UNICEF has agreed to provide Guinea-Bissau with assistance worth US $23 million under a new five-year support and cooperation programme that will continue until 2007. The programme will cover child protection, nutritional health, primary education and functional literacy, and a social communication policy, the programme's coordinator, Karim Alkadiri, told IRIN.

While funds from the National Lottery is being distributed to charities, sports and to a lesser extent arts projects, not a single rand destined for RDP projects has been disbursed, reports the Sunday Independent. Since the inception of the national lottery three years ago, R10,9 billion has been made in ticket sales but not a cent of the R153 million set aside for "RDP" projects has been spent.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) says the detention of Ismael Mbonigaba, editor of the newspaper "Umuseso", who has been imprisoned for the past month for allegedly "inciting people to be divisive and practice discrimination" was simply an excuse for the government to crack down on independent media and the opposition.

Despite having pretended as if the issue of last year's widespread strike organised by the Progressive Teachers Union (PTUZ) had been resolved, the government has now begun to penalise all the 625 teachers who participated in the strike by threatening them with transfers to remote and politically volatile areas, The Standard reports.