Africa’s civil society is failing to harness the power of the internet to help communicate “strategically and effectively”, a global computer charity network warned on Monday. The Association of Progressive Communications (APC) said that all too often, advocacy and campaigning by charities was undermined by their lack of internet communications. The comments came at the launch of a pioneering project during a week-long summit at the UN Conference Centre in Addis Ababa to help charities tap the potential of the worldwide web.

Stand With Africa is a three-year campaign of Lutheran World Relief. The campaign supports African churches and communities as they withstand HIV/AIDS, banish hunger and build peace. Currently in year three, the final year of the campaign, Stand With Africa is focusing on building peace and conflict resolution.

As part of our Africa's Right to Health campaign, Africa Action is targeting President Bush and those around him as Africa Action's Most Wanted, for criminal obstruction of global HIV/AIDS funding and expanded treatment. We are mobilizing nationwide to put pressure on President Bush to keep his promises. We have chosen World AIDS Day as the key date to put our demands to the White House.

As part of sweeping efforts to eliminate measles from Africa, the Measles Initiative program was launched this week in Guinea. More than 3.5 million children in the West African nation will be vaccinated against the disease, which has largely been forgotten in countries like the United States but is still a childhood killer in many areas of the world.

Benin’s environment and urbanisation ministry has begun a one-week sensitisation campaign across the country to raise awareness about rising pollution in this small West African country.

So much children on the street
Have no food to eat
And some of them some of the time
asleep on cold concrete
It hurts me heart to see it
That really makes me weak
No clothes on their back and
no shoes on their feet.
Visit http://www.zvakwana.org to read the latest newsletter from Zvakwana, a Zimbabwean activist organisation, and to read tips for activists on dealing with the situation in Zimbabwe.

Ugandan environmental and rural development organisations are asking for international support in their efforts to stop the construction of the Bujagali dam and redirect the Bank's attention toward developing renewable energy options that would make electricity more affordable and accessible to the majority of Uganda's citizens. You can support this cause by sending a letter to the president of the World Bank.

SABC News reports that last year's campaign "16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children" raised almost R2million. Rural community-based organisations dealing with violence against women and children have been prioritised in the allocation of the funds.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has launched a repatriation campaign targeting 80,000 Rwandan refugees, mostly in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda, the agency reported last Thursday. It said its representatives and those of the Ugandan government met on Monday and Tuesday with refugees at the Nakivale and Oruchinga camps, to discuss the first organised repatriation programme for 25,000 refugees.

The United Nations, the Ministry of Health and several non-governmental organisations have launched a campaign to immunise 3.5 million Guinean children under the age of 14 against measles.

During the fifth ministerial of the World Trade Organisation, the efforts of the United States and the European Union to maintain the current inequitable global trading system provoked the formation of the G 21, a block of countries led by Brazil, India, South Africa, and China. While our enthusiasm is tempered by our disagreement with its endorsement of the panacea of greater market access to northern markets as a solution to the inequities of global agricultural trade, we nevertheless see the G 21 as a positive development. This is not, unfortunately, the view of the US and the EU, which have initiated a campaign to neutralize, isolate, and destroy the new formation.

Earlier this week, the Clinton Foundation announced the dramatic reduction of AIDS drug prices after its negotiations with several "generic" pharmaceutical manufacturers; the result was a cutting in half of the price of antiretroviral treatment for AIDS patients in several poor countries. While the news was welcome to most persons working on the issue, and while indeed many groups eagerly await specific details that might reveal problems or wonders in this deal, there is an underlying question that will remain unaddressed by technical evaluations of the new drug price reduction: what does it mean when a foundation headed by a person who - years ago - placed trade sanctions on countries attempting to import low-cost medicines now helps to procure such drugs and enters the spotlight of praise in the "AIDS community"? The issue is not merely one of hypocrisy or even of repentant revelation and progressive reform. At issue, more generally, is the question of what the meaning of AIDS has become as it has travelled through so many powerful institutions and been altered by so many professional "institutionalists", and what the implications of this are for those people genuinely concerned about human well-being.

Gambian health experts are warning that more Gambian children are dying from malaria despite an intensive campaign against the disease and the provision of heavily subsidised anti-malaria drugs by the government.

The ‘Control Arms’ campaign aims to reduce arms proliferation and misuse and to convince governments to introduce a binding arms trade treaty. Arms proliferation and abuse have reached a critical point, fuelling human rights violations, poverty, and conflict.

In less than two weeks there have been three major incidents of police brutality. Write to the police and government departments reminding them that the police are meant to protect the public, not brutalise them on behalf of the government in power.

The Health Global Access Project (GAP) is calling for organisational endorsements for a comprehensive plan from the leader of the US to fight HIV/AIDS.

The T-shirt, the poster, the billboard. Traditionally the weapons of protest and of solidarity are remarkable for their ability to cross oceans with similar messages, as displayed in an exhibition at the Johannesburg Art gallery in South Africa. Sponsored by the British Council, the “Upfront and personal - three decades of political graphics” exhibition comes on the back of an upsurge in the anti-war movement across the globe and was spurred on by the U.S.-led war on Iraq.

A 16-year-old child has been sentenced to cross-amputation in Sudan. You can write to the Sudanese authorities and protest the sentence.

Don’t take the assault on the freedom of the press lying down. Not only has the only independent daily newspaper been shut down but postage has increased to an extent that many Zimbabweans can no longer afford to correspond with each other. The cost of transport is excessive. The public media including radio and television is state-controlled. All these factors have increased the isolation and the information vacuum in which Zimbabweans live. The information that used to pass between urban and rural dwellers has become almost non-existent. Click on the URL below to find out what you can do.

The United States maintains military bases and other forms of military presence in over 100 countries. This network of bases is crucial for the US to project power around the world - in pursuit of its economic and strategic interests. In order to prevent the US from waging its illegitimate wars, the global peace and justice movement must campaign for the shutting down of these bases or ending other forms of military presence in each of the countries hosting them. The first step is to bring together people working on US bases in an e-mail network or list-serve that will facilitate communication and coordination among its members.