West African countries feature prominently in a US Department of Labour report highlighting the problem of child trafficking and labour in countries with which the US has trade relations.

Anti-Slavery International (London) is seeking a Child Labour Officer to play a lead role in implementing our child labour strategy and to plan and develop our future work.

The Senegalese army has ended a "clean-up" campaign it started on 21 June to restore security in Casamance, Southern Senegal, sources said on Tuesday. The military announced on 7 July that it had ceased operations, according to the sources, who added that the situation in Casamance had been calm in the past week.

A group of campaigners against HIV/AIDS in Somalia, called AIDSOM, last week held the country's first ever public awareness demonstration in the coastal town of Marka, south of Mogadishu. "We did not experience any harassment and were mostly welcomed by the local population", said AIDSOM head Abdullahi Jama Hassan. However, he acknowledged that in some places the campaigners were forced to leave.

Amnesty International is launching a campaign to stop abuses and to strengthen police accountability in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in July 2002. Amnesty International members in the SADC region are taking joint action with other human rights organizations. They are campaigning now for police services to be more effective and accountable.

Supermodel Waris Dirie was a five-year-old child of the Somali desert when an old woman held her down and circumcised her with a rusty blade, sewing up her wounds with catgut and thorns. Now the internationally-renowned beauty whose face has graced countless magazines has turned her back on her lucrative career to campaign against the centuries-old practice of female genital mutilation which has left her scarred for life.

The International Secretariat of OMCT has been informed by the Sudan Organisation Against Torture (SOAT), a member of the OMCT network, that 35 detainees from the Rizeigat tribe, including three children, were subjected to torture and are now awaiting their sentences following an unfair trial in Darfour Province, Sudan. The OMCT requests that you write to the authorities in Sudan protesting the treatment.

Chocolate-manufacturing companies, NGOs and other stakeholders have set up an international foundation to eliminate child labour in West Africa's cocoa industry.

Angola launched a drive last weekend to vaccinate three million children under-five against polio - with the support of the country's girl and boy scout movement. The signing of Angola's ceasefire in April has, for the first time in years, opened up areas throughout the country that were previously inaccessible for polio National Immunisation Day (NIDs) campaigns, the UN children's agency UNICEF said in a report.

Despite continuing fighting in parts of Burundi, the vaccination campaign launched last week was "moving forward as planned", Susanna Campbell, the communications officer for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), says.

The Alliance for Children's Entitlement to Social Security (ACESS) is a national alliance of 80 organisations. Alliance members share a common mission of ensuring that children's rights to survival and development are promoted and protected through the development of a comprehensive and effective social security system. The ACESS task team includes Soul City, Children's Institute and the Children's Rights Centre. In order to fulfil our commitments to ACESS, the Children's Institute is recruiting an Advocacy Officer for this 12-month contract post.

Kenya launched a countrywide measles vaccination campaign on Monday in what is considered the first major step towards eradicating the highly contagious childhood disease, which kills an estimated 18,000 children a year in the country.

Chapter 2 will soon provide a useful information pack on Advocacy and Lobbying Strategies for Campaigns to assist civil society with their activities.

The transfer of small arms from developed to developing countries fuels conflict, undermines democracy, worsens human rights, and hinders development, says this sign-on letter urging the G-8 to control arms peddlars.

Activists from developing countries are seeking 1 million signatures for a petition affirming a globalization that puts people over profits to be given to world leaders at the Johannesburg Summit in August.

Prepared by legal scholars under the auspices of the International Programme on Reproductive and Sexual Health Law at the University of Toronto, this 193-page manual aims to facilitate use of Africa's human rights system to promote and protect reproductive and sexual health.

The East African region joined the rest of the world in marking World Day Against Child Labour for the first time last Wednesday, but the region remains far from meeting targets aimed at reducing child labour and exploitation, and at ensuring that all its children have access to education.

A group of five leading global public health organisations have launched a nationwide anti-measles campaign in Kenya, to be conducted from 17 to 23 June, through vaccinations targeting some 14 million children between the ages of nine months and 14 years, who constitute up to 40 percent of the country's population.

Despite significant progress in efforts to abolish child labour, an alarming number of children are trapped in its worst forms, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has said. Launching ILO's report - 'A Future Without Child Labour', the organisation's Director-General, Juan Somavia, said on Wednesday that child labour remained a problem on a massive scale, despite the increasing commitment by governments and their partners to combat it.

The International Secretariat of OMCT requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The International Secretariat of OMCT has received information from the l'Association Africaine de Défense des Droits de l'Homme, a member of the OMCT network, that 22 detained prisoners launched a hunger strike on May 13th, 2002 in protest of their illegal detention at Buluo prison in Katanga Province.