Three weeks after the massive anti-globalization protests in Genoa and after two days of intense discussion on globalization and human rights, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has adopted three resolutions calling into question the impact of key aspects of the lobalization process on human rights, and has demanded that bodies like the WTO take fuller account of human rights considerations.

THE United States risked appearing indifferent about racism if it were to boycott the upcoming United Nations conference on the subject, South Africa's director general of foreign affairs said on Sunday."If they don't come, people will read into it that they don't see the issues as important. It will send a signal to their own constituencies and the rest of the world," Sipho Pityana told the SAPA news agency.

The Federal High Court has ruled to block the personal and business accounts of a number of former government officials and private businessmen accused of corruption, local press reports said Wednesday.

Kenyan Minister for Trade and Industry Nicholas Biwott, an influential figure in the government of President Daniel arap Moi, has criticised the aid conditions imposed on Kenya as impractical, and suggested that they smack of double standards.

"It is sad that, with its announcement about the pledges to the AIDS fund, the G8 conference was able to seize the PR high ground," an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer states. The commentary piece calls the G8's pledge of $1.3 billion to the Global AIDS and Health Fund created by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "a comparative pittance."