KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 45 * 8126 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 45 * 8126 SUBSCRIBERS
We are recruiting for a Visiting Professor for our spring semester beginning January 2002, as well as two Engaged Scholars for residencies of 6-weeks each between January and May 2002.
The Institute for Human Rights & Development in Africa is a pan-African human rights organisation with its headquarters in Banjul, the Gambia. The Institute specialises in the African regional human rights system, including impact litigation in national and international fora based on African human rights treaties, and training in the procedures of African treaty mechanisms.
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 44 * 8114 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 44 * 8114 SUBSCRIBERS
Liberia's leading independent newspaper, The NEWS, has been summarily closed by the government for the second time this year, on the grounds that it has not paid its taxes. The chairman of the newspaper has been taken in for questioning.
Sixteen people have been confirmed dead and 200 houses burnt down as the pasture wars in Tana River District entered the third day.
Reaction to the addendum of the April report by the UN panel of experts on the illegal exploitation of wealth in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has, so far, been mixed. DRC Information Minister Kikaya Bin Karubi said his country rejected any suggestion that Angola, Namibia, or Zimbabwe - allies to the Kinshasa government since war erupted in August 1998 - were looting the resources of the Congo, saying that these were "countries that came to our rescue in this war of aggression".
Reputed for decades to be the melting pot of Nigeria's cultures, the northern state of Kaduna has witnessed some of the most violent confrontations between different ethnic and religious groups since President Olusegun Obasanjo was elected in 1999.
Eritrea, a country of 3.5 million people, is infested with about two million mines and units of unexploded ordnance (UXO), Andebrhan Weldegiorgis, the commissioner for coordination with the UN peacekeeping mission, has told the UN General Assembly in New York.
Agenda is a feminist quarterly based in Durban, South Africa, now in its 14th year. The Editorial Advisory Group decides on themes in advance. Contributions on topical and current gender issues, gender analysis, reviews and interviews are welcomed. We seek ongoing contributions, particularly from women who have never published their research or writing.
Human Rights Watch today called on the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to speak out strongly on the need to ensure that the rule of law is respected in Zimbabwe. “The situation in Zimbabwe seems to be deteriorating daily,” said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa Division of Human Rights Watch.
The main aim of the EU troika’s visit to Central Africa, lead by Belgian foreign minister, Louis Michel is to examine the peace progress achieved in the different States and to examine the possibility of establishing a Great Lakes conference under the auspices of the EU and UN.
UNIFEM and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), in collaboration with ABANTU for Development, an African women’s NGO, held a ‘Peace and Communications Skills Workshop for Burundi Refugee Women’ from 1-4 October. The need for the workshop resulted from a UNIFEM Training Needs Assessment Mission for Burundi Refugee Women, conducted in June-July 2001. While the target beneficiaries were Burundi refugee women and men in Kibondo, Kasulu and Ngara refugee camps in Tanzania, participants also included key implementing partners of UNHCR who have a direct bearing on the lives of refugee women in the camps.
UNIFEM, in collaboration with the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) held a policy seminar from 15-16 October in Khartoum, Sudan to integrate a gender perspective in the resolution of armed conflicts in the East and Horn of Africa region. The two-day seminar drew participants from the IGAD Member States, which included Ministers in charge of Women/Gender Affairs, Women Parliamentarians, and representatives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and local women’s NGOs.
Violence against women is a universally devastating and often unpunished crime with far-reaching implications. As Dr. Heyzer says in her statement: "What happened in Afghanistan demonstrates that the way in which a country or community treats women and protects and promotes their human rights, is one of the best early warning indicators of its respect for international norms and standards ".
It has been taken for granted that Agriculture and the economies of countries in sub-Saharan Africa must remain liberalized irregardless of the consequences that arise from this process, argued participants at at a recent course in Sustainable Agriculture for East & Southern Africa held in Eldoret, Western Kenya.
For many years farmworkers in Zimbabwe have been a marginalised and neglected community. This is even truer of their children. Children in our Midst brings together the voices of several hundred childrencollected through essays and interviews. You can order a copy by email or visit the Weaver Press web site.
Virtually no new drugs are being developed for diseases that predominantly affect the poor, according to a report released by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF). The report, "Fatal Imbalance" claims among others that from 11 companies surveyed, only one new tuberculosis (TB) drug was brought to the market in the last five years.
Harvests of some of the world's most important food crops could fall by as much as a third in some crucial parts of the planet as a result of climate change, scientists are warning. The decline comes at a time when there is an urgent need to raise yields to feed as growing, global, population.
More than 26 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced persons are registered worldwide and millions more are unregistered. 50% are girls and women. Gender-based violence tends to increase in refugee situations, where reproductive health services are often lacking. For example, a 1994 study of Rwandan refugees in Tanzanian camps found that 60% of the women had a reproductive tract infection and more than 20% of births at a Burundi refugee camp in Tanzania in 1998 were below average weight, and infant deaths rose sharply from prewar levels. Of Rwandan women who reported being raped, 17% were HIV-positive.
The national prevalence of HIV in Zambia is clearly on the decline and Zambia does have a story to tell. It is a story of a strong, active, and
highly developed community response to AIDS.
Zimbabwe's state election agency said yesterday that foreign observers would be welcome at presidential elections next year, in an embarassing retreat from President Mugabe's enraged dismissal of a European Union delegation last week.
Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's government sought Sunday to overturn a High Court decision allowing long-delayed mayoral and council elections in Harare to go ahead next month.
State agents attacked at least 10 persons in Chimanimani including a nine-year-old boy. One of the victims of the attack was beaten by soldiers and sustained a fractured skull. In Bindura, an 11-month-old infant was taken into custody along with its parents and beaten by a police officer. There have also been reports of widespread attacks on civil servants in October, particularly focused on teachers. This is the continuation of intimidation and threats since January; civil servants have been ordered to support Zanu (PF) in numerous rallies throughout the year.
On the 26-27 November 2001, South Africa will witness a court case that can help to alter the course of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in our country. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) calls on your support and solidarity to save people from unnecessary death and suffering. We ask you to encourage our government to change its tragic course in the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
President Moi has said he will appoint a team of internationally respected experts to combat corruption.
Ahead of the September 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa is reviewing its plans and progress towards sustainable development. This paper argues that more attention needs to be given to land reform as a key component of sustainable development strategy. It raises a number of questions and concerns that need debate before the Summit and beyond.
The latest information on African art from Africultures.
A sixteen-year-old boy's prosecution and conviction for engaging in sexual relations with men violates international standards, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Egyptian authorities.
Our post-September 11 comprehension of terrorism must recognize a new enemy: the megalomaniacal hyperterrorist, argues Ehud Sprinzak.
A new generation of theological thinkers, led by figures such as Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and Tunisian activist Rached Ghannouchi, is reconsidering the orthodoxies of Islamic politics. In the process, such leaders are demonstrating that the Middle East may be capable of generating a genuinely democratic order, one based on indigenous values.
Debt relief has become the feel-good economic policy of the new millennium, trumpeted by Irish rock star Bono, Pope John Paul II, and virtually everyone in between. But despite its overwhelming popularity among policymakers and the public, debt relief is a bad deal for the world's poor. By transferring scarce resources to corrupt governments with proven track records of misusing aid, debt forgiveness might only aggravate poverty among the world's most vulnerable populations, argues William Easterly from the World Bank.
Two Ethiopian journalists, Wesenseged Gebrekidan, deputy
editor-in-chief of "ETOP" newspaper, and Kidushabet Belachew, editor-in-chief of "Mebrek" newspaper have both been charged by the High Court.
In South Africa, boarding schools register more strikes and other forms of students' agitation than other schools. A reason being advances is that children in these schools live away from their families at a time when they
badly need guidance.
South African President, Mr Thambo Mbeki has urged African youth to master
the Internet technology and use it to solve the enormous problems confronting the continent.
Hundreds of West African children have been brought illegally into Britain and other European countries in a modern-day form of slavery, according to a BBC investigation. The probe, triggered by the tragedy of Victoria Climbie, says that the practice of children being brought to Europe amid promises of a life of comfort and a good education is widespread.
With dislocation in the Nigerian economy, women and children, have been at the receiving end. The report presented by UNICEF in Lagos recently painted a gloomy picture of the situation, but at the same time, gave a ray of hope that with concerted effort, this vulnerable group of humanity can be rescued from disease, ignorance and want. Godwin Haruna was there.
Immigration Officers nationwide have been advised to abstain from corrupt tendencies as the present administration would not spare anybody caught in the act.
The Speaker of Parliament, Edward Ssekandi, has said that although MPs have tried to fight corruption to a small extent, stamping out graft completely is impossible.
Somalia's only Internet company and its key telecommunication company have been shut down by the United States, because of suspicions of terrorist links. The United Nations and many nonprofit aid organizations have been affected.
Alhaji Babah Sawaneh was only 10 when rebels in Sierra Leone kidnapped and beat him. Then they taught him to fire an assault rifle. The former child soldier, now 14 and reunited with his family, spoke before the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. His plea for improved protection of children in war was echoed by representatives of member states, and the
council adopted a resolution aimed at ending the recruitment of child soldiers.
The Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers submits the following briefing for the regional preparatory process of the Second World Congress on Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, alerting participants to the dire need to address the problem of child sexual exploitation in armed forces and armed groups.
At a recent UN meeting, Christophe Payot, on behalf of the European Union, said the number of internally displaced persons was increasing dramatically, and they now outnumbered refugees by almost two to one. The figure was estimated at 25 million, in 40 or so countries, half of them in Africa. But while refugees enjoyed a special status and international assistance, protecting and guaranteeing the rights of internally displaced persons was primarily the responsibility of the State concerned.
A new radio serial drama that begins airing this Sunday, Nov. 25, in Ethiopia is designed to encourage young adults to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and unwanted pregnancies by depicting characters engaging in either risky or safe sexual behavior.
New training materials to improve skills of humanitarian workers in offering psychosocial help to war-affected people have been developed by Oxford University''s Refugee Studies Centre in collaboration with other partners. The manuals represent the ''state of the art''in this field currently and are directed at UN and NGO agencies working with war-affected populations around the world," said Carol Eyber of the Centre.
Mortality and morbidity rates are similar for breastfed and formula-fed children of HIV-positive mothers, indicating that formula feeding can be a "safe alternative" to breastfeeding in resource-poor settings as long as women are properly educated and clean water exists, according to a study in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
HIV prevention efforts in Mozambique have been hindered by poverty, taboo and sometimes "willfull" ignorance, Reuters reports. An average of 600 to 700 people a day are infected with HIV in the nation, which has 17 million citizens. Mozambique is among the world's poorest nations, where most people have never seen and do not know how to use condoms. In addition, it is considered taboo to talk openly about sex, and many people doubt the existence of HIV/AIDS, making it more difficult to alter sexual behavior.
AIDS activists from the Treatment Action Campaign and other groups will begin a court case Monday against the South African National Department of Health and eight of nine provincial health ministers, alleging that government health officials are "violating [AIDS] sufferers' constitutional right to life and health care" by not providing the antiretroviral drug nevirapine to the nation's pregnant women to reduce the risk of vertical transmission, Reuters/Contra Costa Times reports.
A report on the recent World Bank/IMF meetings from 50 Years is Enough, with some details on what happened in the unofficial events outside the meetings, and some thoughts on what results of the meetings might be.
SAfAIDS (Southern Africa AIDS Information Dissemination Service) has planned the following activities as a way of addressing the 2001 World AIDS Campaign. If you are in the area where any of our activities for the World AIDS DAY are taking place, please join us.
The case against Nawal El Saadaoui fits in with the climate of intolerance prevailing in Egypt and stoked by Islamist thought, with silent consent from the authorities. It represents a permanent danger for freedoms of all sorts.
OneWorld, the leading online network for human rights and sustainable development, has announced a daily news syndication to the World News section of Yahoo News, one of the most popular news site on the Web.
ZANU PF’s propaganda in the state media plumbed unprecedented depths during the coverage of the murder of Cain Nkala, the Bulawayo war veteran’s leader. The state media exposed their total disregard for the general standards and ethics of journalism to churn out inflammatory hate speech reminiscent of the hate radio before and during the genocide in Rwanda. ZANU PF officials and war veterans were quoted describing the opposition, as ‘terrorists’ or the ‘enemy’.
The Editorial Team of the Gender, Society & Development series is planning a book on 'gender/women and sustainable resources management' to be published in 2002. The book will be the 6th in the series produced by KIT (Royal Tropical Institute) and co-distributed by Oxfam GB. The Team is looking for authors, especially from the South, with practical experience in the field of integrating and mainstreaming gender/women' issues into the management and use of natural resources for sustainable development.
This is a country on the take, disfigured by a core group of senior government officials whose corruption is so malignant that it has metastasized to virtually every level of Angola's public sector, according to diplomats, relief workers, academics and Angolans from all walks of life, says Jon Jeter in the Washintton Post.
What ever that might be the acceptable definition, it is an established fact that corruption is a two way process, involving members of both the public and private sector, who are engaged in illegal, illegitimate and unethical actions that diminish a country's economic prospects and degrade its social and political institutions.
Kenya's finance minister, Chris Okemo, has been replaced in a surprise cabinet reshuffle following a public row with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Socialist feminism's synthesis of radical feminism with socialism seems to becoming undone. Many socialist feminists have become postmodernists or postmodern "materialists." Others, especially socialist eco-feminists, are drifting into cultural feminism. Some are calling for a move from socialist to Marxist feminism. Is socialist feminism necessarily "totalistic" and "essentialist"? Does postmodern feminism really defend "difference" and eschew grounding politics in "nature"? Is postmodern materialist feminism a coherent project? Is postmodern feminism anarchist? Is cultural feminism the "feminist" feminism? Is it "radical"? Can the domination of women and nonhuman nature be adequately addressed by Marxist feminism? How is the shift to postmodernism in theory affecting feminist practice, political engagements, and research? Please send completed conference form (below) and 100-word abstract, by January 15.
In this study published in AIDS, the authors found an extremely high prevalence of HIV among young women (34%) and men (9%) aged 14-24 years from a township in the Carletonville district of South Africa. The authors suggest that these
remarkable findings are due to high rates of HIV transmission from
men to women, and the major role played by HSV-2 (herpes simplex virus type 2) in the spread of HIV in this population.
On Tuesday 20 November, 22 journalists from the independent Sudanese newspaper Al-Watan were arrested for protesting about a ban on their publication of an article concerning corruption.
Mr. José Mafwata Shamba, Secretary General of the Rassemblement National Populaire (RNP) party, was arrested on October 4 and subesequently detained. He has not been allowed access either to legal counsel or to his family since his detention began, giving rise to fears that he may be being subjected to ill-treatment or torture, which are prevalent in the DEMIAP's jails and have even lead to deaths in detention.
Amidst much controversy, the first human embryo has finally been cloned. Read on for links to articles and interviews with the scientists and comments on the ethics involved.
International AIDS activists and medical organizations protested at the opening day of meetings of the Board for the Global Fund for AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, in Brussels, and demanded the Global Fund subsidize cheap AIDS Drugs.
There is perhaps no place better to focus anti-racism efforts than to educate
children and youth about racism and how to combat it. Racism, after all, is only as strong
as its proponents and practitioners – and educating the next generations is surely one of
the most effective ways of reducing the number of racists and the potential appeal of their message. Accordingly, this Report focuses on anti-racism educational efforts directed at children and youth.
The US 'war on terrorism' is having serious effects on online liberty and freedom of expression.
Zimbabwe's government has threatened to treat six journalists working for foreign media organizations including The Associated Press as "terrorists" after accusing them of filing false reports on political violence.
An Arabic-language satellite television station financed by the US and aimed at winning hearts and minds in the Muslim world could shortly become a reality. President George Bush has been told of Initiative 911, which would put half a billion dollars into a channel that would compete in the region with al-Jazeera and would be aimed specifically at younger Muslims who are seen as anti-American.
THE Constitutional Court has been asked to decide upon the constitutionality of a clause of the Code of Conduct for Broadcasting Services which is alleged to have a "chilling effect" on the right to freedom of expression.
The South African government was accused in court this week of sacrificing the lives of tens of thousands of babies by its "insane" policy of refusing to make anti-Aids drugs widely available to pregnant women.
The International Press Institute has written to the Zimbabwean president, Robert Mugabe, asking him to repudiate his government's accusation that local and foreign journalists are colluding with terrorists.
Relief agencies such as the Red Cross are using the web to coordinate humanitarian aid. Elen Lewis on how alertnet could revolutionise the way aid workers deal with crises.
As seven western correspondents are killed in one week in Afghanistan, author Phillip Knightley asks if frontline reporters are now considered legitimate targets.
This web page lists many African radio stations which broadcast live over the Web.
Can industry be trusted to deliver sustainability? A quick glance back at the corporate track record gives sobering food for thought. Much of the past half century of economic development has come at the cost of havoc wrought on the life-support systems of the planet and its social fabric, while the twin drivers of growth and profit have repeatedly ridden roughshod over other considerations.
Today's consumption is undermining the environmental resource base. It is exacerbating inequalities. And the dynamics of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus are accelerating. If the trends continue without change - not redistributing from high-income to low-income consumers, not shifting from polluting to cleaner goods and production technologies, not promoting goods that empower poor producers, not shifting priority from consumption for conspicuous display to meeting basic needs - today's problems of consumption and human development will worsen.
Every Rwandan needs to be given a stake in a peaceful future. There are numerous obstacles to peace and development, which require imaginative responses from government and civil-society groups, in conjunction with donors, regional organisations, and NGOs. Large-scale financial and technical assistance will be needed. Rapid population growth is placing pressures on an under-resourced social sector, and is increasing competition over land and water in densely populated rural areas. The social sector, cruelly targeted during the genocide, urgently needs new investment. Training of teachers, health workers, and administrators is critical. Violent conflict continues.
The Paris Club of creditors agreed to reduce Mozambique's debt by $1.65 billion in net present value under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). The country will devote all the resources freed by the debt relief into priority areas identified in the country's poverty reduction strategy.
The International Monetary Fund has called on the world's richest countries to boost aid budgets and debt relief efforts to prevent the gathering downturn in the global economy pushing millions more people in the developing world into abject poverty.
A Belgian commission of inquiry on the Great Lakes convened on Friday in Brussels to investigate alleged involvement of Belgian and non-Belgian companies in the illegal trade of natural resources of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and to explore measures to halt such activities from fueling war in the region.
Although the European Union is developing the capacity to become a fully-fledged crisis management actor in the international arena and is co-operating with the United Nations, it does not regard its humanitarian work as a crisis management tool and is not in favour of a humanitarian alliance.
Commodity producers in developing countries have generally suffered from fluctuating world prices. Efforts by international organisations over the last 30 years to help them have failed in an increasingly competitive market dominated by the rich. Now a World Bank-sponsored task force believes extending some modern market instruments would help, reports Gemini News Service.
Families are fleeing their homes in Garowe, the regional capital of the self-declared autonomous region of Puntland, northeastern Somalia, in fear of renewed fighting, a local journalist told IRIN. They are doing so because of reports of militia approaching the town, and the fear of more clashes, Muhammad Sa'id Kashawito of Midnimo radio said on Friday.
A newly formed human rights group charged this week that unscrupulous employers in Lusaka have sacked at least 45 workers since June 2000. because they tested HIV-positive.
Environmental disaster looms if governments fail to take swift action to stop waste flows from land polluting the sea, officials from around the world will warn this week.
Kenyan media rights activists have condemned a bill they fear aims to muzzle the press before the country goes to the polls next year.
Older people in Mozambique have struggled to recover from the devastating floods of 2000. Necodemus Chipfupa of HelpAge International describes how older people's organisations have mobilised support for vulnerable people in the community.
Recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, along with well-known economist Paul Krugman, have of late made a flurry of public statements critical of the policies and processes of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank / IMF, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — while leaving plenty of harsh words for the blatantly pro-corporate actions of the Bush Administration. Both economists point to the disruptive and distorting influence of large corporate entities through their dominance over both domestic and international institutions.
Buying and selling across the World Wide Web offers "unlimited" opportunities for developing countries, says a new United Nations report.
The United Nations country team on Tuesday launched its Consolidated Appeal (CA) for Eritrea for the year 2002, requesting a total of US $120 million to fund a series of emergency and reintegration programmes drawn up by 11 UN agencies and partner NGOs.
Turkana pastoralists who have been living and grazing their cattle in eastern and northeastern Uganda for almost 30 years have returned to Kenya to avoid handing their guns over to the Ugandan government, according to local news reports.
The livelihoods - and perhaps even the lives - of many Kenyans are threatened by a government plan to excise, or remove, over 167,000 acres of the country’s forests, according to protesting environmental campaigners.
Signifying a further breakdown in some of West Africa's environmental ecosystems, the last giraffe population in the region has shrunk from just 100 to a much smaller and endangered number found in Niger's Koure region, 60 km east of the capital Niamey.
Angola is closer to peace today than it was a year ago, the UN's Special Envoy to Angola, Ambassador Mussagy Jeichande, told IRIN in a recent interview.
"Once you join the army, that's forever," Pedro says. "You die there." Pedro, 26, is one of the many young Angolan men who are worried by a fresh initiative by the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) to recruit new soldiers.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan pledged on Sunday that the world body would continue to be a "close partner" to the survivors of genocide and holocaust aiming to transform their trauma into action to prevent a recurrence of war crimes.
The transitional parliament of the Republic of Congo (ROC) in Brazzaville on Saturday adopted a new electoral law setting out conditions for presidential candidates, AFP reported on Monday.
Under a pilot scheme in drought-prone North Welo, farmers are turning away from the use of expensive and potentially dangerous chemical pesticides in favour of ancient methods of pest control to help their crops flourish.
The United Nations Secretary-General has ordered an extension of the United Nations Political Office for Somalia's (UNPOS) to run for a further two years.
Ethiopia's foreign debt has been almost halved in the last two years following succesful debt cancellation programmes.
Ending months of uncertainty, Zambian President Fredrick Chiluba announced on Thursday that presidential, parliamentary and local government elections would be held on 27 December, news agencies reported.
Issues surrounding the withdrawal of Guinean troops from their base near Koindu in eastern Kailahun District of Sierra Leone, will have to be resolved by the governments of the two countries, according to the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL).