The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is seeking to broaden its donor base to meet increasing needs. The deputy high commissioner of UNHCR, Wendy Chamberlin, said the agency was suffering financial stress owing to the rising needs. Chamberlin, on a tour of East Africa, was accompanied by five top executives of leading trans national corporations.

A 20-year-old fractious conflict centered in Northern Uganda that has displaced 1.7 million people is receiving renewed attention from the United States, United Nations and other international organizations. What the United States and other world bodies can or cannot do to help resolve this crisis, which has resulted in close to 30,000 child abductees and set the scene for heinous forms of torture and murder, was discussed at a March 9 event sponsored by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus.

Tanzania's Williamson Diamonds Limited (WDL), will soon start providing antiretroviral therapy to employees, their families and people living in the surrounding villages. A medical officer-in-charge of the Mwadui Hospital, said the voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) centre at the hospital would offer antiretroviral therapy, now that it has secured clearance from the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS).

Britain has thrown its weight behind recent decisions by international lenders to delay aid to Kenya. High commissioner Adam Wood said Britain was a key partner of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and would, therefore, support their conditions. The Bretton Woods institutions have withheld the funding to press the Government to act tougher on corruption and reforms. At the weekend, World Bank country director Collin Bruce said Kenya stood to miss out on close to Sh15 billion in aid if it did not speed up economic reforms.

I am shocked to read that African countries are suffering from Chinese textile imports. (China in Africa - the new imperialism? Stephen Marks) It seems that the Chinese textile industry is simply wiping out its African competitors . Italian textile and shoe manufacturing is facing same hard competition from China. Here, in Italy, we blame the low-paid, hard-working Chinese workers. Should we think Africa is a worker's paradise, where people earn a high-salary for a few working hours?

Instead, is the Chinese textile invasion due to a commercial factor? I mean they sell their manufacturing surpluses at a low-price to African markets. Is the Chinese textile invasion due to a manufacturing factor? I mean African factories are badly managed and use obsolete technology .

Editors' Reply: It's a bit of a generalisation to say that African factories are badly managed and use obsolete technology, especially when the conditions for that manufacturing sector have been undermined. What comes first: People or Profits? In the case of Chinese textile imports, surely the issue is that in a sector where a local industry has been developed it does enormous damage when a global economic giant such as China - which can produce at a far lower cost, certainly not because of any advanced labour rights standards - is allowed to undercut local industry at huge social and economic costs to workers. What is fascinating is that there is such vehemence against the impact of China in Africa, yet the same outrage is sometimes lacking when it is USA, Europe or other advanced capitalist countries doing the same.

More aid is being channelled to the poorest countries. Donors are coordinating efforts around nationally-owned, sector-wide policies. But what do these new rules mean for middle income countries? Do they still need aid? If so, how should it be administered?

Human Rights First, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, is a US-based advocacy group that works to advance justice, human dignity and respect for the rule of law. It runs an Asylum Legal Representation Program that matches volunteer American lawyers with refugees seeking asylum in the United States.

Literacy is recognised as a human right and the foundation for all further learning. However, complacent policymakers keep nearly a fifth of the world's adult population on the sidelines of society and limit progress towards poverty reduction. Action is needed to increase programmes and encourage the meaningful use of literacy.

Companies that develop drugs to treat diseases of poor countries such as malaria should be rewarded with vouchers that might speed up government review of far more lucrative drugs, researchers proposed on Tuesday (March 7). Another set of researchers suggested that rich countries subsidize the use of the most effective drugs to fight malaria in poorer nations. Both reports, published in the journal Health Affairs, are aimed at finding ways to eradicate easy-to-treat diseases that persist because there is little profit in fighting them.

The foundation seeks to hire a full-time program officer to work in its International Development Program. The person filling the position will be primarily concerned with the program interests in strengthening selected African universities, but will also participate in program considerations in the other program areas: enhancing women’s opportunities in higher education; and revitalizing public libraries.

International marriage brokers leave little doubt about what they're selling. ''Her life is centered around her family, her husband and children (similar to American women from generations past). These women would rather compliment her man than compete with him,” reads the ad on the Web site of TLC Worldwide, a Houston marriage broker. For decades foreign mail-order brides have been marketed as quiet, submissive and easily controlled. Such women have also frequently fallen prey to serial abusers who relied on an unregulated industry to secure a continuous supply of women. While there are no firm figures on how many women in brokered marriages wind up abused, a 2003 survey of 175 legal service providers by The Tahirih Justice Center indicated that more than 50 percent were serving or had served women who met their spouses through a broker.

The successes and challenges of online education in the developing world are the focus of "Online Education: What Can It Deliver?" launched this week. Educational resources available via the Internet, from online course materials to virtual classroom videoconferencing, offer new opportunities. But roadblocks remain, including the high cost of Internet access and lack of trained local professionals. The report looks at lessons learned and innovations that work. It also coincides with April's Digital Learning Asia 2006 in Bangkok, and May's International Conference on ICT for Development, Education & Training in Addis Ababa.

SANGONeT has gathered a collection of resources on sustainability for NGOs, ranging from information on monitoring and evaluation and the importance of credibility and ethics to matters such as social responsibility and entrepreneurship as well as tips relating to practical concerns that others have encountered when grappling with how to implement effective communication and marketing strategies and sound financial management techniques in their organisations.

Over five hundred million people, nearly 10 percent of the world's population, have a disability. The United Nations (UN) is currently negotiating a treaty, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, to ensure that human rights standards are extended to people with disabilities. In order to help promote the adoption of the Convention, the Centre for International Rehabilitation (CIR) has launched the ConventionYES! Website.

Most of the Millennium Development Goals may seem at first sight unobjectionable, says this introduction to an article by Samir Amin on the website of Monthly Review. "Nevertheless, they were not the result of an initiative from the South itself, but were pushed primarily by the triad (the United States, Europe, and Japan), and were co-sponsored by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. All of this has raised the question of whether they are mainly ideological cover (or worse) for neoliberal initiatives." Click on the link to read the full analysis.

'Growth isn’t working: the uneven distribution of benefits and costs from economic growth', shows that globalisation is failing the world’s poorest as their share of the benefits of growth plummet, and accelerating climate change hurts the poorest most.   The report, the first in the New Economic Foundation's series of 'Re-thinking poverty' reports, reveals that the share of benefits from global economic growth reaching the world’s poorest people is actually shrinking, while they continue to bear an unfair share of the costs.

The Tech Museum of Innovation is issuing a global call for nominations for the 2006 Tech Museum Awards. This is a unique program that honors innovators from around the world who use technology to benefit humanity.

Following up on an agreement reached on the contentious topic of internet governance at the November World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to start creating a forum for a more inclusive dialogue on internet policy. According to his spokesman, Mr. Annan will establish a small Secretariat in Geneva to assist in the convening of an Internet Governance Forum, following consultations held in February by Nitin Desai, the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser for the WSIS that produced a consensus on the need for a strong development orientation.

The Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission has completed investigations on Central Bank governor Andrew Mullei over corruption allegations and asked the Attorney-General to take action against him. It means Dr Mullei could face court charges arising from allegations concerning his management, which had caused a major split between the Treasury and the Central Bank Board.

Rights & Democracy is currently accepting nominations for the John Humphrey Freedom Award, presented every year to an organization or individual for outstanding contributions to the promotion of human rights and democratic development. The deadline is April 15, 2006.