KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 41 * 7873 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 41 * 7873 SUBSCRIBERS
Life in Africa just received financing to create an offline magazine companion to LifeInAfrica.com.
More than 1000 community members from Valhalla Park, Cape Town, will protest
outside the High Court in Keerom Street, Cape Town, on Thursday. The protest takes place in support of 700 community members who have been charged with illegally occupying a piece of land in the centre of Valhalla
Park that the Unicity had already set aside for housing.
As many as 20,000 refugees from across the world, cleared to come to the United States to escape persecution in their homelands, have had their arrival delayed indefinitely in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
Netwar is an emerging mode of conflict in which the protagonists - ranging from terrorist and criminal organizations on the dark side, to militant social activists on the bright side - use network forms of organization, doctrine, strategy, and technology attuned to the information age. The practice of netwar is well ahead of theory, as both civil and uncivil society actors are increasingly engaging in this new way of fighting.
This article describes the Africa-wide movement to network schools and educational resources using Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).
In the new scenario of social reactivation experienced in Latin America, we are seeing the growth of networks and social coordinations that bring together actors who are seeking to break out of the isolation of their specific struggles. The need to share, coordinate and disseminate their actions and proposals has lead them to appropriate the Internet. But they find that taking optimal advantage of this instrument demands a deeper understanding of its logics and peculiarities.
Read about this attempt to create an Internet Library. It is the largest database in the world. Well worth a visit.
Salary : £16,000
Location : Oxford, United Kingdom
Closing Date : 29 Nov 2001
Salary : £26,679pa
Location : Luanda, Angola
Closing Date : 14 Nov 2001
Posted on : 2 Nov 2001
Location : Berlin, Germany
Closing Date : 30 Nov 2001
Posted on : 2 Nov 2001
Salary : Starting salary between £25,572 and £27,730 (+ 9% pension)
Location : Islington, London, United Kingdom
Closing Date : 23 Nov 2001
Posted on : 1 Nov 2001
Salary : $$58,000
Location : Luanda, Angola
Closing Date : 31 Dec 2001
Posted on : 24 Oct 2001
Salary : £21,479pa to £24,129 p.a.
Location : Harare, Zimbabwe
Closing Date : 14 Nov 2001
Posted on : 23 Oct 2001
The Information Technology Resource Center in Chicago continues to innovate.
They have just announced the CTC Accelerator to help the rapid formation of
Community Technology Centers.
1. 3rd ACP-EU JOINT PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY
2. EU DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL – 8 NOVEMBER 2001
3. IN BRIEF
- Suspension of Zimbabwe from Cotonou?
-EP call reforms of EU Development Policy
- EU drop support from developing countries on generic life saving drugs
DEVJOBS is a a large mailing list to receive international job ads that are related to various development fields: microfinance, poverty alleviation, community development, institution development, governance, health care, population, food security, agriculture, education, human resource development, natural resource management, information technology, disability rehabilitation and rural development. Membership is totally free! Hundreds of jobs posted each week.
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 40 * 7861 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU-SANGONET NEWSLETTER 40 * 7861 SUBSCRIBERS
UNICEF is in the process of updating the UNICEF Directory of NGOs in Nigeria. In this respect, UNICEF has commissioned CASSAD to identify and categorize all viable and credible NGOs operating in all development sectors in all the regions of Nigeria, with a view to facilitate access to them for development purposes. The exercise will: Identify, assess and classify all NGOs in Nigeria; Keep a record of all viable and credible NGOs; create an NGO database, and produce a revised and updated Directory of NGOs in Nigeria for wide dissemination. All NGOs, operating in Nigeria, are hereby invited to provide information on themselves by completing and returning the NGO Profile Questionnaire. Deadline 22 November 2001.
An opinion piece in the Daily Trust based in Abuja, argues that "phony amendments" to the constitution of the Nigeria Union of Journalists are to blame for recent developments that "have tended to portray the union as one huge bunch of jokers and mediocrities."
Former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni is one of 37 officials and employees of all races that have been exposed for corruption and forced out of office by the investigative reporting of three award-winning Sunday Times journalists.
The Dutch government's 'Voice of Hope' radio station, broadcasting into Sudan and aimed at a southern Sudanese audience...has been a disappointment and embarrassment to the Dutch government, according to critics.
Amid the nationalistic furor sweeping the United States in wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, many government and private websites are yanking content that could be deemed unpatriotic or risky to national security.
As the United States continues its aerial assault on military targets in Afghanistan, a second front is quickly emerging in the war against terrorism--the fight for the hearts and minds of Muslims around the world.
71 political activists have been arbitrarily arrested and held in detention in Kenya. According to the information received, 71 members of the Release Political Prisoners (RPP) pressure group and their friends – comprising 66 men and 5 women - have been arrested as they were celebrating the so-called Mau Mau Day on October 20th 2001, being held to honour freedom fighters.
UNICEF regional representative Thomas McDermott has called on the Sudanese government to increase efforts to repatriate Ugandan children abducted by the Ugandan rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) and held captive inside Sudan.
Feeding programmes to assist the poor should begin soon to prevent starvation, and possible death, by the end of the year, World Vision relief manager for Malawi, Elton Ntwana, warned on Wednesday.
Machreq/Maghreb Gender Linking & Information Project is organizing its seventh regional gender workshop entitled "ACCEPT: Gender & Organizational Change" as part of MACMAG GLIP's on-going gender training and capacity building initiative. Participants represent partner development and local organizations from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria who have been engaged in a process of mainstreaming gender in policies and programmes in working towards positive transformation in gender relations.
What seems to be evident from historical accounts on marriage and the human family is that these institutions evolved from various property relationships. The word "family," in fact, is derived from fammulus, which referred to the total number of slaves owned by a man. Today, even with women’s inevitable rise out of property/slave status, her transformation from property into person continues to challenge the foundations of intimate heterosexual relationships, especially within marriage.
The issue of male presence, in physical and ideological terms, within what should be women-only spaces is not just a matter of ideological contestation and concern within the Women’s Movement globally; it is also a serious expression of the backlash against women’s attempts to become autonomous of men in their personal/political relationships and interactions.
On Thursday October 11th Ms. Omaima Al Mardi, Director of the Gender Centre went to work as usual, to find out that the office has been occupied by security agents who ordered her to close the Centre and leave immediately.
Speaking at a high level conference with finance ministers in Brussels on Oct 17, UNIFEM's Executive Director, Noeleen Heyzer, called on all governments to review their national budgets by 2015 to see how the budgets impact women and girls differently from men and boys.
Kenya and the United States are locked in a war of words over whether a parcel sent to a Kenyan doctor actually contained anthrax spores.
Villages in the Wassa West District of Ghana's western region have been hit by the spillage of thousands of cubic metres of mine wastewater contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals. The cyanide-laced waste contaminated the River Asuman on October 16 when a tailings dam ruptured at a mine operation owned by the South African company, Goldfields Ltd.
A reader based on the February, 1998 Inter-Regional Consultation in Kigali, Rwanda. This publication brings together case studies, testimonies and analytical studies drawn from countries in situations of conflict and reconstruction from across Africa, South and Central America, the Balkans, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific Region.
The President’s official announcement that his government had “dumped” ESAP dominated Zimpapers and ZBC during the week, but none of them explained that government had effectively abandoned the policy years ago.
The Zimbabwean police detained the country's most respected human rights activist yesterday as a visiting six-nation Commonwealth delegation began assessing implementation of last month's accord reached in Abuja, Nigeria, on restoring the rule of law.
Britain and the Commonwealth of its former colonies are making little progress in efforts to force Zimbabwe to stop the violent invasions of white-owned farms, Britain's top aid official said on Wednesday.
The European Union will give Zimbabwe a final warning next week that it will impose sanctions if President Robert Mugabe refuses to accept European observers at the leadership elections next year.
The policies of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have systematically undermined democratic principles and eroded human rights protections in dozens of countries around the globe, argue The Global Exchange.
Structural adjustment -- the standard IMF/World Bank policy package which calls for slashing government spending, privatization, and opening up countries to exploitative foreign investment, among other measures -- has deepened poverty around the world. In the two regions with the most structural adjustment experience, per capita income has stagnated (Latin America) or plummeted (Africa). Structural adjustment has also contributed to rising income and wealth inequality in the developing world.
Multinational Monitor reviewed loan documents between the IMF and World Bank and 26 countries. The review shows that the institutions’ loan conditionalities include a variety of provisions that directly undermine labor rights, labor power and tens of millions of workers’ standard of living.
According to reports, on 19 October Mr Tiogo, publication director of the weekly Le Canard Liber was sentenced by a court in Niamey to six months in jail and ordered to pay fines and damages totalling 5.1 million CFA francs for "defamation". He was immediately imprisoned.
HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson's threat earlier this week to break the patent of Bayer's antibiotic Cipro if the company did not reduce the drug's price has "emboldened" developing nations hoping to "convince international trade rule makers that poor countries should be allowed to exercise such powers to improve access to essential medicines," including HIV/AIDS drugs, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Attorneys representing a six-month-old infant who contracted HIV from her mother are suing South African health authorities for negligence for failing to inform the mother of means available to reduce the odds of vertical transmission, the Johannesburg Mail & Guardian reports.
While Pfizer officials defend their "seemingly generous" plan to give away the antifungal medication Diflucan to government clinics in South Africa, many AIDS advocates are criticizing the program, calling it a "very conditional gift," Forbes reports.
Pharmaceutical companies, AIDS activists and churches are trying to "force" the South African government to dispense AIDS drugs that are "almost as bad as the illness that they are supposed to alleviate," government spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama has said.
For the first time ever, a joint delegation of Kenyans attended the 10th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Prague, Czech Republic, (October 7th to 11th 2001) and signed a Joint Commitment Statement to combat corruption.
America needs a new agenda for combating terrorism--one that secures against terrorist attacks and that integrates the use of force within an international legal and policy framework. This agenda must bring international terrorists to justice, debilitate their capacity to wage terrorism, and undermine the political credibility of terrorist networks by addressing related political grievances and injustices.
According to information collected by RSF, on 18 October 2001, Mr. Barre, head of Sogapresse, asked that shipments of "Le Gri-Gri International" be stopped. Yet, a week earlier, Sogapresse had ordered more copies of the newspaper because of high demand for it in Gabon.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions deplores the attack by armed police on the press conference called by the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU) on Friday 19 October. It condemns the assault on journalists and the attack on free speech that this incident represents.
South West Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) party backbencher Doreen Sioka unleashed a barrage of criticism during the National Assembly, accusing the media of being a bunch of "liars, distorters and creators of conflict," "The Namibian" reported on Monday 22 October.
The Press Union of Liberia (PUL) is becoming increasingly concerned about the apparent unending paralysis of the judicial system as a result of the standoff between the House of Representatives and the Liberia National Bar Association.
The State Department's annual report on international religious freedom has failed to single out a number of egregious violators that are members of the U.S.-led "anti-terrorism" coalition, Human Rights Watch said today.
The People’s Budget campaign awaits the Minister of Finance’s first Medium Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) since the publication of the People’s Budget document. In particular, we hope that this year’s MTBPS will lay the foundation for expanded public investment in human development in the 2002/03 budget.
Citing corruption and poor governance, Belgium has omitted Kenya from countries to benefit from its aid, its ambassador has said.
There is little to celebrate in Zambia, where after 37 years of independence from British colonial rule, debt, corruption, crime, disease and poverty reign.
With the United Nations' embargo on Liberian diamonds impinging on revenues, the country's ruling elite has turned to Liberia's maritime registry to fund the war in neighbouring Sierra Leone.
The Executive Director of Transparency International (TI), Mr. Miguel Schloss, has rated President Olusegun Obasanjo's anti-graft campaign low.
This easily accessible new publication from the Human Rights Council of Australia revises and brings together two earlier publications “The Rights Way to Development A Human Rights Approach to Development Assistance” and “The Rights Way to Development Manual for a Human Rights Approach to Development Assistance”. It outlines the conceptual basis of the human rights human rights approach to development, as well as providing practical guidance for development programmers interested in applying the
approach.
Talent Consortium now has VHS cassette copies available of 'Born Free and Equal?', a video produced for broadcast during the World Conference against Racism. Born free and equal? is a 30-minute documentary which explores some of the issues of race and gender in southern Africa that keep people from enjoying their rights to the full, and that contribute to continued poverty and discrimination.
The United States is not doing enough to implement the human rights criteria of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), Human Rights Watch said today.
Human Rights Watch today condemned the massacre of more than 100 civilians by Nigerian soldiers in several villages in Benue State, apparently carried out as revenge for the killing of 19 soldiers earlier this month.
A Ugandan government diplomat to the United Nations, Catherine Otiti, on Tuesday told a committee of the General Assembly that "the rights of children are the supreme priority in all programme processes in Uganda", and that the government was particularly
concerned about their situation in northern and western parts of the
country.
In a letter sent to the President of Gambia, Amnesty
International is calling on him to immediately and unconditionally release Mohamed Lamin Sillah, Secretary General
of Amnesty International's Gambian section, who was arrested on 22 October 2001.
The Commonwealth was accused of giving President Robert Mugabe an easy ride yesterday as it wrapped up its mission to Zimbabwe by avoiding censuring his government for failing to uphold the rule of law and order.
A statement issued at the end of a Commonwealth mission to probe what steps have been taken to end violence on Zimbabwe's farms in exchange for help with land reforms showed there is little hope for an early end to the crisis.
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD 2002) will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa from 02 to 11 September 2002. In preparation for this important event, the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) is calling on concerned women's organisations to participate in the global consultation that aims to come up with a Women's Action Agenda for a Healthy Planet 2002(WAA2002). This will be launched in the World Summit.
The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) today announced that the International Labour Organization (ILO) has formalized its commitment to fighting the global HIV/AIDS epidemic by becoming a Cosponsor of UNAIDS.
The World Bank on Wednesday announced its approval of a US $150 million interest-free credit to support the government's efforts to improve education quality, expand school access and increase school retention at the primary level.
West Africa's first pontifical university is to be inaugurated later this month. Located near Enugu, Nigeria, the varsity will offer courses in theology, philosophy, social science, human resources, entrepreneurship, agriculture among others.
Children who have been through traumatic events need special care and attention. Here is a brief on a workshop where handy tips on dealing with such children were discussed in New York.
This school near Durban has excelled itself in more ways than one by providing special care for children with special needs.
Using Ghana as a case study, this report shows why rapid enrolment expansion in many developing countries, and subsequent concerns over worsening educational quality, has prompted renewed interest in teacher education.
After over two weeks of Anglo-American bombardment of Afghanistan, once one gets beyond the sound and fury of American bombs and the smokescreen of CNN propaganda, it appears that in the war between the United States and Osama bin Laden, the latter is coming out ahead.
The US and EU, as well as the WTO Secretariat, are showing desperation in their attempts to ram through a new round of trade negotiations with a host of new issues by the WTO Ministerial on 9 November even though more than half of the members remain totally opposed to new issues being brought in.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is founded and maintained on many myths. The most all-pervasive myth is that the WTO upholds and promotes free trade for all countries through a rules based, multilateral trading system. In truth, the trade regime enforced by the WTO is hardly free, nor are the rules of this system favourable for developing countries. The WTO has facilitated unfettered, global economic and political expansion by a handful of rich and powerful countries, who use trade as political instruments with impunity (in another time and era, this would be called imperialism).
Zambians are asking how President Frederick Chiluba, a leader with a taste for Rolex watches and gold jewellery, failed to notice the theft of his entire government salary for more than a year.
An international team of psychologists has demonstrated that baboons are capable of abstract thought - making them the first non-human, non-ape animal shown to share a central aspect of human intelligence. The findings have profound implications for the evolution of human intelligence and the stuff that separates homo sapiens from other animals.
E-Library, a service from the Population Reference Bureau, enables users to obtain publications and website material by e-mail. E-Library is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of a PRB initiative to heighten awareness and use of population and health information, especially among audiences in lower-resource settings. We hope that you find this service useful and we welcome your comments.
The Distinguished Environmental Lecture, "Increasing the Contribution of Atmospheric Sciences to Sustainable Development: Experiences of WMO in International Environmental Governance," by Godwin P. Obasi, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization, delivered at Harvard University on October 16, 2001, is now available online as a pdf file.
Like the art of all peoples, the art of Africans expresses values, attitudes, and thought which are the products of their past experience. For that reason, the study of their art provides a way of learning about their history. Through the study of African art we can study the questions which have long preoccupied historians of Africa. This essay -- written by a historian who studies the African past -- presents an introduction to these questions. Its purpose is to encourage students to use their knowledge of African art to think about issues in African history. – Professor James Giblin, University of Iowa
The contemporary urban environment in Africa has nurtured ever increasing numbers of artists who are creating art that is directed at local or international markets rather than for use in ancient religious practices. These artists strive to create art forms that reflect their own cultural backgrounds but that express new ideas about the struggle to deal with a difficult and quickly changing African environment.
Can Africa survive? Many of the nations of sub-Saharan African have all but ceased to exist as organized states: tyranny, diseases such as AIDS, civil war and ethnic conflict-and border invasions threaten the complete disintegration of a region. Peter Schwab offers a clear, authoritative portrait of a continent on the brink. Palgrave; ISBN: 031224018X, 2001.
by Mariane C. Ferme.
In this erudite and gracefully written ethnography, Mariane Ferme explores the links between a violent historical and political legacy, and the production of secrecy in everyday material culture. The focus is on Mende- speaking southeastern Sierra Leone and the surrounding region. Since 1990, this area has been ravaged by a civil war that produced population displacements and regional instability. The Underneath of Things documents the rural impact of the progressive collapse of the Sierra Leonean state in the past several decades, and seeks to understand how an even earlier history is reinscribed in the present. University of California Press; ISBN: 0520225430, 2001.
African groups call for a new debt initiative to tackle the continent's crippling debt crisis. Structural Adjustment Programmes and the HIPC Initiative have failed sub-Saharan Africa, creditors must now donate debts to non-governmental organisations for developing local communities.
Global warming is spilling over – seas over defences, rivers over banks, one wave of issues on top of another. The always-contentious balance of power between rich and poor countries is about to flip. A paradigm shift is emerging not from politics or ideology, but from a deep fissure opening up between two great continental plates – on one hand, the way the world does business, on the other, the limited tolerance of the earth’s environment that business depends on.
The World Trade Organisation stands accused of failing poor countries and citizens in favour of rich nations and corporations. As the Qatar meeting approaches, it is now vital that huge public concern about WTO rules voiced in Seattle is not lost. The challenge is to transform this into a real commitment for change.
Reducing emissions of manmade greenhouse gases, using "sinks" to soak up excess carbon in the atmosphere, and transferring energy efficient technologies to developing nations have all had to take a back seat to what is widely seen as more pressing concerns. One of the biggest tasks facing the delegates in Marrakesh at the upcoming UN Conference on Global Warming is convincing the rest of the world that what they are doing is relevant. Indeed, just getting the international media's attention for anything longer than a sound bite would be a small triumph.
Less than a week after presidential elections in The Gambia there are reports of arrests of members of the opposition and human rights activists, and attacks on the homes of some senior members of the main opposition party.
Seventy-one members of Kenya's Release Political Prisoners lobby group who were arrested on October 20 for holding a parallel rally have gone on a hunger strike at Kamiti Maximum Prison, on the outskirts of the city of Nairobi.
Is the emerging global coalition with or against eradicating poverty? Mark Curtis, Christian Aid's Head of Policy, fears that in the aftermath of September 11, the 'with or against' edict may result in policies that further harm poor people.
A consortium mandated by the Tanzanian government to evaluate the state of corruption in the country has launched an internet appeal and questionnaire in an effort to increase public participation in the anti-corruption campaign.
Judith Todd, who combated white rule, now faces harrassment from Mugabe's forces as she fights for the freedom of Zimbabwe's press.
Up to 300,000 people are currently displaced in Nigeria's central region as a result of communal clashes and recent attacks launched against several communities by the army, local officials said.
The interim government of Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galayr was voted out of office on Sunday after it failed to defeat a no-confidence motion tabled by disgruntled members of the Transitional National Assembly (TNA).
An advance party of 230 South African troops arrived in Bujumbura, Burundi, on Sunday as part of a 700-member special protection unit for returning Burundi exiles expected to take part in the transitional government and institutions due to begin functioning on 1 Nov., Burundi army spokesman Col. Augustin Nzabampema told IRIN.
Tanzania is determined to see to it that no child is denied the right to education just because parents cannot afford to pay, and the government has committed itself since July to providing basic primary education free of charge to all, Tanzanian envoy Christine Kapalata told a UN General Assembly debate on child rights on 26 October.