Up to 20,000 war-displaced people in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR) are set to benefit from the distribution of relief aid begun on Wednesday by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the CAR Red Cross, an official said. "At least 100 villages around the towns of Markounda, Paoua and Batangafo will benefit from the relief operations," Alphonse Zarambaud, the programme coordinator of the CAR Red Cross, said in Bangui, the capital.

Collapsing states, violent conflicts and natural disasters shape the picture of Africa in Europe. This conference, organised by the Scribani European Jesuit Network and the Institute for Social and Development Studies, aims to challenge the common picture through an analysis of the relationship between Africa and Europe.

Organised by Oxfam Canada in partnership with the Victoria International Education Development Association, this youth symposium focusing on global justice issues promises to be empowering and action-oriented. Through a series of interactive workshops on such issues as food security, sweatshops, and the global AIDS epidemic, participants will share their experiences and help develop global alternatives.

This publication aims to support the use of monitoring and evaluation of development results. It is intended to support United Nations Development Program (UNDP) country offices in aligning their monitoring and evaluation systems with a results-based management methodology, specifically in tracking and measuring the performance of UNDP interventions and strategies.

A picture is worth a thousand words—but what happens when you’re faced with a thousand pictures? At different points in 2005, violent natural disasters and war created devastation around the world, captured in a slew of heart-wrenching images. In the midst of so many visual calls on our compassion, how do we continue to communicate the stories of people suffering and surviving human rights abuse in ways that not only move us but also inspire a belief that change is possible?

The United Nations world conference on small arms has collapsed without agreement - despite the majority of governments, including the European Union and many African and Latin American governments, backing tougher controls on the international trade in small arms and light weapons, Oxfam Great Britain said on Monday (10 July).

Social Justice Commissioner, Tom Calma, has welcomed the adoption by the United Nations Human Rights Council of the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Geneva on 29 June 2006. 'This is a very significant day for Indigenous peoples worldwide in the struggle for recognising their rights' said Commissioner Calma. 'Adoption by the Council brings to a close nearly twenty years of negotiations on this text in the United Nations human rights system'.

BBC wants to allow audiences to create personal radio stations from its content, its director general has said. The planned service, provisionally called MyBBCRadio, was revealed by Mark Thompson at the Radio Festival in Cambridge. It aims to give audiences more control by combining existing services such as podcasts and the BBC Radio Player.

For all the efforts of civil society and governments alike, in ensuring fair conditions for developing country agricultural sectors, the reality on the ground is somewhat more compex. This report critically analyses the influence of trade and distribution on production and production conditions in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable sector. The report identifies the key challenges and opportunities of the sector from the perspective of poverty eradication and sustainable development.

This Guide is a resource to help development researchers make the best use of information sources available on the Internet. It offers descriptions of well known Internet resources and suggests how their use can be best applied to development research.

This ActionAid report highlights ways to make global aid more effective so that it will have a lasting, positive impact on the poor throughout the world. The report critiques excessive spending on foreign consultants, a lack of coordination with locals, and aid that never reaches poor countries as major problems. ActionAid calls for increasing the shared responsibilities between donor countries and aid recipients to solve the current shortcomings.

APC is seeking professional:
* Spanish-to-English translators (native English speakers)
* English/Spanish-to-French translators (native French speakers)
* Spanish-to-Portuguese translators (native Brazilian Portuguese speakers)
* English-to-Arabic translators (native Arabic speakers)
for occasional freelance work. We'd like to hear about your areas of experience working with texts particularly related to internet, civil society and gender issues for an international audience.

Some of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) to forums for community-based organizations (CBOs) in developing countries, whatever the subject, are regarding funding. The 'Basic Fund-Raising for Small NGOs serving the developing world' guide is meant to provide very basic guidelines for small NGOs in the developing world regarding fund-raising, and to point to other resources.

People living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries who are in urgent need of an improved version of the AIDS drug lopinavir/ritonavir continue to be denied access to it by its sole manufacturer, Abbott Laboratories, according to the international medical humanitarian organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

No less than a quarter of annual development aid -- about 20 billion dollars -- is being used by donor countries to fund technical assistance of sometimes dubious worth, says ActionAid International in a new report. According to the report it typically costs about 200,000 dollars a year to keep an expatriate consultant on staff. School fees account for more than a third of this expense, which could be reduced with greater use of local advisors.

Just a line to say that if you're interested in China, the environment and/or tech stuff, you might like to take a look at this new site, (sorry to spam you if you're not interested!). It's a project of opendemocracy.org edited by Isabel Hilton. It's interesting for a number of reasons, not least that it's worked out a comfortable way to use chinese and english on the same page, but also because it's the only site i've seen that actively seeks to host a conversation between non-official China and the outside world. One reason that's rare is because of the translation costs implied. Anyway - take a look.

Amnesty International welcomes the many substantive outcomes of the first session of the new Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva 19-30 June 2006, which has laid important groundwork for a stronger and more effective United Nations (UN) human rights political body.

There is a crying need for an international agency for women. Every stitch of evidence we have, right across the entire spectrum of gender inequality suggests the urgent need for a multilateral agency. The great dreams of the international conferences in Vienna, Cairo and Beijing have never come to pass. It matters not the issue: whether it’s levels of sexual violence, or HIV/AIDS, or maternal mortality, or armed conflict, or economic empowerment, or parliamentary representation, women are in terrible trouble. And things are getting no better.

President Kufuor will attend the plenary session of the Second conference of Intellectuals from Africa and the Diaspora to be held in Salvador. The conference themed "The Diaspora and Africa Renaissance" is a follow up to the first conference held in Dakar in October 2004. The conference aims at reviving and harnessing the contribution of intellectuals in Africa and the Diaspora. It also aims at broadening mutual understanding and fostering greater cooperation for development between Africa and Diaspora countries.

Banking institutions have been urged to start rural mobile banking services to attract more people into the banking industry and help the country instil a savings culture; much lacking in Uganda. The service that involves making banking transactions through a combination of banking technologies such as Point of Sales Services, Automated Teller Machines, Mini-ATMs (Movable ATMs) and mobile phones does not necessarily require bankers to visit banks.