Humanitarian operations in Angola are to receive a Euro 8 million (about 8.5 U S million dollars) boost from the European Commission. The EC Humanitarian Aid Office would channel the aid package through partner organisations and international agencies operating in the country, the European Commission said in a statement.

Soweto pupils were further empowered on Saturday when a leading bank donated 52 mobile libraries to 26 schools in the area. The libraries, complete with the first 100 books selected in conjunction with the Gauteng Department of Education, came at a cost of R466 000 and were donated by Standard Bank.

Humanitarian operations in Angola are to receive a Euro 8 million (about US 8.5 million dollars) boost from the European Commission. The EC Humanitarian Aid Office (ECHO) would channel the aid package though partner organisations and international agencies operating in the country, the EC said in a statement.

"What do you want?" is a constant query put to economic and globalization activists decrying current poverty, alienation, and degradation. In this highly praised new work, destined to attract worldwide attention and support, Michael Albert provides an answer: "Participatory Economics" - "Parecon" for short - a new economy, an alternative to capitalism, built on familiar values including solidarity, equity, diversity, and people democratically controlling their own lives.

Scientists have criticised a study published last year which suggested that earlier estimates of worldwide tropical deforestation and atmospheric carbon emissions were too high. The original study calculated that deforestation rates were 23 per cent lower than current UN Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates.

Recent gains made in making HIV/AIDS treatment accessible and affordable to Kenyans are being threatened by a deal currently under discussion at the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which would severely restrict access to such drugs, a group of local NGOs has warned. ActionAid Kenya, EcoNews and Medecins Sans Frontieres on 14 February said the WTO meeting, convened in Tokyo, Japan, was negotiating a proposal to restrict use of compulsory licensing for many developing countries only to extreme national emergencies.

The World Bank and IMF have been condemned by civil society groups for many years for their inequitable governance arrangements. Recently officials have also complained, and the Monterrey Financing for Development conference last year came up with language urging the Bank and Fund to reform in this area. Visit http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/reform/r3201ifigov.html for more information and read a Draft Civil Society Statement on the issue at the link below.

So how did things go in the third round of the title fight to save the world? SustainAbility--a London-based strategic management consultancy and think-tank dedicated to promoting sustainable development--sent representatives to both the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Switzerland and the World Social Forum (WSF) in Brazil.

Imagine being torn from your family and your home by a foreign invasion. Imagine living in a refugee camp in one of the harshest desert environments on earth. Imagine having your time in exile extended to an entire generation due to political manipulation by the invader and the ineffectiveness of the political and peacekeeping arms of the United Nations. Imagine, finally, enduring this situation with precious little solidarity and attention from the wider world. This, in summary, is the plight of the Saharawis of Western Sahara, one of the world’s forgotten people, begins a report from Refugees International.

On average, the morals of IT professionals who work for an organisation with a code of ethics are significantly higher than professionals working for companies that do not have a code. Communication and enforcement of a code of ethics is essential in raising public awareness of the code and in minimizing unethical behaviour.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) aims to protect wild flora and fauna from threats posed by international trade. A paper from the Overseas Development Institute looks at the scope for the parties to CITES to commit themselves to linking conservation initiatives with measures to address rural poverty. It argues that it is time to give teeth to the belated, and still largely rhetorical, recognition that international conservationist goals must go hand in hand with a commitment to poverty reduction.

Delays in the approval of NGO proposals from the first round of grants from The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, TB And Malaria (GFATM) was causing great concern amongst NGO board members due to the fact that it was frustrating efforts by civil society to participate in the grassroots response to HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. This is according to the first year update for Southern NGOs from the Southern NGO board team.

President Bush has received kudos for his announcement that the administration will propose $15 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS abroad. But, says a commentary from Foreign Policy in Focus, many AIDS activists and experts are still waiting to see whether the administration will actually be able to wrestle the money away from a less enthusiastic Republican-controlled House of Representatives. There is also concern that the proposal has slighted multilateral efforts to combat HIV/AIDS - particularly the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria - in favour of a renewed emphasis on bilateral initiatives.

Africans were challenged on Thursday to find ways to end their exclusion from the rewards of globalisation and make the system work for the benefit of the continent's 820 million people. The challenge was issued by international and regional leaders at the opening ceremony of the African Regional Dialogue of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation in Arusha, northern Tanzania. "We cannot wish globalisation away. It is an inevitable part of the development process, and African countries must respond to its challenges to ensure they reap its benefits while minimising its risks," Kingsley Amaoko, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, told delegates.

"Africa didn't really shine here," South African finance minister Trevor Manuel told a press conference in snowy Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum last week. "There is a complete dearth of panels on Africa."

Nevertheless, in any five-star hotel gathering of powerbrokers, backslapping is crucial, no matter how artificial the camaraderie. Here is how former Johannesburg Star newspaper editor Peter Sullivan witlessly described the Davos experience for Sunday Independent readers this week:

"The SA contingent worked hard to get investment but partied equally hard: a real 'jol' was had by all with great jiving from Kader Asmal, Trevor Manuel and Alec Irwin (sic), while Bertie Lubner and his wife boogied the night away. We also drank a few bottles of KWV's best red." (Too many, apparently, to subsequently spell trade minister Erwin's name correctly.)

Sullivan regaled with stories of meeting "the beautiful Queen Rania of Jordan", Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. But as one shrewd journalist - not the social-climber Sullivan - reported on January 28, "Among the many snubs Africa received here was the decision by former US president Bill Clinton to cancel his presence at a press conference on Africa today to discuss the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Forum officials said Clinton did not give reasons for not attending."

The ingratitude!

Recall that over the previous eighteen months, Thabo Mbeki, Manuel and Erwin had either hosted, chaired or played a crucial backroom role on globalisation's equivalent of a big-five hunting safari - mainly for the benefit of the Davos club:

* At the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, Mbeki shot down NGOs and African leaders who argued in favour of reparations for slavery/colonialism/apartheid.

* Ten weeks later at the World Trade Organisation's Doha ministerial summit, Erwin split his continent's delegation to prevent a Seattle-style denial of consensus by African trade ministers, in the process promoting multinational corporate interests.

* Then, at the UN's Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico last March, Manuel was summit co-chair and endorsed the World Bank and IMF "Washington Consensus", relegating debt relief to the status of a dead duck.

* A few months later, at the Kananaskis, Canada Summit of the G8 powers, a grovelling Mbeki departed with a handful of peanuts for his hungry and now badly wounded African elephant - and yet, against all evidence to the contrary, declared that the meeting "signifies the end of the epoch of colonialism and neo-colonialism".

* Finally, at Johannesburg's World Summit on Sustainable Development, Mbeki undermined standard UN democratic procedure, advanced the privatisation of nature, and did virtually nothing to genuinely address the plight of the world's majority.

A little sympathy from the world's ruling class for Pretoria's men in kneepads would surely have been in order - even if just the face-saving sort, for the cameras, as is normally the case.

So let's leave the grey-monied set in favour of a hot, sunny, colourful place crowded with ordinary grassroots activists who took the world's problems rather more seriously last week. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, the World Social Forum attracted 100,000 leftist delegates from across the globe who insisted, "Another World is Possible!"

Here at least, South Africa - especially Soweto campaigners for free electricity, water, medicines, education and housing - shone as brightly as a house reconnected late at night thanks to Operation Khanyisa.

Several times in Porto Alegre, I witnessed the passion with which former Soweto city councillor Trevor Ngwane addressed the crowds, moving the agenda from basic human rights, to continent-wide organising in the year-old Africa Social Forum, to his widely-applauded declaration that the World Bank must now be defunded and decommissioned.

"Weakening the power of Washington is our main challenge," Ngwane announced, "especially now that Bush is in heat after Middle Eastern oil, and because the IMF and World Bank show they will not reform."

Moreover, the World Social Forum has spawned a variety of localised social forums of labour, women, environmentalists, community militants, church activists, and youth. In conjunction with the African Social Forum which met last month in Addis Ababa, Ngwane has been mandated to help get a Southern African Social Forum off the ground.

Decentralisation will help avoid, as Canadian author Naomi Klein warns, domination by the new "big men" of the left: Brazilian president Lula Inacio da Silva and embattled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Crucial for a coming generation of bottom-up social forums, says Klein, is the chance to replant Porto Alegre's most radical seeds: "The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming - a vision of politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation."

Icy Davos and friendly Porto Alegre will clash again - as elites marginalise Africa through intensified globalisation and as social forums break out across Africa uniting to demand, as Asian intellectual Walden Bello suggests, economic "deglobalisation". Which forum philosophy will prevail?

On two previous occasions, South Africa's famous two Trevors - Manuel and Ngwane - have seen their respective teams square off. Once, during an April 2000 clash covered by SABC's Special Assignment ("Two Trevors go to Washington"), Manuel chaired the World Bank board of governors for two days while Ngwane taught 30,000 protesters outside to toyi-toyi.

And again last August, when Manuel was negotiating some meaningless treaty or other at the Sandton Convention Centre, Ngwane and 20,000+ demonstrators marched over from Alexandra to demand that the elites pack up and end their charade.

With the world's environmental and developmental crises worsening ever more rapidly, lubricated by petro-warrior George Bush, can any conclusion be reached about the latest confrontation? Perhaps only this: one Trevor was cold and lonely fighting a battle he can never win; the other was flush with the warmth of solidarity, basking in the resurgence of a humanistic but uncompromising international left.

* Patrick Bond teaches at Wits University and recently authored ‘Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest’, published by University of Natal Press. This article was due to appear in the Sowetan newspaper on February 7.

* Send comments on this editorial for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to

According to The Mercury, the South African National Aids Council (SANAC) - now constituted as a legal entity - has been appointed principal recipient of funding to South Africa from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. SANAC will act as an intermediary grantmaker, disbursing grants to organisations and initiatives, monitoring their progress and reporting back to the Fund.

The International Committee of the World Social Forum has agreed that India would be the host for the next WSF in 2004.

The people of Ochigba community in Ahoada East Local Government, Rivers State, have staged a peaceful demonstration over the attitude of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to an oil spillage in the area two months ago.

Global economic governance refers to the institutions, norms, practises and decision-making processes from which rules, guidelines, standards, and codes arise in order to manage the global economy. This paper - produced by the South Centre - recommends that in order to carry out a true reform of global economic governance, democratic participation and representation with a view towards reforming decision-making must be guaranteed; South-South cooperation through coalitions and groupings must be encouraged, and a realisation of the need to strengthen existing institutions, rules, and processes, or to even replace them with new ones, must be made.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has expressed “deep concern” about increased questioning of the prohibition of the use of torture in countries that had previously vigorously upheld the absolute nature of this prohibition. This was now enabling the nations allied in the so-called "war against terror" to actively engage in the use of torture, either through their security services or those of states known to have poor human rights records.