Advocates, academics, and development practitioners have been working hard for more than thirty years to integrate gender roles—that is, the different roles males and females play in a society—into American aid policy and programming. Yet, despite the evidence that women are active in national development and that investing in women and girls yields a multitude of benefits, U.S. international assistance programs and policy have not caught up with the facts.

Women and groups recognized by the Millennium Peace Prize for Women, launched by UNIFEM and International Alert on March 8 this year, are continuing to receive recognition for their courageous efforts. One of the award winners, Women in Black, a worldwide network of women against war, has been nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. So far only 10 of more than 100 Nobel Peace Prize recipients have been women.

The SA Government was the only sub-Saharan African country to be contacted after the first US bombs fell in Afghanistan, but it has remained tightlipped about its view of the US strikes.

I am writing on behalf of the Digital Freedom Network. I am writing to see if we could republish the editorial "Justice on Hold: Impunity in Kenya" from your last newsletter. We would like to republish it on our Web site (http:dfn.org) and eventually on the Ogiek campaign Web site (http://www.ogiek.org). This article would be particularly helpful for the Ogiek campaign site as it would provide helpful background information on the political situation in Kenya. (We are currently redesigning the Ogiek campaign site; when complete, the new site will have more background information on Kenya.)

Salary : equivalent to £13,200 per annum
Location : Lusaka, Zambia
Closing Date : 26 Oct 2001
Posted on : 1 Oct 2001

A Valuable Resource for Civil Society

Dear Colleagues,

As you know, the Development Gateway (http://www.developmentgateway.org?128) provides valuable information and services to civil society worldwide on development projects, government statistics, key development topics, and policy dialogue.

This unique Internet platform brings together information,
experiences, and perspectives from governments, civil society,
businesses, and donor agencies from over 32 countries. The Development
Gateway has just introduced a new version that has made it even more
focused, useful and interactive.

Announcing two distance education courses that HREA will organise during January-May 2002. The courses are part of a pilot project in which six courses will be developed and offered to human rights activists and NGO staff via distance learning mechanisms. The project is generously supported by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Constitutional and Legal Policy Institute (COLPI). Participation is free of charge. Deadline of application: 7 November 2001. All applications should be sent to (e-mail) or +1 617 249-0278 (fax).

This training manual assists women to identify sources of violence in the family, community, society, and state.

A review of the June 1999 democratic elections in South Africa and has extensive chapters on the role of civil society and voter education and election monitoring.

A 52-part series of 5-minute videos on the Right to Development - produced by Young Asian Television [Sri Lanka]

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) on Monday expressed "deep concern" at what it described as the increased harassment of Senegalese journalists by government authorities since President Abdoulaye Wade took office in April 2000.

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum have written a letter of protest to Eritrean President Isayas Aferwerki to express their "serious concern at the government's closure of Eritrea's eight private newspapers". The letter was sent in response to the indefinite closure on government orders of the country's free press last week.

Continuing violent invasions of Zimbabwean farms are jeopardising the country's food security and crucial foreign exchange inflows from tobacco, according to the Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers' Union.

President Robert Mugabe's government insists Zimbabwe did not agree to curb violence on white-owned farms under the Abuja land deal.

"Reshaping the Nursing Landscape" will be the second conference of its kind to be hosted by the Department of Nursing Education, University of the Witwatersrand. The organisers are calling for abstracts for oral and poster presentation. Closing date: 28 November 2001.

According to a study by the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks may have unpredictable effects on Americans' charitable giving.

Civic bodies are being hampered by pro-government militia from carrying out voter education in some rural areas, ahead of Zimbabwe's 2002 elections.

The Zambian film industry is struggling to find itself, after Touch of the Sun, one of the country's first local productions, was a flop.

A UN technical team is on an 'exploratory mission' in Angola to learn about the country's peace process and the consolidation of democracy.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees said southern Africa remains the most war-torn region in the world, at a meeting in Gaborone aimed at building regional consensus on the controversial refugee question.

Namibia will introduce a land tax on commercial farmland to augment government's efforts in developing the neglected communal areas as well as to acquire more commercial land for resettlement purposes.

Human rights monitors say two civilians were shot dead by a detachment of Special Field Force on a routine patrol along the Okavango River, some 130 km east of Rundu.

Environment and Tourism Permanent Secretary Tangeni Erkana has resigned from his post in unclear circumstances.

A recent "Sustainable Food Security for All by 2020" conference, held in Germany, further strengthened the belief that Northern countries are not totally committed to attaining global food security but rather, more interested in increasing their profits.

Pupil enrolment increased a staggering 63 percent when Malawi introduced free primary school education in 1994, but education authorities are still battling to keep young girls in class.

The Women's Action Agenda 21 was originally the platform used to lobby for a consideration of women and gender in the United Nations Conference for Environment and Development (UNCED), in Rio de Janeiro, 1992 (also known as the Rio Earth Summit). In 1991 women started getting prepared for the Summit and in November 1991, 1500 women from 83 countries met in Miami for the World Women's Conference for a Healthy planet. The Women's Action Agenda 21 grew out of this meeting.

While technical cooperation (TC) has undoubtedly contributed to very significant development successes around the world, it also continues to perpetuate many counter-productive practices. Is TC, as currently practised, part of the solution to underdevelopment or too often part of the problem? Globalization, the information revolution, democratization and increasing capacities in the South have profound implications for development at large and for the way in which technical cooperation can adequately contribute to developing needed capacities. You are invited to join this inquiry to examine, question and scrutinize the fundamentals of technical cooperation and capacity development.

Top Zanu commanders from the Dare Rechimurenga and the Zanla High Command killed former Zanu chairman, Herbert Chitepo, in Zambia in 1975, a special report by a Zambian commission into the late leader's mysterious death reveals.

Modern public health has paid little attention to prevention tailored towards Muslims even though the Islamic population now numbers over 1 billion. Religion is a major component of the social life of many communities throughout the world, but in disease prevention we often use the concept of "one size fits all," with little recognition of religion or culture. Religion's positive influences can be incorporated into a strategy for health promotion and disease prevention by using recent developments in information technology.

The IMF has decided that additional debt relief can be given to some countries that complete the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) program but whose debt burden remains unsustainable, reports Reuters.

"John Gray of the London School of Economics spoke for many last week when he declared that the era of globalization was over. "The entire view of the world that supported the markets' faith in globalization has melted down ... Led by the US, the world's riches states have acted on the assumption that people everywhere want to live as they do. As a result, they failed to recognize the deadly mixture of emotions-cultural resentment, the sense of injustice and a genuine rejection of western modernity-that lies behind the attacks on New York and Washington ... The idea of a universal civilization is a recipe for unending conflict, and it is time it was given up.""

This brief report has been produced to underscore the difficulties in accepting that elections, be they by-elections or the Presidential election, can be free and fair in the current situation. The persistence of organised violence and torture seem to mitigate against any acceptance that the conditions for holding elections are even close to desirable. The current by-election in Chikomba constituency provides an interesting case study of the electoral process in Zimbabwe currently.

Remember the last time two nations went to war over water? Probably not, since it was 4,500 years ago. But today, as demands for water hit the limits of a finite supply, more than 50 countries on five continents might soon be spiralling toward water disputes unless they move quickly to strike agreements on how to share the rivers that flow across international boundaries.

About 27 million people are shackled in conditions akin to slavery around the world today. This number is higher than during the heyday of the colonial slave trade, says Dinyar Godrej in the latest online edition of New Internationalist.

As governments queue up to volunteer for the US-led coalition against terrorism, one victim could be another global alliance that has taken 10 years to build. Since the Cold War's end, the world has witnessed a massive debate on development and calls to eliminate poverty. Gemini News Service examines an invisible victim of the 11 September carnage in the US.

Candidates aspiring to vie for parliamentary and civic seats on the Democratic Party of Kenya ticket must subscribe to its code of ethics.

When Ghana’s new president, J.A. Kufuor, declared “zero tolerance for corruption” in his inaugural address, most Ghanaians welcomed the move. Yet public opinion appeared to have shifted when the policy claimed its first victim, the naive-looking, ever-smiling youth and sports minister, Mallam Isa.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir has halted the trial of several opposition activists accused of plotting with the United States against Sudan.

Family Health International has published a series of online research briefs and other materials on the female condom. The briefs summarize the latest scientific data and are designed to assist program managers and policy makers to determine the appropriate role for the female condom in reproductive health programs.

The WHAT Commissions have highlighted urgent issues in the management and over-exploitation of three of the world’s key resources – fisheries, agricultural bio-diversity and freshwater supplies. The common conclusion is that action is needed now, at both the global and national levels, to improve radically the systems we have for governing the use of these resources.

29-31 October 2001, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. The founding Conference of the African Malaria Vaccine Testing Network (AMVTN) was held in Arusha, Tanzania during February 1995. The second AMVTN Conference was held in 1998 in Accra, Ghana. In between the AMVTN Conferences, we have mainly organized training workshops, which have benefited over 200 African scientists and associated staff. Given the progress being made in malaria vaccine research and development the 3rd Conference of the AMVTN is now planned for Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from 29-31 October 2001. For more information contact:
Prof. W. L. Kilama, Chairman/Coordinator African Malaria Vaccine Testing Network C26/27 Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology Building
P.O. Box 33207 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

The South African government continues to resist efforts to supply its citizens with antiretroviral drugs, the "only medicines known to slow the replication" of HIV, the Washington Post reports.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is gravely concerned for the safety of seven Sierra Leonean journalists, all longtime critics of the government who received identical anonymous death threats during the last week.

After the success of Ahmadou Kourouma's penultimate novel En attendant le vote des bêtes sauvages, the Ivoirian writer's latest work, Allah n'est pas obligé (Editions du Seuil), has erupted onto the French literary scene this autumn, where it has been nominated for several and won one of the country's top literary awards. Over to the author.

Zanzibar islands are famous for many things. Their exquisite beaches and splendid resorts are a haven for holiday makers. Their spices make many chefs around the world very proud of their work and the involvement in slavery adds a dark side to an otherwise illustrious past. The Islands are now home to the Zanzibar International Film Festival (Ziff) of the Dhow Countries now in its fourth year. The festival, arguably the largest cultural event of its kind in East Africa, has effectively tapped into their rich and diverse historical and cultural heritage.

The case in which the Ogiek community in Kenya has taken the government to court over the fate of their Mau Forest land will begin on October 4. The Ogiek, a forest dwelling Kenyan community has been fighting for their right to remain on their ancestral land in the Mau Forest, Rift Valley Province of Kenya.