The Human Rights Advocates Program (HRAP) at Columbia University is designed to prepare proven human rights leaders from the Global South and marginalized communities in the U.S. to participate in national and international policy debates on globalization by building their skills, knowledge, and contacts.

WITNESS is pleased to announce the launch of the Human Rights Video Hub Pilot, in collaboration with Global Voices Online. The Human Rights Video Hub Pilot is the first initiative of its kind – a curated forum that amplifies and gives context to human rights-related video footage uploaded to the Internet by concerned citizens around the world.

Offered by Oxfam, this website explores dilemmas that farmers face at the beginning of the 21st century, development issues associated with trade, and ways in which trade affects the food we eat.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the ability to efficiently access and share information can have dramatic implications for social and economic development. As worldwide demand for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) services grows, so does the potential for these services to improve the lives of the poor.

As the horrific images of slaughter stream out of Darfur, Sudan, a playwright in New York has gathered experts, survivors, church leaders, diplomats and others to reflect on the tragic occurrence of genocide in our time.

The theme for the 2006 UNICEF/OneWorld Radio contest is UNITE FOR CHILDREN. UNITE AGAINST AIDS. Entries should be about HIV and AIDS - prevention, education, the scope of the pandemic and youth action to address it. Prizes are offered for two categories - Public Service Announcements and Features.

More than half of all children who do not go to school are girls. Achieving universal primary education is a Millennium Development Goal and one of UNICEF’s primary objectives. At a panel discussion organized by the US Mission to the United Nations in New York, UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman gave a keynote address on the vital importance of educating girls in the developing world.

The HRH Global Resource Center, a digital library devoted to human resources for health (HRH), now offers an electronic newsletter that provides information on the latest HRH resources, improvements and news. It will be emailed to subscribers once a month.

The Harambee Project, conceived by the Association for Progressive Communications, Bellanet and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and funded by Connectivity Africa hosted by IDRC and Hivos, is designed to support increased capacity among both the project’s initiators and a range of Africa-based networks and communities to coordinate and facilitate the interactions of their respective constituencies.

Only one week left to submit a story to the first annual Penknife Press Short Story Writing Contest.

In the first-ever legal challenge to racial profiling filed with an international human rights tribunal, a coalition of advocacy groups have submitted an application to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, seeking to halt racial profiling by police.

Registrations are still going on for the open forum. If you are interested in the theme and haven’t registered yet, try to register soon. Your contribution may bring a change to both continents.

The DEA is looking for a new Director to lead and inspire the organisation during a period of expanding interest in global perspectives within education. For further information, click on the link.

Africa in Motion (AiM) will enchant audiences with screenings of more than two dozen African films from all over the continent at Filmhouse Cinema this October. The packed programme covers a variety of genres spanning six decades of filmmaking in Africa.

The RSG/Project has developed Operational Guidelines on Human Rights and Natural Disasters, in consultation with UN agencies. The UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) adopted them in June 2006. By publishing them, the Project hopes to assist the UN in providing the people on the front lines of disaster response with the guidance they need on how to ensure that the rights of people affected by natural disasters are better protected.

To make the best use of the promised doubling of aid to Africa, it should be distributed multilaterally, possibly by a United Nations fund "independent of political pressures", according to a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

The riots that broke out in Atlanta, Georgia between 1898 and 1906 were part of a pattern of anti-black violence that included several hundred lynchings each year. September 22-24, 1906 is the 100th anniversary of the Atlanta Race Riot. In Atlanta, the Coalition to Remember the 1906 Atlanta Race Riot has planned a series of initiatives and events to increase public awareness of this shameful episode in the city’s history and inspire Atlantans to appreciate differences as opportunities to build community.

The ongoing controversy about the Pope’s ill-judged statement on Islam and violence may not abate easily, as different Muslim populations across the world continue to react in different ways. One hopes that the spate of violent attacks on Christian places of worship end immediately. Governments must assume responsibility for stopping these attacks. It is not the Pope that is hurting, but fellow citizens and neighbours.

All citizens, whether Christian or Muslim or the majority who are neither, deserve and should enjoy the full rights to the protection of their lives, place of worship, and freedom of their consciences along with other rights.

The Pope’s statement may do long lasting damage to inter–faith dialogue and religious tolerance, something that his predecessor, Pope John Paul 11, was closely associated with.

Both the violent reactions from a minority of Muslims and the biased reporting from the dominant Western media suggesting that ‘Muslims are violent’ are not surprising. They fit a template only too familiar.

Not too long ago there were the Danish cartoons and the reactions to them. It is a rather simple ‘audience and cue’ circus: a western person or institution says or does something that is offensive to good taste but specifically offensive to the Muslim faith or Muslims. Then there is a spate of militant and sometimes violent reaction from people in virtually the same countries. The western media then turns on the reactions, suggesting that the Muslims are immature, unable to take criticism and unable to engage in rational debate. Some proceed to conclude that the reactions prove how violent Muslims are.

It is a case of someone slapping you and also dictating that you should not cry. It is not correct that every offended group in the world should be burning places down and killing people. However, those on global platforms must also learn to say and act in ways that do not inflame emotions.

The same pattern repeated itself after the Pope’s statement. The attention soon shifted away from what the Holy Father said, to the reaction of some of those he offended. It is true that the Pope gave an unprecedented apology and is taking very public steps to atone for the misjudgment.

Hopefully with time this may cool things down, but the bad blood generated may not easily subside. It is neither the worst statement ever nor would it be the last time such a statement will be made about Islam, however, it must be pointed out that the Pope is not just any other person. He is the closest the world has to a religious head.

Neither Islam nor other religions like Confucianism or Hinduism that have more adherents to their faith than Christianity (let alone just Catholics) have a head that is as globally influential as the Pope. There are no two Popes in the world. He is also a head of state with diplomatic relations with virtually all governments of the world. With this influence surely comes huge responsibilities.

What he says in private and public will be scrutinized; therefore, he has to weigh up his statements carefully. They carry both moral and political weight well beyond his tiny papacy and faith.

It was a rather evasive reaction to say that the Pope was only quoting an obscure writer. He has made that writer known to everybody now. Would the Pope have quoted many of the more obscure writers that wrote and are writing about Christianity, Hinduism, or the Jewish faith?

Could the Western Media be that understanding if the Pope had quoted a Nazi writer famous or infamous writing about Jews or the Jewish faith? Historians who question the holocaust are taken to court and convicted because Holocaust denial is deemed beyond the limits of academic debate and freedom of expression.

There is so much violence in the name of God that no religion, especially a monotheistic one, has a monopoly over violence and violent methods. That the Pope enjoys the political visibility that he does today is not because Catholics are the majority of the world’s population or that his city–state empire is of any indispensable strategic importance, but the result of historical powers of Rome and the Church.

These powers were built by conquest and pillage. The Roman Empire and the Roman Church were involved in slavery, colonialism, wars, and other forms of non-Christian activities.

More recently in Rwanda, the Church (even if it was not convicted of genocide) bears responsibility for keeping quiet while God’s children were butchered with the connivance of some of its clergy and even Bishops. If anyone is to condemn Christianity for all these crimes such a person will be descended upon. If the Church and all Christians cannot be held responsible why are Muslims always maligned as a group?

Islam and Christianity are both monotheistic religions with shared roots, built by evangelism, through empires that utilized peaceful and non-peaceful means to establish their hegemony. Once hegemonic they declared peace of the victorious!

Even though it is Muslims that gave vent to the offence caused by the Pope’s statement, Dr Jibo Ibrahim (one of very few people, including those reacting violently, who have bothered to read the full text of the paper) the Director of the CDD, a leading researcher on religion and interfaith relations based in Abuja, Nigeria noted that the Pope’s statement should be even more offensive to non-European Christians (the majority of all Christians) because of its Euro-centrist understanding of God, the church and Christianity.

It is not about which religious group(s) are offended but rather the responsibility of a political and religious leader like the Pope in these trying times. Why did the Pope say those things? If he wanted to promote dialogue, he chose a very strange way to do it.

In a world in which Muslims and the Islamic faith replaced Communism in the pantheons of Western phobias, the Pope’s statement is at best mischievous, and at worst deliberately provocative. Whether one is a Muslim or not, both reasons should be unacceptable. I am not sure whether it was a goof or a papal declaration of intent to line up behind Bush in his modern crusade.

* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement,
Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa

* Please send comments to or comment online at www.pambazuka.org

The downward trend in asylum applications in most industrialised countries continues unabated, according to the latest UNHCR statistical report. Based on provisional data provided to UNHCR by governments, the report indicates that during the first six months of this year, a total of 134,900 asylum applications were submitted in Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Internal conflicts based on ethnic tensions and rivalries, political instability, disputes over the control of natural resources, natural disasters, poverty, food insecurity and the imperatives of development have all resulted in significant displacement in West Africa.