One of the world's leading electrical companies, Schneider Electric, was fined R10-million in the Lesotho High Court after admitting to bribery. The global giant avoided a trial by pleading guilty on 16 counts of bribery, all relating to the construction of the now-completed Lesotho Highlands Water Project. The corruption involved around R16-million.

Globalization can and must change, says a new, groundbreaking report released by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) urging that building a fair and inclusive globalization become a worldwide priority. A Fair Globalization: Creating Opportunities for All calls for an "urgent rethink" of current policies and institutions of global governance. "There are deep-seated and persistent imbalances in the current workings of the global economy, which are ethically unacceptable and politically unsustainable. Seen through the eyes of the vast majority of men and women, globalization has not met their simple and legitimate aspirations for decent jobs and a better future for their children," says the report.

The contrast between rich countries' rhetoric and reality is staggering, says an ActionAid report that examines the performance of 22 rich country leaders on their promise to provide the aid needed for every child to get an education.

Indigenous children are among the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the world and global action is urgently needed to protect their survival and their rights, says a new report from UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence. Improving the lives of indigenous children is crucial not only for their own health and well-being but for the future of indigenous peoples and their unique place in the human family, the report concludes.

TakingITGlobal.org is a global online community, providing youth with inspiration to make a difference, a source of information on issues, opportunities to take action, and a bridge to getting involved locally, nationally and internationally based on areas of interest. TIG showcases the power of expression through art and writing. TIG is a bridge to events, organisations, and scholarships around the world. Membership is free of charge and allows you to interact with various aspects of the website, to contribute ideas, experiences, and actions.

As civil society, we are confronted with an opportunity – to use the Internet and other emerging network technologies to support our quest for global peace and social justice. Consider that we live in a world where almost anyone located in an urban centre can share their message globally with a free blog and a few dollars spent at an Internet café. Access is not– or will not for much longer be – a major communications stumbling block for civil society organisations. The more pressing need is for civil society to learn how to appropriate the technologies that we now have access to, bending and moulding them so that they can be used more strategically and politically.

This programme aims to support women's participation in international events such as seminars, conferences, trainings related to women’s rights issues. The objective of this programme is to facilitate the access of women active in this field to the international movement for the emancipation of women. The grants will be allocated for the participation in those events which will contribute to information gathering and later on their dissemination at national level, as well as to sharing experiences concerning the promotion of women’s rights.

The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination opened its sixty-fourth session by electing its Chairperson, 3 Vice-Chairpersons and a Rapportuer. In the course of its 3 week session, ending on 12 March, the Committee will review anti-discrimination efforts undertaken by the Governments of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Suriname, Spain, Sweden, the Bahamas, Lebanon, Nepal, Brazil and the Netherlands. It will also look into the state of affairs in Guyana, Nigeria, Tanzania, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Madagascar and Venezuela under its review procedure for States parties whose reports are seriously overdue. These countries are among the 169 States parties to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

The Bush Administration's Global AIDS strategy, released this week by the State Department, is based on selective and misleading use of science, evidence and rhetoric in support of an ideological approach to AIDS prevention and treatment that fails to address the needs of women and girls, who now represent the majority of those infected with HIV worldwide, asserts the Centre for Health and Gender Equity (CHANGE), a U.S.-based organisation focused on the effects of U.S. international policies on women's rights and health worldwide. "This plan is all smoke and mirrors when it comes to responding to the spread of HIV among women and girls," asserted Jodi Jacobson, Executive Director of CHANGE. "On one hand, the strategy correctly cites critical factors, such as violence and sexual coercion, that put women and girls at high risk of infection," notes Jacobson. "Yet the plan fails to offer any concrete strategies for addressing these concerns." This posting also includes information from the latest issue of the Africa Focus Bulletin on the Aids plan.

A student from Guinea-Bissau was stabbed to death in a southern Russian city in what appears to have been a racial attack, the African country's embassy said. Skinheads have been increasingly active in Russia recently, launching attacks on dark-skinned foreign students and migrant workers. Human rights groups have said the authorities weren't doing enough to combat hate crimes.

Corruption - broadly defined as "the abuse of public or private office for personal gain" takes many different forms, from routine bribery or petty abuse to the amassing of spectacular personal wealth through embezzlement or other dishonest means. The international community is adamant that corruption must be stopped. It is demanding that the governments of poorer countries eradicate corruption within their countries if they want to be considered eligible to receive Western aid. Yet there is a deep hypocrisy in the international community's approach, at the heart of which are the taxpayer-backed export credit agencies of industrialised countries.

A new dossier on the SciDev.Net website has evolved from the previous quick guide on biodiversity with the addition of four specially commissioned policy briefs, along with new opinion pieces and features. It also has the latest news, links, definitions and details of future events. The new dossier's specially commissioned policy briefings summarise key aspects of the issue in an informative and accessible style, dealing with the The UN Convention on Biological Diversity; Modern agriculture and biodiversity; How biodiversity loss affects ecosystems and Biodiversity and climate change.

Two months into the United Nations' official year against slavery, Black Information Link(BLINK), the communication channel of the 1990 Trust, a National Black British organisation, questioned the Home Office over why they do not have any events planned for Britain. The Home Office not only confirmed they had failed to organise a single event for 2004, but also issued an amazing statement saying we should forget the slave trade rather than commemorate it. And they claimed today’s government cannot be held responsible for the millions of lives lost during slavery. The statement sparked outrage from furious campaigners who contrasted it with the government’s active support for Holocaust memorial day, held on 27 January this year.

The arguments for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that have been dinned into us for 15 years are based on an almost sublime misreading of the world's food problems. Without GM, the story has it, famine and increasing deficiency are inevitable, yet present-day deficiencies are almost never caused by an inability to produce enough. Angola is a good example: it is always bordering on disaster, yet it has 2 1/2 times the area of France and every kind of climate, and only 12.5 million people. Its farmers are highly accomplished. Famines result not from inability but from the civil war that raged for 30 years. Behind the claim that GMOs are necessary lies a deep - and racist - failure to appreciate traditional farming.

Credit and savings schemes are hailed as blueprints for tackling poverty but their benefits are exaggerated. They fail to address the way gender effects relations of power and inequality within families. Frequently unsustainable, they seldom manage to cover their running costs. If future credit and savings schemes are to be effective in poverty alleviation they need to make stronger links between local economies and global economic trends and be linked to wider programmes of women's empowerment.

The Seventh Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity ended in Kuala Lumpur with environmental officials from 100 countries renewing their commitment to cut rates of extinction by 2010, issuing a declaration that some participants called vague and disappointing. The declaration stated the countries were determined to preserve ecosystems threatened by industrialization, logging, overfishing, and other commercial activities. The ministers also said they were "alarmed that biological diversity is being lost at an unprecedented rate as a result of human activity."

When a government of a country fails or neglects to curb spread of corruption, one may conclude that government also fails to fulfil its obligation to promote and protect the fundamental human rights of the people of the country. The same also applies when a powerful country misrepresents its publicly-stated policy towards another country for hidden reasons, thus grossly violating human rights. The fight for political, social, economic and cultural rights is often inextricably linked with the fight against corruption. The elimination of corruption and the protection of human rights are interdependent.

Since the third wave of democratization that began in 1974, many regions of the world have experienced significant economic and political reforms as policymakers have sought to provide the citizens of their countries with a better life. Little systematic effort has been undertaken to understand the cumulative results of these reforms on a global scale, the extent to which outcomes have matched expectations, the effect of regional contexts on reforms, and the ways in which reforms have perhaps negatively affected the target populations. The Fifth Annual Global Development Conference, which opened on January 27 in Delhi, addressed these critical questions, premised on the belief that a better understanding of past reforms—including their initiation, implementation, and outcome—should inform the design, introduction, and execution of future reforms throughout the developing and transition worlds.

The "collaborative approach," the preferred response of the UN's humanitarian system to the crisis of internal displacement, is not working. Evaluations commissioned within the system describe "egregious failures" to protect and meet the basic needs of internally displaced persons (IDPs). Yet when pressed to defend the collaborative approach, senior officials of humanitarian agencies and donor governments invariably respond that there are no realistic alternatives to a system of ad hoc efforts on behalf of IDPs, a system characterized by diffuse responsibility and lack of accountability.