The election of more than 200,000 judges in Rwanda offers hope of speeding up trials resulting from the 1994 genocide, Human Rights Watch said. But the innovative judicial system, called “gacaca,” may be subject to political pressures and lacks some basic internationally recognized safeguards, such as the right to legal counsel.

The UN Refugee Agency's Executive Committee was told Thursday that more women should be included in the current peace talks on the central African state of Burundi.

Africamix, a volunteer-based traveling arts and music festival organized to help combat child abuse and neglect, will commence its tour in California in June 2002 and travel from there to 18 countries around the world.

There is perhaps no place better to focus anti-racism efforts than to educate children and youth about racism and how to combat it. Racism, after all, is only as strong as its proponents and practitioners and educating the next generations is surely one of the most effective ways of reducing the number of racists and the potential appeal of their message. Accordingly, this Report focuses on anti-racism educational efforts directed at children and youth.

An eight-member Human Rights Watch delegation, led by Board Member Joel Motley and Advocacy Director Reed Brody, participated in the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) in Durban, South Africa (August 31 to September 7). HRW played a key role in several programmatic victories that set the stage for future activism on issues including the protection of migrants and refugees, repairing the legacy of slavery, the equal application of criminal justice, and equal nationality rights for women.

Violence against children is a bigger problem than governments acknowledge, and in fact is often carried out by officials of the state. The Human Rights Watch report "Easy Targets: Violence Against Children Worldwide" documents beatings, torture, forced labour, sexual assault and murder by police or other law enforcement officials, employers, and teachers. The report was released in Geneva on September 28, a day which the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child devoted to violence against children. The report calls on governments to take stronger measures to protect children from abuse and urges the United Nations to undertake an international study of violence against children.

Women exposed during childhood to physical, sexual or emotional abuse or to household dysfunction have an increased likelihood of engaging in risky sexual behavior later in life, according to "Adverse Childhood Experiences and Sexual Risk Behaviors in Women: A Retrospective Cohort Study". The study, by Susan D. Hillis of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention et al., appears in the September/October 2001 issue of The Alan Guttmacher Institute's bimonthly, peer-reviewed journal Family Planning Perspectives.

The Governing Body of GDN believes that the Internet and new technology offer enormous potential to help realize the overall objective of GDN. Several prototypes and projects have been explored via GDNet, the electronic voice of GDN and a key tool in GDN's capacity-building efforts. An update and workplan for the next six months was developed to keep the GDN community aware of current and future projects.

Approximately 250,000 Ethiopian children under five years of age are HIV positive, the Ethiopian health ministry announced Tuesday. A UNICEF official working with AIDS prevention efforts in Addis Ababa confirmed the total but added that the figure is an "estimate."

News of a fresh dispute within the opposition MDC provided the state media with a golden opportunity to pursue its agenda of recent weeks to discredit the party and add their own embellishments portraying the organization as violent, divided and tribalist.

Is cyber-privacy a luxury that complicates national security? The American public seems to think so, with almost three-quarters favoring anti-encryption laws, writes Brendan I. Koerner.

The Kenyan government plans to make primary education free and compulsory from the year 2003, according to the Kenyan education minister.

Many of the world's largest banks have been ordered by the UK High Court to freeze accounts linked to General Sani Abacha as part of Nigeria's search for more than $3bn looted during the late dictator's rule.

The United Kingdom deposited its ratification of the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court on Thursday, October 4, the third country to do so in three days.

World Trade Organization delegates from 52 developing countries on Sept. 19 asked other WTO ministers to approve a proposal that would clarify language in the Trade-Related Aspects of International Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement to say that TRIPS would "not prevent governments from taking measures necessary to protect public health," including the production or importation of generic AIDS drugs.

'The Congress of South African Trade Unions welcomes the resignation of Tony Yengeni as the ANC’s chief whip. We cannot afford to have anyone remain in a position of political leadership who is tainted with corruption, no matter how worthy his past...'

The mayor of the Togolese capital, Lome, has been arrested on charges of corruption.

President Daniel arap Moi has blamed Kenya's provincial administrators' poor performance of their duties for ethnic clashes in parts of the country.

Observers are growing increasingly anxious about food shortages in Zimbabwe, and some now say that preventing starvation next year in the country will require external help.

The United States and Britain have not merely begun a war with Afghanistan's regime. Despite their predictions of a lengthy struggle, they have also begun a deadly race against time. The race for "victory" is lent added impetus by fears that the supporting coalition may fall apart. Yesterday's riots in Pakistan, and unrest in other Muslim and Arab countries, may be only a foretaste of a more fundamental turbulence if the conflict proves protracted and intractable. But of all the time pressures facing Washington and its allies, the daily, upward advancement of Bin Laden towards folk-hero status in the Muslim world is perhaps the most alarming.

Few Arabs share Bin Laden's fundamentalism, but his militancy on Palestine and Iraq strike a chord that resonates widely.

The South African Communist Party has condemned the arrest of five executive members of the Swaziland Youth Congress, who could be charged with sedition.

The Rural Legal Trust is an independent entity located in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Its core business is to facilitate, monitor and guide action oriented legal teams comprising of practising advocates, attorneys, candidate attorneys and paralegals to support mainly the poor rural and peri-urban based communities. RLT is seeking to engage the services of an independent and self-motivated full time Senior Administrative Secretary/Administrative Secretary for a fixed period of 3 years starting in mid-November or beginning of December 2001.

The tribes that live along the Omo river in western Ethiopia - the Turkana, the Dassanech, the Nyagatom, the Karo and the Mursi to name but a few - are physically distinct from their compatriot Ethiopians. In their isolated valley they share a rich symbolic culture displayed through body art and adornment. Their survival is intimately linked to the forces of nature and the seasonal flooding of the Omo river.

South African Gender Based Violence and Health Initiative is a partnership of 15 organizations working on gender based violence and health issues. SAGBVHI plans to host an annual conference on gender based violence and health in April 2002. Set to become an annual event, the conference will attempt to raise awareness about intersection between gender based violence and health and to find creative ways of building a violent free society.

The Citizen Base Initiative, a creative resourcing programme, has created the Citizen Base Award - an international competition which provides seed capital to NGOs for innovation in local resource mobilisation. The award aims to support local resource mobilisation as an alternative to international fundraising. This is an international award that has already been hosted in Brazil, Thailand, Bangladesh and India. It is currently running in Argentina. CBI invites South African NGOs to submit a locally focused resource mobilisation strategy.

WWF, the conservation organization, today welcomed the adoption by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) member states, of a Convention that will effectively ban the use of organotins in anti-fouling paints on ships.

Eighteen new sites in 13 countries have been added to the United Nations World Network of Biosphere Reserves, and two existing biosphere reserves have been extended. The reserves provide a framework for the study and conservation of the environment and for the sustainable use of natural resources.

The World Food Programme (WFP) on Sunday expressed grave concern over two days of heavy bombing on an area used as a site for the distribution of relief food in southern Sudan.

A leading exiled Hutu politician, Jean Minani, has said over Gabon's Africa No 1 radio that he is ready to return home before the full establishment of a special protection unit for him and his colleagues.

The Sudanese government has warned that it could pull out of the peace negotiations sponsored by the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) if progress is not made at the next round of talks, news agencies reported on Saturday.

Director-General of Tanzania's National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) Andrew Kitua has said the institute received a request for permission for testing of an alleged new HIV/AIDS treatment that South African researchers are conducting on Tanzanian soldiers, but that the trials had not yet been approved, the South African 'Mail and Guardian' newspaper reported on Friday, 5 October.

A referendum on a new constitution will be held before the end of the year and political leaders feel it will lay the foundation for a more stable democracy, AFP reported on Friday.

As of September, international donor countries responded with only meager funding to a request by the government of the Central African Republic for US $95 million in emergency relief and rehabilitation aid for displaced people, the US Committee for Refugees (USCR) reported on Tuesday.

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has granted the Tigray Regional State (northern Ethiopia) 18.7 million birr (about US $2.3 million) to help people displaced by the war with Eritrea, the Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) reported on 4 October.

The international NGO World Vision is carrying out a food and nutrition assessment in Malawi to determine how best to combat the hunger that is ravaging most of the country. Many desperate people are reportedly eating maize husks and wild roots.

Angolan rebels have gunned down more than 80 diamond diggers in an attack in the
gem-rich northeast of the country.

The Nigerian Senate's committee on women's affairs and youth has announced that it will hold public hearings to investigate child labour, sex trading and other forms of exploitation to which minors are subjected, AFP reported on Sunday.

The Angolan ministry of health and the World Health Organisation has delivered US$7-million worth of medical supplies to outlying regions in the country.

When all eyes are focussed on international crises, the world needs to be reminded of the great humanitarian needs on the African continent, says the President of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

Prof. Penina Mlama, who addressed a forum of the over 250 delegates at the Arusha sixth Biennial of the Paris-based Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA), said the problems of girls' education in the continent were inter-related and therefore, required a holistic rather than a piecemeal approach.

Former Nairobi Provincial Commissioner Joseph Kaguthi and his successor Cyrus Maina are dumbfounded that land allocated to more than 130 women's groups four years ago is now unavailable.

Provincial police superintendent Miranda Mills said racism in the approximately 11 000-member provincial police force was hampering service delivery.

On 1 October 2001, the international cocoa and chocolate industry signed a Protocol in the United States to eliminate child slavery in the chocolate industry.

More than 60 papers from a conference that reviewed what is known about the relationship between debt, development and poverty reduction, and assessed progress on debt relief and its implications for the relationship between aid donors and recipients. Presented by the Electronic Development and Environment Information System.

Key Points: U.S. policy toward the Islamic world is skewed by negative stereotypes of Islam that fail to recognize its diversity; Radical Islamic movements often arise out of the legitimate needs and grievances of oppressed sectors of the population who see the U.S. as partly responsible for their suffering; Washington has encouraged the rise of extremist Islamic politics both through shortsighted support for such movements or governments and through its support of repressive regimes, which often trigger extremist backlash responses.

Thank you so much for sending me your newsletter...its is very informative and a valuable addition to mainstream american media which tends to report the same thing over and over with a specific agenda....not always thankfully...the nation, village voice, public radio and public tv are exceptions....your newsletter provides a valuable counter viewpoint that I appreciate..which also helps to keep my mind and heart open...keep up the good work!

The National Association of People Living With HIV/AIDS (NAPWA SA), a National NGO (with National Office based in Germiston) that coordinates the resources and needs of people living with HIV/AIDS, has a vacancy for an office administrator.

As the US and the UK launch bombs on Afghanistan, the victims of terror will now extend far beyond New York City, to innocent people in Afghanistan and beyond. Even before the western bombs began to fall, in a report published last week the World Bank warned that the victims of the September 11 attacks in the US will extend to millions across the world, and in particular to Africa. The report says that the effects of those events alone will sharply hit economic growth in developing countries next year, condemning millions more people to live in poverty, and hampering the fight against childhood diseases, malnutrition and death.

In the words of World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn: "We estimate that tens of thousands more children will die worldwide and some 10 million more people are likely to be living below the poverty line of $1 a day because of the terrorist attacks. This is simply from loss of income. Many, many more people will be thrown into poverty if development strategies are disrupted."

While recent reports from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) sent mixed messages about the ability of African countries to weather the impending global recession as against its ability to make longer term gains against poverty, after recent events there is now little doubt that global trade will be severely damaged, with its inevitable knock on effects for developing economies. In particular, the World Bank report notes, countries especially dependent on commodities, like many in Africa, are likely to be particularly hard hit by the severity of a downturn in global trade. The Bank estimates that Africa will now see possible increases in poverty of 2-3 million people as a result of lower growth and incomes, and a further 2 million people may be condemned to living below $1 a day. About half the additional 20,000-40,000 children worldwide estimated to die because of the US attacks, are also likely to be in Africa.

It is only inevitable now that the numbers of these appalling statistics will be added to as a result of the US decision to begin a war in Afghanistan and perhaps beyond, with the resulting destabilisation of global politics, the increased suffering of Afghan refugees and war casualties, and the loss of perspective and focus for many civil society initiatives.

The events of September 11 and beyond have, however only exacerbated deep-seated trends. As UNCTAD point out, economic growth alone is simply not going to deliver the prosperity that Africa needs. More fundamentally, there needs to be a complete restructuring of global trading terms if the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of the world are to escape the chronic poverty trap; a restructuring that Western countries have so far successfully resisted. Over the past 50 years, average tariffs in Western markets on manufactured goods have fallen from 40 percent to 4 percent. But for agricultural products – the backbone of the exports of LDCs – tariffs have remained at 40-50 percent. LDC’s were promised greater access to Western markets during the last round of trade talks in Seattle in 1999; but this has so far failed to materialise. As a result, the effects of the current global destabilisation and recession will hit the poor far harder than they will the rich.

The fourth World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference is scheduled to be held in Doha, Qatar, from 9-13 November. It is vital that this meeting goes ahead, and that it provides a venue for Western leaders to demonstrate that the political will exists to finally begin to organise global trade in a more equitable way. The LDCs, who met in Zanzibar in August, are demanding a 'New Deal' on trade, and greater access within the WTO itself in order to argue their case for fairer trading terms. As a result of the likely effects of world events on developing economies, even the World Bank has called for the trading round at the WTO this November to go ahead, and to be a “development round” motivated primarily by a desire to use trade as a tool for poverty reduction and development.

But it remains to be seen how Bush, Blair et al will respond to the impending disaster for millions in poverty across the globe. Before the West’s ‘counter offensive against terror’, it just seemed possible that the tragic events of September 11 could have been the wake-up call so desperately needed for a more equitable approach towards death by poverty, displacement and recession that afflict so many in developing countries. While it is still possible that the promises made at Genoa, and more recently by Blair for a “Marshall Plan” for Africa – and elsewhere – are honoured, the danger is that, as is usually the case, western leaders dig themselves deeper into the bunker than ever before, and in the name of ‘justice’, preside over a dangerous global destabilisation while continuing to block initiatives that would prevent further suffering and further victims of such destabilisation across the world.

Poverty To Rise in Wake Of Terrorist Attacks in US

Economic Development in Africa: Performances, Prospects and Policy Issues
http://www.unctad.org/en/pub/pogdsafricad1.en.htm
'Promises No Longer Enough' Say Countries Seeking Fair Trade
http://www.oxfam.org.uk/policy/papers/doha.html
Africa 'brushed aside' by WTO draft
http://www.attac.org/nonewround/doc/doc02.htm