KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 23 * 3671 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 23 * 3671 SUBSCRIBERS
Title: AFRICA CONNECTS CONFERENCE - FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS
Conference Date: 10-13 July 2001
Location: Cape Town
Closing Date for Proposal Submissions: 1 June 2001
Contact Details: E-mail: [email protected]
Web: http://ac.wcape.school.za
Telephone: +27 21 674-9140
Fax: +27 21 683-6766
Post: PO Box 44460, Claremont 7735, Cape Town, South Africa
The Africa Connects conference, focusing on Education in the Internet Age, will be held in Cape Town, South Africa from 10-13 July 2001, opened by South Africa's Minister of Education Kader Asmal.
The conference is hosted by SchoolNet SA and the Western Cape Schools Network in association with the 8th Annual International I*EARN Conference (with activities for I*EARN delegates from 9-14 July).
You are invited to submit your presentation proposals for the conference. 1500 delegates with a wide range of ICT interests and abilities are expected to attend. All proposals will be seriously considered.
Title: Claude Ake Memorial Awards Program. Deadline for Applications: July 16, 2001. Contact Details: The Africa-America Institute Claude Ake Memorial Awards, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W., Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20036-2259, U.S.A.
The Africa-America Institute and the African Studies Association announce the 2002 Claude Ake Memorial Awards Program competition, funded by the Ford Foundation. The Claude Ake Memorial Awards Program seeks to encourage young and mid-career African scholars-activists to carry out research, reflection and writing about their ideas and activities. The award is intended for Africans who are engaged in knowledge-based and reality-informed problem solving to address the continent's development challenges, in the tradition of Claude Ake.
“World Guide to Scholarships” is a foremost guide for financial aid information for international students wishing to study in a foreign country. Most comprehensive listing of grants, scholarships, loan programs, and other information to assist students in their pursuit to study abroad. The guide includes directory of award scholarships, grants and fellowships available to international students all over the world. The guide identifies several independent and corporate foundations, all of which award grants to individuals.
Deadlines for Applications: 31 October 2001
Contact Information: Steven Wayling Manager, Research Training Grants (RTG)Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), World Health Organization, 1211 Geneva 27
Switzerland, Fax: +41-22-791-4854 Tel: +41-22-791-3909
The UNDP/World Bank/WHO Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) invites applications for the award of Research Training Grants (RTG) in 2002. Applicants must be nationals of, and employed in, the developing disease endemic countries (DECs),particularly from least developed countries, and low income and high- burden countries with limited research capacity. RTGs are awarded, on a competitive basis, for studies leading to a postgraduate degree, or for acquiring specialized skills. Studies must be on one or more of the TDR target diseases - malaria, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, lymphatic filariasis and onchocerciasis, African trypanosomiasis and Chagas disease, leprosy, dengue and tuberculosis in laboratory, clinical or applied field research disciplines relevant to TDR and/or national priorities. The training may take place in the home country, in another developing country, or in a developed country. TDR reserves the right to select the academic institution, research programme or TDR-funded Research & Development (R&D) project where it is felt the most suitable training can be obtained.
Date: 14th - 16th September 2001
Location: University of Central Lancashire, England
Deadline for Submission of Papers: 31st May, 2001
Cost: The conference fee which includes all documentation, refreshments and lunches will be £85.00 plus VAT (£99.88 incl. VAT). There will also be a
daily delegate rate of £50.00 plus VAT (£58.75 incl.VAT). Please note that accommodation is not included in the fee. Should you require a list of accommodation, close to the venue, please contact the conference unit on 01772 892256.
The main purpose of this first ASA-UK conference on Human Rights is to examine the ways in which human rights are involved in a wide range of contemporary issues in African Studies.
Contact Details: Please address all submissions and general enquiries to:
Liz Kelly
Business Services
Livesey House
University of Central Lancashire
Preston PR1 2HE, UK
Tel: 00 (44) 1772 892256
Fax: 00 (44) 1772 892938
South African investigators begin public hearings today into alleged corruption by senior politicians in the hugely controversial purchase of £4bn worth of weapons from European manufacturers. But scepticism about the effectiveness of the public protector's investigation - one of three by government agencies looking into the accusations of corruption - has grown as the African National Congress has sought to use its overwhelming majority in parliament to limit the political damage.
Job Title: Program Manager, Transitional Justice Project Department. Location: Center for Civil and Human Rights, Notre Dame Law School, Notre Dame, Indiana,USA. Position Pay Range: $ 4,055 - $ 6,763/Month. Application Deadline: June 20, 2001. Position will remain open until filled. Contact Details: Please apply with cover letter, resume, and letters of reference to: Program Manager, Transitional Justice Project, Job # 1012-135 Dept. of Human Resources, 100 Grace Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556
Job Title:Associate Director of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute
Location:Columbia Law School, New York, New York
Closing Date for Applications: Initial screening will begin on May 31, 2001
Contact Details: Sharon Kim, Human Rights Institute,
Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th Street,
New York, New York 10027
Job Title:Project Director (Bringing Human Rights Home Project)
Location: Columbia Law School, New York, New York
Closing Date for Applications: Initial screening will begin on May 31,2001
Contact Details: Sharon Kim, Human Rights Institute,
Columbia Law School, 435 West 116th Street,
New York, New York 10027
Job Title: Post of HIC General Secretary
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Organization: Habitat International Coalition
Closing Date for Applications: 30 June 2001
Contact Details: The Secretariat, Habitat International Coalition, P.O. Box 34519, Groote Schuur 7937, Cape Town, South Africa Tel: 27 21 696 2205 Fax: 27 21 696 2203
Title: A Collaborative Conference on the Crisis in Health Care, Environment, and Economic Development in Africa.
Date: September 12 - 14, 2001
Location: Chicago, IL
Contact Phone Number: (312) 755-0635
Title: PATT -Technology Education Conference.
Date: October 2001
Location: Cape Town, South Africa
Closing Date for Submission of Papers: 11 June 2001-05-28
Cost of Conference: Conference fees (incl. teas, lunch and functions)
Authors presenting a paper: $ 200/R 1200 (reduced: R 600)
Delegates $ 210/R 1300 (reduced: R 650)
Contact Details: Prof. Nico Beute Tel +27 21 460-3657
Dean: Engineering Faculty Fax +27 21 460-3701
Cape Technikon Email: [email protected]
PO Box 652, Cape Town, 8000 RSA
Wayne Marshall, UNIX programmer and African resident, shares concern over what he names "the new zeal of the high-tech missionary" - delivering internet access. Access delivery does not mean that projects are planned well. They need to be carried out with insight into issues like sustainability and relevance.
A look at new policies around information, Internet access and multimedia in Cote D'Ivoire. New infrastructure and policy developments have gone ahead despite a telco monopoly and political upheaval. However, there are still several obstacles to becoming a connected computer user.
A project in Zambia is examining how interactive radio instruction can help bring basic education and life skills to help address the crisis of AIDS orphans. In "interactive radio instruction," broadcast lessons are scripted so that listeners feel as if they are interacting with the radio teachers. EDC has been working in partnership with the Zambian Ministry of Education's Educational Broadcasting Service (EBS), churches, NGOs and local community groups to use this method to meet the desperate and growing needs of AIDS orphans.
In the last 40 years urban populations have increased five-fold and over the next 30 years 90 per cent of population growth will be in urban areas. As the special session of the UN assembly meets in New York on June 6 - 8 2001 to review progress since 1996, Panos is publishing a new report, Governing Our Cities: will people power work? assessing whether post-Istanbul urban strategies are succeeding. It concludes that although many nations are trying to take new approaches to the way they manage cities, they are doomed to fail unless governments work in tandem with other groups in society, and particularly the urban poor.
The International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI) has launched an internet-based campaign with Yahoo! and other partners to create public awareness about the urgent need for an accessible AIDS vaccine. The Call for Action petition will be presented during the UN Special Session on HIV/AIDS in New York June 25-27 2001. Sign by June 25.
Should all HIV/AIDS research become centralised in Western competence centres? You may cast your vote (anonymously).
It was like a scene out of Le Carré: the brilliant agent comes in from the cold and, in hours of debriefing, empties his memory of horrors committed in the name of an ideology gone rotten. But this was a far bigger catch than some used-up Cold War spy. The former apparatchik was Joseph Stiglitz, ex-chief economist of the World Bank. The new world economic order was his theory come to life. He was in Washington for the big confab of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. But instead of chairing meetings of ministers and central bankers, he was outside the police cordons. The World Bank fired Stiglitz two years ago. He was not allowed a quiet retirement: he was excommunicated purely for expressing mild dissent from globalisation World Bank-style.
There are signs that Nigeria's northern region is becoming increasingly vulnerable to annual epidemics of measles and meningitis amid widespread resistance to immunisation by suspicious locals. Taking advantage of strong anti-Western sentiments sweeping across the predominantly Muslim region since a number of states started implementing strict Islamic law over the past year and a half, some radical Muslims have launched a strong campaign against Western medicine.
Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), today called on world leaders "to give full-fledged priority to food security in national policies." Addressing a Summit meeting of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Dr. Diouf said, "Freeing the planet from hunger is a formidable historical challenge, particularly for Africa's Heads of State. But, I am convinced that this objective is within our reach."
The Nairobi River, one of the most polluted rivers in Kenya, is the focus of an intense cleanup campaign by the United Nations Environment Programme which is headquartered in Kenya's capital city of Nairobi, through which the river runs.
Royal Dutch/Shell Group, the second-largest publicly traded oil company, will team up with the World Bank to spread the benefits of its oil projects to Nigeria's people, in a bid to repair Shell's image in the country. Shell's plans to join with the lender in setting up a $30 million fund to finance oil service contractors is drawing fire from human rights and environmental groups, which say the bank is
encouraging what they call Shell's abuses in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
In this issue: global warming changes forecast for agriculture; an interview with Asbjorn Eide, senior fellow and former director of the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, explores the concept of food as a human right; read about the 2020 Vision conference on "Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020" in Bonn, September 4-6, 2001.
The World Bank and the IMF announced on Wednesday that they have agreed to support a comprehensive debt reduction package for Chad—one of the poorest countries on earthunder the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative.
The IMF has commended Tanzania for continued impressive economic performance, saying it may soon qualify for extensive debt relief under the enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, AFP reports. Jürgen Reitmaier, leader of an IMF team on a two-week mission to Tanzania, said on Friday that most of the benchmarks set under the Fund's Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) have been met.
Masvingo’s Mayoral elections again exposed the state media’s bias in favour of the ruling party. In previous weeks these media had given ample platform to the ruling party to campaign. In the week even after the defeat of the ruling party, the state-media solicited opinions from an array of Zanu PF sources. On the day the results were announced ZBCTV gave little airtime to the victor. On the other hand, The Daily News’ had a subjective interpretation of the results, both in its headline and in the text.
Wednesday, May 30 2001 is the D-day for the formal opening of Nigeria's first resource centre and a new website dedicated to providing
information on HIV/AIDS and reproductive health issues for the media and the general public. The Media Resource Centre on HIV/AIDS and Reproductive Health/Rights, the first of its kind in the country, is a project of Journalists
Against AIDS (JAAIDS) Nigeria, a media-based HIV/AIDS advocacy organisation founded by a group of journalists in 1997. Located at 1st Floor, 42 Ijaye Road, Ogba, Lagos, the resource centre
will provide electronic and non-electronic information resources on HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and other health issues to journalists and other members of the public. Facilities at the centre include a documentation library stocking HIV-related literature, research reports, CD-ROMs, disks, and audio-visual materials.
The Institute for Policy Studies and Friends of the Earth today denounced the World Banks plans to approve a $15 million loan to a financial intermediary that would provide subcontracting services to Shell Oil Corporation in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. The loan, which would be provided by the World Bank's private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), would provide hard currency to banks in the Niger Delta who could then onlend to subcontractors providing services to the Shell Oil Corporation. It is set to be approved next week.
As expected, Senator Jim Jeffords announced this morning he is leaving the Republican party and will align himself with the Senate's Democratic caucus. The move, which Jeffords delayed to permit smooth Senate passage of the massive Bush tax cut, swings power over Senate committees and the schedule of Senate legislation to the Democratic Party.
Nominations for the 2002 Reebok Human Rights Award are currently being sought. Please put in your nomination by the June 15, 2001 deadline.
The Reebok Human Rights Award seeks to shine a positive, international light on young human rights activists and to support their work with a $50,000 grant from the Reebok Human Rights Foundation. The Award has honored 64 past recipients in 28 countries. Visit the website for the announcement and application materials for the 2002 Reebok Human Rights Awards.
It is time for the talking to stop and the action against corruption to begin. This is the central message that civil society organisations from across the world will deliver when they place a set of key demands before the more than 100 governments gathering at the Second Global Forum on Fighting Corruption and Safeguarding Integrity in The Hague, The Netherlands from May 28-31, 2001.
semaine du 25.05.01 au 03.06.01.
Residents of the Central African Republic's capital, Bangui, have been fleeing continuing fighting between the presidential guard and rebellious soldiers. The authorities had said on Monday that they had the city under control, following what was described as a coup attempt against President Ange-Felix Patasse carried out by disgruntled soldiers.
The Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, and the main rebel leader, John Garang of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA), are to attend a summit aimed at ending the country's 18 year civil war. The peace summit, organised by the regional Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is due to take place in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, in June.
The people of Nigeria should be celebrating the second anniversary of the restoration of civilian rule, but as the BBC reports, few are in partying mood.
Chad's six unsuccessful presidential candidates were all picked up for questioning by police on Monday and then released an hour later. The six men were meeting just hours after it was announced that Chad's incumbent President Idriss Deby had won an outright majority in the first round of voting, making a second round unnecessary. The six opposition candidates had issued a joint statement last Thursday alleging fraud in the 20 May poll, but foreign observers said the vote appeared to be fair.
Senior army officers in Zimbabwe have secretly warned the South African government that they may launch a coup against Robert Mugabe if the growing political and economic crisis results in riots. Pretoria has strongly advised against any move to overthrow the Zimbabwean president by force but has been made aware of the circumstances in which it may be attempted.
Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe's government has been thrown into disarray by the death of the defence minister, Moven Mahachi, the second cabinet minister to die in a car accident in the past month. Mr Mahachi, 53, was killed late Saturday afternoon in a car accident in Zimbabwe's eastern mountain district of Nyanga. He had been one of Mr Mugabe's longest serving and most trusted allies. In 1975 he helped Mr Mugabe escape Rhodesian authorities by sneaking across the eastern border to Mozambique.
Sixty Angolan children abducted by UNITA forces earlier this month were freed on Friday, but an unknown number of juveniles remain captives within the rebel movement's ranks, humanitarian officials told IRIN. The children, along with two adults, were released at Camabatela in the northern province of Kwanza Norte. They had been abducted from an orphanage more than 300 km south run by the development agency ADPP, during an attack on the town of Caxito on 5 May.
Somalis in the self-declared state of Somaliland, northwestern Somalia, will be asked on 31 May to vote on a new constitution which includes an article on territorial independence. Somaliland independence was unilaterally declared in May 1991, but has never received international recognition. The declaration followed the collapse of Muhammad Siyad Barre's military dictatorship, which had pursued brutal policies in the north during the civil war of the 1980s. During a recent visit to the capital, Hargeysa, IRIN spoke to Somaliland President Muhammad Ibrahim Egal about independence, and the issue of past atrocities. A number of sites discovered in 1997 were identified by an international forensic team as having characteristics of mass graves, but no further investigation followed.
The JRS-backed Radio Kwizera has donated 50 solar powered free-play radio sets to schools in the refugee camps of Ngara and Biharamulo districts of Tanzania, the Catholic NGO Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) reported on Friday. Forty six of the radios would be used by primary schools in the camps of Lukole, Lumasi and Kitali to monitor education programmes produced and broadcast by Radio Kwizera, it said.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell on Saturday urged Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi to step aside next year, when his term of office finishes under the constitution, and to let a new president be elected, the 'New York Times' reported. President Moi sidestepped direct questions as to whether he would stand again, saying that the destiny of Kenya was in the hands of the people themselves.
Research funded by the Jesuit Refugee Services (JRS) has found that 90 percent of respondents displaced by tribal land clashes feared to return home due to ongoing hostility, the Catholic NGO reported on Friday. Land clashes directly linked to the 1992 and 1997 multi-party elections in Kenya had prompted JRS to commission research to assess the situation of those displaced by the clashes and to identify warning signs that portended violence, it said.
Fourth Session of the Independent Commission on "Africa and the Challenges
of the Third Millennium"
Date: 28-29 May 2001
Location: Accra (Ghana)
Contact Details: For more information, please contact :
Bernard VERSCHUEREN [email protected]
Africa Millennium Project (233-21) 77 53 60
Iddrisu SIDDIQ [email protected]
UNDP-Accra (233-21) 77 38 90 ou (233-24) 32 76 61
The group of eight pro-Tutsi parties supporting Colonel Epitace Bayaganakandi as transitional president have issued a statement condemning the "unacceptable manipulation by the government and its associates aimed at avoiding the implementation of the Arusha agreement", the private Burundi news agency NetPress reported. It said the parties believed that a recent meeting brokered by the Italian San Egidio religious community which brought together the CNDD faction of Leonard Nyangoma, the hardline Tutsi PARENA party, the government, and ruling party UPRONA, as well as the recent visit to South Africa by President Pierre Buyoya were attempts to "exclude Bayaganakandi".
A former MP is among 10 people sentenced to death in a ruling on genocide by a court in the northwestern town of Gisenyi, Rwandan radio reported on Saturday. It said Wellars Banzi, who was an MP under the former regime and an ex-chairman of the Mouvement republicain national pour le developpement (MRND), was among 54 people on trial for genocide. Twenty three others were sentenced to life imprisonment. He was found guilty of "inciting ethnic division" through articles he wrote for the extremist 'Kangura' newspaper.
The UN Security Council mission wound up its visit to the region at the weekend, after talks in Kampala on the last leg of the trip. The leader of the mission, French ambassador Jean-David Levitte, is due to provide a closed-door briefing to the Council on the eight-country tour on Tuesday. While in Uganda, the 11 ambassadors met Jean-Pierre Bemba, leader of the rebel Front de liberation du Congo (FLC) for talks on the disengagement of his forces from positions in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
On 24 May, Eritreans celebrated 10 years of independence from Ethiopian rule. In an address to the nation, Presidents Isayas Afewerki stressed the need to reduce the size of the army, swollen after the two year border conflict with Ethiopia in 1998, the pro-government Visafric news agency said. The demobilisation of enlisted soldiers and their reintegration into civilian society would reduce government expenditure on the military and generate economic growth, Isayas said.
A large-scale humanitarian disaster loomed as the lives of drought-affected populations of central, western and southern Sudan entered a more difficult phase, according to the latest summary report from UNOCHA, for the month of April. In addition to some 600,000 people being in dire need of food and supplies, infant mortality was increasing, malnutrition rates were rising - especially among children, and new segments of society were experiencing vulnerability, it said.
US President George W. Bush has prohibited the import of all rough diamonds from Liberia, the US State Department reported. Liberia is under UN sanctions for dealing in Sierra Leonean diamonds and otherwise supporting Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels.
The evacuation of tens of thousands of refugees from the Parrot's Beak in southern Guinea is nearing completion, UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said on Friday. He said about 2,000 refugees remaining in small groups in camps and villages inside the Beak, an insecure area wedged into Sierra Leone, would be transferred over the next two days to the Katkama transit camp to the north.
Although Zimbabwe is likely to face serious food shortages this year, the situation is not likely to lead to the predicted flood of refugees entering neighbouring countries, observers and civic organisations told IRIN on Friday. "Those with skills are leaving, but this is not a new phenomena," a foreign economic analyst told IRIN from Harare. Estimates suggest about 400,000 Zimbabweans have left in recent years, mainly for South Africa, Botswana, Britain and North America.
I thought I should write to thank Kabisa-Fahamu for the wonderful work that you are doing in inter-alia up-dating us on a number of issues and bringing us news from accross the world. It really is a pleasure reading through most of the staff atht you bring to us through this newsletter. Keep it up!
Of interest though is the debate around the issue of compensation to affected countries by former colonialist states. One would like to hear views of members to the project on this issue, as I think is one of very burning issues and needs to be confronted and addressed.
This would even be of necessity as we continue to, in disbelief, note that countries from the the developed world are reluctant to write off debts of poor countries, who, if it were not for the brutal colonialist tendencies and practices, which resulted in invasions and brutal uprooting of resources from these countries, they probably would not be in these type of financial difficulties.
I would definately like the subject put on the public domain for vigorous discussions, which should lead to resolutions taken and loobbying done for their implementation.
Finanlly, please receive our latest research results on 'Impact of Freedom of Expression on the Rights of the Child', whic we conducted during the year 2000.
UNDP Country Office in Ghana found the editorial note on Study Urges Overhaul of UN, IMF, World Bank very interesting, posted on KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 20. We would like to know what is the full title of the study and, if possible, we would like to get a copy of the study. Do you have any detailed information regarding the study? We visit the web-site you stated in the newsletter, but unfortunately, we have to say that it does not have a 'user-friendly' design, listing just code of file names, and we have no clue which is the said document.
OUR RESPONSE: Thank you for pointing out the problem with that link. Unfortunately the internet is a constantly changing place and a link that works today may not work tomorrow! Please get in touch with Eberhard Wenzel, Griffith University, Australia ([email protected]) who supplied the material.
Congratulations! Keep up the good work.
The Bram Fischer Visiting Professorship represents a major new endowment in the School of Law, University of Witwatersrand. Named for a leading human rights advocate, the Visiting Professorship is intended to advance a tradition of advocacy and scholarship in human rights that will ensure South Africa's vibrant constitutional democracy and influence students to regard human rights as an integral part of their practice of law. Internationally distinguished academics and practitioners will be appointed as Visiting Professors for a limited period of time. The Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer will be a full time postion on the same endowment. Apart from teaching, research and other duties the incumbent will help organize programmes for the Visiting Professor. He / she will, in addition, have the duties set out below.
Qualifications: A legal academic of stature and experience iwth a solid record of teaching, research and / or practice in the field of human rights; the ability to have an impact on the future development of human rights law; demonstrated commitment to advancing the cause of human rights, whether generally or in a specific field.
Duties: administration and development of new courses and curricula in Human Rights Law; an interest and involvement in the broader concerns of the Law School and the University.
Attractive package and salary negotiatable; annual bonus, generous leave, retirement fund, medical aid, car scheme, relocation allowance, 100% financial assistance towards dependents studies at Wits.
Enquiries: Professor Skeen, Head School of Law, Tel (011) 717-8411
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Amnesty International. The following text is extracted from the Foreword to AI’s Annual Report 2001 and written by Pierre Sane, former Secretary General.
The end of the Cold War was hailed by many as the start of a new world order that would bring freedom and prosperity for all. But for millions the reality has proved very different.
Globalization - the spread of the free market economy, multi-party political systems and technological change - has been accompanied by growing wealth for some, but destitution and despair for many.
Globalization did not start in the 1990s but its effects have intensified and become clearer over the past 10 years. Capital has always been mobile; what has changed is that the reliance of corporations on national states has become less and less important. Parallel with the concentration of wealth in the hands of multinational corporations has been the growing power of global economic institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and World Trade Organization (WTO).
Globalization has been accompanied by debt and poverty. More than 80 countries had a lower per capita income in 2000 than they had in 1990. At least 1.3 billion people struggle to survive on less than a dollar a day. Deregulation, privatization and the dismantling of social welfare provision have led to widening inequalities in many countries. In large parts of the world, corruption has increased, and personal, social and political insecurity has spread. The predictable and almost inevitable consequence of this growth in poverty has been a parallel escalation in violations of all human rights. The Berlin Wall may have crumbled, but the walls of poverty, intolerance and hypocrisy still stand.
However, it would be naive not to recognize the potential conflict between the pursuit of profit and the protection of human rights. For example, the proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) would have restricted states' ability to regulate the conduct of multinational corporations. It would have limited the capacity of states to enforce certain human rights, while not imposing any binding obligations on multinational corporations to protect such rights. A broad coalition of non-governmental organizations, trade unions and political parties lobbied against the MAI, which in the event was shelved, temporarily at least.
Similarly, the World Bank, ostensibly working to alleviate poverty but heavily engaged in promoting deregulation and globalization, is in a position to exert great influence over national economic and political agendas. The World Bank disburses more funds than all the UN agencies put together.
In a world where globalization is undermining many nation states and bringing poverty to the forefront of the human rights agenda, the challenge for AI is to remain relevant. In my opinion, this means broadening our aim from the protection of civil and political rights to embrace all human rights. The indivisibility of human rights is not an abstraction: the context which gives rise to human rights violations is invariably complex and cannot be divorced from issues of wealth and status, injustice and impunity. We have to maintain our focus on the individual victim to articulate what indivisibility means in real life. And in real life, accountability extends beyond the police officer wielding a baton, not only to his or her political masters but also to those who profit from inequality. In the minds of the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, freedom from fear and freedom from want have always been inseparable.
And the indivisible links between socio-economic and political rights have been mirrored in the emergence of a new network of protest movements. Globalization has brought together activists on issues such as child labour, the environment, anti-capitalism, Third World debt and human rights, creating an international, grassroots movement. Many of the groups that have come together to halt the proceedings of international financial institutions overcame long-standing divisions and diverging agendas using one of the much-vaunted advances of globalization - the Internet. A global solidarity movement to address the negative consequences of globalization is in the making. AI will bring its unique contribution to this endeavour.
Divisions within many societies have deepened in recent years, and in some have degenerated into open conflict. Far from the fall of the Berlin Wall marking "the end of history", we have witnessed a resurgence of bitter wars in which countless lives have been ruined and lost. In the past decade there have been tragic conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina and other parts of former Yugoslavia, in Chechnya, East Timor, Algeria, Somalia, Central Africa, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Faced with the mass violations of human rights committed during such conflicts, and especially the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, AI was forced to re-evaluate some of its working methods and its policies. Many of AI's campaigning and research techniques were developed in the Cold War era of individual prisoners of conscience faced with a monolithic state apparatus. But the scale, the ferocity and the speed of these disasters demanded new approaches. AI developed new internal mechanisms to respond to human rights crises more rapidly and forcefully, and grappled with difficult issues such as "humanitarian" military intervention and sanctions. Our members expanded AI's mandate in the light of the increasing number of conflicts with complex internal and international dimensions. Central to our approach has been the belief, borne out in each succeeding crisis, that impunity is the poison that allows human rights violations to spread, to recur or to re-emerge.
I am confident that new audiences will find a home in a multifaceted mass human rights movement, and that together we will rise to these challenges. The forces ranged against us may be formidable. However, the outrage at injustice that led to the founding of AI 40 years ago continues to inspire and motivate millions of people determined to build a better world.
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 22 * 3181 SUBSCRIBERS
KABISSA-FAHAMU NEWSLETTER 22 * 3181 SUBSCRIBERS
E-mail access to Internet resources and databases is a topic dear to Kabissa, since it enables African organisations who have difficulty accessing the Web to do so with ease - via email. Our colleagues in Trieste have come a long way to solving the problem. We urge you to take advantage of the service that they have made possible.
SPECIAL DELIVERY
The information revolution has not only brought scientists closer together on a global scale; in the minds of some critics, it has created a 'digital divide'--a gnawing gap between scientists in the North, who enjoy full e-connectivity, and their colleagues in the South, who do not.
ICTP's "www4mail" project, which Centre staffer Clement Onime and I launched in 1998, has sought to close this troublesome divide by providing researchers in developing countries with access to databases, online journals, and scientific preprint repositories via e-mail.
Simply put, www4mail gives browsers in the South the means to navigate the internet off-line and free-of-charge through low-cost technologies that are available in their home countries. As a result, www4mail offers an instructive example of a technological solution to disparities in 'information access' between the North and South. It also aims to help fulfil ICTP's mandate for transferring knowledge to developing countries.
An important lesson learned from www4mail is that high-bandwidth access to the internet is not essential for bridging the digital divide. Indeed the service--and the software that drives it--offers web information to internet users in countries where full connectivity is not widespread. As an added bonus, www4mail's support for non-Western character sets enables internet users from these countries to interact with web-based information in their own languages. Since its launch more than two years ago, the software has evolved rapidly thanks largely to extensive user feedback that has led to enhancements and new features. www4mail was designed to overcome many of the obstacles--such as JavaScript, cookies and frames--that have sometimes impeded the use of other free software. At the same time, it has tried to replicate, as closely as possible, the experience of browsing the web via full internet connection, including searches of online databases.
Most importantly, the software is easy to use and extremely reliable. So much so that the www4mail project was named a finalist in the Stockholm Challenge Award 2000, a 'cyberspace competition' that included more than 600 projects from 84 countries (see News from ICTP, Summer 2000, p. 14).
An evolving goal of the project is to disseminate the service more widely and to use it as a catalyst to build capacity in developing countries for setting up and hosting local www4mail services. Until now, five main public www4mail servers--one each in Germany, Italy and the United States and and two in Canada--have been established to deliver web pages via e-mail to users around the world. Each server can supply more than 5,000 pages of information daily. We hope to have additional servers in place in the near future. www4mail's value is reflected largely in its rising number of users. But like the dynamic environment in which it operates, the project's prospects for success in the future (and the not-so-distant future at that) lie in its ability to meet the demands of an ever-more sophisticated and complex operating environment. That, in turn, means finding ways to provide easy access to more dynamic content, multimedia elements, and specialised software. To keep pace, the www4mail project must continually draw on state-of-the-art knowledge and technologies. For this reason, observations and insights from www4mail users are always welcome. It's the only way we can ensure that we stay abreast of advances in the field in ways that allow us to serve the needs of scientists working in remote areas. By taking one small step at a time, projects like www4mail will help determine whether, over time, the digital divide narrows into a sliver of separation ultimately bridged by creative applications of today's technology.
[This article first appeared in . Many thanks to Enrique Canessa for permission to reproduce it.]
Questions concerning www4mail may be addressed to http://www4mail.org
To learn more about using the Kabissa www4mail server, contact Tobias Eigen. Alternatively, simply e-mail [email][email protected] with the word "help" in the message body. Full instructions will automatically be returned to you via e-mail.
An online discussion about the Kabissa www4mail server for the African non-profit sector is ongoing! To join, write to [email][email protected] with only the command "subscribe".
A new baseline study to determine reproductive
knowledge among young refugees in South Africa's most populous province shows that although there is a general awareness about HIV/AIDS, specific
knowledge about how the disease is transmitted and prevention strategies is "alarmingly low".
In the second installment of a four-part series on AIDS in Africa, "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" reporter Elizabeth Farnsworth examines the AIDS crisis in Botswana, where nearly 36% of sexually active adults are HIV-positive and some estimate that the country's overall life expectancy has been reduced by 20 to 40 years.
The House voted by a narrow margin yesterday to restore President Bush's ban on aid to international organizations that perform abortions, refer patients to abortion clinics or advocate abortion rights overseas.
Scientists at the Liege University in Belgium have reported that DDT, a pesticide that has been banned in Europe but is still in use in the
developing world to fight mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria, is causing children in the developing world to develop earlier than their peers in the developed world.
THE proposed plan by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to build a facility to recycle waste generated in one of its areas of operation ran into a hitch yesterday as the communities in which it was to be sited rejected it.
The French government should launch an official investigation into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by French forces in Algeria, Human Rights Watch said today.
MediaChannel.org - news, reports, resources and opinion. Featuring content from over 660 media-issues groups worldwide.
As the sun slips behind the jagged hills of the Transkei, Chief David Lingazwe surveys the land his family has farmed for hundreds of years. He smiles as he tucks a cell-phone into the folds of the traditional blanket he wears to keep out the evening chill. The chief's daughter Bonizwe has just given birth at a government hospital in Bizana, 60 km away. A year ago, Vodacom, one of Africa' biggest mobile technology players, installed a mast and base station in Amambisi village, ending isolation, but also bringing hope to this impoverished community of 30,000.
The Bloemfontein Court of Appeal, on 18 and 19 May, will hear an appeal against the Cape Town High Court’s ruling in favour of Old Mutual, who were accused of mismanaging an employees’ pension fund. COSATU is extremely concerned that the appeal should be upheld and that Old Mutual be found guilty, in the interests of thousands of workers directly affected and millions more who
may be affected by the precedent set by this case.
Most of us who enter politics do so because we hope to change things for the better. Tackling world poverty is an obvious ambition. Yet in the world today millions of people continue to live in conditions that most Westerners can barely imagine. – Romano Prodi
The preparations of more than 30 South African athletes for this year's world championships have been plunged into crisis following allegations of corruption and financial mismanagement against senior Athletics South Africa (ASA) officials, which prompted the postponement of the team announcement.
In Arab countries it is called baksheesh, hongbao in China, matabiche in central Africa, propina in Latin America, pots de vin in France, in other parts of the world it is called bribery; whatever the term, there is a significant cost to the world economy because it exists, and flourishes. Githongo claims that corruption is a major international scourge that undermines economic, political and social development. Sanchez explains that "corruption will always flourish in the obscurity of totalitarianism, authoritarianism and dictatorship- regimes that limit power to an unaccountable few." Sanchez does not limit corruption to certain governments or economic systems; he finds that democracy is not immune to corruption.
Anti-graft legislation must be scrutinised by the International Monetary Fund before enactment, Attorney-General Amos Wako said yesterday. The redrafted Kenya Anti-Corruption Authority Bills, will consequently be looked at by the Bretton Woods institution before being taken to Parliament, he said.
A Lagos-based national newspaper last week did nearly a full-page feature on how recruitment into the police force is riddled with fraud such that a candidate is required to pay as much as N250, 000 for the recruitment form, plus so many other sums for greasing the palms of some officials and self- appointed recruitment officers. All that came shortly after the former Lagos State Police Commissioner, Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, went full blast on the police and its corrupt agents at the Oputa Panel which has just ended its sitting in Enugu.
President Yoweri Museveni yesterday told Uganda's donors and creditors that he was committed to fighting corruption in Uganda's "backward and pre-industrial society," writes John Odyek. "There is political will to fight corruption," Museveni said at the International Conference Centre. Earlier a senior economist with the World Bank, Satu Kahkonen, said many public officials ask for bribes to "grease the wheels of bureaucracy," thereby increasing the costs of doing business.
Which provides the best health service, the 'American' model or the 'European' model? According to a report by the UK Institute of Development Studies, neither example is useful for countries undergoing rapid social change. For countries like China and South Africa, these dominant models are too static and fail to take into account constantly changing social and
political realities.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Monday welcomed the results of a just-published study on malaria, which, it said, could offer new hope in reducing the toll of the illness among infants. The study of 701 children in Ifakara, southern Tanzania, published in 'The Lancet' medical journal "opens up an exciting new possibility of reducing the impact of malaria in young children", WHO stated.
Technology has always attracted big dreamers. Think back to the rhetoric of two years ago, when e-commerce was supposed to change the world. Yet, as the economy sputters, there are people who still believe that a computer and a high-speed Internet connection can make a real difference. Some of them can be found at Technology Works for Good (www.technologyworks.org), a Washington group devoted to helping nonprofits connect with the community.
The organization that brought the world the green revolution is now struggling to survive the gene revolution. Few organizations have affected the lives of as many people as the little-known Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, which plays a major role in developing better crops for poor countries.
Search our entire database of funders with the Foundation Directory Online Platinum, a new addition to our popular Web-based subscription services. Platinum offers convenient Web access to over 58,000 profiles of foundations, corporate givers, and grantmaking public charities, as well as a separate searchable file of over 170,000 recently awarded grants. If you are already a subscriber to the Foundation Directory Online, it's easy to upgrade!
Under the Direction of Professor J. Gregory Dees, Pathways to Social Impact is a multi-year research project focusing on how social entrepreneurs can most effectively spread their innovations from one community to another. While there has been much talk about "replication" and "scalability" in the social sector in recent years, there has been little systematic, in-depth research to help social entrepreneurs make these decisions. Utilizing in depth case studies and data gathered from interviews and surveys, the study will explore the various strategies nonprofits employ to spread their programs and ideas effectively, ranging from information sharing to the establishment of wholly owned branches in other locations and the many possibilities in between.
The latest "Poverty Trends and Voices of the poor" shows that social indicators in the developing world have generally been improving over the last three decades. However, living conditions have deteriorated substantially for many Africans. Sub-Saharan Africa is in fact experiencing a serious health crisis because of AIDS: on average, life expectancy decreased from 50 years in 1987 to 47 years in 1999, and in the countries hardest hit by the epidemic decreases were of more than ten years of life. Child mortality increased from 155 per 1,000 in 1990 to 161 per 1,000 in 1999. Sub-Saharan Africa also experienced declines in enrollment rates between 1980 and 1994.
The ICT (Information and Communication Technology) Stories web site, just announced the winners of the 2001 competition - read about cases of ICT projects that are contributing to development in countries as diverse as India, Mongolia, Gambia and Niger.
The new Development Goals web site presents the latest data on country and regional progress towards the International Development Goals on poverty, education, gender equality, child, infant and maternal mortality, reproductive health, and the environment. Country tables present time series data for four of the last ten years.
A new study by the World Resources Institute reveals that water policies in most of the world are failing to protect the world's freshwater systems, resulting in growing water scarcity and alarming declines in the numbers of aquatic plants and animals. The study recommends that water prices should reflect the cost of supplying water and protecting watersheds.
Côte d'Ivoire's authorities hope to integrate some 20,000 Liberian children into the education system in the next school year, which starts in October, but first a number of hurdles need to be surmounted, participants in a workshop held to discuss the idea noted. Examining the technical and socio-psychological obstacles facing the proposed project and coming up with ways to ensure its success was the focus of the meeting, held on 7-9 May in the Ivorian capital, Yamoussoukro, 241 km north of Abidjan.
What is the best way to teach science? What kind of teacher training makes better science teachers? Donors now tend to fund in-service training (INSET) for teachers already in the classroom rather than pre-service teacher training. But what makes an effective INSET programme? And how can effectiveness be measured? Collaborative research by the Universities of York and Swaziland uses teacher perceptions and student learning outcomes to measure the effectiveness of an INSET programme for junior secondary science in Swaziland and asks whether the INSET methodology could be used in other subject areas.
The decade of the 1990s returned a mixed score card for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). Overall, the LDCs recorded only modest progress, but there were some encouraging experiences in social development and economic integration. The Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries presents an opportunity to review these experiences and agree on strategies to build on lessons learnt to accelerate the fight against poverty. These strategies must be centred on the realization of the rights of children.
COSATU expresses its appreciation to the University of the Witwatersrand for committing its support to the Treatment Action Campaign against the closure of the Johannesburg Hospital HIV/Aid clinic. The federation views the closure of the clinic as a ‘punch below the belt’ to the Johannesburg HIV/Aids sufferers, especially in an area where an alarming number of infected people live.
An international fund to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria will be a major tool for economic growth in the developing world, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in Geneva.
In a speech to the World Health Assembly, Mr Annan said that in order to encourage development in many countries, the runaway contagion of HIV/AIDS, and other diseases must be contained.
Paper from Hakikazi - Local Catalysts in Tanzania.
The context in which refugee policy is framed within the European Union has changed dramatically since the 1980s. From being an issue of human rights and cold-war politics it had, by the early 1990s as the number of asylum claims rose, become an issue of immigration control. By the end of the decade the paradigm had shifted again to criminology, moving from border control to the fight against transnational organised crime.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) today proposed setting up a US$98 million fund to help the world's least developed countries (LDCs) improve the safety and quality of their food products. The proposal was made at the third UN Conference on the LDCs (Brussels, 14-20 May) .
Biotechnology and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) can help to increase the supply, diversity and quality of food products and reduce costs of production and environmental degradation, as the world still grapples with the scourge of hunger and malnutrition, Dr. Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said in a speech in Stockholm today. The environmental risks of biotechnology should, however, be openly addressed and the new technology should not be allowed to widen the gap between rich and poor nations, he said.
Zimbabwe's beleaguered opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has been forced to take much of its political activity "underground" to avoid the violence of a government widening its net of repression and terror to attack diplomats and aid workers.
The Kellogg Foundation has released an updated version of their e-Philanthropy report, e-Philanthropy v2.001: From Entrepreneurial Adventure to an Online Community.
This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a company with widely distributed holdings within a volatile industry. The need for this distributed organization to respond as a unified whole to a rapidly changing environment required it to confront the uncertainties and contingencies introduced by invisibility, distance, and fragmentation of information. In this paper, we focus on issues generated by the integration of remote meeting technologies into local work practices. We compare face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings to understand how these new technologies impact the work of a distributed organization, and to uncover the new order that emerges around the use of these technologies.
The promise of serving the huge philanthropy market has fed the rush of entrepreneurs and investors to create new digital products and services. After several years of rapid growth, however, the e-philanthropy industry has begun to experience a shakeout. Most notable has been the demise of Charitableway, which produced a Web-based system for handling workplace giving campaigns.
Media inadequately covered the Masvingo mayoral elections. The Zimbabwe Independent and The Zimbabwe Mirror (11/5) had no story on the event while The Daily News and The Financial Gazette failed to inform its readers about important electoral issues. However, the Daily News provided the most comprehensive and impartial coverage of the pre-election violence. The state media put on a partisan performance, preferring to urge the public to vote Zanu PF. This message was supported by the prominent coverage given to alleged defections from the MDC to Zanu PF.
South African Generic Drug Manufacturer Requests Permission to Produce Patented AIDS Drugs; 'NewsHour' Continues Examination of AIDS in Africa, Addresses Distribution of Antiretroviral Drugs in Botswana; Bianca Jagger Works to Fight 'Human Catastrophe' of AIDS in Africa; South African Department of Health Has Not 'Killed' Possibility of AIDS Drug Provision, Letter Says.