Rich country governments have failed to provide financing they promised under the "Education for All Fast Track Initiative" (FTI) to help fund universal primary education in poor countries, according to a World Bank report. The scheme—intended to help countries meet the Millennium Development Goal of providing primary education for all children by 2015—is suffering from a lack of financing, according to a report by World Bank staff. The report was prepared for the development committee of finance and development ministries, which advises the boards of the World Bank and IMF.

The international humanitarian medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has said that the battle against tuberculosis (TB) is being lost because of reliance on archaic diagnostic tests and drugs. "The HIV/AIDS pandemic has magnified this problem as TB often coincides with, and is made harder to treat by, HIV/AIDS. MSF calls for an urgent increase in worldwide investment in TB research and development," the organisation said.

As many as a third of the world's people do not meet their physical and intellectual potential because of vitamin and mineral deficiencies, according to a report released in New York by UNICEF and The Micronutrient Initiative. The report is accompanied by individual Damage Assessment Reports that present the most comprehensive picture to date of the toll being taken by vitamin and mineral deficiency in 80 developing countries.

Outlining what she called the "scandal of malnutrition" in the world, U.N. Undersecretary General for Management Catherine Bertini said this week that while the global gross domestic product has increased 100 percent over the last 20 years, "the number of underweight preschoolers has only decreased by 20 percent." "As the world grows richer, we do not keep up in the areas of improvement of nutrition," said Bertini, who was director of the World Food Program before she took her current post.

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights has began its discussion on racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination, hearing the Special Rapporteur on racism and the Chairpersons of the Working Groups on people of African descent and the implementation of the Durban Declaration present their reports. Doudou Diene, Special Rapporteur on Contemporary Forms of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, said the alert status today was at red with regard to racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia. There was a resurgence and vitality of traditional forms of discrimination, and the appearance of new forms of discrimination affecting the non-national, the refugee and the immigrant.

A series of African countries speaking before the Commission on Human Rights have decried what they said was a lack of effort on the part of developed nations to carry through on international commitments to combat racism, and called for more action to end discriminatory policies in immigration, education, and employment. A Representative of the Republic of the Congo, speaking on behalf of the African Group, said the Group was very concerned by the increased practice of discrimination in Europe.

The International Day for the Elimination of Racism was observed on March 21 at the Palais des Nations in Geneva with a panel discussion entitled "Intercultural Dialogue: a means to combat racism”. The Special Rapporteur for Racial Discrimination, Doudou Diene, said that all forms of discrimination had both political and economic constructs and often at the core of the problem of racial discrimination was a cultural misunderstanding.

Preparations for Education for All Week 2004 (19 - 25 April) are well underway. UNESCO is working with the Global Campaign for Education for this event. The focus this year is a lobby by children on behalf of the 104 million children who have no access to education. The Big Lobby is intended to sensitize governments, teachers, parents and children to those who are denied the right to education.

A Zambian bank has granted loans of more than 30 million dollars to white Zimbabwean farmers re-settling in Zambia. Zambian state media quotes the Standard Chartered Bank, Stanchart, as saying the money was disbursed between January and December last year.

The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights is inviting submissions for nominations for the 2004 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. The RFK Human Rights Award was established in 1984 to honour creative individuals who are engaged in strategic and nonviolent efforts to overcome serious human rights violations, often at great personal risk.

"We, the undersigned representatives of Civil Society wish to express our support for the UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights (hereafter also: UN Human Rights Norms for Business or UN Norms). In our view, the UN Human Rights Norms for Business represent a major step forward in the process of establishing a common global framework for understanding the responsibilities of business enterprises with regard to human rights."

Research on the health hazards and environmental pollution of vanadium mining in South Africa will be presented on March 25 by a team who travelled to the small mining town of Brits, north of Johannesburg, in 2003 to study the dangers of this practice. The trip was spearheaded by Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a Barnard alumna, who was the whistle-blower on the dangers of vanadium mining while serving on the Gore Mbeki Commission, which provided U.S. assistance to the then-new South African government, headed by President Nelson Mandela.

Why is sexual violence so prevalent in Africa's schools? Why is predatory aggressive masculinity condoned? What are the links between abuse in schools, lack of information and poverty? How should schools tackle abuse and intimidation of female students?

Is there any prospect of achieving one of the key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) - getting equal numbers of girls and boys into school by 2005? Could educating girls be the key to ending world poverty? What must be done to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015?

"Since Africa’s history of unequal relations with the developed world in the last three centuries or so is such that it has largely become a non-autonomous actor without the capacity to decide its own fate and future, NEPAD - by being essentially a-historical does not constitute an adequate response to the continent’s underdevelopment. It needs to be replaced by a more African-centred economic action plan that takes the continents history into account." This the central argument of this article from Africa Studies Quarterly, reproduced on the website of University of Natal's Centre for Civil Society.

Education is often put forward as a panacea, and few would contest its importance in shaping citizens to play an effective part in their societies. But education, says researcher Sobhi Tawil of UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education, is also “an inherently ideological instrument that is related to political violence in both intended and unintended ways.” A group of experts from seven countries that have experienced decades of violent conflict share their experiences and work for change in the latest issue of UNESCO's new Courier.

The context within which we practice philanthropy has changed dramatically — the world of even 15 years ago is gone. As recently as the 1980's, the world's economic systems were fairly clear: nation states controlled their borders and most businesses operated within those borders, importing or exporting from them. International institutions, created almost exclusively after WWII, mediated between nation states, helping diffuse tensions on everything from monetary policy to movements of refugees. That was the context in which philanthropies operated. It was difficult, but orderly. Three new forces have disturbed the old world we lived and acted within: global economics, access to information and the role of the United States as the sole superpower.

This final report of the ILO’s World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization suggests how the potential of globalisation can be better harnessed to address the needs, concerns and aspirations of more people in the world. The report argues that globalisation can be a process with a strong social dimension based on universally shared values and respect for human rights and individual dignity. It can also be fair, inclusive, democratically governed, and should provide opportunities and tangible benefits for all countries and people.

This paper argues that the government of the United States is contravening its commitment under the "Doha Declaration" of 2001by using technical assistance, bilateral and regional trade agreements, and the threat of trade sanctions to ratchet up patent protection in developing countries. The paper states that the U.S. is pressuring developing countries to implement patent laws which go beyond TRIPS obligations and do not take advantage of its public-health safeguards in order to benefit the influential U.S. pharmaceutical industry.

With fist in the air, Virginia Setshedi shouts “Amandla!” The crowd gathered in a University of Alberta classroom raises fists in the air and responds “Awethu!” – “Power to the People,” the cry of South Africa’s liberation movement. But this cry is in opposition to a new form of oppression – privatization. Virginia Setshedi, a founding member of the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee in South Africa, and Rudolf Amenga-Etego, the national campaign coordinator of the Coalition Against the Privatization of Water in Ghana, visited Edmonton as part of a cross-Canada speaking tour organized by the Halifax Initiative. Setshedi and Amenga-Etego spoke of the detrimental effects of the privatization of electricity and water services and other neoliberal policies foisted on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).