In a historic victory for the Treatment Action Campaign, Pretoria High Court Judge Chris Botha ruled on Friday that the South African government must supply the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to all HIV-positive pregnant women in the public health system in order to reduce transmission of the virus from mother to child.

South Africa's second-largest miner of gold, Gold Fields Ltd., signed an agreement on Wednesday with the representatives of several mining unions to create "one of the most advanced" workplace HIV/AIDS programs in the country, Reuters reports.

The Brookings-CUNY Project on Internal Displacement has just published a Selected Bibliography on the Global Crisis of Internal Displacement. Authored by Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, this 73-page bibliography compiles and catalogues available materials on internally displaced persons. It contains more than 800 items.

Judge Augustino Al Nur Shimela was picked from his house on 19th Nov 2001 and brutally killed by Sudan Government (GOS) sponsored militia group known as 'Nafir al Sha'abi' in Nuba Mountains, reports The New Sudanese Indigenous NGOs (NESI) network.

Amnesty International is concerned about the wave of arrests of former military personnel in the aftermath of an alleged coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau last week.

It has become loathsomely fashionable amongst all tiers of government in Nigeria, namely, the federal, state, local, ministries, departments, parastatals and all other government sponsored organisations to draw up or prepare their yearly budgets, that is, amounts of money to be spent in any coming year, without first of all giving proper and reliable accounts of huge sums of public money squandered in the preceding years.

"The US-led anti-terror coalition is close to neutralizing al Qaeda's Afghanistan base. While this is an encouraging start, the US and other nations must address another core reality: Africa is the world's soft underbelly for global terrorism. If countries around the world intend to win the war on terror, Africa must be an important focus of our long-term anti-terror efforts."

The problem of Weapons of Mass Destruction must always be addressed on two levels. On one level, we find the scientific and technical aspects of WMD--their design, fabrication, and destructive effects. To a great degree, discussion on this level entails an understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological properties of WMD. On the other level, we have the political and strategic aspects of WMD. This entails an analysis of international power relations and the political dynamics underlying decisions on the manufacture, deployment, and actual use of WMD.

On 7th September 2001, the security arrested Adbel Khaliq AlFatih Abdulla, a third year medical student, at Bakhat AlRuda University in White Nile province, and a leading member of the Student Democratic Front (SDF). Adel Khaliq was tortured while he was in detention, and was subsequently pressured and harassed by the security into not initiating any legal action against them.

In Guinea, as in most West African nations, female genital cutting was, until recently, common practice. Prior to 1998, roughly 90 percent of Guinean women were circumcised. While the government enacted legislation banning the practice in 1984, the law was only recently enforced as a result of several deaths, vigorous campaigning by CPTAFE, a national women's rights NGO, and the public outspokenness of the First Lady and Minister of Social Affairs.

The trial of former Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi and four others over allegation of attempts to murder The Guardian Publisher, Chief Alex Ibru yesterday further took a dramatic turn as Bamaiyi restated the bribery charge against the trial judge, Justice Ade Alabi accused of the same offence last week by Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, Chief Security Officer (CSO) to the late head of state, General Sani Abacha.

17 Nobel Peace Laureates signed an appeal calling for the prompt establishment of the International Criminal Court in Oslo, Norway last week.

Half the world's population is living on the coasts, and human impacts on the coastal and marine environments are growing. It will take improvements in international ocean governance to deal with fisheries depletion and deteriorating marine conditions, especially due to pollution, concludes a new report released late last month by the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

The newly inaugurated National Advisory Committee of the Ghana Accountability Improves Trust is to facilitate government's responsiveness to citizens at the local level and promote accountability and transparency in district assemblies.

The cloud of controversy hanging over the new Electoral Law thickened further as some members of House of Representatives filed an objection for an amendment to the law because of what they described as "a smuggled clause."

It is well-documented that the Gap (and its family of stores, including Banana Republic and Old Navy), Tommy Hilfiger, Nordstrom, May Co., Sears, Wal-Mart, and most of the big names in US clothing and retail use slave labor. Because they farm out clothing manufacturing to factories all over the world to increase their profit margins, it is impossible for them to insure their workers' basic rights.

On Dec. 7, the U.S. Senate endorsed provisions introduced into a defense spending bill by Sen. Jesse Helms, voting overwhelmingly to block U.S. participation in an international criminal court. Despite the vote, it is increasingly clear that the International Criminal Court [ICC] Treaty will enter into force sometime next year. Alone among Western nations, however, the United States has declared its opposition to the Court in terms that have become increasingly shrill.

The UN General Assembly on Friday adopted a resolution on strengthening the coordination of emergency humanitarian assistance in Sudan, despite Canadian and European Union concerns about inadequacies in its wording and scope.

A Zimbabwean government official on Monday denied media reports that the army had been deployed in the opposition's Matabeleland stronghold and was allegedly intimidating villagers.

The World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) on Friday announced the addition of Lamu Old Town, eastern Kenya, and the Tombs of the Buganda Kings at Kasubi, southeastern Uganda, among 31 new sites inscribed on the World Heritage List.

A UN panel on the exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo's natural resources told the UN Security Council on Friday that there was a need for a plan to rebuild state institutions, and that this process should be linked to an international conference on peace and development in Africa's Great Lakes region.

An estimated 13,000 people have been affected by heavy rains and flooding in Mbandaka, in the northwestern province of Equateur in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported on Wednesday.

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has expressed fears for tens of thousands of Ethiopians in Tigray region who were displaced from their homes during the war with Eritrea, following a decision to withdraw food aid at the end of the month, a WFP spokesman told IRIN this week.

At least nine people have died in gang fights in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, local newspapers report.

A Liberian general has been picked up as the capital, Monrovia, is awash with rumours of an attempted coup.

Carla Del Ponte, the woman who took on the Mafia and Switzerland's financial institutions, is now applying herself to the Herculean task of making the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda less inefficient.

The World Bank, USAID and African governments have pledged US $39 million for an initiative to wipe out onchocerciasis - river blindness - in Africa by 2010, according to the World Bank. The initiative is based on the "highly successful" West African Onchocerciasis Control Programme (OCP), begun in 1974, the World Bank said in a statement on Friday.

The Namibian government has lodged an appeal against a High Court ruling that it provides free legal representation to 128 high treason suspects.

Two NGOs, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and Concerned Christian Community (CCC), have called for the relocation of thousands of internally displaced Liberians who were recently forced to flee south from the northwest regions, because of renewed fighting between disssidents and government forces. The organsations said more than 10,000 IDPs are currently living in Sawmill, Bomi County.

More than 3,500 Sierra Leonean returnees have finally been repatriated to their place of origin, in Kambia district northwest Sierra Leone. "Their return home means that peace has really returned to Sierra Leone," a UNHCR press release on Thursday quoted a woman from the hosting village in Lungi's Lokomasama Chiefdom, north of the capital Freetown as saying.

The steering committee of Côte d’Ivoire’s National Reconciliation Forum has submitted to President Laurent Gbagbo the results of a three-month public debate in which representatives of political, religious, non-governmental, academic and other groups analysed and proposed solutions for the country's socio-political problems.

The Road Map is a guide for migrant NGOs to the International Human Rights System and Other Mechanisms. The Road Map is a joined project by the Canadian Human Rights Foundation, Asia Pacific Forum on Women Law and Development, Ateneo Human Rights Center and the Asian Migrant Centre.

A new executive four week course on International Migration Policy and Management is being offered in 2002 by the Southern African Migration Project in partnership with the Graduate School of Public and Development Management at University of Witwatersrand. Further details are available on their website.

Southern African Migration Project, Migration Policy Brief No. 6.
In 2000, an estimated 200-220,000 former Mozambican refugees remained on South African soil. The South African Cabinet decided in December 1996 that Mozambican refugees who wished to remain in the country should be given permanent residence status. This amnesty was eventually implemented between August 1999 and February 2000 by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA). Unlike earlier amnesties, a number of NGOs participated in the outreach, advocacy and monitoring components of the amnesty’s implementation. This paper presents a detailed examination of the amnesty process, including its planning, the criteria for eligibility, the information campaign, the application procedures, the problems encountered and the lessons learned. Recommendations from this document can be drawn upon to develop appropriate responses to any future refugee influx to South Africa, whether from neighbouring countries or further afield.

The Second Committee of the United Nations General Assembly concluded its work this week by approving a draft resolution on the World Summit on Sustainable Development. This resolution is expected to be approved by the General Assembly without changes when it takes up the report of the Second Committee on Friday, 21 December 2001. This resolution changes the dates of the WSSD to 26 August - 4 September 2002, advancing the conference dates by one week.

"I have no objection to issuing a new anti money laundering law in the crimes of planting, manufacturing and trading in narcotics, nor in the kidnapping and detention of people, nor in terrorism and the importing of and trading in weapons and ammunition, nor in the crimes of libertinism and prostitution, nor those against antiquities or related to the preservation of the environment, to the end of the crimes listed in Article 2 of the draft law on money laundering that was prepared by the government and presented to the People's Assembly for an immediate endorsement. I have no objection to that, but my objection is that the USA is pressuring us to issue that law, and imposes it on us and on other countries against the will of the government and the state agencies and institutions."

Brian Raftopoulos & Lloyd Sachikonye
In the struggles for democratisation that emerged in the late 1980s and 1990s in Africa, labour movements often played a central role in the development of opposition politics. This book examines the emergence of labour as a strong organisational and political force in the struggles against an increasingly authoritarian state in Zimbabwe. Written by specialists in the labour movement from a variety of different perspectives, the chapters discuss the political, economic, global, organisational, legal, gender and sectoral challenges faced by the Zimbabwean labour movement in its move from the margins of liberation movement politics to a pivotal role in the post-colonial struggle for a more responsible and accountable civil society and government. ISBN: 0797422862, 2001 Weaver Press Ltd.

The African Gay and Lesbian community in New York is shifting more and more from its barely visible position under the radar to a front and center role in African lives. And yet, for some Africans their increased visibility is incredulous. “There is one?” a gay Nigerian artist asked the other day. I had heard of one or two people but not an entire community,’’ she said.

Over the past few months, the media has been saturated with one or another version of a cultural theory of politics. From a simple Huntingtonian version of a ‘clash of civilizations,’ we now read more refined notions of a clash inside civilizations: specifically, we are told that ‘bad Muslims’ have hijacked Islam which ‘good Muslims’ must now prepare to defend. The implication is that the only way forward is a civil war inside a quarantined Islam.

I want to suggest that we turn the cultural theory of politics on its head. Instead of dismissing history and politics as does culture talk, I suggest we place cultural debates in historical and political contexts. My claim is simple: terrorism is not a cultural residue in modern politics; rather, terrorism is a modern construction.

Iqbal Ahmed writes of a television image from 1985, of Ronald Reagan meeting a group of turbaned men, all Afghani, all leaders of the Mujaheddin. After the meeting, Reagan brought them out into the White House lawn, and introduced them to the media in these words: “These gentlemen are the moral equivalents of America’s founding fathers.”

This was the moment when official America tried to harness one version of Islam in a struggle against the Soviet Union. Before exploring the politics of it, let me clarify the historical moment.

1975 was the year of American defeat in Indochina. 1975 was also the year the Portuguese empire collapsed in Africa. It was the year the center of gravity of the Cold War shifted from Southeast Asia to Southern Africa. The question was: who would pick up the pieces of the Portuguese empire, the US or the Soviet Union?

As the center of gravity of the Cold War shifted, from Southeast Asia to Southern Africa, there was also a shift in US strategy. The Nixon Doctrine [that] had been forged towards the closing years of the Vietnam War but could not be implemented at that late stage – the doctrine that “Asian boys must fight Asian wars” – was really put into practice in Southern Africa. In practice, it translated into a US decision to harness, or even to cultivate, terrorism in the struggle against regimes it considered pro-Soviet. In Southern Africa, the immediate result was a partnership between the US and apartheid South Africa, accused by the UN of perpetrating “a crime against humanity.” Reagan termed this new partnership “constructive engagement.”

South Africa became both conduit and partner of the US in the hot war against those governments in the region considered pro-Soviet. This partnership bolstered a number of terrorist movements: Renamo in Mozambique, and Unita in Angola. Their terrorism was of a type Africa had never seen before. It was not simply that they were willing to tolerate a higher level of civilian casualties in military confrontations – what official America nowadays calls collateral damage. The new thing was that these terrorist movements specifically targeted civilians. It sought specifically to kill and maim civilians, but not all of them. Always, the idea was to leave a few to go and tell the story, to spread fear. The object of spreading fear was to paralyze government.

In another decade, the center of gravity of the Cold War shifted to Central America, to Nicaragua and El Salvador. And so did the center of gravity of US-sponsored terrorism. The Contras were not only tolerated and shielded by official America; they were actively nurtured and directly assisted, as in the mining of harbors.

The shifting center of gravity of the Cold War was the major context in which Afghanistan policy was framed. But it was not the only context. The minor context was the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Ayatullah Khomeini anointed official America as the “Great Satan,” and official Islam as “American Islam.” But instead of also addressing the issues – the sources of resentment against official America – the Reagan administration hoped to create a pro-American Islamic lobby.

The grand plan of the Reagan administration was two-pronged. First, it drooled at the prospect of uniting a billion Muslims around a holy war, a Crusade, against the evil empire. I use the word Crusade, not Jihad, because only the notion of Crusade can accurately convey the frame of mind in which this initiative was taken. Second, the Reagan administration hoped to turn a religious schism inside Islam, between minority Shia and majority Sunni, into a political schism. Thereby, it hoped to contain the influence of the Iranian Revolution as a minority Shia affair.

This is the context in which an American/Saudi/Pakistani alliance was forged, and religious madresas turned into political schools for training cadres. The Islamic world had not seen an armed Jihad for centuries. But now the CIA was determined to create one. It was determined to put a version of tradition at the service of politics. We are told that the CIA looked for a Saudi Prince to lead this Crusade. It could not find a Prince. But it settled for the next best, the son of an illustrious family closely connected to the royal family. This was not a backwater family steeped in pre-modernity, but a cosmopolitan family. The Bin Laden family is a patron of scholarship. It endows programs at universities like Harvard and Yale.

The CIA created the Mujaheddin and Bin Laden as alternatives to secular nationalism. Just as, in another context, the Israeli intelligence created Hamas as an alternative to the secular PLO.

Contemporary “fundamentalism” is a modern project, not a traditional leftover. When the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, this terror was unleashed on Afghanistan in the name of liberation. As different factions fought over the liberated country – the Northern Alliance against the Taliban – they shelled and destroyed their own cities with artillery.

[After the Cold War and right up to September 10 of this year, the US and Britain compelled African countries to reconcile with terrorist movements. The demand was that governments must share power with terrorist organizations in the name of reconciliation – as in Mozambique, in Sierra Leone, and in Angola.

If terrorism was an official American Cold War brew, it was turned into a local Sierra Leonean or Angolan or Mozambican or Afghani brew after the Cold War. Whose responsibility is it? Like Afghanistan, are these countries hosting terrorism, or are they also hostage to terrorism? I think both.]

The Question of Responsibility

To understand the question of who bears responsibility for the present situation, it will help to contrast two situations, that after the Second World War and that after the Cold War, and compare how the question of responsibility was understood and addressed in two different contexts.

In spite of Pearl Harbor, World War Two was fought in Europe and Asia, not in the US. It is Europe, and not the US, which faced physical and civic destruction at the end of the war. The question of responsibility for postwar reconstruction did not just arise as a moral question; it arose as a political question. Its urgency was underlined by the changing political situation in Yugoslavia, Albania, and particularly, Greece. This is the context in which the US accepted responsibility for restoring conditions for decent life in noncommunist Europe. That initiative was called the Marshal Plan.

The Cold War was not fought in Europe, but in Southeast Asia, in Southern Africa, and in Central America. Should we, ordinary humanity, hold official America responsible for its actions during the Cold War? Should official America be held responsible for napalm bombing and spraying Agent Orange in Vietnam? Should it be held responsible for cultivating terrorist movements in Southern Africa and Central Africa?

Perhaps no other society paid a higher price for the defeat of the Soviet Union than did Afghanistan. Out of a population of roughly 15 million, a million died, another million and a half were maimed, and another five million became refugees. Afghanistan was a brutalized society even before the present war began.

Official America has a habit of not taking responsibility for its own actions. Instead, it habitually looks for a high moral pretext for inaction. I was in Durban at the World Congress Against Racism (WCAR) when the US walked out of it. The Durban conference was about major crimes of the past, about racism, and xenophobia, and related crimes. I returned from Durban to listen to Condeleeza Rice talk about the need to forget slavery because, she said, the pursuit of civilized life requires that we forget the past.

It is true that, unless we learn to forget, life will turn into revenge-seeking. Each of us will have nothing but a catalogue of wrongs done to a long line of ancestors. But civilization cannot be built on just forgetting. We must not only learn to forget, we must also not forget to learn. We must also memorialize, particularly monumental crimes. America was built on two monumental crimes: the genocide of the Native American and the enslavement of the African American. The tendency of official America is to memorialize other peoples’ crimes and to forget its own – to seek a high moral ground as a pretext to ignore real issues.

It is a human tendency to look for others in times of adversity. We seek friends and allies in times of danger. But in times of prosperity, the short-sighted tend to walk away from others. This is why prosperity, and not adversity, is the real litmus test of how we define community. The contemporary history of Southern Africa, Central America, and Afghanistan testifies to this tendency.

Modernity in politics is about moving from exclusion to inclusion, from repression to incorporation. By including those previously excluded, we give those previously alienated a stake in things. By doing so, we broaden the bounds of lived community, and of lived humanity. That perhaps is the real challenge today. It is the recognition that the good life cannot be lived in isolation.

* Mahmood Mamdani, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government and Anthropology, Director, Institute of African Studies, Columbia University

INTERFUND is a development agency that seeks to combat poverty and inequality, and strives to promote democracy and human rights. The successful candidate should be a dynamic, motivated,
self starter who will work in the Research and Information Department.

INTERFUND is a development agency that seeks to combat poverty and inequality, and strives to promote democracy and human rights. Both persons will have core responsibility for implementing INTERFUND's Human Rights and Democratisation/ Gender, Arts and Culture Programmes.

Themba Lesizwe is a newly established network of trauma services providers and specialised agencies dealing with victim empowerment and trauma support. It has a vacancy for a Project Officer, in a three year contract position.

Although slow to adopt the internet, Eritrea is now finding that initial demand for connectivity exceeds gateway capacity. As the technology resource
person for a USAID project this year Carole Roberts describes recent developments and the future plans to meet the new demand.

This new comittee aims to halt cybercrime in Nigeria.

'What they don’t understand is that the wildlife is in such a delicate state that if you leave it another four months there’ll be nothing left' says a leading conservationist.

President Robert Mugabe’s campaign to retain power and win re-election was endorsed on Wednesday by ministers from neighbouring states who ignored reports of political violence, chaotic land reform and media repression.

Zimbabweans might as early as Wednesday have to deal with draconian new security laws which would make President Robert Mugabe untouchable by his critics as the country gears up for the presidential election next year.

InterWorld Radio is a source of daily news bulletins and broadcast quality features for radio stations and online listeners. We commission local journalists all over the world to file reports on the critical global issues of our time - economics, human rights, environment, international trade, science and technology.

NTUNGAMO Woman MP Beatrice Rwakimari has condemned teachers who defile their pupils in schools. Rwakimari, speaking at Maato Primary School, called upon the administration to punish culprits rather than transferring them to other schools.