Why are condoms so unpopular? This question has baffled and discouraged health experts for a decade, but in Swaziland the mystery of why men and women refuse to use condoms is slowly being unravelled by a project that is getting Swazi men to open up about their condom use, or lack thereof.

The purpose of this workshop is to mobilise NGOs and other civil society actors and equip them with requisite information and skills regarding the electoral law and the Constitutional provisions to be able to use their development/advocacy platforms to mobilize communities to assert their rights to vote and fully participate in the 2008/09 elections by making informed choices during the elections.

As is traditional, the African Centre will host the 43rd Forum on the participation of NGOs in the Ordinary session of the African Commission. The forum will deliberate generally on the human rights situation in Africa in general and attempt to bring to the fore specific situations that need to be highlighted in order to attract the attention of the African Commission in particular and the international community and other concerned bodies.

Swaziland’s timber plantations have been held up as a model of sustainable forestry management, where other plantations around the world are considered to have had negative environmental and social impacts. However, the authors of this report argue that these plantations are sustainable in the narrowest sense of the term, that of “long-term productivity” rather than “sustainability” as it is understood in a development context.