A desperate move by the Zanu PF government to protect consumers from economic hardships it has created, has backfired, causing more hardships instead. The deterioration of the economy has been worsened since late last year by the desperate ruling party, which sought to ensure the re-election of President Robert Mugabe in the face of a challenge from MDC president, Morgan Tsvangirai. The price controls have caused havoc in the country, threatening the livelihood of many people.

This paper by the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad) outlines a 15 year programme for implementing the 2015 human development targets and a potential solution for the indebtedness of 49 countries. This proposal requires a multilateral collaboration among all the participants and additional contributions from 23 countries equal to 0.1 of 1% of their GNP over each of the 15 years.

Some 83 countries are on track to achieve Education For All (EFA) by the deadline of 2015 set at the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal) two and a half years ago. However, on present trends, more than 70 other countries will not make it, and some are even going backwards. This is the conclusion of the 2002 Education For All Global Monitoring Report: Is the World on Track? launched by UNESCO.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its partners are expanding help to more vulnerable children in Burkina Faso. They are providing school materials to 10,000 children this year, up from 850 in 2000. Parents of many of these children died of AIDS. Only about a third of children in Burkina Faso, one of the world's poorest countries, are enrolled in primary school.

Leading trade ministers agreed on a plan last Thursday to give the world's poorest nations access to affordable medicines, a breakthrough in the effort to tackle global health crises like HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, officials said. The plan would grant waivers on drug patents on a case-by-case basis and seek tight controls on trade in the generic medicines.

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.