PAMBAZUKA NEWS 49 * 8304 SUBSCRIBERS
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 49 * 8304 SUBSCRIBERS
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called for reconciliation and rehabilitation in Somalia, saying these were among the Horn of Africa's key concerns. In this respect, he urged Somali leaders to put aside their differences.
The World Food Programme (WFP) says it needs help urgently to continue feeding about 19,500 mainly Angolan refugees in Namibia beyond March.
UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, has appealed for US $18 million to fund its projects in war-wracked Angola, much of which it hopes to spend on reducing the country's appalling child mortality rate.
Amnesty International has expressed concern about "consistent reports of restrictions to freedom of expression and assembly, violence against members of political parties, inhuman and cruel prison conditions, and widespread impunity" in Togo.
SADC chairperson and president of Malawi, Bakili Muluzi, called for free and fair elections in Zimbabwe at the opening of the Southern African leaders summit in the Malawian capital Blantyre.
Six out of every 10 Kenyans who are shot dead are victims of police, says a new report. But the statistic rises dramatically in 2001, when police shot dead nine out of every 10 victims.
Political dishonesty in Nigeria, especially under the Fourth Republic, is not news. What is probably new and disturbing is its deepening character and the attitude of acquiescence of the Nigerian people. As for judicial impropriety, it is news even though there have been occasional reports of corruption amongst the learned profession. It is news because of the increasing controversy over allegations of requests for bribe by court judges and refusal by the accused people to comply.
Abubakar Rimi, the President's Party Man, Tells Dickson Offre That the President Should Be Impeached for the Confusion Over the Doctoring of the Electoral Act.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions notes Zimbabwe President Mugabe’s verbal undertakings to yesterday’s SADC summit meeting in Blantyre that he agrees to hold free and fair Presidential elections, to allow independent observers and journalists and to investigate reports of political violence. COSATU is however sceptical about this pronouncement and disappointed that the SADC leaders appear to have accepted these promises at face value.
THE European Union has given Zimbabwe seven days to make a written undertaking that it will allow international observers and news media personnel for the country's presidential election scheduled for 9 and 10 March.
As I sit here, reflecting upon history, remembering the contextual conditions under which we have operated and the 10 years worth of weekly voluntary labour hours, I am convinced that without some madness and a lot of love it would not have been possible to give women a forum, voice and skills... towards transforming unequal gender relations in South Africa. Ten years is a long time to condense into a few pages. Here I shall outline some of the key strategies, practices and processes that have enabled the only feminist journal in the country to survive, and contribute towards an extremely difficult yet challenging period of our history.
The Malawi Media Women's Association (MAMWA) recently received a grant from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to add four new "radio listeners clubs" to its broadcast operation, according to Janet Karim, MAMWA's co-founder.
After months of wrangling, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says agreement has finally been reached on a document setting out the terms for global action against racism and xenophobia. Publication of the document was delayed by a dispute over whether several paragraphs referring to slavery and the slave trade should be included in a programme of action. European nations objected to this proposal, fearing it might expose them to claims for compensation from African nations. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, says the world.
In the bad old days of 19th-century eugenics, scientists who had supped at the table of social Darwinism would construct evolutionary trees that had twigs within the species Homo sapiens. Each twig was a racial group. The top twig was, of course, the white Caucasian one—since the scientists who did this work were themselves white Caucasians. Modern genetics has shown the error of their ways. Systematic genetic differences between people from different parts of the world, though they exist, are small compared with variations between people from the same place. The visible differences, such as skin colour, are the result of a mere handful of genes. Under the skin, humanity is remarkably homogenous. Racism, however, is ubiquitous. It is not only white Caucasians (whatever that term means, in the context of current knowledge) who are guilty of it. That has led to another biological hypothesis, that people are somehow "programmed" to recognise race and be racist. Robert Kurzban, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides, three evolutionary psychologists who work at the University of California, Santa Barbara, find this hypothesis unlikely. And they have published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that supports an alternative hypothesis. That hypothesis is that racism is actually an unfortunate by-product of another phenomenon—a tendency to assign people to "coalition groups", and to use whatever cues are available, be they clothing, accent or skin colour, to slot individuals into such groups (or "stereotype" them, as modern usage might term it). The good news is that experiments done by the researchers suggest that such stereotypes are easily dissolved and replaced with others. Racism, in other words, can be eliminated.
Secretary General Kofi Annan urged developing countries on Monday to agree to fight corruption so as to persuade rich states to raise an extra 50 billion dollars in aid at a major UN conference this year.
The British and US governments have begun a joint effort to identify millions of dollars thought to have been salted away in foreign bank accounts by Robert Mugabe and members of his inner circle.
Congratulations on Pambazuka and thank you for your excellent news service. Long may it continue.
OUR tragedy this
Fall
Is counted in thousands of dismembered joy
And
Discounted in caved vengeance with smart bombs
The faithful on that side sang:
“From their caves of Adullam to ours of Afghanistan
We take our stand
From Saladin before to…
The Fearsome Genius (permission to speak in your presence, please)
We sought only a little destruction, a few mangled hundreds perhaps
But Allah gave us DESTRUCTION UNLIMITED…!”
In honor of
Broken
Dreams,
splintered feline pipe-dreams in chevalure quantities
dreams too nightmarish for our age of fundamentalisms
The faithful on this side sang:
“From our crusades of Jerusalem to theirs of Kandahar
We take no prisoners
From de Bouillion before to…
The Brave One (Nostradamus’s prophecy*)
We sought only handover justice, dead or alive
But, God! They gave us JUSTICE INFINITE…!”
In honor of
Broken
Defenses,
Polished oversold pedestal-defenses in heavy penal quantities
defenses too unjust for our age of impoverishments
President Moi has appointed a team of internationally-respected experts to combat corruption. In Tuesday's statement, he said: "The action that I and my Government have taken is a statement of our total commitment to address head-on corruption and the resultant ills that befall us."
The South African Parliament is poised to establish an online communications platform, accessible from anywhere in the world, serving both parliamentarians and the public. The Internet-based portal is designed to serve as an entrance point to Parliament, enabling visitors to the site to consult policy, listen to speeches and gain an insight into the legislation process. Eventually members of the public may be able to "virtually attend" parliamentary sessions, debates and hearings as they happen - or have them played back after the event.
STATE House yesterday refuted reports that it had banned women from wearing mini-skirts and skin tights as part of President Mwanawasa's 'New Deal' and directed police to deal firmly with culprits who stripped innocent women in the Lusaka city centre yesterday. Spokesperson Arthur Yoyo said the President had at no time issued directives to bar women from wearing pairs of trousers, mini-skirts and skin tights. Police arrested more than 20 youths in connection with the rowdy behaviour which left some women stripped naked.
To express our condemnation of the continued assault on women, since Monday this week in particular, and on violence against women in general in Zambia. Bring your placards with messages to bring home once and for all to our government that enough is enough...
Time: assemble 08:00 hours
Place: embassy square (opposite Cabinet Office), Lusaka
Date: Friday, 18th January, 2002.
The government of Zimbabwe has recently introduced two pieces of legislation, the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Bill, currently before Parliament and the Public Order and Security Act, passed yesterday, which severely restrict freedom of expression and of the media in the run-up to presidential elections planned for March this year.
As the name of the Information Bill implies, it does formally establish a right to access information held by public bodies. However, this right is so limited by exclusions and exceptions that its practical impact is likely to be extremely limited. In any case, most provisions in the bill have nothing to do with access to information but rather impose harsh restrictions on media freedom, giving analysts the sense that the information provisions have been included simply to draw attention away from the real import of the Bill.
Key problems with the two laws are as follows:
- excessive restrictions are imposed on the content of what the media may publish or broadcast;
- all media outlets and any business disseminating media products or even video or audio recordings must obtain a registration certificate from a government controlled body;
- all individual journalists must also obtain accreditation from the same body; and
- all foreign ownership of the media is prohibited and non-citizens are prohibited from working as journalists; and
- the authorities are given excessive powers to prevent demonstrations.
ARTICLE 19 calls on the Zimbabwean Parliament to reject these laws and calls on the government to stop seeking to control the media and to prevent independent media reporting. We also call on the international community to take effective measures to oppose these developments, including by isolating the government.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions notes Zimbabwe President Mugabe’s verbal undertakings to yesterday’s SADC summit meeting in Blantyre that he agrees to hold free and fair Presidential elections, to allow independent observers and journalists and to investigate reports of political violence.
COSATU is however sceptical about this pronouncement and disappointed that the SADC leaders appear to have accepted these promises at face value. Mugabe has given such assurances before and then completely ignored them. These latest promises will prove as worthless as those he made at the Commonwealth summit meeting on 6 September 2001 in Abuja, Nigeria, and after previous SADC meetings on 10-11 September and 10 December 2001.
Since then he has been pushing draconian anti-democratic laws through Parliament, which:
· Prevent public protests which “cause disorder or intolerance”;
· Ban “illegal” strikes;
· Restrict the rights of opposition activists;
· Outlaw publishing “false statements prejudicial to the state or that incite public disorder, violence, affect defence and economic interests of the country or undermine confidence in security forces”;
· Ban “spreading malicious rumours or publishing information likely to cause alarm and despondency”.
· Make it an offence to insult the President.
The election has been made subject to:
· Bans on voter education and election monitors;
· Rules on voter-registration which require votes to have proof of residence and a bank account, which will disenfranchise thousands of voters, especially the unemployed and the young;
· Severe restrictions on opposition election meetings; · An electoral commission staffed by hand-picked loyalists, which will not be independent. All these measures are designed to make it impossible for the opposition to campaign openly and guarantee President Mugabe’s own re-election.
They not only contradict all his earlier promises but are steps in the opposite direction. Yet Malawi and SADC President, Bakili Muluzi, when asked how Mugabe could be trusted, replied: "I raised that question myself with him. He said, 'It will be done', and I take his word for it." This is not the decisive action that millions of Zimbabweans were hoping for from the regional heads of government to force President Mugabe to restore democracy. COSATU wants to see more than promises. Workers will not be convinced he is serious about holding free and fair elections unless immediate steps are taken to set up an independent election commission, with independent observers, the withdrawal of all the draconian laws currently being pushed through Parliament and a halt to all attacks on political opponents and journalists by ZANU-PF supporters. The SADC leaders should have issued an ultimatum to Mugabe to comply with these conditions or face expulsion from the organisation. Their failure to take more decisive action to ensure that Mugabe genuinely changes his policy is a serious blow to the idea of an African Renaissance, the New Africa Initiative and an African Union, all of which aim to transform the continent on the basis of democracy, human rights and good governance.
If SADC cannot deliver free and fair elections in Zimbabwe, their credibility will be brought in to question, especially since they are silent about the lack of democracy in Swaziland. Unless the SADC leaders face up to their responsibility, there can be no prospect of democracy in Zimbabwe.
The workshop will offer advanced training to operators of existing African Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who are participants in the process of developing and enhancing a national Internet with regional and international connectivity.
Two days of workshops, trainings and speakers, followed by two days of action in solidarity with Another World Is Possible! and the Anti-Capitalist Convergence New York. Workshops will be presented by local organizations.
Reporting directly to the Board of Trustees, the incumbent is expected to provide strategic leadership, vision, guidance and direction in planning and execution of sustainable natural resources management and training programmes making linkages with stakeholders in Government, NGOs leading donor agencies as well as training institutions in Malawi and the SADC region.
We're talking about bricks and mortar grants for rural nonprofits, the liability of nonprofit board members, grants for operating expenses, and much more.
The latest jobs from OneWorld Jobs - the place on the internet for jobs in sustainable development, environment and human rights.
Salary: £27,346pa
Closing Date: 8 Feb 2002
Closing Date : 31 Jan 2002
Posted on : 19 Dec 2001
The African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) is looking for a self-motivated, energetic Tanzanian / East African citizen to assist the multi-sectoral District AIDS Secretariat in the coordination of a comprehensive district HIV/AIDS control programme in Serengeti district, Mara region, Tanzania.
The Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs will sponsor up to eight non-residential Fellows for the program year June 2002 - June 2003. Among the topics and areas eligible are: Human Rights; Environment; Conflict; Justice and the World Economy; and History and the Politics of Reconciliation.
Pact's Community REACH team is pleased to announce the release of Request for Applications (RFA) #02-A-1. Community REACH is a five-year, USAID funded program designed to facilitate the efficient flow of grant funds to organizations playing valuable roles in the fight against HIV/AIDS, including PVOs, regional and local NGOs, universities and faith-based organizations.
Bread for the World’s Africa: Hunger to Harvest campaign aims to win U.S. leadership for an international effort to reduce hunger and poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, including an increase of $1 billion in annual U.S. funding for effective, poverty-focused development assistance.
An important gathering of those in the developed and developing worlds who are concerned about gender issues and the growing inequity in access to, and use of, essential information and communications technologies in the developing regions.
Tucked into corners and collecting dust in the closets of nonprofits worldwide, you'll find them: stacks of ancient computers, cracked monitors, tangled cords and drives without floppies. The hardware comes from well-meaning donors who hope their castoffs can do others some good. But while secondhand technology is indeed a blessing for some struggling agencies, for most it's quickly becoming a costly curse.
An international agency seeks suitably qualified South African gender and education experts to help review teaching and training materials from a gender perspective.
A protest, organised by MISA and NCRF, against restrictive media clauses passed under the Public Order and Security Bill in Zimbabwe is planned to take place in Johannesburg on Friday, 18 January 2002.
The monthly, electronic newsletter published by the Non Profit Partnership, is one of the tools the organisation uses to fulfil its objectives of maximizing the benefits for the non-profit sector in proposed legislation, as well as to widely disseminate information on the implications of particular laws, which have significant impact on the sector.
"Your newsletter is brilliant - but it is too long for me to receive in my mailbox." How many times have we heard this! When we tried last year to get your views about how to reduce the length of the newsletter, most of you responded that the value of the newsletter is in the broad range of issues covered. The problem, of course, is that the pace of events on the continent is so great that even a newsletter twice the size would leave many gaps.
But to get round the problem, we propose that, from now on, we will send you the newsletter in two parts.
Part one will include: 1. Editorial, 2. Conflict, Emergencies, and Crises, 3. Rights and Democracy, 4. Corruption, 5. Health, 6. Education and Social Welfare, 7. Women and Gender, 8. Refugees and Forced Migration, 9. Racism and Xenophobia, 10. Environment, 11. Media, 12. Development.
Part two will include: 13. Internet and Technology, 14. eNewsletters and Mailing Lists, 15. Fundraising, 16. Courses, Seminars, and Workshops, 17. Advocacy Resources, 18. Jobs, 19. Books and Arts, 20. Letters and Comments
We hope this change will overcome some of the problems some of you have had in receiving large emails. We would welcome your feedback - but perhaps we could try this for a few weeks first, and then we can evaluate the experience.
We hope to make a few more changes over the next month that will, we hope, bring further improvements.
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 48 * 8233 SUBSCRIBERS
PAMBAZUKA NEWS 48 * 8233 SUBSCRIBERS
This document discusses the consequences for regional development of the widening demand and supply of agricultural economists and proposes solutions to the problem. Prepared by Marios Obwona and David Norman for the 2020 Vision Network for East Africa, in collaboration with The East and Central Africa Program for Agricultural Policy Analysis (ECAPAPA) and The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), with support from The Rockefeller Foundation (Nairobi). November 2001.
Throughout the developing world, poor people subsist on diets consisting of staple foods such as rice or maize and little else.The lack of diversity in the foods they eat often leads to micronutrient deficiencies. Almost one-third of the children in developing countries are affected to some degree by vitamin A and iron deficiencies. Food-based approaches are an essential part of the long-term global strategy to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies, but their real potential has not been explored adequately. This report reviews a number of recently published studies of food-based interventions to reduce vitamin A and iron deficiencies in developing countries. It summarizes the current state of knowledge and identifies the lessons learned and the enormous gaps in knowledge that remain.
In 1999 global population surpassed 6 billion people, and this number rises by about 70-80 million people each year. Six Billion and Counting examines the consequences of continuing population growth for the world's resource systems and for national and global food security. Leisinger, Schmitt, and Pandya-Lorch offer here a sober analysis of a complex and alarming situation. They assess the progress the world has made in controlling population growth and point to the areas where future difficulties will lie. They describe the effects of rapid population growth on social and economic conditions and on natural resources, and they consider what population growth will mean for the food security of poor people and poor countries. In addition, the authors make clear how the roles of women and children in traditional societies affect birth rates. Six Billion and Counting shows that neither the population pessimists, who predict a catastrophic exhaustion of natural resources, nor the population optimists, who foresee technological solutions for all of the problems raised by population growth, offer the most useful approach to this problem. Instead, Leisinger and his coauthors argue that new technologies mitigating the harmful effects of rapid population growth can give the world valuable time to take the complex and multifaceted steps needed to reduce population growth rates to sustainable levels. ISBN 0-89629-705-5, John Hopkins University Press.
At COP7 in Marrakesh, the Kyoto Protocol was weakened even further--it is, now, the Marrakesh Dilution of the Bonn Compromise to the Kyoto Protocol. Nevertheless, and despite the often-dispiriting nature of Kyoto's loopholes, we believe that the essential situation remains unchanged. Particularly in today's grim international context, the ratification of even this weakened first-generation climate treaty must be counted as a major victory for democratic, multilateral environmental governance. And this remains true despite 9-11, despite the arrival of the U.S.-led "anti-terror coalition," and despite the newly uncertain fate of the Bonn coalition.
The U.S-Russian decisions about their nuclear arsenals are going to set the pace for the whole show. If we decide that we have to have 2,000 nuclear weapons in the year 2010, we are guaranteed that other poorer nations will say, as India has already said, that they don't want to live with nuclear apartheid. The two-tier world, to use a phrase beloved by the strategist, is an unstable world. It's got to go one way or the other. Either it's going to go to zero nuclear weapons, or it's going to go to a much fuller proliferation.
The Organization for African Unity Expert Meeting held in Addis Ababa, (12-16 November) to consider the Additional Protocol on women's rights to the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights concluded its deliberations by adopting an Article providing for the rights of women and their protection around issues of violence. There was an impasse on some elements related to the elimination or continued legal recognition of polygamous marriages. UNIFEM and its partners contributed to the strengthening of the language on reproductive rights specifically related to HIV/AIDS, widows rights and inheritance rights as well as rights to peace, which compliments the UN Security Council Resolution 1325. For more information, contact Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, Regional Programme Director for East, Central and Horn of Africa.
In Kenya and Uganda, UNIFEM supported the Coalition for Violence against Women of Kenya and Raising Voice of Uganda to publish a book based on a collection of newspaper coverage on the subject from 1998 to date. This book will be used as an advocacy and lobby tool for action on violence against women in two selected districts. A tribunal has also been organized to hear women victims of violence. For more information, contact Mary Mbeo.
The draft of the report prepared for the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights by its Special Rapporteur on Women has just been received in Nairobi. The report reviews what is meant by violence against women in the context of international campaigns (using the example of female genital mutilation), national laws and the African Charter. It also examines the situation in three West African countries: Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone, in terms of domestic violence, state-sponsored violence and conflict-related violence with particular reference to refugee women. The draft text will be reviewed by an Expert Meeting in Maputo in March 2002 and the final version will be presented to the African Commission at its 31st Session, to be held in Pretoria on 2-16 May, 2002.
For more information, contact Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, Regional Programme Director, UNIFEM Nairobi Office.
UNIFEM's Nairobi-based African Women in Crisis Programme has commissioned two short studies of groups of women living in the margins of society to ensure that the issues they represent are restored to the development agenda. The first study will examine the impact of a large refugee camp (65,000 inhabitants) on a local population of agro-pastoralists whose fragile economy is teetering on the edge of extinction after several years of drought. Young girls and older women from the Turkana community in Northern Kenya are drawn to the opportunities afforded by Kakuma camp, which offers access to medical and educational facilities, but also forced marriages and work in camp brothels. The second study revisits the situation of internally displaced women in Kenya's Rift Valley and Laikipia Plateau, many of whom remain displaced since the so-called "land clashes" which preceded the 1992 elections and others as a result of subsequent ethnic conflicts. For more information, contact Nyaradzai Gumbonzvanda, Regional Programme Director for East, Central and Horn of Africa.
The southern African media was among the most challenged of any African media last year by heavy-handed governments, regional analysts and senior journalists told IRIN.
Unfolding events in Afghanistan have brought worldwide attention to the severe treatment of women under the Taliban. As the Afghan people prepare to rebuild their country, and as they explore ways to include women in this process, World Bank experts say that countries which promote women's rights and increase their access to resources and schooling enjoy lower poverty rates, faster economic growth and less corruption than countries that do not.
Amnesty International (AI)called on the UN Security Council to take a lead role in urging the international community to provide adequate protection and assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs) in Liberia.
PRESIDENT J. A. Kufuor has given hints of a possible overhaul of the education system to meet the developmental needs of the country. He has announced his government's determination to bridge the huge gap between well-endowed schools and the less-endowed ones by the end of his term of office as part of measures to correct the existing defects.
Save the Children has launched a new web site for young people. Packed with
information and resources, Rightonline aims to inspire young people to learn
about and actively promote children's rights, locally and globally.
Mention the word terrorism and, no matter what the context, people will sit up and take notice. In the Japanese city Yokohama Carol Bellamy, the executive head of Unicef, declared that employing children as sex workers (a term that seems to have displaced prostitution for the world's oldest profession) is "nothing less than a form of terrorism."
Awareness, acceptance and use of condoms are increasing in Uganda thanks to an open government policy, widespread public awareness campaigns and aggressive social marketing. But it is still difficult for young people to learn about condoms. How can HIV prevention programmes overcome these barriers?
The Health Services Research Projects in Progress (HSRProj) database contains more than 6,200 descriptions of ongoing health services research grants and contracts funded by government agencies, state agencies, foundations, and private organizations. Researchers, policymakers, managers, clinicians, and librarians can have access to information about health services research before results are available in a published form. Contact: Virginia Van Horne.
Leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) decided at their 25th summit in Dakar, Senegal, to set up special police units to combat trafficking in humans beings usually children and women -, the UN News service reported. They also decided that special training would be provided for police, customs and immigration officials, prosecutors and judges.
There is no place on Earth where neo-liberalism has not poisoned. It has allowed a handful of private interests to control as much as possible of social life in order to maximize personal profit. It has poisonous effects especially in the Third World, where imperial powers continue to pirate natural and human resources to fill the pockets of transnational capitalists. as women fighting against global capitalism and its new phase, as women yearning for a better world where we will not be exploited and abused, we must go a step further into looking into this 'neo-liberalism' through the experiences of women. And it is not just about how women linearly experience it - we must go into the depths to manifest how neo-liberalism operates in a very gender-biased way.
How should we characterize the outcome of the World Trade Organization ministerial in Doha? I am not sure if a debate on whether or not a new round of trade negotiations was launched in Doha will lead us very far. But something very threatening occurred in Doha and that is what we must urgently convey to the world, which at the moment is very confused as to what its outcomes really were.
The World Trade Organization's new mandate raises a key question for next year's UN World Summit on Sustainable Development: Who will decide our common future?
If the ICTR archives are ever revisited, the hearing of witness TA will stand out as a disgraceful moment in the court's history. For two weeks, from October 24 to November 8, 2001, the woman recounted the multiple rapes of which she was a victim during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Her testimony directly implicates Arsène Shalom Ntahobali and also includes accusations against his mother, Pauline Nyiramasuhuko, and "the prefect." After one-and-a half days of questioning by the prosecutor, which amounted to almost 100 pages of transcripts, she was forced to undergo seven days of cross-examination by the various defence lawyers in the Butare trial, in which six people stand accused.
Rapid population growth in developing countries, declining population in developed countries. These are the two trends which will determine the development of the world population in the coming century. These are the facts which have emerged from the current demographic report "World Population Dynamics 2002," which is published by The Berlin Institute for World Population and Global Development.
The draft protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa as adopted by the Meeting of Government Experts in Addis Ababa on 16 November 2001.
For thousands of years it was a place of spiritual upliftment where shamans entered trances and etched their visions in stone. Today, the newly opened Wildebeest Kuil Rock Art Site is being used to boost the economy of an uprooted community in South Africa's impoverished Northern Cape province. Located about 10 miles from the diamond-mining town of Kimberley, it is one of the few rock art sites to be opened to the public in South Africa, which boasts some of the finest stone engravings and paintings in the world.
Nigeria continued last year to reap a grim harvest of ethnic and religious violence, as it had in 2000, which began with clashes that claimed over 2,000 lives in the northern city of Kaduna, and ended with fighting in Lagos in which hundreds died.
In the past decade the situation in Nigeria’s oil belt - the Niger Delta, has been characterised by restiveness among the local communities. The over seven million people in the region -source of most of the oil that is the lifeblood of Nigeria's economy - feel cheated of the wealth pumped from their soil.
Natural disasters caused at least 25,000 deaths worldwide in 2001, more than double the previous year, the world's largest reinsurer said on Friday. Putting total economic losses at $36 billion, Munich Re said catastrophes related to extreme weather were a result of continued global climate change.
There is a one in 20 chance of a dramatic rise in world sea levels over the next century due to global warming, according to a new risk assessment. The survey -- by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Norwegian environmental safety organisation, Det Norske Veritas -- said there was a five percent chance of the giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet disintegrating due to climate change and raising sea levels by one metre (yard) in the next 100 years.
Victims and survivors of the 1980s Matabeleland genocide have renewed their call for the arrest and prosecution of President Robert Mugabe and his security and defence ministers for crimes against humanity.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has authorised a war crimes tribunal to be set up in Sierra Leone despite a big shortfall in funding pledges from the world body's member-nations.
The International Development Directory is a new guide to UK-based voluntary organisations working in the developing world. Building on the strengths of the Third World Directory, also published by Directory of Social Change, this latest guide offers updated, expanded and clear coverage of details of over 250 organisations involved in campaigning, development and emergency relief, available funding for this area of work from a variety of government and charitable sources and useful subject and geographical indexes. An invaluable resource for fundraisers, donors, volunteers and job seekers in the field of advocacy, humanitarian work and development. Directory of Social Change, ISBN: 1 900360 85 3, 2001.
Women in Africa have been the hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. Twenty years into the pandemic, very little has been done to empower them to insist on safe sex.
The creation of this investigation committee is a consequence of the debates held in the Commission for Foreign Relations on 8 December 1999 following the publication of the book “The Murder of Lumumba” by Ludo De Witte. Besides reaching conclusions about Belgian responsibilities in the murder of the first Prime Minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba (and his fellow-victims Okito and M’polo), it was also the intention to instigate a debate on colonisation and decolonisation.
An innovative partnership between the International Council of Nurses (ICN), the US-based pharmaceutical company, Merck & Co., Inc. and Elsevier Science (formerly Harcourt) will deliver state-of-the-art medical information to thousands of nurses in remote clinics and health centres in developing countries. The nursing Mobile Library, housed in a transportable trunk resilient to moisture, insects and hard knocks, was officially launched in London, where the first 23 units will ship from the Elsevier Science warehouse.
Zambian ruling party candidate Levy Mwanawasa has been sworn in as president amid high controversy after the tightest election since independence in 1964.
Stephen Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for AIDS in Africa, said that 2002 could be "the turning point" for Africa's fight against the disease if wealthy nations demonstrate a financial commitment to combatting the virus in the developing world, the Washington Times reports.
There is currently "no agreement on program infrastructure, a standardized [HIV treatment] regimen, drug procurement and distribution and no agreed-upon monitoring levels" in Kenya, making it difficult for a "common strategy and coordinated approach" against HIV/AIDS to be mounted, Miriam Taegtmeyer of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Kenneth Chebet, director of the AIDS Control Program in Kenya, write in the "Personal View" column of the January issue of the Lancet Infectious Diseases.
Zambia's new president, Levy Mwanawasa, has vowed to fight the AIDS epidemic gripping his country, declaring it a national disaster and promising to look at securing cheaper drugs to help treat the disease.
President Thabo Mbeki used his New Year's message to call on South Africans to stop a wave of rapes of babies and children.
Denial is always dangerous. But in South Africa, it has proven deadly. Some 4.7 million people there are HIV-positive. That is the highest number living with the prospect of AIDS, or with the disease itself, of any nation in a world where 40 million people are infected.
The move to liberalise African banking is gaining momentum. Do African banks have reasons to fear the consequences of liberalisation or does it give them opportunities to restructure and compete with international banks in African-wide or regional markets?
Capital account liberalisation (CAL) or the removal of restrictions on the movement of capital across national boundaries, it is claimed, promotes growth and thereby helps the poor. But have the free-marketeers gathered credible evidence? Is scrapping capital controls in the interest of poorer countries and of poor people in those countries?
Eritrea and Ethiopia surprised the world by going to war in May 1998 over the position of their common border, ending seven years of peace. A peace agreement signed in December 2000 brought hopes of a new era of reconciliation and rehabilitation. What challenges now face the two nations and their peoples, the region and the international community? Is peace sustainable?
Policy debates around forests and livelihoods, biodiversity, sustainable timber production and watershed protection now emphasise social inclusion and participation. Yet comparative research in West Africa and the Caribbean demonstrates how current configurations of science and policy continue to exclude the knowledge and experiences of land users - especially the poorest - remaining antithetical to their interests, and compromising broader policy effectiveness.
African producers exporting fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers to UK supermarkets now have to meet codes of conduct covering their conditions of employment. Much of the workforce is female seasonal labour, with men predominantly occupying permanent and more secure work. Employment conditions are often far worse for women. The gender-sensitivity of many company codes is weak with little stakeholder participation at a local level. Unless gender issues are addressed, ethical trade may not improve the employment conditions of the majority workforce.
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11th BRIDGE has become increasingly aware of the need for gender impact analysis of the international situation. Despite massive amounts of coverage, this has been largely ignored by reporters, experts, analysts and politicians. However, the gender implications are diverse and far reaching.
Xavier Cirera , Neil McCulloch , L Alan Winters.
This Handbook, published with the Department for International Development (DFID), examines how openness to trade is a key element of economic policy; continuing extreme poverty in developing countries is a disgrace. This Handbook examines how our concerns about the world’s poor should affect our attitude towards and implementation of trade liberalization. ISBN: 1 898128 62 6, Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2001.
On 25 December 2001, three men form Northern Darfur were executed with death by handing after being convicted for robbery under Articles 167 and 168 of the 1991 Penal Code which state that the punishment for armed robbery (harraba) death and death followed by crucifixion.
4 men have recently been sentenced to amputation of the right hand in Sudan. The punishment of amputation is against the Government of Sudan’s international obligations, with regard to article 5 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and article 7 of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.