Yeken Kignit (“Looking Over One’s Daily Life”) and Dhimbiba (“Getting the Best Out of Life”), two new social content soap operas, are changing behaviour in Ethiopia. New evidence indicates that more than a third (35 percent) of new family planning clients in Ethiopia have heard one of the radio soap operas. Nearly six percent of the new clients said they visited the clinic as a result of listening to one of the dramas. Since the programs began broadcasting in June 2002, 7,500 letters from enthusiastic listeners have arrived at Population Media Centre’s (PMC) Ethiopia office, the U.S.-based organisation behind the dramas.

The fight against a growing malaria epidemic in Ethiopia is being hampered because of a resistance to available drugs, humanitarian agencies warned on Monday. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the parasite’s resistance was “aggravating the epidemic and causing a high death toll".

Gifti Abasiya is the State Minister for Women’s Affairs – one of the smallest ministries in Ethiopia. In this interview with IRIN, she says that discrimination is a result of undemocratic systems, and that widespread and deeply entrenched poverty is the key factor in fuelling arcane attitudes towards women.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has urged the international community and African governments to back rural development for the continent. Speaking at the launch of the UN Development Programme’s 2003 Human Development Report in Addis Ababa on Monday, he said rural and agricultural development was the “quickest and most reliable” way to reduce poverty. Meanwhile, Patrick Asea, chief economist at the UN’s Economic Commission for Africa, told the meeting that cooperation between rich and poor nations was a litany of broken promises.

Child prostitution in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa is “increasing at an alarming rate”, according to a study by Save the Children-Denmark (SCD). The NGO revealed that the lure of work brought many child prostitutes – some as young as 13 - to the city. The report, compiled with government officials and a local child rights organisation, urged immediate action to tackle the magnitude of the problem.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned that lasting peace in Eritrea and Ethiopia cannot be based on "temporary arrangements". In his latest report to the Security Council, issued on Monday, he said the peace process was still at a critical stage.

With 14.6 million people in need of assistance in Eritrea and Ethiopia by May 2003, and indications that conditions continued to deteriorate in several areas, Carolyn McAskie, the UN's Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator (DERC), undertook a mission to the region in June. The objectives of the mission were to review the overall humanitarian situation; raise awareness of the situation; and to seek better ways of addressing the underlying structural causes of food-insecurity in the two countries.

The Ethiopian government has blasted the "pathetic" attitude towards women's rights in the country which it says is fuelling the AIDS epidemic. It warned that social and cultural factors such as polygamy and sexual violence were exacerbating the vulnerability of the nation's women.

"We are desirous that the African Union Constitution would firmly stand for the respect and exercise of press freedom; embrace the accountability and responsibilities of all concerned parties, protect press freedom from attacks; strongly protest against undemocratic practices of dictators, and strongly require professionals to be governed by a code of ethics...In several AU member states, journalists are arrested, harassed, and intimidated solely for their reporting, and many countries resort to harsh, outdated laws to prosecute journalists for their work." - Extract from a letter to President Thabo Mbeki, President of Republic of South Africa and Chair of the African Union from the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists' Association (EFJA).

The Draft Press Proclamation tends to err on the side of control and regimentation, in particularly state control of expression; imposes detailed and intrusive conditions for licensing and endorses censorship of the worst kinds by empowering the courts to order the seizure of publications and other products of the media and to close down media houses. This is according to a critique of the Ethiopian Draft Press Proclamation by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MWFA).

Mass migration in Africa will threaten the region’s stability if it continues unchecked or unabated, a conference in Addis Ababa heard on Monday. Millions who flee conflict or economic crises pose enormous burdens on their new host nations, the four-day meeting on migration and trafficking was told.

One of Africa’s first ever national women’s coalitions aimed at combating HIV/AIDS has been formed. The coalition, made up of tens of thousands of women countrywide, is headed by some of the leading female figures in Ethiopian society.

The goal of this mission is to address acute and chronic humanitarian crises within Ethiopia where the inability of the health system to cope fully with the needs of an increasingly vulnerable population experiencing a food crisis has combined with the destabilizing effects of systemic changes in the health system and limited capacity and resources. Merlin proposes to address the most immediate problems facing the health sector. Project activities will provide immediate relief to the population in the short term but will also affect medium and longer term issues surrounding the identified gaps within the health sector.

Education is a key weapon in preventing girls from falling victim to child trafficking, Bjorn Ljungqvist, the head of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) in Ethiopia, said last Thursday.

A total of 8,700 Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia in 1998, and who have been homeless ever since, have been given farmland by the Eritrean government. The 2,870 families have each been given one hectare of land.

If there were a simple reason for Ethiopia's chronic food shortages, the problem would likely have been resolved before now. But the causes are complex, and addressing them requires a multifaceted approach. This article outlines the causes of food insecurity in Ethiopia and describes Oxfam's work to create solutions that are effective, fair, and sustainable.

A measles vaccination and vitamin A campaign, targeting more than five million children aged between six months and 15 years, was launched on Friday by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the health ministry. "This campaign is part of our joint efforts to fight the major childhood killer diseases in Ethiopia," said Dr Mahendra Sheth, the head of UNICEF Ethiopia's health and nutrition section.

More than 2,500 malnourished children in Ethiopia have been admitted to emergency feeding centres in recent weeks, the humanitarian organisation Save the Children USA said on Monday. It said a further 2,000 children were on the "brink" of starvation as Ethiopia faced what has been described as its worst food crisis in two decades.

The Ethiopian government has said that a scheme which provides for the resettlement of some two million people over the next three years, but has faced criticism from the international community, is necessary if Ethiopia is to stave off future food emergencies. It has also said it will not shy away from the scheme and has urged the international community to support it fully.

The UN’s Emergencies Unit in Ethiopia (EUE) has warned that people are dying at an “alarming rate” in southern parts of the country. It said the affected areas had been hit by a “green famine” (famine despite the absence of drought) which had been exacerbated by poor targeting of food aid to starving families.