KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 24 * 4511 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 24 * 4511 SUBSCRIBERS
UNHCR says the best solution for refugees is to see them return to their home countries and restart their lives, "but this [repatriation] cannot take place if the conditions in their home countries are uncertain and insecure", UNHCR's external relations officer in Dar es Salaam, Ivana Unluova stated on Tuesday. "In the case of Burundi, we continue receiving refugees from the country who give accounts of fighting, attacks and insecurity," she told IRIN.
The Kenya Coalition for Access to Essential Medicines on Sunday called on US Secretary of State Colin Powell, visiting Nairobi slum areas during an official visit to the Kenyan capital, to prevail upon the US government to mobilise serious political and financial resources to fight HIV/AIDS and to ensure affordable treatment. "We are asking you and the US government to support HIV treatment for Africans by providing greater funds to fight this global epidemic and by supporting generic [drugs] competition in developing countries," said Patricia Asero, an MSF outreach worker on AIDS in Kibera slums, speaking at Powell's meeting with AIDS patients.
Burundi has called on the UN Security Council to act with delay to stop the spread of war in the country and beyond its borders. In a statement issued this week, the country's permanent representative to the UN, Marc Nteturuye, welcomed the Security Council mission to the Great Lakes region last month, noting that it was able to obtain first-hand information regarding the "transfer of the war in Congo to Burundi".
A recent UN-NGO assessment mission to areas of northwestern Equateur province found a dramatic lack of resources for displaced people, OCHA said. The visit took in the towns of Mbandaka, Boende and Ikela all of which are located near the frontline and which had poor access to humanitarian assistance. Most of the displaced people were living with host families.
Children displaced by years of drought are dying every day from malnutrition and disease in a situation that is likely to get worse unless urgent action is taken, a UNICEF press statement released on Tuesday in Addis Ababa said. "Mortality rates among IDP [internally displaced people] children in Ethiopia's Somali region are alarming. Several children are dying from malnutrition and related diseases every day, the statement quotes UNICEF nutritionist Yvonne Grellety as saying.
Two prominent human rights activists have been charged with attempting to change the "constitutional order" of Ethiopia by force, the pro-government Walta Information Centre has reported. Professor Mesfin Woldemariam, former head of the Ethiopian Human Rights Council (EHRCO), and Dr Berhanu Nega, head of the non-governmental Ethiopian Economic Association, were also charged with being members of an unlawful clandestine organisation, Walta said.
Long queues of voters could be seen around polling stations in the Hargeysa, capital of the self-declared state of Somaliland, as they waited in line to vote in the referendum on independence. Pro-referendum demonstrations with women singing and waving branches took place on Wednesday evening and Thursday, and some celebrated by slaughtering a goat. Voters at the polling stations told IRIN that they had turned out to vote "yes" for the "motherland".
Tension in Casamance, southern Senegal, continues to drive people into neighbouring Gambia, UNHCR spokesman Ron Redmond reported on Friday in Geneva. He said more than 200 refugees arrived this week in villages along Gambia's southern border. This brought to more than 2,500 the number of people who have fled to The Gambia since fighting flared up in mid-May between Senegalese government forces and the Mouvement des forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC).
Niger's government hopes to be able to provide its most vulnerable populations with enough low-cost cereals to tide them over until the first cereal harvests in August, state officials said on Tuesday. Nafoga Adamou, coordinator of the Early Warning Unit at Niger's Systeme d'Alerte Precoce/Gestion des Crises (Early Warning/Crisis Management System), told IRIN that food donations and purchases by the state amounted to some 24,000 mt.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to hold a summit as a confidence-building measure toward achieving peace in and between their nations. His appeal was contained in a 23 May report on refugees and internally displaced people in the three countries which, he said, have one million war victims, including refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs).
President Charles Taylor said on Tuesday that if West African leaders became complacent about the war in Lofa County, northern Liberia, the entire region could be endangered, the Liberian Ministry of Information reported. "We cannot be trying to solve the crisis in Sierra Leone while others are trying to support a new war in Liberia," he said, referring to reports that Liberian troops had seized British-made ammunition from anti-government forces in Lofa.
Zimbabwe's top military commander has dismissed British press reports that senior officers planned to overthrow President Robert Mugabe in the event of widespread civil unrest, the official 'Herald' newspaper reported on Thursday. "It's not true because that type of thing is not being expected in this country. I as the commander would have known about the coup," General Vitalis Zvinavashe told the newspaper.
The G8's Dot Force has reached the end of its deliberations and produced a strategy and a plan for action. Many in Africa held out great hopes of this initiative. But it's not clear how this strategy or its implementation plan
will be carried out. The USA is distancing itself from the initiative and any action is being seen as taken by individual countries. Russell Southwood looks at what's being proposed.
The United Kingdom has announced that it will contribute 75 million pounds -- about $100 million -- to the U.N.'s global fund to fight HIV/AIDS in the developing world, the Guardian reports. Britain's contribution is smaller than the United States' $200 million allocation, but it represents a greater proportion of the country's gross domestic product than the funding proposed by the Bush administration. However, since international contributions to the fund thus far have been "pitiful" -- only Britain and the United States have pledged money -- the U.K. contribution "will not swell Kofi Annan's coffers," the Guardian reports.
The World Bank’s ability to ensure social and environmental safeguards in the $3.7 billion Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline project is threatened because of political unrest in Chad, according to two Chadian human rights organizations. The two groups, the Chadian Association for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights, and the Environmental Defense, said that World Bank’s promise of equitable development and environmental safeguards for Africa’s largest infrastructure project, co-financed by the World Bank, is threatened because of mounting political tension in the region.
Africa-EXpo is now scheduled for December 2002 in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.Africa-Expo is a joint cultural-trade exposition with the fifty-five nations of Africa in order to present for the first time the cultural heritage of the continent and to provide an opportunity to sell each country’s manufactured products, arts, and handicrafts now and in the future. All the funds made from the events at the Expo will go to our charities: a children’s cancer ward in Johannesburg; an orphanage for little girls under five in Rwanda who have been raped by those who think that sex with a child will cure their AIDS; tribal women whose husbands have died of AIDS and who are the sole support of their families; a group of women attorneys in Nigeria who are working for rights for women in all African nations; and scholarships for poor American youngsters in the arts. No one who is on the Board of Directors receives any compensation. All are volunteers. No salaries are paid. There will be forty-five booths available for non-profit groups which will be available gratis upon application.
Wondering what all the hype about open source software and Linux is about? This tutorial will introduce new Linux users to this free and secure operating system. New developments have made Linux more user-friendly. This step-by-step guide is especially geared towards people who are migrating from Windows to Linux.
A "Conference on International Criminal Court Ratification and
Implementation in the SADC Region" was held in Windhoek, Namibia, from
28-30 May 2001. The Conference was organised by the Ministry
of Justice of Namibia, the Parliament of Namibia, Parlimentarians for
Global action and the ICC Technical Programme Assistance (ICCTAP-Canada),
with the support of the Government of
Canada and the European Commission.
The Conference was attended by representatives of the legislatures,
governments, civil society and media from most SADC States.
At the end of the Conference a Plan of Action was adopted for ICC
ratification and implementation in the SADC region. The Plan of Action
contains specific steps to be taken at the regional level to enhance
ratification and ensure effective implementation of the ICC Statute.
Certain countries expressed at the Conference a new and favorable position
towards ICC ratification.
In addition, a very interesting common position on the crime of aggression,
proposed by the Portuguese-speaking member States of the SADC, found
consensus at the Conference and this will be submitted to the SADC Justice
Ministerial meeting in Gaborone, Botswana, at the end of the next month.
The civil society sector also drafted a Civil Society Plan of Action. The
Plan commits this sector to advocacy work and lobbying governments in the
SADC region to promptly ratify and implement the ICC Statute. It also
offers technical support to SADC governments for the drafting of
implementing legislation and seeks to empower citizens with knowledge about
the ICC.
At the closing plenary session of the Conference Adv. Anil Naidoo, Convenor
of the South African Coalition for an ICC, spoke on behalf of the civil
society sector and said that NGOs in the region are working hard to make
sure that a strong, fair and effective ICC is established by
'constructively engaging' government for the mutual benefit of both
parties. Later at the media conference, Adv. Naidoo stated that the ICC
will be established whether the USA ratifies the ICC Statute or not, and
despite efforts by the US to dilute the effectiveness of the Court. Milimo
Moyo a member of the civil society component talked about the effect
ratification by the DRC would have on the war there. She said that as the
ICC will not apply retrospectively, crimes which have been committed and
crimes which are currently being committed will not come before the Court.
She said however, that the message that will be sent by such a ratification
would have a profound effect on the war.
So far 32 countries have ratified the ICC Statute. Of these, three SADC
states, Botswana, Lesotho and South Africa have ratified. The ICC will into
being after sixty ratifications.
We have learned that Akwasi Aidoo will become the Director of the Special Initiative for Africa.
This is a Ford Foundation-wide effort to support uniquely African continental responses to issues of peace and conflict, identity and citizenship and regional integration. The initiative will start with an initial incubation phase (based in the Ford Foundation's New York head office), which will focus on planning, grantmaking and convening of key institutions working in Africa. Eventually, the initiative will be institutionalized as an independent Africa-based Foundation or Fund, which provides effective stewardship of resources generated by a lasting endowment.
Kabissa and fahamu are pleased to congratulate Akwasi on this appointment. We hope to feature more about this initiative in a forthcoming issue of the Newsletter.
The May list of funding oppotunities from EUPRAXIS.
This manual is intended for organizations interested in developing and strengthening advocacy strategies and capacities. It provides advocates with frameworks to analyze past and plan future advocacy efforts, and trainers with materials for adaptation and use in capacity building workshops. It offers concepts, planning frameworks, analytic tools for assessing public policy systems, tools for strategy development, frameworks for understanding and planning organizational capacity-building for advocacy campaigns, suggestions for assessing the impact of advocacy campaigns, case studies of successful advocacy in many regions, and a variety of readings and references. It draws on lessons gathered through joint research and projects with our colleagues in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. IDR, 340 pages, Price: $75.00, Year: 1997
African Foreign Policies in the 21st Century
Working Papers.
More and more attention is being paid to government policy around internet user privacy (see the editorial above). This article by Dylan Tweney illustrates how important an issue this is.
The death of Zimbabwean war veterans' leader Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi on Monday has left a vacuum within the movement he had come to symbolise, analysts told IRIN. Hunzvi, who led the majority faction of the veterans' association that served as the political "shock troops" of the ruling party, died in hospital on Monday, state radio reported. His group spearheaded the violent invasions of white-owned commercial farms last year, before turning to an urban campaign that purportedly championed workers' rights but degenerated into intimidation and extortion.
By the way, your newsletter is excellent. I don't always get time to read it all, but knowing that it's there as a resource is great.
We much value your initiative but would not be in a position to share our news with you on a weekly basis. We do however produce a quarterly newsletter of which we could forward the plain text so as to enable you to slot any items in whenever and wherever you find suit. I would appreciate it if you could let us know at your earliest convenience whether you would be agreeable to our suggestion and whether such would be feasible. Looking forward to hearing from you again, please receive my best regards.
OUR RESPONSE: Your message indicates to us that our open, co-operative approach is working - please do send your news whenever it comes out to [email protected] and we will slot it into the newsletter where relevant. We also welcome short (500 words) editorials, and feedback on the format and content of the newsletter. Thank you for your thoughtful message.
Please can you enter a subscription to your most useful newsletter for [email]. I am now receiving it at work, but would like to receive it at home so I have more time to read it properly and benefit from all the further contacts it gives.
One main reason why I unsubscribed. The newsletter is far too long and becomes unmangeable. It takes too much time to scroll all the pages and I prefer looking straight on the internet to find information on these subjects.
OUR RESPONSE: Thank you for your important feedback. We are also very concerned about the issue of newsletter length, however for the moment we have not found a way around it. We always welcome reader suggestions on both format and content of the newsletter. It is designed specifically for those working in the African non-profit sector, where access to the internet can be difficult. In its current form, the newsletter provides access to valuable information and resources in a single message which can be printed out or read on the computer, offline. E-mail addresses and website URLs are provided to enable targeted follow-up to request more information or to get additional information, often including the full text of submitted material. Used in conjunction with the Kabissa web-to-e-mail server, which delivers web content to e-mail mailboxes on demand, the newsletter permits African organizations to drastically reduce the time spent online.
For more information about using the Kabissa web-to-e-mail server, write to [email protected] with the word "help" in the message.
African journalists can enhance their understanding and reporting of environmental issues at this workshop offered by the Reuters Foundation.
Involves a different approach to project monitoring and evaluation by involving local people, project stakeholders, and development agencies deciding together.
HIV/AIDS and TB present an enormous challenge to the public health of sub-Saharan Africa. This workshop aims to highlight the research issues
around these diseases.
Intervention Mapping is a new process for the creation of health education programmes.
The theme is Children and Development. It builds on drama's proven success in captivating audiences, particularly children and young people, and in informing and educating them.
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 23 * 3671 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 23 * 3671 SUBSCRIBERS
Date of Conference: 4th - 6th September
Location: Safari Park Hotel, Nairobi, Kenya
Cost: A registration fee of Ksh 2,500 is payable.
The registration fee must accompany the abstract form.
Information: For further details, abstract and registration forms please visit
our website at:
http://www.kapc.or.ke
Deadline for Abstact Submissions: 31st May 2001
Contact Information:Dr. D.H. Balmer
Executive Director
Kenya Association of Professional Counsellors
P. O. Box 55472
Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: +254-2-786-310, 784-254
mailto:[email protected]
Contact Details: HUREPI CENTRE FOR PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES
P.O.BOX 14963,ARUSHA,TANZANIA
Contact Name:Mr.Peter O.B.MCOMALLA
Contact e-mail: [email protected]
TEL:255-27-2501081
HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION AND PEACE INTERNATIONAL or in short HUREPI-TRUST incorporating the HUREPI CENTRE FOR PEACE AND HUMAN RIGHTS STUDIES based in Arusha Tanzania has launched a long term HUMAN RIGHTS AND PEACE EDUCATION PROJECT.
-Currently Hurepi-Trust is performing the Training
courses in:-
Education for Conflict Resolution in Schools
Education for Peace(Creating Peaceable
Schools)
Education for Citizenship/Democracy/Good
Governance
Human Rights Education
The main purpose is to introduce a culture of Peace and respect for human rights to all.
-During its programmes,it also organizes,conduct training courses in the field of International Human Rights.
Job Title: Judicial Education Consultant
Deadline for application: 8 June 2001
Duration: 6 months (may be extended up to nine months. Starting date: 1 July 2001. Location: Phnom-Penh, Cambodia. Contact Details: Applications should be mailed or faxed to the following address: Education, Training and Information Unit, Cambodia Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, #16 A, Mao Tse Toung Boulevard, PO BOX 108, Phnom-Penh
Cambodia, FAX +855-23-212 579
A new report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points to an unusual paradox in sub-Saharan Africa. Although the region has the lowest emissions of the greenhouse gases that are the major cause of climate change, it is the most vulnerable to the effects of global warming.
More than 2,200 people have fled to Gambia in the past few days following an upsurge of fighting in the neighbouring Senegalese province of Casamance, the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said in a statement issued today in Geneva. The first group of refugees reportedly crossed into southern Gambia on 18 May.
Date: 25-29 June
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Cost: The Course is free of charge. All the participants should be Estonian residents. The deadline for the applications is May 31, 2001.
Contact Information: For more information please contact project manager Nadja Vark at:
LICHR
tel. (+372) 64 64 270
fax. (+372) 64 64 272
e-mail: [email][email protected]
Addressing the contract between society and agriculture at the World Agricultural Forum in St. Louis, Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), called on Sunday (20 May) for increased efforts towards ensuring all people regular access to safe and nutritious food. "Unless efforts are stepped up by national governments, international bodies and organizations of the civil society, widespread hunger - a stain on the world's conscience and a constraint to security, stability and economic growth - will remain with us in the decades to come," warned Dr. Diouf.
One of twenty-six hostages captured by Mai-Mai militia in the northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) begged for international help in a taped message heard by Human Rights Watch today. Bjoern Rugsten, a truck supplier for DARA-Forest, a Thai-Ugandan logging company, was visiting the compound of the enterprise near the town of Mangina, when he was abducted on May 15, along with a Kenyan and twenty-four Thai nationals.
In Mali, Powell Pledges Administration's Support for Africa; AIDS Activist Nkosi Johnson's Foster Mother Answers Public's Questions on BBC.
Landmines Struggle Center monitored the deaths of 5 persons and the injury of 7 in 6 mine/UXOs incidents in Egypt during last year. The number of casualties has decreased compared to 1999, which witnessed 37 victims (14 killed/23 injured) and 1998 that witnessed 33 victims (13 killed/20 injured).
Five MediaChannel affiliates discuss their initiatives, the advantages of new technology and the challenges of struggling democracies.
Ten years after the United Nation's landmark declaration promoting an "independent and pluralistic" African press, the 2001 Windhoek Charter demands action to protect broadcasting in the public interest.
MediaChannel.org - news, reports, resources and opinion. Featuring content from over 660 media-issues groups worldwide.
This is the first edition of the largest global listing of health information resource centres, with data pertaining to about 1,000 centres. The focus is on their missions and objectives, with particular reference to their attitudes to technology, and their capabilities and requirements. You may consult or download the entire Directory at the site, or just pick out letters of the alphabet to select countries that are of interest.
Restructuring and Resistance charts some of the rapid changes in social, political and economic relations which have been occurring in western European society, and the new conflicts which are emerging at the heart of these changes. The particular focus is the last twenty years of the European Unification process. The book is the voices of many different people directly involved in diverse grassroots struggles and processes of social change from across (mainly) western Europe. 77 chapters from 15 countries chart the breakdown in social consensus which has marked western Europe in the post Second World War years, and the emergence of new challenges to the current social order which this breakdown is giving rise to. Analyses of restructuring processes and accounts of resistance are intertwined with each other, showing that they are inseparable from each other. As well as having a wide diversity of stories, the book is also illustrated, with a wide range of cartoons, photos, and propaganda materials.
Violence in schools is a problem common to both rich and poor countries. It is a problem that points to complex patterns linked to family situations, socio-economic conditions and teaching methods. Whatever the factors responsible, one thing is clear - dealing with the menace calls for extreme caution.
Here are some landmarks in the process towards the UN General Assembly's Special Session on Children, slated to be held in September 2001.
It is now clear that the 21st century will feature a major transformation in world population. Population growth in the industrialized (or "more developed") countries has essentially stopped. Demographic growth has now shifted almost entirely to the less developed countries of Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Measles infections rose by 670 percent in northern Nigeria's biggest city, Kano, in the first 21 weeks of this year over the same period in 2000, the international medical organisation, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), said on Tuesday.
Judge Ziyambi finished hearing the Chiredzi South election challenge last Friday, reserving her judgment for a later date. She is due to open the petition for Marondera East on Tuesday, May 22. Hearings continued last week in the Makoni West trial involving Minister of Defense Moven Mahachi. The respondent’s witnesses presented evidence to Judge Paddington Garwe that MDC supporters had assaulted them in the run-up to the 2000 parliamentary elections. Judge James Devittie, who ruled for the opposition MDC in three of four cases before him, has announced his resignation.
To mark the tenth anniversary of the coming to power of the ruling Ethiopian Peoples' Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), ARTICLE 19 today publishes a report exploring what progress has been made towards eliminating the
censorship dimensions of famine in Ethiopia over the past decade. Andrew Puddephatt, Executive Director of ARTICLE 19, said: "The apparent return of famine to Ethiopia in 1999-2000 suggests that, despite the progress that has been made since 1991 by the ruling EPRDF in strengthening freedom of expression, including access to information, much more remains to be done. If, as Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen argues, poverty and famine are forms of 'unfreedom', then it makes it literally a matter of life and death that those who govern Ethiopia push forward urgently with the process of deepening and consolidating respect for fundamental human rights and democratic principles."
In an address to the fifty-second World Health Assembly in Geneva, United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan detailed plans for the Global Aids and Health Fund. "The Fund would be governed by an independent Board, on which all significant stakeholders would be represented — including, of course, the governments of developing countries," Annan said. "In addition, there would be a small secretariat, to do the day-to-day administration, and a strong advisory body, on which the best international experts would be asked to serve."
Faced with changing economic conditions and more competition, nonprofit organizations are increasingly being pressed to measure and report their outcomes to funders and other constituents. At the same time, service organizations are becoming aware of the need to create feedback loops involving constituents as a way of improving their services. How nonprofits measure the impact of their work is the subject of "Outcome Measurement in Nonprofit Organizations: Current Practices and Recommendations," a new report from Independent Sector and the Urban Institute.
At a conference in Stockholm to sign the international Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), officials from 120 countries and a host of environmental and civil society groups have gathered to celebrate the adoption of a treaty that will restrict a group of chemicals the United Nations has labelled the most dangerous in the world. The convention will enter into force once ratified by 50 countries.
Bushmeat has become the most immediate threat to the future of wildlife populations in Africa, according to the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force. The task force, a consortium of conservation organizations and professionals, has just completed an international meeting to develop an action plan for countering this threat to wildlife.
Secondary schools heads from a Kenyan rural district of Kenya have petitioned the government to lift the ban on corporal punishment citing indiscipline. Media reports here say that the school heads from Machakos district which was in the news last month after two students torched a school domitory leading to death of more than 60 students wanted the government to review the ban.
At the invitation of the Great Socialist Peoples' Arab Libyan Jamahiriya, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights held, under the Chairmanship of Professor Emmanuel V. O. Dankwa, its 29th Ordinary Session from 23rd April to 7th May 2001 in Tripoli, Libya.
Grassroots International invites you to subscribe to its electronic newsletter, GrassrootsOnline. GOL will bring you news directly from our
partners in Brazil, East Timor, Eritrea, Haiti, Mexico, and Palestine. Read the human stories and the everyday struggles against injustice that are the foundation of a global movement for justice and democracy. Hear the unedited voice of partners in the Global South and how they feel about corporate globalization, land rights, peace and autonomy.
This report is submitted as a consultation to the Digital Opportunities Task Force (DOT Force), a Digital Divide initiative of the Group of Eight (G-8). The report’s substance is drawn from comments solicited and received from the public at large. Those comments address four questions: what are the best approaches to address the digital divide? what are the current barriers to greater Internet access? what organizations are currently working on the Digital Divide?
how should groups narrow the Digital Divide?
A "Journalist' Guide to the ICC" has been produced as part of the the International Criminal Court Technical Assistance Program. It is being distributed to journalists who attend the program's regional workshops, but in an effort to distribute it more widely, it is now available online. Please feel free to draw journalists' attention to this guide, which we feel is a concise summary that can help media in their coverage of ICC issues. If you would like a printable MS Word copy of the Guide, please e-mail Mike Crawley.
Today, Africa is characterised by problems of poverty, underdevelopment, war, illiteracy, famine and diseases. It has however come to the limelight that the task of solving these problems has to a large extent been left to the governments and other institutions, leaving untapped a big contribution that would have come from the civil society. SAI believes therefore that unless the civil society in Africa is given the opportunity to engage in the peace building process, nation building, development and governance, the Africa continent will always remain a step behind, caught in the web of conflict and underdevelopment.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said today that the sentencing of human rights defender Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years' imprisonment is "alarming". The Supreme State Security Court sentenced Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Director of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, and 27 co-defendants to between one and seven year prison terms. Charges included accepting foreign funds without authorization, disseminating false information harmful to Egypt's interest and embezzlement.
The White House decided last week to nominate U.N. Vatican representative John Klink to head the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, overruling Secretary of State Colin Powell's choice for the position, the New York Times reports. The selection "marks the second time the White House has taken an antiabortion stance in the area of foreign policy and international population efforts" (referring to President Bush's executive order to ban U.S. funding of international organizations that use their own funds to provide or promote abortion), and is a "setback" for Powell, who, unlike Klink, supports abortion rights.
In Mali yesterday, Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the $200 million contribution to the global AIDS fund recently pledged by President Bush is "evidence that the Bush administration won't skimp when it comes to fighting AIDS" and reassured observers that Africa remains a "priority" for the new administration, the Wall Street Journal reports. The visit to Mali is the first stop on a tour that will take Powell, one of the administration's "most vocal supporters" of Africa, to the "AIDS hot spots" of South Africa, Kenya and Uganda.
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan sounded an alarm Sunday that climate change "may well be the greatest global challenge" for the next generation, while expressing the "concern throughout the world" over the recent U.S. decision to reject the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
Three years have passed since the launch of Roll Back Malaria, the global campaign to halve the burden of malaria by 2010, and one year since its high profile African summit in Abuja. The campaign has had two major successes. Firstly, it has built an impressive partnership of the United Nations and development agencies, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, governments, the private sector, researchers, and non-governmental organisations. Secondly, it has raised the visibility of this neglected diseaseone that causes at least 3000 deaths a day and that slows economic growth by 1.3% per year in endemic areas.1 But it has not yet produced a major impact where it matters mostat the ground level in the world's poorest countries.
NPower's Tech Surveyor is a free tool that makes it easy to gather detailed info about your organization's computers, servers, networks, printers and other peripherals, and key software. It can also profile the technology skills of your organization's staff.
The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the world’s largest organization of philanthropic fundraisers, today released a study regarding the charitable giving habits of wealthy, high-tech executives. The High Tech Donor Study is the first qualitative, interview-intensive report providing in-depth analysis of how high-tech philanthropists view their giving and the long-range implications of their involvement in the nonprofit sector.
The Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) has invested in new technology to bring its ever-popular First Course in Fundraising to the Internet. The online version, which will debut on June 4, is meant to complement the live version of the course, which is hosted by AFP chapters throughout North America.
On 14 March 2001, Lesotho's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) announced the country's long awaited general elections will be held in 2002. The IEC chairman, Hon. Leshele Thoahlane announced that eligible voters would be able to register to vote between 13 August and 9 September 2001 at 1300 registration centres across the country. The final voters' list is expected to be completed by the end of January 2002. Thoahlane has declared that at least five months were needed before the registration period to allow for the purchase and dissemination of voter manuals, training materials and registration equipment and, moreover, to conduct a country-wide voter education campaign.
On the 27th March 2001 a roundtable entitled "Inclusivity in South African schools" was held at EISA's offices and attended by 60 participants. Speakers included the Principals of Parktown Girls and Troyville Primary who shared their schools' experiences and activities around tolerance and inclusiveness in South African schools. Mr Andre Keet from the South African Human Rights Commission and Dr Anthony Meyers from the Gauteng Department of Education also shared some valuable insights into the important steps that are being taken to root out racism and develop a culture of diversity in South African schools. Information on the content of these discussions will soon be available on EISA's website.
APC has launched the Africa Hafkin Prize to reward outstanding African initiatives that successfully use information and communications technology (ICT) for development. APC will accept nominations for the Hafkin Prize until 31 May 2001 through the Hafkin Prize Web site.
Despite recent political upheavals, the internet in Cote D'Ivoire continues to grow steadily. Although the semi-privatised state telco operates a monopoly, its regulatory regime has been sufficiently liberal to encourage new operators. As a regional hub for the computer industry it should have considerable future potential. Kokou Adediha looks at what's happening.
Former SA minister of post and telecommunications Jay Naidoo yesterday called on the private sector to overcome the “paralysis of analysis” on the digital divide and start on concrete projects to overcome it, and profit in the process.
Uganda, Rwanda and Congolese rebels have all described as evil-minded, senseless and ridiculous a new report in which the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accused them of involvement in the assassination of the former Congolese President, Laurent Desire Kabila, in January. The report, released on Wednesday in the capital Kinshasa, said international intelligence agencies were also implicated but did not specify which.
Burundi army officers failed to turn up in Arusha today for a scheduled meeting with eight pro-Tutsi political parties. The meeting was to have addressed Burundi's transitional leadership. The eight parties are opposed to the current Burundi leader Pierre Buyoya leading the first phase of a three-year transitional plan proposed by Nelson Mandela, the facilitator of the Burundi peace talks.
Shell's deepwater subsidiary in the country, Shell Nigeria Exploration and Production Company Limited (SNEPCO), has announced the discovery of another substantial crude oil find in the company's oil block located in Nigeria's offshore deepwaters.
South Africa yesterday for the first time publicly criticised the illegal occupation of white-owned farms by self-styled veterans of Zimbabwe's 1970s independence war and their attacks on private companies and foreign aid organisations ostensibly on behalf of discontented workers. In the clearest sign yet of a shift by Pretoria from its policy of quiet diplomacy on Harare, Jeremiah Ndou, South Africa's High Commissioner to Zimbabwe, said in a statement that his country strongly condemned the current wave of company invasions.
In the White House earlier this month, U.S. President George Bush told Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo that the United States would continue to help train Nigerian troops as peacekeepers. This week en route to Mali, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told reporters that President Bush's assurance represented an unbreakable promise, despite Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's intention to reduce overseas commitments by the Pentagon.
"Corruption report stuns cricket world," announced one website this week. Remove cricket from that headline, and you might be closer to the truth. Because for those in the game who have followed developments closely since Cronjegate " and have greeted each new revelation with less shock and horror than the last " there is precious little that is new in Sir Paul Condon's report. Stunned? We passed that stage ages ago.
The Mozambican public prosecuting authorities on Tuesday charged six people for the assassination of Carlos Cardoso, the editor of the independent newssheet, Metical. The six, who include businessman Ayob Abdul Satar and former bank manager Vicente Ramaya, were arrested following a six-month investigation.
At first glance, the public hearings on the arms deal, due to start in Pretoria next week, appear to be a good thing. The government will be bringing into the open one of the most damaging sagas since 1994. And the public will be given an opportunity to judge for themselves why " and how improperly " R50-billion was spent on a sophisticated defence package. Unfortunately, if one probes a little further, the hearings have few redeeming features. Instead they appear to be the result of anything from sloppy legal thinking to a sinister exercise to sabotage the main criminal investigation.
We're eating more meat, drinking more coffee, popping more pills, driving further and getting fatter. Around the world we are consuming more than ever before: but more than one billion people still don't have access to safe water; natural disasters are taking a worsening toll; and we have yet to vanquish some of the world's biggest killers-diarrhea, malaria and AIDS-reports a new publication by the Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001: The Trends That are Shaping Our Future.
White farmers and private financial backers have offered to give the government a million hectares of farmland to resettle landless blacks, the scheme's coordinator, Malcolm Vowles, told IRIN on Thursday. "This is a genuine attempt to break the impasse over land in this country," Vowles said. Zimbabwe's mainly white Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) has been deadlocked in negotiations with the government over the confiscation and violent occupation by black militants of hundreds of white-owned farms.
An Amnesty International (AI) research team has found widespread evidence of politically-motivated murder, torture, rape and violence. Tor-Hugne Olsen, head of the team, told IRIN on Wednesday that after spending a week in the country, they had established that such acts were "commonplace" and that the government was doing nothing to stop them.
Oxfam campaigners notched up another notable success at the annual general meeting of GlaxoSmithKline. Shareholders arriving at the meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Conference Centre in London yesterday, 21 May, were greeted by protesters under a banner proclaiming "Take Leadership". Dressed in white lab coats, the campaigners from Oxfam campaigners handed out prescription bags with a medicine packet containing a leaflet calling for GSK to take the lead within the pharmaceutical industry to make essential medicines cheaper for poor countries.
Rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone have for the first time allowed the deployment of UN peacekeepers in the contested eastern diamond- producing region of Kono, about 340 kilometres from the capital Freetown. Confirming the breakthrough to IPS this week, the spokesperson for the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), Margaret Novicki, said that two companies of about 250 Bangladeshi troops have moved into Kono ahead of the full deployment of peacekeepers there.
First of all, thank you for an excellent south-focused newsletter that is one of the rare things in my email box that I regularly read. Secondly, I am sending the announcement of a newsletter that we are putting out which enables our southern partners to reach a larger audience. I hope you can share the announcement with your readership. The text is below. Thank you.
The rich get richer
The poor get the picture
The bombs never hit you when you're down so low
The Global Alliance for Women's Health submits new proposals for the revised draft Declaration of Commitment on HIV /AIDS. If you or your organization would like to sign on to these proposals please contact us by e-mail.
Zimbabwe has passed a new law which imposes jail sentences of up to 20 years on anyone who knowingly passes on the HIV virus to another person. Under the Sexual Offences Act, women raped and infected with HIV as a result will be given health assistance by the state and the children born as a result of the assault will also be supported.
The race for the leadership of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) Women's Wing has gathered momentum as the elections' date draws near. BDP women are scheduled to elect their leaders in Shoshong this weekend at the end of their national congress.
Women for Change executive director Emily Sikazwe has condemned the practice by politicians to use women as mere tools in politics. Speaking during yesterday's national Development Review Forum at Lusaka's Intercontinental Hotel, Sikazwe said women had continued to be marginalised even though they played a major role in putting politicians into power.
Children fleeing fighting in Liberia's Lofa County and separated from their families are vulnerable to attacks by rebel and government forces while girls and women are being raped, Save the Children UK reported on Wednesday.
With the continued influx of illegal immigrants into Maun, local authorities have launched a major move counter the situation. Maun District Commissioner Michael Maforaga dispatched trucks to fetch 14 more refugees from Shakawe, so they could be locked up in jail cells before facing repatriation. But a member of Women Against Rape (WAR) said Maun suffers from a more serious problem than is seen on the surface.
Political parties are not fair game for the press, senior advocate George Bizos told the Johannesburg High Court yesterday. Van Niekerk and Mda lodged the application in response to a statement made by senior ANC leader Jeff Radebe to the Human Rights Commission during its hearings on media racism last year. Radebe told the commission that Van Niekerk had authored a critical opinion piece on Thabo Mbeki, who was deputy president at the time, and published it under Mda's name.
Racism is alive and well, and thriving in South Africa and the world at large. Racism is both overt and subliminal. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish the one from the other. Overt racism is in the face of the white farmer who shoots at black children crossing what he thinks of as his property, or in the face of the other white farmer who covers a black worker from top to toe in silver paint to make a point about what the farmer considers to be insubordination.