The UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Aid (OCHA) will adopt new models of assistance to Angola in 2003 and cancel emergency aid and funding. The information was released recently by Ocha coordinator, Erick De Mull, alongside the "conference on international emergency aid put to test" held in Luanda.

As the United Nations (UN) meets for the first time to pick up the pieces after the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD), Friends of the Earth International has accused governments of betraying people and the planet in Johannesburg. Friends of the Earth International has called on governments to abandon the neoliberal trade agenda which dominated negotiations in Johannesburg and instead to develop and implement global rules for big business as promised. Friends of the Earth International is calling for a commitment to deliver on this promise.

Despite the legal abolition of slavery in Mauritania twenty years ago, the government is yet to take practical steps ensure its abolition in practice, Amnesty International says in a report: 'Mauritania: a future free from slavery'. The report, published on the eve of the 21st anniversary of the decree which officially abolished slavery, shows that human rights abuses related to slavery persist in Mauritania, although the government denies their existence.

While developing countries have produced 86 per cent of the world's refugees over the past decade, they also proved to be a safe haven for seven out of ten of those seeking asylum, according to a new statistical yearbook released by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

The government drought food relief has yet to reach over 345 000 people, who face starvation, due to bureaucratic and logistical delays. Hundreds of tonnes of maize meal, cooking, oil, sugar and fish have now been delivered to several warehouses nationwide. Those severely affected by drought in the Caprivi, Otjozondjupa, Oshana, Omusati and Ohangwena regions are still waiting for the food to reach them.

The World Bank has been planning to provide 50 million US dollars for Malawi in emergency drought recovery credit, primarily to enable the government to maintain commitments to key economic priorities while averting a famine.

The Corruption Fighter's Tool Kit was created to share the experiences of Transparency International's country chapter programmes, best practices, and lessons learned. The aim is to foster discussion, spark ideas, and inspire those fighting corruption around the world. The tool kit presents cases of anti-corruption activities to be replicated or adapted by civil society groups in other countries. Emphasis is on empowering civil society with the wherewithal to engage both the public and private sectors.

This report sets out to assess the scientific validity of what it calls the WWF's 'doomsday prophecy', as outlined in the NGO's Living Planet Report 2002. The Danish authors argue that WWF has produced one in a long line of articles, stretching back to Malthus' essay on the principle of population, that predict disaster as a result of human demand on natural resources outstripping supply. For a reply to the criticism from the WWF, visit the link

Many thousands of children, adolescents and women in developing countries collect and sort recyclable solid waste from roadsides, bins and dumpsites. This waste comes from household, commercial, institutional and industrial sources. The profits of this sector usually benefit the wholesale buyers of recyclable materials and those involved in their recycling. Meanwhile workers live in poverty and have a limited choice of alternative employment. A report from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine argues that waste-pickers should be recognised for the positive environmental work they do and protected from the risks they face from hazardous waste.

Michael Maren shows that the international aid industry is a big business more concerned with winning its next big government contract than helping needy people. The problem isn't a lack of charity missions in the Third World, but that the best intentions of these idealists are often inadvertently destructive, thanks to a deadly combination of their naiveté and the willingness of native elites to exploit them. Maren spent many years in Africa living this life. This is a splendid, literate, muckraking memoir of his experiences.

Gavin Hayman, campaigner with Global Witness, considers some of the lessons from the organisation's report on the exploitation of the Angolan civil war to loot state revenues from the oil industry. The missing money appears to be more than the entire international humanitarian relief effort and he argues that in countries such as Angola, transparency is necessary if international relief efforts are not to be endlessly undermined.

Human activities are threatening to wipe out as many as one-half of the Earth's plant species, a new study suggests, with the demand for new farm land to feed a growing population in tropical countries being the biggest cause of global plant species extinction. "The natural forest is being cut down and burned and the land converted into pastures and fields for crops," said Peter M. Jorgensen of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis.

The abortive "Earth Summit" in Johannesburg is already fading from our overtaxed memories. Indeed, as we write this, the conference of the week is COP8, the Eighth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We have few chances to change the terrain in truly decisive ways. The climate negotiations, however, offer one, says this commentary by Foreign Policy in Focus.

The South African government has pledged medical equipment worth R80m to assist Angola, after an appeal from President Eduardo Dos Santos's government. Pretoria also donated R500 000 in cash to Luanda, as well as 6 000kg of maize seeds and 50 tons of maize meal. One hundred tons of clothing and food, worth R3 million, have also been donated.

In Turkey, the apartment buildings that collapse during earthquakes are known as "bribe buildings." In Africa, bridges dot the landscape with no roads to connect them. There's no doubt that corruption, endemic in emerging economies around the world, throws economic development into chaos. It affects decisions made by bureaucrats, degrades the quality of those in power, and discourages foreign investment. It's also an increasingly hot business topic, with a growing number of influential business and political leaders from around the globe regularly pinpointing corruption as one of the greatest threats to global economic development.

The Namibian government has apologised for delays in distributing drought aid but says the task is time-consuming and cannot easily be fast-tracked. The distribution of food aid to an estimated 345 000 people in need has been delayed by official bureaucracy and the allocation of tenders to firms that do not have the capacity to deliver.

The year 2002 is the year of the mountains. However, a new report from Panos argues that mountain people must have a stronger voice and role in the development of their regions. Experts in their own environments have a large part to play in tackling poverty and conserving resources – investing in people is the most effective way to protect the mountains for future generations, says the report.

US President George Bush plans to make his first visit to Africa at the end of January. He will not go empty handed, but a fear is that Bush will propose only a modest new Aids initiative without new funding.

Walden Bello believes the world requires a radical shift towards a decentralised, pluralistic system of economic governance allowing countries to follow development strategies appropriate to their needs and circumstances. This 'deglobalization' means radically reducing the powers and roles of the existing TNC-driven WTO and Bretton Woods institutions. And requires the formation of new institutions helping to devolve the greater part of production, trade and economic decisionmaking to national and local level.

Between 21-23 October, over 90 trade unionists took part in consultative meetings with the IMF/World Bank to discuss issues including privatisation, poverty reduction and reforms of the international financial architecture. The scale and scope of the meetings was unprecedented, and the unionists confronted these institutions with evidence of the continuing damage wrought by their policies throughout the developing world.