KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 31 * 6182 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 31 * 6182 SUBSCRIBERS
In this issue: Greenstar to launch village center in Ghana; wireless communications, music, dance, artwork provide an economic model for Africa; Sweatshops and Butterflies: cultural ecology on the edge; Practical Solar Power for Everyone: simple tools for anyone to get started with renewable energy.
THE virulent legal battle between the Botswana Guardian and Midweek Sun began on Monday, 09 July 2001, with the papers' attorneys scoring preliminary goals.
Women'sNet is planning resources for our website for the celebration of Women's Day 2001. We would like to include events planned to celebrate this day around the country. If you are planning an event, please send us the details, and we will include it on our website! Your event will then be advertised on a web site visited by women all over South Africa.
A list from the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) on the 33 media workers across the world killed since January 1, 2001.
Development, State and Society is a nuanced overview of economic thought, political formations and social issues applied to Africa. In this thought-provoking book, Seyoum Hameso argues that the promise of development was taken to heart by millions throughout the world. After half a century of "development," it remains unfulfilled for millions in Africa. The swollen bodies of children, emaciated faces of women, a relentless scourge of conflicts that have become a way of life, all point to a continent ill at ease with itself and less at ease with its external engagement. All this indicate that there is a pressing need for the redefinition of the existing approaches and practices with a view to help chart alternative development. Our price: $25.95. Format: Paperback. Size: 6 x 9. Pages: 448. ISBN: 0-595-18810-9. Publication Date: Jun-2001
Even though the world is incomparably richer than ever before, ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, writes in the International Herald Tribune.
Attorney General Amos Wako says the Anti-Corruption and Economic Crimes Bill he published last week does not expressly give blanket amnesty to guilty individuals. In a rejoinder to mounting criticism and public outrage, the AG said Monday that the Goldenberg scam will be pursued to its logical conclusion.
CHIEF Mangosuthu Buthelezi, South Africa's minister of home affairs and leader of the mainly Zulu Inkatha Freedom party, has launched a startling broadside against the government of President Thabo Mbeki.
Since April 2001, Nuffic/CIRAN and the Uganda Council for Science and Technology (UNCST) co-operate in partnership on the development and
maintenance of the Indigenous Knowledge site on the Global Development Gateway, and act as multiple Topic Guides in this field. The purpose of this site is to further stimulate the recognition, utilization and exchange of indigenous knowledge in the development process. The site aims to function as a platform for local communities, NGO's, development practitioners,
policy makers, and academia interested in indigenous knowledge (IK).
The Malawi Economic Justice Network welcomes the 2001-2002 Budget as one that laregely focusses on improving the lives of the poorest in Malawi. However, MEJN retains a number of serious concerns over whether the commitments made in the budget to spending on key Priority Poverty Expenditures will actually be fulfilled, as no new systems for detailing, reporting and guaranteeing expenditures have been included in the budget, despite assurances given by the Minister during his pre-budget consultations.
ATCnet has launched an easily accessible Internet database for the African Health and HIV-AIDS Crisis to consolidate information about organizations and individuals that are working to combat the crisis. There is a growing global appreciation of the enormity of the health and HIV-AIDS crisis in Africa. With this database it will be possible to publicize the enormous amount of work that African organizations and individuals are doing in Africa to address the pandemic.
In a speech today to the UN's Economic and Social Council, World Bank President James D Wolfensohn called on G7 leaders to take steps to open their markets to developing country products and meet their commitments to devote 0.7 percent of their annual GDP to overseas aid. Currently the average figure for rich countries is 0.22 percent with some countries like the United States falling well below by devoting only 0.1 percent of annual GDP to development aid.
The following statement presents the outcome of meetings involving civil society organisations held at the UNGASS on HIV/AIDS in June 2001. This
document builds upon "Comment on the draft declaration of commitment for UNGASS on HIV/AIDS -civil society organisations meeting in Geneva, 25-27 April 2001", comments submitted to the Break the Silence forum and meetings among civil society members during the UNGASS itself.
Third International WAAD Conference, Madagascar Conference on Women in Africa & the Diaspora(WAAD). To be held October 8 - 17, 2001 Antananarivo, Madagascar. All are invited! For the latest Update, please visit the website.
At the World Conference Against Racism, the People's Movement for Human Rights Education will be holding a one day workshop on Breaking Through the Vicious Cycle of Humiliation: Strategies for Racial Justice Through Human Rights Education. The tentative dates of the event are September 2nd or 3rd and it is a complimentary activity to the WCAR.
One of our latest editions is the MPA Distance Education programme. With this exciting training programme students attend classes for 8 afternoons in a year. Lecturers present classes in a studio in Stellenbosch from where it is transmitted by satellite to televisions in the electronic class rooms. Interaction between lecturer and student is possible by telephone.
Lettre d'information 29/2001
semaine du 20.07.01 au 29.07.01
Erosion along much of the Togolese coast has caused former beaches to be cemented by calcite into a crest of sedimentary rock called beachrock, Adote Blivi of Togo's Centre de Gestion Integree du Littoral et de l'Environnement (Centre for the Integrated Management of the Coast and the Environment) told IRIN.
Do you find writing difficult? Are you having to write reports, documents, theses, or just memos? Do you find yourself staring at a blank sheet wondering how to begin? This interactive guide to effective writing takes you through the steps of defining your main message, deciding on who you are writing for, creating a structure, brainstorming and then ordering your ideas, developing a first draft, and then editing to make your writing clear, precise and likely to get results. The guide covers the core skills of writing, and contains sections on scientific writing for publication, as well as writing for advocacy. Available as a CDROM with a users guide. Order from Fahamu - learning for change. ISBN 0953690210 Price UK Pounds 22 including post and packaging.
Ahead of the UN World Conference against Racism (WCAR)*, Amnesty International will launch a new report, Racism and the Administration of Justice, at a press conference on Wednesday 25th July 2001.
South African President Thabo Mbeki and other African leaders are at the G8 summit in Genoa to present a recovery plan for the continent - A New African Initiative.
The fires that burned across Lancashire and Yorkshire through the summer of 2001 signalled the rage of young Pakistanis and Bangladeshis of the second and third generations, deprived of futures, hemmed in on all sides by racism, failed by their own leaders and representatives and unwilling to stand by as, first fascists, and then police officers, invaded their streets.
The Rosslyn Learning Project and the Timbuktu Multipurpose Community Telecenter (MCT) Project, funded by the International Development Research Centre through its Acacia: Communities and the Information Society in Africa program initiative and other donors, are among the 100 finalists for this year's Stockholm Challenge Awards. The Stockholm Challenge is a global arena for pioneering information technology (IT) projects that focus on the benefits of technology to people and society. The winners in seven categories will be announced in a ceremony at Stockholm City Hall on September 26, 2001.
In a response pressures from civil society organisations (CSOs) internationally, especially through the People's Health Assembly held in Dhaka in December 2000, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has finally conceded the importance of engaging with CSOs. Commenting on the formation of the WHO Civil Society Intiative, Eva Wallstam, Director, said: "This is a time when the Health for All core values of equity, dignity and human rights, need to be more clearly articulated ... For WHO this means reaching out, beyond the formal health sector to other partners and to a wide range of civil society actors." The full text of her speech is available at the URL shown below.
The Internet Society (ISOC) has published their fifth annual issue of "On The Internet" (OTI), with a special focus on the use of ICTs in developing countries. "Throughout the developing world, small groups of citizens are changing their worlds based on the shared belief that information and communication technology (ICT) can make a difference." Articles include "Paving the way for internet-rich environments in developing nations", "Rethinking Telecentres" and "African Chapters and their role in internet development in African Countries".
Economic Commission for Africa and Africa Action. Consultation among diverse African partners and through projecting African voices into the global arena, has been a central priority for the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). The Africa Policy Information Center (APIC, now a part of Africa Action), has in recent years been a crucial conduit for making African policy perspectives accessible to diverse constituencies in the United States and around the world. Last year, from January to May, the two organizations co-sponsored "International Policies, African Realities: An Electronic Roundtable," which brought more than 500 people together, with African panelists and participants from Africa and around the world, in a structured on-line discussion on a range of African issues. We are now releasing this new publication based on the Roundtable because we think it contains valuable lessons for the ongoing process of making effective and innovative use of new communication technologies to advance African shaping of continental and global policies.
The Sudanese Victims of Torture Group has received confirmed information that on Friday 6 July 2001, afternoon , in Khartoum north street, the Public Order Police stopped 3 young women and questioned them about their clothes and dress. When the women protested, the police attacked the women, beat them and verbally abused them.
From Tuscany to Tibet to Texas, huddling around a short-wave radio to listen to the BBC is for millions a tradition that dates back to the days when the sun never set on the British Empire. But short-wave listeners in the United States, Canada and Australia are about to lose that scholarly voiced BBC welcome - “This is London”- on the hour, every hour, as the service is being discontinued from 30 June.
We are back! Thank you. WEST AFRICA NEWSLETTER (WAN), suspended publication in April because government security agents confiscated the computer that linked us to the Internet through our network. While that problem was being solved our weekly newspaper “The Journalist” was banned by the Ministry of Information, not because of stories we reported, but rather a letter from Human Rights lawyer Benedict Sannoh, who alleged that he had a problem with the Institute’s management. (We had asked the honorable Human Rights Lawyer to serve as Board Chairman of the Institute-publisher of the Journalist newspaper). According to the Minister of Information, since there were internal squabbles, for this reason he banned the publishing of the paper.
As the G8 summit opens today in Genoa, Italy, leaders of the world's most industrialized nations are this evening expected to "formally unveil" the Global AIDS and Health Fund, intended to battle HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the developing world.
German and British officials, whose countries rank second and third after the United States as contributors to the World Bank's International Development Association, said on Wednesday that they oppose President Bush's proposal that the World Bank increase up to 50% its grants to developing nations, the Washington Times reports.
The launch of the Greater Nelspruit Rape Intervention Project - the inappropriately acronymed Grip - was heartily welcomed by the police, courts and doctors in South Africa's eastern province of Mpumalanga last year. But Grip fell foul of the authorities with another of its services. The organisation ensured that women were swiftly given access to anti-retroviral drugs, paid for by donations. The Mpumalanga provincial health minister, Sibongile Manana, was outraged. She said President Thabo Mbeki had banned the supply of anti-retrovirals and that their prescription was an attempt to poison black people and was "undermining the present government".
International environment ministers have agreed a compromised, last-minute global warming deal this morning. Japan's request to be exempt has been accepted following it's concerns about the legally binding requirement of the accord.
This article from Scientific American reports on current technologies that work using the energy generated by human activity. "Human activity" means everything from the strike of a boot heel to the warmth of your wrist. Will the military research into these technologies be shared immediately with people in developing nations? Will people without access to electronic power grid infrastructures be able to afford the devices? These questions - and their answers - were not part of the article, but they are important to bear in mind.
MIT's famous Media Lab has developed a way to use the internet to link people's 'creative thinkcycles'. The purpose? To work on global design challenges. "ThinkCycle seeks to create a collaborative community of individuals and organizations engaged in working on design challenges posed by our environment and the developing world." In summary, this site offers the opportunity to create a database of shared solutions. It is modelled on the open source software concept. This project's web site is a reason to have internet access. Will people connect to it and use it?
This weekend, an estimated 100,000 people were in the streets of Genoa, Italy, to express dissent against the closed meetings of the Group of 8. The 'G8' - the leaders of the world's most economically powerful countries, meets yearly to discuss general international policy direction. Demonstrators from all over Europe converged on Genoa to present alternative visions of the way the world's population could organize to undo poverty, inequality and environmental disintegration. The G8 members claim that they are democratically elected representatives. But the club is an exclusive one - it excludes the greater part of humanity and their representatives. The decisions they take there affect us all, so why don't the rest of the world's governments have a say? This club is an attempt to by-pass the UN system where other governments will have a say. The self appointed club have no right to claim they represent the overwhelming majority of the people of the third world. That is why there is such a groundswell of opposition. And no amount of tokenism by having a few tame African leaders attend the meeting as they did in Genoa is going to change that. Why aren't their deliberations public? The G8 cabal has no legitimacy to determine the future and livelihood of the rest of the world.
100,000 face G8 in Genoa. Full coverage from Independent Media:
Genoa Fails; Big Promise for Next Year: Oxfam’s reaction to the conclusion of the Genoa G8:
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/educationnow/g8genoa.htm
World Development Movement: statements on Genoa:
http://www.wdm.org.uk/campaign/genmed.htm
Genoa Social Forum:
http://www.genoa-g8.org/
Riots Force review of Summits:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,526082,00.html
Men in Black Behind Chaos:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,525999,00.html
Stay Home for Awhile: Katharine Ainger, the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,7369,526077,00.html
The Economic and Social Council at the UN on Wednesday wrapped up a three-day high-level meeting on the role of the UN in supporting African nations achieve sustainable development by adopting a ministerial declaration that, among other things, expressed concern about the health crisis in Africa and the weight of African countries' external debt.
The decision by the Central African Republic (CAR) earlier this week to close its Ubangui River border with the DRC came as no surprise to Jean-Pierre Bemba's rebel Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo (MLC), which controls the neighbouring Equateur province, MLC secretary general Olivier Kamitatu told Radio France Internationale (RFI) on Thursday.
Feeding the hungry in Angola's central highlands continues to be impeded by the poor state of the runway in the provincial capital Kuito and escalating fighting, aid workers told IRIN.
Another 83 fighters from opposing sides in Sierra Leone's 10-year civil war disarmed on Thursday, marking the resumption of the stalled process in the eastern district of Kono, The UN Mission in Sierra Leone reported.
The northeastern MPs in Uganda's newly constituted seventh parliament have pledged support for a peace and reconciliation project among warring northern ethnic groups on the one hand, and between these groups and the government on the other hand, the international NGO World Vision reported on Wednesday.
In light of the effects of three years of drought in Kenya, the European Commission (EC) has decided to provide 3.1 million euros (about US $2.7 million) through its humanitarian aid office to support a range of actions for the drought-affected population.
At the beginning of this year, there were 1.5 million people of concern to UNHCR in seven countries of East Africa and Horn of Africa, UNHCR reported on Wednesday. Of these, 339,446 were refugees from Sudan, 281,423 from Somalia and 368,969 from Eritrea, it said.
"Recognising the importance of the Central African Republic (CAR) to regional stability," the UN Security Council on Tuesday expressed "its deep concern at the precarious situation in the country and urged the government to take steps to end persisting acts of violence there."
An apparent assassination attempt involving a 10-minute frenzy of grenades, rockets and gunfire against Itihi Ossetoumba Lekoundzo, defence minister of Congo-Brazzaville was reported to have taken place on Wednesday in Brazzaville, according to AP.
The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) has announced the six finalists of the first APC Africa Hafkin Prize. The USD$7,500 prize will be awarded on August 1st 2001 at the ACT (African Computing & Telecommunications) Summit in Johannesburg to the women-led, women-informed, and/or women-inspired initiative that has demonstrated outstanding creativity in the use of information and communications technologies (especially the Internet) in furthering development, mobilising participation and building capacity in Africa.
The European Union commissioner for development has stressed the need for leaders in the Democratic Republic of Congo to try to reunite the country if the DRC is to receive development aid, sources in Kinshasa told IRIN.
A mission to assess the training needs and the effects of Burundi's civil war on the lives of Burundi refugee women living in camps in western Tanzania observed that war has had a significant and destabilising effect on gender roles and relations between the country's men and women. The refugees were found to be virtually under the "complete control" of various development and humanitarian relief agencies, the team said in its preliminary report.
Rwanda has asked that the four former International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) defence investigators, recently sacked by the Tribunal on suspicion that they played a part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, be arrested and tried, the Rwanda News Agency (RNA) reported on Thursday.
Steps will be taken against 14 NGOs said to be operating illegally in East Shewa Zone of the Oromiya Regional State, the official Walta Information Centre reported on Thursday. The NGOs, which are engaged in reproductive health care, kindergarten and other social development activities without formal agreements with the government, include a number of international and local church-based organisations.
A serious shortfall in the food aid pipeline to Ethiopia may develop within six weeks if donors do not respond soon to an appeal for more resources, Wagdi Othman, information officer for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Addis Ababa told IRIN on Thursday.
A total of 434 Liberians arrived in western Côte d'Ivoire's 'Refugee Reception Zone' between 16 and 19 July, UNHCR reported. This brings to 4,076 the new Liberian refugees in the area. The western towns of Danane and Guiglo, which lie along the border with Liberia, are within the zone.
Two leading members of the opposition Rassemblement des republicains (RDR) left court free men on Friday after being acquitted of charges linked to election-related violence last year.
Rape and other forms of sexual abuse are becoming more common in Sierra Leone, and greater numbers of young victims are reporting their experience to the authorities, Gladys Brima, one of the founding members of a recently established Women's Help Line (WHL), told IRIN on Thursday.
As the Zimbabwe government slowly begins to face the reality that in six months time the country could run out of food, UNDP told IRIN that donors might support a UN-administered food aid initiative.
Rampaging political gangs torched several vehicles and attacked voters in a crucial parliamentary by-election in Zambia's capital on Tuesday, heightening fears that widespread political violence will undermine general elections scheduled for the year-end.
Zambia's new opposition Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD) won a landslide by-election victory in a working class Lusaka suburb on Tuesday, dealing a blow to President Frederick Chiluba's party, news reports said.
The Foundation Center in Washington D.c. offers a number of courses as online tutorials. Examples:
-Guide to Funding Research & Resources
-Proposal Writing Short Course
Zimbabwe's embattled government is talking tough in the face of rising international pressure, but political analysts allege its senior members are growing concerned over the threat of sanctions, Reuters reported.
Through participatory methods, participants will learn some of the tools and techniques that facilitate needs assessment, design of sustainable, people-centred projects and the formulation of successful proposals. Topics include principles of participatory planning, community needs assessment, establishment of project baselines, village entry techniques, planning tools and writing of project proposals
As the web and e-mail spread, Africans will increasingly want to have information and communicate in their own languages. For the purposes of generating and transmitting text electronically, Africa has three categories
of languages: those that use basically the same characters one finds in the major languages of West European origin; those which use basically that same Latin alphabet but with some added letters; and those which use non-Latin alphabets. The last two pose considerable problems for those wanting to see digital advances as a way of improving communication. Bisharat's Don Osborn
looks at how these obstacles can be tackled.
A unique opportunity for African asylum seekers and refugees working to improve human rights in Africa. In September, World University Service (UK), a charity working to support access to education for refugees, will be hosting an advocacy training course for 18 asylum seekers and refugees from Africa. The course aims to enable refugees and their community organisations to enhance the important contribution that many are already making to the promotion of human rights and the development of more democratic and equitable societies in the countries from which they come. The course also aims to help refugees to engage effectively in public education in Britain concerning human rights in Africa and to influence public perception of refugees currently here. Deadline 10 August.
The African Conservation Tillage Network (ACT) consists of practitioners and promoters who believe the adaptation and adoption of conservation tillage principles is a cost effective method of reducing and reversing the environmental degradation and food insecurity devastating Africa. ACT NOW! is ACT's electronic update on events and findings which may assist accelerate this process.
As was reported in the last newsletter on 2 July, two new judges have been appointed to hear election petition cases in the High Court. Four judges now currently hear election petition cases. During the time that the newsletter was on hiatus, Judge Ziyambi heard the Seke case, which had been postponed earlier due to crucial paperwork not being filed correctly. Marondera East continues with the vote recount.
This article from the International Herald Tribune is an interesting discussioin of the pros and cons of open source software in developing countries.
People accessing Soul City are significantly more likely to discuss HIV/AIDS with someone close to them. The more elements [TV, radio, print] of Soul City that people access the more likely they are to have a dialogue and debate on HIV/AIDS issues. 39% of people accessing 3 elements of Soul City discussed HIV/AIDS with friend or family and 36% of those that accessed 2 elements. This compares with 21% of those with no exposure to Soul City.
With a ban on diamond mining in Sierra Leone, announced 18 July, hopes abound that there will now be an end to violence. But the diamond trade is deeply entrenched and some doubt that the ban will work. A Gemini New Service correspondent reports from Kenema - in the heart of Sierra Leone's 'blood diamond' mining region.
CAFOD, the Catholic aid agency, is accusing G8 leaders of misleading the world on its claims to have cancelled 100 percent of the debts of the poorest countries.
Over the past weeks, Nigeria's central region has been racked by violent ethnic clashes that have claimed many lives and displaced thousands of people. Fighting that broke out in June has pitted Tivs against their mainly Hausa-speaking neighbours in Nasarawa State, leading to at least 100 deaths, according to the police - more than 200, according to other sources - and the displacement of more than 50,000 people.
This was listed in kfn 24, but now they have a web site. The Saturday after the 17th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning (august 11th, 2001) there will be a symposium on Strategies for International Humanitarian Organizations.
A local editorial response to some of the mindless, racist blather from the mayor of Toronto and the head of USAID.
Officials from the world's 49 poorest countries have started talks in Zanzibar to try to shape any further liberalisation in the World Trade Organisation in their own interests. They are concerned that they are being forced to open up their markets while the West is not opening up to them.
UWC's School of Public Health provides health and welfare personnel with the necessary tools to facilitate the process of transformation in the country's health and welfare sectors. The UWC SOPH has established itself as a national leader in public health teaching, research and service development: Its innovative educational and research activities focus on the implementation of district health systems. Closing date for applications: 3 August 2001.
The Development Action Group (DAG) is a leading urban development NGO in the Western Cape. Our mission is to support and implement community housing and development projects and processes and to work towards the creation of an enabling, community sensitive policy environment. Closing date: 10 August 2001
The Youth Development Network (YDN) is a national network of seven youth development NGO’s. It is committed to building the capacity of it’s member organisations and the youth sector and to raise the quality and standard of youth development programmes. Closing Date 31 July 2001
Manage a program to advance the learning and practice of community-based support and care of children affected by HIV/AIDS and oversee the development of relationships with stakeholders.
Coordinate UNICEF support to social mobilisation efforts for Polio eradication and improving routine immunisation.
Includes provision of IT at a grassroots level and
global youth participation in advocacy campaigns via the Internet.
Closing Date: 15 Aug 2001
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 30 * 6179 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 30 * 6179 SUBSCRIBERS
Participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is an approach involving a wide range of stakeholders such as local people, community organizations, NGOs, and development agencies deciding together about how to measure results and what actions should follow once this information has been collected and analysed.
First National Congress on Quality Improvement in Health Care, Medical Research and Traditional Medicine at the Ministry of Health Kenya, Department of Standards and Regulatory Services. 19 - 23 November 2001, Kenya College of Communications and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya.
The Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health Program Initiative of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) supports transdisciplinary research that focuses on the development of ecosystem management interventions that lead to the improvement of human health and well-being while maintaining or improving the capacity of the ecosystem to provide a desired range of products and services.
The uses of GIS in epidemiology and public health monitoring will be explored in this course. Students will learn how to map public health indicators, identify disease clusters, and explore the geography of environmental risks.
In April 2000, IFPRI launched an Institute-wide synthesis activity on "Successes in African Agriculture," involving an extensive review of success stories in African agriculture, criteria for success and factors underlying success.
THE South African government is on a mission to rescue the UN Conference Against Racism, to be held in Durban next month, by pushing for a compromise that will keep slavery on the agenda but shelve the contentious question of reparations. The US has insisted that slavery and reparations be removed from the conference declaration or it will downgrade its delegation. Africa, on the other hand, has insisted that slavery be recognised as "a crime against humanity that is unparalleled", that the former colonial powers apologise and that reparations be paid by governments and businesses that benefited.
Divisions and infighting in the NGO sector have deepened with the recent break-up of the Non-Profit Partnership (NPP), which was established only three years ago to strengthen non-profit organisations. And the World Conference Against Racism, to be held in August in Durban, has been touched by the fallout.
Creative Associates International, Inc., known locally as CREA SA, has been contracted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to implement a program of grants management and technical assistance in support of the USAID Democracy and Governance
Program in South Africa.
There are a good number of articles, which would enrich our Zambian readers. What are the procedures if we would like to publish any of the articles in our Icengelo or The Challenge magazines? Thanks for your kindness in answering our request. Have a nice day in your good work.
WE REPLY: We are happy for you to use materials published in the Kabissa-fahamu Newsletter provided that the source is properly acknowledged.
Greetings. We are kindly asking friends, individuals and development NGOs to please do help in the provision of educational materials and funding the building of our Non-Formal primary schools. Schools are now closed down for next academic school year starting in September 2001. These children attending are victims of the recenly past war. The communities recently provided lands for the buildings and we are inviting people to come and see the development of the schools.Even our staff are not paid but just volunteering to teach and no better material. Please do help today. God be with you.
I am a human rights activist living and working in Lesotho. For the past 15 I have been working effortlessly for the defence and promotion of Human Rights, to the extend that I have on the other hand become a referal point for foreign agencies on human rights issues in this country. Similarly I have become a dissdent, my government has done and is continuing to do everything to silence me. For ten years I have been running a weekly, vernacular newspaper which concentrates on Rights and Good Governance. In the past three years, we added a Community Radio Station to our activities. Unfortunately, up to now we have not been able to solicite any form of support from international, regional and local human rights organisations. Pressures of work, subsequent to the demands from the public, we are intending to open an Institution that will act as a community charge office, where people can come to report matters of human rights abuse for us to take action, even by way of private litigation. However, we are aware that we won't be able to make money out of this activity, it will become just an additional burden on our meagre resources. Please advice me on the organisations that may be approached for financial and other material resources.
WE REPLY: We can well understand the difficulties that you must be facing. You might like to get in touch with the Southern African Human Rights NGO Network (SAHRINGON). They may be able to help you identify possible sources of funding.
I'd like to thank you most sincerely for your so informational news. Being an editor of 2 magazines one in Bemba and another one in English and English language not being my mother tang, I appreciate your efforts even more. I will send you our magazines in English by post and if you find something fit to publish in the newsletter, just do it. I would also appreciate if you could put on your mailing address a local radio station in Slovenia, my home country, and send them regularly the newsletter. They are hungry and thrirsdy for some original African news. Their Email address is:
I thank you for a very interesting newsletter which I am privileged to be part of the recipients. I wanted to get information on how our organisation which is the Media Institute of Southern Africa-Zimbabwe (MISA-Zimbabwe)Chapter can also participate by sending its stories / information especially media related information on the newsletter for the benefit of your wider readership. We have a number of programmes that we are running and also we monitor the media on a daily basis, issuing alerts at the same time. It will be of interest to us if some of that information is carried in your newsletter. I await to hear from you in regard to our proposal.
WE REPLY: Thank you. We would be delighted to receive information from MISA-Zimbabwe on a regular basis. Please send your information to . We will shortly publish our suggestions on how to submit information that will make it easier for us to ensure your story is included.
We were hoping that the gateway was going to be as bad as people said it would be - we signed up and put up a link to our child labour campaign, which is clearly critical of the Bank and the IMF's policies (which tend to encourage governments to spend less on education). We thought it would be quietly removed, so that we could claim that our campaign was being stifled by the Bank (which would have generated some attention). But the link has not been removed. I posted it in without any prior approval - I just signed up with my personal details, and a few minutes later my information was there (3 clicks from the home page). Is this gateway really that bad?
Understanding the meaning of economic, social and cultural rights through study of one aspect of these rights, the human right to food and nutrition.
Political Science 675c is the University of Hawaii's graduate course on Nutrition Rights. The central purpose of the course is to study the working of human rights systems through close examination of the human right to food and nutrition.
Convened by the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), School of Government, University of Western Cape and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS), University of Zimbabwe. Course dates: 10-14 September 2001.
Finally - a book that neatly and intelligently dissects the democracy discourse that has come to dominate African political economy, and shows it for what it is: an absurdity with tragic consequences.
The 2001 UNDP report on technology: "technology networks are transforming the traditional map of development, expanding people's horizons and creating the potential to realize in a decade progress that required generations in the past."