Britain is concerned by the wanton destruction of forests worldwide. British High Commissioner to Kenya, Mr Edward Clay, said the consequences of the destruction was a "global issue". "We have an interest in the way other countries look at the environment. Its protection is very important," Mr Clay told Environment Minister Joseph Kamotho at Maji House, Nairobi.

The UNITeS Knowledge Base for ICT Volunteers in Development and International Online Volunteers is up and running.

The Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), a national Alliance of 300 non-government organisations, community based organisation and trade unions, is looking for a media coordinator.

The Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), a national Alliance of 300 non-government organisations, community based organisation and trade unions, is looking for a WSSD administrator/secretary.

The Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), a national Alliance of 300 non-government organisations, community based organisation and trade unions, is looking for a National Director.

Namibia has received part of the US$750,000 World Bank stash to develop its Country Gateway in line with the Bank's Development Gateway project.

E-Governance information and resources, as well as project documentation, is ccessile online. Read this invitation from Vikras Nath to use the resources and contribute your opinioons and resources.

English has always dominated the World Wide Web, but new studies show that language diversity is more and more of a trend online.

The Digital Vision Fellowship Program is a sabbatical program for technology professionals at California's Stanford University. Digital Vision fellows are located full-time on the Stanford campus for up to one academic year, each undertaking a project that explores the utility of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in addressing develop ing world problems.

Noam Chomsky comments on the the new war on terrorism, U.S. foreign policy, Osama bin Laden, U.S. involvement with Afghanistan, and the long-term implications of America's military attacks abroad.

I’m trying to track down figures that show how accessible CD ROM format resources might be in Africa. We are currently reviewing methods for disseminating a training manual on HIV treatment issues, and would appreciate some advice on how to find this data. We are particularly interested in the usage of CD ROMs by the health sector and NGOs working in the health field.

Statement of 17 September 2001
Some American politicians now argue that criminal justice is inadequate because the events of September 11 were an "act of war". But according to international law, we must know what State committed it. A group of individuals, even numbering in the hundreds, cannot commit an "act of war".

Perhaps those who harbour terrorists may themselves be accomplices in an "act of war". But let us remember the last time this bold claim was made, in 1914, when Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia because a Serb nationalist had assassinated its archduke. It unleashed a cascade of belligerent declarations justified by an earlier equivalent of article 5 of the NATO treaty.

We now look back in horror and bewilderment at how an overreaction to terrorism, in the name of punishment and retribution, provoked a chain of events that ultimately slaughtered an entire generation of European youth.

The anger and even the thirst for vengeance of the victims and their families can well be understood. But any act of reprisal that takes civilian casualties or is directed against civilian objects is quite simply forbidden by international law. It is a war crime. To the extent reprisals are allowed at all, they must target purely military objectives.

The US seeks sympathy for the thousands of innocent victims of this tragedy, and they have it. Our hearts have been broken to see the agony of the bereaved relatives, and an unbearably sad hole in a beloved skyline. But international solidarity should not become a pretext for promoting a US political agenda that has little to do with catching the perpetrators and preventing future crimes.

Above all, if measures are to be taken in the name of protecting democracy, there can be no room for double standards. Only two years ago, in another context, the US argued that a civilian office building in Belgrade was a legitimate military target because it housed a television station. The US justified the resulting deaths of civilian office workers as "collateral damage". If those responsible for attacking the World Trade Centre are ever brought to court, they may invoke this precedent. The scale of the killings was different in Belgrade, but the principle is barely distinguishable.

Let us recall, again and again, that civilians must be spared in any conflict. The right to life is the most fundamental of all human rights.

The right to life of thousands of innocent civilians in New York City and Washington has been egregiously violated. But that same right also belongs without exception to civilians in Belgrade, Baghdad and Kabul.

The latest jobs from OneWorld Jobs - the place on the internet for jobs in sustainable development, environment and human rights.

The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) is launching a competition to support research on the changing balance between public and private sector funding of research, and its implications for developing country governments and research institutions. The competition is open to researchers throughout the developing world, and will award up to seven grants, with a maximum value of CA $80,000 each. Applications must be submitted by March 29, 2002, with final selection of grants to be completed by April 30, 2002.

The new issue of the Bretton Woods Update is now available in PDF and HTML versions. Among the topics covered are the IMF and the crisis in Argentina, the World Bank new private sector development strategy, IFI roles in Afghanistan's reconstruction and in the "New Deal" for development proposed by the UK Chancellor.

Timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum, WEF, the World Social Forum or WSF was launched last year as a venue for the creation and exchange of social and economic projects that promote human rights, social justice and sustainable development. Thousands of civil society activists will gather at Porto Alegre, Brazil from January 31st to February 5th, to participate in activities reflecting the slogan "Another World is Possible". This year, the World Economic Forum, WEF, will be held in New York from 31st January to 4th February, 2002.

The fourth issue of E-SEAL has been published by the European Foundation Centre as a supplement to the SEAL Journal. E-SEAL provides information about legal and fiscal issues affecting foundations, associations, and NGOs.

The African NGO Refugee Protection Network seeks an experienced professional to set-up and develop an electronic Network of human rights organisations working with refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The African Conservation Tillage Network (ACT) consists of practitioners and promoters who believe the adaptation and adoption of conservation tillage principles is a cost effective method of reducing and reversing the environmental degradation and food insecurity devastating Africa. ACT NOW! is ACT's electronic update on events and findings which may assist accelerate this process. ACT NOW! AND HELP AFRICA GROW!

A unique public-private financing partnership, initiated by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), has been launched . The partnership aims to create a long term synergy between the developmental and commercial objectives of the public and private sector participants to the benefit of sub-Saharan Africa’s economic development.

On the 15th of January the Kenyan head of state appointed a committee of respected foreigners essentially to help kick start and lend coherence to the Kenya government's apparently stalled anti-corruption programme.

Working under the auspices of the contracted British Risk Advisory Group, the high-powered group comprised of the firm's MD Bill Waite, Graham Stockwell, formerly of the London Metropolitan Police and the Hong Kong and Botswana anti-corruption authorities; top British lawyer Stephen Kramer QC; and, a former Deputy Secretary General of the Commonwealth Secretariat Sir Humphrey Maud. Others were Carolyne Snowden and Tony Milford. They are expected to "advise on what is required to create a nationally and internationally credible machinery which will combat corruption and promote integrity in the public sector."

The appointment of these distinguished individuals was the latest installment in a fight against corruption in Kenya that has been tortuous to say the least. To the government's credit, however, when in November the President first announced that the experts would be appointed, the Attorney General took the trouble of partly explaining what they would be doing in Kenya to the Kenya Anti-Corruption Coalition (KACC). The KACC was formed last October at the International Anti-Corruption Conference (IACC) in Prague. It brings together a number of groupings involved in the fight against corruption in Kenya including the Attorney General, the police anti-corruption unit, representatives of civil society including TI-Kenya, the Kenya Private Sector Foundation, religious leaders and members of the cross-party African Parliamentarian Network Against Corruption (APNAC) Kenya Chapter.

Controversy, tentative steps forward, major setbacks, recrimination, shreds of hope that everyone tries to clothe themselves with and regular bouts of serious disconcertment have characterized the fight against corruption in Kenya since 1997 when under donor pressure the government created the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority (KACA). It was modeled on the popular Hong Kong official anti-graft organization. Prior to this a Prevention of Corruption Act (Cap. 65) had been enacted in 1956. It was amended eight times over the next 41 years. One needs both a sense of humour and perspective to follow the ups and downs in the struggle against corruption in Kenya that the changes in this piece of legislation in part illustrate.

Partly as a result of mounting donor pressure, in 1991 the Kenya government amended the Prevention of Corruption Act to increase criminal sanctions for graft. This had no discernible effect, however, and in 1993 the government took a step further and created a special anti-corruption investigative unit within the police ostensibly separate from the rest of the force. The unit arrested a few junior traffic policemen for taking small bribes but did little else before its registry and offices mysteriously burnt down. In 1997, again under donor pressure, the Act was amended and the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority (KACA) created. The first director was an ex-policeman and sharpshooter and a former Presidential candidate on the Party of Independent Candidates of Kenya (PICK) ticket.

After about a year in office he was suspended and a tribunal constituted to examine his performance and conduct. He finally resigned as head of KACA in November 1998. Some consideration was apparently given by the tribunal to his robust temperament, which was plainly exhibited before the tribunal at which he appeared in his own defence without the assistance of counsel.

In 1999 the president appointed Justice Aaron Ringera to head KACA. At around the same time the renown white Kenyan palaeontologist Richard Leakey had also been appointed to head the civil service. The combination of Ringera's hard work and meticulous legal capacity, and Leakey's newfound political influence led to a situation where the for the first time KACA started making progress against politically connected elements of Kenyan society previously considered untouchable. Between November 1999 and June 2000, KACA investigated 135 cases of corruption and secured
1 successful conviction. During this time Ringera successfully institutionalised KACA hiring competent staff, initiating training programmes and launching preparations for the Kenya Anti-Corruption Strategy. He also showed a willingness to cooperate with civil society that was not really in evidence before.

It has been argued that the root of KACA's ultimate demise was in the very appointment of such an industrious person as Justice Ringera to its helm. The first sign of trouble was contemporaneous with his appointment when two legal challenges were mounted in court. In the first the immediate former director Harun Mwau challenged the appointment for offending doctrine of separation of powers in purporting to second a High Court Judge to head KACA which inter alia had powers of investigation and prosecution. He temporarily injuncted the new director from taking office. The second challenge was by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) which objected to the constitution of the Advisory Board that had recommended the appointment of Ringera, on several grounds including the fact that several supposed nominating bodies to the Advisory Board were non-existent! Another limb of the LSK's argument revolved around separation of powers. Ringera survived both challenges but took no steps to regularise his position. Thus it came as no surprise to many observers when the High Court on the December 22nd 2000 reversed itself and found that Ringera as a judge was after all unqualified to sit as the head of KACA. The court went further and declared the entire authority unconstitutional. Barely three weeks earlier on November 28th 2000, the South African Constitutional Court sealed the fate of Hon. Mr. Justice Willem Heath of the Special Investigative Unit (SIU) - finding his appointment and incumbency to be unconstitutional.

That was the end of KACA. Subsequent government attempts to introduce legislation legalising KACA last year were thrown out of parliament partly because of poor drafting but also because many MPs resented the impression that the legislation was being forced down Kenyan throats by the donor community. This meant that Kenya failed to meet one of the most fundamental IMF conditionalities before resumption of Kenya's programme with them. Essentially this and other unmet conditionalities put a number of key donor programmes on hold and left the government with a significant hole its budget. It is now expected that we'll see the contentious pieces of anti-corruption legislation again in the coming two months. In the meantime the government re-created the ill-fated police anti-corruption unit much to the chagrin of many Kenyans who consider their police force among their country's most corrupt institutions. The international experts were appointed ion the 15th just as most of us were waiting for the latest versions of the legislation necessary to regularize KACA's situation and hopefully get the fight against corruption in Kenya back on track.

The saga of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority(KACA), the failed pieces of legislation and all the developments leading up to the appointment of foreign experts this week offered an interesting lesson about the fight against corruption in Africa. When the donor backed anti-corruption legislation was thrown out by the Kenyan parliament in August 2001 it demonstrated the ultimate limit of conditionalities as tool for donor interaction with African governments where governance issues are concerned. When parliament rejected the legislation it was an expression of sovereignty lacking in any appropriate response from donors. Clearly the entire approach of donor conditionalities vis-à-vis governance was tested in Kenya in a way that has implications for other African countries.

* John Githongo, Transparency International, Kenya

This article discusses the use of border sentry software which blocks access to certain web sites if visitors are in certain countries.

Over the past few months, security experts have discovered flaws in a variety of Microsoft products.

Primary school children cannot form a political party, get elected to parliament and secure budgetary allocations for their education. The proportion of children in the northern part of the world is small and their parents can secure funding for education, combining their political voice with paying tax. In many developing countries, children constitute the majority of the population but obtain a vote only after becoming adults; hence they have to rely on their parents and their teachers. Few of their parents pay tax, many because they earn too little, and their vote seldom affects budgetary allocations because there often is simply too little to distribute. Their teachers habitually have to battle to get their rights recognized and their salaries paid so that they could teach. Children thus need to have their right to education fully recognized, and this right necessarily goes beyond national and regional borders.

Some responses to a request about web usage in developing countries are presented in this announcement.

Over the last weeks, various improvements have been made to the HURIDOCS Web site: There is now a complete site index, plus a hierarchical menu. A search engine allows to search the site. Lists of all pages in French and in Spanish have been added as well. Also many new pages have been posted, including no. 25 (December 2001) of the periodical 'HURIDOCS News', all Micro-thesauri for human rights documentation, the programme of HURIDOCS activities for the year 2002.

Kampala, 23-27 July 2002
To build and consolidate powerful relationships between participating organizations, in order to create new programs to make information on the position of women, and for women, highly accessible and visible.

The report from the International Conference on "Globalization of Research and Development: Challenges and Opportunities for Developing Countries," held in Grado, Italy on 11-13 September 2001, is now available for downloading in pdf format.

The nineteenth Meeting of States Parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination have elected, by secret ballot, nine members of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination for four-year terms, to replace those whose terms of office will expire on 19 January. It also elected its chairpersons and four vice-chairpersons.

At the opening of its twenty-sixth session, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women -– the monitoring body for the implementation of the Convention against such discrimination -- discussed recent progress and future action. Adopting its agenda and programme of work, the Committee agreed that during the current session, which is to last until 1 February, it will examine reports of eight States parties. The Committee's 23 experts, who act in their personal capacity, are also expected to continue their work on a new recommendation to address article 4.1 of the Convention on temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women.

The east African nation of Somalia is being mentioned with increasing frequency as a possible next target in the U.S.-led war against international terrorism. Somalia is a failed state--with what passes for the central government controlling little more than a section of the national capital of Mogadishu, a separatist government in the north, and rival warlords and clan leaders controlling most the remainder of the country. Before the U.S. attacks that impoverished country, however, it is important to recognize how Somalia became a possible haven for the followers of Osama bin Laden and what might result if America goes to war.

The Associates Programme offers African women scholars supportive intellectual space and establishes AGI connections with intellectuals and research-based advocates, committed to working with gender and equity issues in Africa. Through an Associateship programme, AGI Associates are offered supportive intellectual space, where they are free to reflect on, discuss and write up their individual work, and engage in collective projects for gender equity. The Associates are selected through a pan-African committee process.

Gordon Brown's recent speeches on a "New Deal" for the global economy have been generally welcomed, especially for their suggestions that aid budgets should be increased. But some of his more detailed proposals on the World Bank and IMF are controversial.

A World Bank team is currently preparing the next World Development Report which will be launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development this September. However despite the wide interest in the report's subject matter and the sensitive timing of its release, the Bank has produced no clear plan for outsiders to be involved in the drafting process.

'INASP Health Links' is a new Gateway to selected Web sites of special interest to health professionals, medical library communities, publishers, and NGOs in developing and transitional countries. Please have a look and let us know what you think of the site and, especially, how we might improve it.

There are divergent views between the French central bank and development experts on how the new EU currency – the Euro - will impact on the CFA, the currency adopted by 14 West and Central African countries. The CFA, which used to be tied to the French franc, was automatically tied to the euro from 1999 when France joined the Euro zone.

Final Communique of the SADC Extra-Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government, January 2002, Blantyre, Malawi.

This week the UK Foreign Secretary begins a three-day trip to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa. Next month Tony Blair will follow with a trip expected to take in Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. In his conference speech last October, Blair said that Africa is a 'scar on the conscience of the world'. Whether he has anything more than a sticking plaster to offer as a cure will soon become clear.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) reacted today with outrage at the arbitrary arrest of the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Adams Oshiomhole. In a letter to ILO Director General, Juan Somavia, the Brussels-based labour group strongly condemned the arrest of the labour leader, incarcerated while leading a nation-wide protest over a hike in petrol prices.

Mercifully, South Africa has experienced a reasonably peaceful transition into the democratic “rainbow nation”. Yet the soldier with his gun, and the ubiquitous R4 rifle remain the constant, if not the only, signifiers of symbols of power that thread through and remain respected during both apartheid and the era that has come after it. The omnipresent Casspir with its male occupants, rifles at the ready, driving through township streets today, makes one question the extent to which the physical and social spaces of South African townships have been demilitarized.

Reading the title of this article and knowing the history of Uganda, one may ask: “which war?” There have been several civil wars in my country since independence; in fact, currently (un)civil war rages in the northern and southwestern regions of Uganda. The civil strife that I refer to here is that which Ugandans witnessed between 1981 and 1986. The war itself was concentrated in the so-called “Luwero Triangle” - a large swathe of land lying just 50 miles northwest of the capital city, Kampala. Nevertheless, generalized violence and bloodshed rippled throughout the length and breadth of the country and touched each one of us. Moreover, the civil war took place against a historical backdrop of vicious military and civilian dictatorships in Uganda's post-independent politics. The words “duka-duka” were reminiscent of the times - running for cover and fleeing civil strife.

On 8th December 2001, Abok Alfa Akok a Christian woman of 18 years of age from the Dinka tribe, was sentenced by the criminal court in Nyala City, Southern Darfur, to execution by stoning for the crime of adultery.