The fourth Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation is still scheduled to be held in Doha, Qatar on November 9-13. This backgrounder helpfully summarises the positions different blocs hold on issues like trade and environment, trade ad labour standards, and indeed the need for a new round.

According to a global report released Wednesday by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), there is “a strong possibility of use of anti-personnel mines in the DRC in June 2000” by Uganda, which is a party to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty that outlaws any use, production, transfer or stockpiling of anti-personnel mines.

Both government and rebel forces in Sudan are continuing to use antipersonnel mines despite claiming to adhere to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines (ICBL) said on Wednesday.

The G8's mandate has been seriously questioned in recent months, but this has not stopped G8 ministers setting new directions for the World Bank and IMF.

Globalvision News Network presents worldwide reports and commentary on the implications of the attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. What can we learn from the voices of the global media?

Doctors Without Borders President Bernard Pecoul and Brazilian Health Minister Jose Serra yesterday signed a letter of intent stating that the not-for-profit group would work with Brazil to export the country's successful anti-AIDS model and its state-produced generic anti-AIDS drugs to other developing countries, Reuters/New York Times reports.

Rising death rates in South Africa due to HIV/AIDS have led to the creation of a makeshift funeral industry, Newsweek reports. Many "fly-by-night undertakers," who are unlicensed and operate out of storefronts, compete to make funeral arrangements and leave bodies to decompose while they search for the cheapest means of disposal, creating a health hazard and raising costs to the government.

Christian Solidarity International (CSI) on Thursday, 6 September, reported that one of its research teams, recently returned from the Afro-Arab borderlands of Sudan, had found systematic of human rights abuses, as a manifestation of racism, among a group of "97 female slaves above the age of 12 who were recently liberated from bondage."

This is a series of useful lesson resources on various topics related to modern-day slavery. The two-pagers on "Bonded Labour" and "Slavery from the past..." can be used by teachers as illustrative materials in civic education, history or other social science classrooms.

All states involved in the slave trade should acknowledge their role and issue a formal apology to victims and their descendants, say campaigners
marking an international day of slave trade remembrance.

Three weeks after the massive anti-globalization protests in Genoa and after two days of intense discussion on globalization and human rights, the UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights has adopted three resolutions calling into question the impact of key aspects of the lobalization process on human rights, and has demanded that bodies like the WTO take fuller account of human rights considerations.

THE United States risked appearing indifferent about racism if it were to boycott the upcoming United Nations conference on the subject, South Africa's director general of foreign affairs said on Sunday."If they don't come, people will read into it that they don't see the issues as important. It will send a signal to their own constituencies and the rest of the world," Sipho Pityana told the SAPA news agency.

The Federal High Court has ruled to block the personal and business accounts of a number of former government officials and private businessmen accused of corruption, local press reports said Wednesday.

Kenyan Minister for Trade and Industry Nicholas Biwott, an influential figure in the government of President Daniel arap Moi, has criticised the aid conditions imposed on Kenya as impractical, and suggested that they smack of double standards.

"It is sad that, with its announcement about the pledges to the AIDS fund, the G8 conference was able to seize the PR high ground," an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer states. The commentary piece calls the G8's pledge of $1.3 billion to the Global AIDS and Health Fund created by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan "a comparative pittance."

As the G8 summit opens today in Genoa, Italy, leaders of the world's most industrialized nations are this evening expected to "formally unveil" the Global AIDS and Health Fund, intended to battle HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the developing world.

At the World Conference Against Racism, the People's Movement for Human Rights Education will be holding a one day workshop on Breaking Through the Vicious Cycle of Humiliation: Strategies for Racial Justice Through Human Rights Education. The tentative dates of the event are September 2nd or 3rd and it is a complimentary activity to the WCAR.

Even though the world is incomparably richer than ever before, ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality, Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, writes in the International Herald Tribune.

The 2001 summit in Genoa this week will be a crucial test of the ability of participating nations to group around a common agenda on global economic governance. As protesters on Genoa's streets will make clear, the fundamental challenge facing the G8/G7 leaders is to address mounting concerns about economic globalisation and the power of transnational corporations, argues Tom Barry.

In advance of a major international conference
on racism, Human Rights Watch today called for reparations to counter the most severe continuing effects of slavery, segregation, and other
extreme forms of racism.