As Libya gradually loses its pariah status and slowly but surely returns to the bosom of the family of acceptable nations, changes are also afoot within the state-run Libyan economy. Money is being spent on the country's tired and overstretched telecoms infrastructure and Libya now has a new mobile phone network that has introduced a sort of competition into what was a massively overpriced and moribund sector. However, both the new 'Libyana', and the original 'Al Madar', are owned by the Libyan government.

New Deadline: 12 October 2004

Submissions are now being extended for the Trade policies and Sub-Saharan Africa category of the 2004 Awards Competition: Japanese Award for Outstanding Research on Development, and the Medals for Research on Development. The five topics for the research medals competition relate to the theme, "Developed and developing worlds: mutual impact."

The Roman Catholic Church has voiced its opposition to the use of condoms to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS in Gambia, challenging a government-backed prevention campaign based on the distribution of cheap contraceptives to the country's youth. Father Edward Gomez advised the Catholic youths to seek more knowledge about their faith and its teaching on the issue of HIV/AIDS and not be "misled by public opinion that condoms should be made easily accessible for sex".

The National Immunization Day of the polio eradication program is expected to take place between October 6 and 12 and November 18 and 22, with about 819,000 children below the age of five years expected to be vaccinated. In order to provide support for the eradication of polio, UNICEF Representative to Liberia, Angela Kearney, appealed to the media to become more involved in promoting the campaign.

When not dominated by racism and security issues, the debate on the movement of migrants becomes a debate over the migrant question, in other words over one of the questions which, in reality, as is well known, will never be resolved. The response to the migrant question is above all integration, a response dictated by the conviction that it is indispensable to recognise equal rights to all individuals present on a given territory. Central to such a position is the necessity of recognising migrants as citizens, albeit a particular kind, who should enjoy the rights assigned to every citizen as well as others which would guarantee the continuity of their history and their "culture".

Campaigners have condemned plans by the World Bank to relax its environmental and social requirements when lending money to the private sector. The proposed changes, which deal with controversial issues such as pollution and the mistreatment of indigenous people by Western companies, were condemned by Friends of the Earth last night. 'They make a sham of the World Bank's declared mission to alleviate poverty,' a spokesperson said.

Over 7.6 million Malagasy children will be inoculated against measles this month in the country's largest immunisation campaign. UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) information officer Misbah Sheik told IRIN the campaign would run until 8 October and reach the children through a "bottom-up" strategy to be rolled out in each of the country's 111 districts.

A growing number of NGOs and education activists are recognizing that good teachers are the key to educational success, and the Education For All goals will never be achieved unless governments invest more in teachers. If you share this view why not let your government know by organising local events linked to World Teachers’ Day on 5 October.

Bridges.org is facilitating the donation of 120 Hewlett Packard (HP) H4150 iPAQ handheld devices (handhelds) to support innovative projects in South Africa. The aim is to highlight the most exciting use of handheld devices for social or economic development in order to enable innovative projects to benefit from technology that might otherwise not be accessible to them. Winning projects will be captured in case studies to highlight how handhelds can benefit South Africa and the developing world. The deadline for submission is 8 October 2004.

The anniversary of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) was marked with a stock take of the progress made towards achieving its goals. On paper, that progress has been impressive. Governments around the world have introduced legislation that reflects the ICPD's aims. But when it comes to turning policy into practice, “mixed success” is the verdict of a report card just released by Countdown 2015, a coalition of voluntary bodies involved in the field. Few poor countries have earmarked enough of their budgets to meet their citizens' reproductive-health needs. Nor have donors lived up to expectations.

The increase in child molestation in Kenya is partly due to lack of education and knowledge about HIV/AIDS. The Kenyan Community Abroad Anti-Child Molestation Initiative or The STOP Campaign, argues that while education and awareness provide good starting points, more needs to be done which will deter the act of rape from occurring and penalize perpetrators through judicial policies.

This paper examines the place of women's health concerns in the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and explores strategies to address maternal mortality and emphasises the importance of all women having access to EmOC (emergency obstetric care) in the event of birth complications. A new vision is needed, says the paper - one that has the potential to reconnect households and communities to health care systems.

"As the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank celebrate their 60th anniversary this year, movements from all over the world are mobilizing to express vigorous opposition to their policies and operations. We are now calling for coordinated actions on October 1 to 12, 2004 of the peoples, and to dub these days of October as the Worldwide Days of Resistance to the IMF & World Bank."

Telkom workers in South Africa are facing a new wave of retrenchments. The telecommunications giant plans to shed another 4,181 workers in 3 years, despite its record R4.592 billion profit for the 2004 book year - in a country with an unemployment rate of 42%. You can help by signing a petition.

Angola’s health authorities have begun immunizing 5 million children under the age of five against polio, part of a campaign by United Nations agencies to make sure the country is not caught up in the current wave of re-infections across Africa. Backed by officials from the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation, as well as several non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 12,000 vaccination teams will fan out across the country, the UN agencies said in a statement.

The United Nations Peace-Building Office in the Central African Republic (BONUCA) has launched a nationwide "awareness campaign" to prepare for elections in January that it is hoped will end years of instability and violence in the country.

The World Coalition Against the Death Penalty calls for local initiatives for the 2004 edition of the World Day Against the Death Penalty. For the 10th of October 2004, the Coalition calls upon NGOs, teachers, lawyers and magistrates, town councilors and members of Parliament, religious organizations, artists, journalists, and citizens to prepare new initiatives.

The U.N. children's agency UNICEF is launching a measles vaccination campaign in Madagascar designed to reach 7.5 million children and halt a potentially deadly epidemic, the agency said last Tuesday.

A nationwide campaign began last Wednesday to increase voter registration and public awareness about general elections scheduled for the early 2005. The UN Peace-building Support Office, in conjunction with the Central African Republic's Communications Ministry, is conducting the campaign.

Many analysts of international trade decry the concept of a 'social clause' as an attempt by rich developed countries to protect jobs and dominate markets by stipulating minimum labour standards. However, little attention is given to competition between developing countries to gain access to markets in richer countries, which is equally detrimental to labour standards. In the absence of a common set of minimum labour standards, destructive competition deprives workers of the benefits of economic growth.