Introducing his report -- "In larger freedom:  towards development, security and human rights for all" -- to the General Assembly, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Member States to adopt this year a package of specific, concrete proposals to tackle global problems and enable the Organization to better respond to current challenges. He said the comprehensive strategy he was proposing "gives equal weight and attention to the three great purposes of this Organization:  development, security and human rights, all of which must be underpinned by the rule of law."  The report was called "In Larger Freedom" because he believed those words from the Charter conveyed the idea that development, security and human rights went hand in hand.  The cause of larger freedom could only be advanced if nations worked together; and the United Nations could only help if it was remoulded as an effective instrument of their common purpose. 

The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) at its 49th session (New York, 28 February ­ 11 March 2005) adopted a Declaration reaffirming the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and emphasizing that the full and effective implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform is essential to achieving the internationally agreed development goals including those contained in the Millennium Declaration. The full text of the Declaration is available through the link provided.

As the Indian Parliament prepares to tackle the country's implementation of the World Trade Organization's (WTO) agreement regulating patents on medicines, Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) is urging Indian decision makers to ensure that patients in developing countries will continue to have access to affordable medicines. "MSF has examined the proposed amendments to India's Patents Act of 1970. We believe they will drastically restrict, perhaps even prevent, the production and supply of vital therapies by Indian pharmaceutical companies to other developing countries," said Ellen 't Hoen, director of policy advocacy and research with MSF's Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. Also included here is a two-page letter sent by the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific, Dr. Nafis Sadik, and the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, Stephen Lewis, to the Prime Minister and the President of India.

At least 88,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the war-torn district of Ituri, northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), are again receiving relief aid, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), reported. Humanitarian actors have resumed aid to Kakwa, Tché and Gina IDP sites after they suspended services following the killing of nine Bangladeshi UN peacekeepers by militiamen on 26 February in Kafe village.

Despite the official satisfaction expressed at end of the meeting, several of the 33 WTO members which attended the latest in the series of Mini-Ministerial meetings in Mombasa, from 2- 4 March, left privately worried about the chances of WTO making real progress on the issues at stake in time for the Hong-Kong Ministerial Conference of the WTO, reports Karin Gregow of EcoNews Africa in the latest edition of Africa Trade Agenda, a publication of Third World Network-Africa. "The ministers also left behind them scores of members of grass-root organisations still facing charges following their arrest when their attempt to manifest their concerns were disrupted by Kenyan police." Read the full story by visiting http://twnafrica.org/tradeagenda.asp

The United Nations Secretary General has appointed an Independent Expert, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, to lead a global study on Violence Against Children. The Study, rooted in children's human rights to protection from all forms of violence, aims to promote action to prevent and eliminate violence against children at international, regional, national and local levels. The Study is a UN-led collaboration, mandated by the General Assembly, to draw together existing research and relevant information about the forms, causes and impact of violence which affects children and young people (up to the age of 18 years). A major report will be published in 2006 and recommendations presented to the UN General Assembly.

"The Bush administration has made much of the recent advent of 'democracy' in Iraq. We believe that a precondition for democracy is the withdrawal of US troops. Iraqis can not freely decide their own future before that. Not only was the US war of 'liberation' illegal in terms of the United Nations; not only was it prosecuted despite the open opposition of most of the world; not only has it never turned up the weapons of mass destruction which justified it and not only did Bush and Blair lie about the evidence for their existence; not only has that war of 'liberation' killed up to 100,000 of the very people it claims to liberate; not only has it further destroyed houses, hospitals, sanitation, roads, water and electricity networks - besides all this, it has entrenched US troops in the region as an occupying force, bent on maintaining control of Iraq under a fig leaf of voting." Read the rest of this statement and sign on to petition ahead of the global day of action on Iraq scheduled for March 19.

We braved the chilling cold, snow and rains of London for three days of meetings and briefings of the Commission for Africa, set up by Prime Minister Tony Blair. We were 16 "senior" journalists from Africa sponsored by the British government to interest us in the commission's work. Like so many previous initiatives to deliver Africa from its state of permanent crisis, Blair's effort, in spite of good intentions, is bound to deliver little or nothing because it is not breathing fresh ideas into the debate on Africa's development predicament.

Africans are skeptical that a new Africa recovery plan proposed by Prime Minister Tony Blair will help the poor, and some dismiss it as a public relations gimmick, analysts and campaigners say. Blair's new Africa Commission, in a report due for official release on March 11 but leaked last week, will call for an overhaul in the way rich countries do business with Africa as well as debt cancellation and an end to agricultural subsidies. "The commission raises very, very important issues and if Blair is able to use it to challenge (rich countries) then that is good. I welcome any initiative," said Aseghedech Ghirmazion, director of the East and Horn of Africa office of Germany's Heinrich Boll Foundation, a political and development group. "But will it lead to action? I am very suspicious. I have my doubts that this is going to be anything more than more debates and more talking," he added on Tuesday.

"The policies designed to 'integrate' Africa into the global economy have thus far failed because they have completely sidestepped the developmental needs of the continent and the strategic questions on the form of integration appropriate to addressing these needs. They consequently have, thus far, not led to higher rates of growth and, their labelling notwithstanding, have not induced structural transformation. Indeed, the combined effect of internal political disarray, the weakening of domestic capacities, deflationary policies and slow world economic growth have placed African economies on a 'low equilibrium growth path' from which the anaemic GDP growth rates of 3-4 per cent appear as 'successful' performance." This is the focus of a paper presented at the conference 'The Agrarian Constraint and Poverty Reduction: Macroeconomic Lessons for Africa', in Addis Ababa on 17-18 December, 2004 and available from the website of the Southern African Regional Poverty Network.

UNIFEM and the Southern African Media NGO, Gender Links, are collaborating to run a series of cyberdialogues, in order to: 1) allow people not able to be in New York for B+10 to be kept abreast of issues and to give their comments; 2) use ICT as a medium to reach women around the world and engage them in the B+10 process; 3) reach out to a younger IT-savvy audience globally. Seven real time online chats will be conducted, facilitated out of UNIFEM HQ in NY, beginning on 2 March 2005. Experts will be called on to speak briefly on specific topics and their comments woven into the chats. UNIFEM regional offices, such as the Nairobi office, are deeply involved, providing access to women's organisations and members of the public through cybercafes, the UN complex and other NGO venues. The Regional Programme Director has also succeeded in getting the participation of the World Bank who will also provide a substantial number of access points - they have contacted their global offices with the information and are urging people to log on. For more information about the cyberdialogues, contact Kubi Rama at: [email protected] or [email protected]. You can download the report of the Secretary-General on the review and appraisal of the progress made in national level implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the outcome documents of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly in 2000, by loading the page http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw49/documents.html
* For a background briefing on Beijing +10 and related links, visit the following web page:
http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/1665.html

As International Development Ministers prepare to meet in Paris to try to improve the quality of their aid, a joint report from ActionAid and Oxfam [ Millstone or Milestone? What rich countries must do in Paris to make aid work for poor people ]says just one fifth of aid actually goes to the very poorest countries. And only half of this is spent on basic services such as education and health where aid can make a decisive difference in ending poverty. Amongst other things, the agencies accuse rich countries of using aid to reward strategic allies and pet projects at the expense of the neediest countries and tying aid so developing countries are forced to spend it on overpriced goods and services from the donor country, reducing its value for money.

The number of asylum seekers arriving in industrialized countries fell sharply for the third year in a row in 2004, reaching its lowest level for 16 years, according to annual figures released by the UN refugee agency. The total number of asylum seekers arriving last year in the 38 industrialized countries for which comparable historical statistics are available was the lowest since 1988, at 368,000.

The "digital divide" between rich and poor nations is narrowing fast, according to a World Bank report. The World Bank questioned a United Nation's campaign to increase usage and access to technology in poorer nations."People in the developing world are getting more access at an incredible rate - far faster than... in the past," said the report.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has told the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that it was uniquely qualified to clarify governing principles and offer guidance to States on all measures necessary to ensure the elimination of racial discrimination in the administration of justice. Mrs. Arbour said that racial discrimination persisted in the functioning of the penal system and in the application of the law in some States, as well as in the actions and attitudes of institutions and individuals responsible for law enforcement.

This Social Science Research Network paper outlines many of the specifics of the Ugandan Domestic Relations Bill (DRB). The Bill addresses women's property rights in marriage and women's right to negotiate sex on the grounds of health, sets the minimum age of marriage at eighteen, prohibits FGM and criminalises widow inheritance. The authors uses a thorough explication of the particulars of the bill to exhort the Ugandan government to take responsibility for the discrimination and violence that many of its female citizens routinely suffer.

‘Double aid to halve poverty’ looks likely to be the catchphrase of 2005. We will hear it from Tony Blair’s Africa Commission, from the UN Millennium Project in New York, and from Gordon Brown and other advocates of an International Financing Facility. But can more aid be spent? More precisely, can more aid be spent successfully? Many think not.

The sceptics make five main points.

First, aid has diminishing returns. This is partly as a consequence of other points below. All countries are therefore bound to reach an ‘aid saturation point’ beyond which additional aid has less impact. The evidence is that this point could be reached around 25-30% of GDP, depending on estimates. At the moment, aid already represents 22% of national income in Ethiopia, and 47% in Sierra Leone.

Second, aid flows can cause macroeconomic imbalances. ‘Dutch disease’ is the main risk, where increased foreign exchange flows cause an appreciation of the exchange rate and harm the export sector. Aid can also cause interest and inflation rates to rise, which could have negative effects on private investment. Nigeria suffered from exactly these problems when its long oil boom began, with severe long-term consequences for the agricultural sector.

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A matter that has raised much debate recently is whether civil society organisations should engage with local, national and global intergovernmental institutions such as the World Bank or the United Nations, writes Civicus's Kumi Naidoo. "What really is engagement? Engagement can take various forms. These can include: submitting petitions, letters of appeal or correspondence which puts forward a case that runs counter to the policies and actions of such institutions; participating in meetings with these institutions when they seek to ‘consult’ with civil society organisations; participating at the micro level in a joint venture around project delivery; participating in policy shaping processes such as the Extractive Industries Review undertaken last year by the World Bank; or simply participating in events of governing institutions whether it be the annual meetings of the World Bank and the IMF or a conference of a department or ministry of a national government."

The environmental impacts of the mining industry have been devastating to some areas of the Witwatersrand, the country's most densely populated region. Some of the gold deposits located here have been mined for more than a century. According to South African geographer Malcolm Lupton and South African urban planning expert Tony Wolfson, mine shafts - the deepest is 3,793 meters - have made hillsides and ridges less stable. Pumping water from subterranean aquifers has caused the natural water table to subside, and the resulting cavities within the dolomite rock formations that overlie many gold deposits sometimes collapse, causing sinkholes. Moreover, these impacts of the mining industry could worsen over time.

In a new report, Refugees International announced that 11 million individuals worldwide have no citizenship or effective nationality and called on the United Nations and individual countries to take measures to reduce the problem. “Stateless people are international orphans who have fallen through the cracks of the United Nations,” said Maureen Lynch, Refugees International’s Director of Research and the author of the report. “Unlike other populations of this size, the international community has largely ignored the problems facing the 11 million people who have no citizenship or effective nationality. This is especially true for those who are not classified as refugees.”