EDITORIAL: Darfur continues to burn as the international community stand by and watch, writes Adwoa Kufuor from the Sudan Organisation Against Torture
COMMENT & ANALYSIS:
- From the classroom to the corridors of power, The Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa offers a powerful tool for remedying education disparities, writes Roselynn Musa from Femnet
- Ken Saro-Wiwa and nine comrades were hung this day ten years ago. Maja Daruwala, Director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, asks what's changed for human rights in the Commonwealth
BLOGGING AFRICA: Sokari Ekine sums up the last week in the Blogosphere with a look at the strife in Ethiopia, the dangers of blogging in Egypt and the Paris riots that are ripping Europe apart
CONFLICTS & EMERGENCIES: News from the hotspots of Burundi, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Sudan - and Paris
HUMAN RIGHTS: 18 000 arrested in Ethiopia, reports human rights network
REFUGEES & FORCED MIGRATION: Refugees revolt in Ghana
ELECTIONS & GOVERNANCE: Weah claims fraud as Sirleaf takes early lead
WOMEN & GENDER: 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence begins November 25
CORRUPTION: World Bank oil pipeline project hits a snag
MEDIA & FXI: Calls on Tunisian government to stop crackdown on rights defenders and journalists prior to UN WSIS
INTERNET & TECHNOLOGY: ICTs and the MDGs: On the Wrong Track?/Internet governance showdown heads for Tunis
FUNDRAISING & USEFUL RESOURCES: Civicus fundraising guide available
COURSES, SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS: 2006 WSF registration deadline looms

SILICON VALLEY AWARD FOR FAHAMU
FAHAMU was one of 25 Laureates for the 2005 Tech Museum Awards, and one of the five in the Education category, for its work on developing innovative distance learning programme. Annually, "The Tech Awards honor individuals, for-profit, public and not-for-profit organizations from around the world who are applying technology to profoundly improve the human condition in the areas of environment, economic development, education, equality and health." see http://www.techawards.org/pressroom/detail.php?id=116

In just ten weeks, the fifth year of the new millennium will be behind us, and what a year it has been! We have seen environmental tragedy and the world’s political leaders failing to act decisively, but we have also seen determined and dedicated action by campaigners focused on ending global poverty. By Kumi Naidoo, chair of the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).

Leading up to the December 2005 World Trade Organization's (WTO) Ministerial Conference in Hong Kong, Pambazuka News will examine some of the issues regarding the WTO as it affects Africa. This week we look at the concept of fair trade and compare it to the free trade agenda that predominates in Africa.

Many debates exist around the two terms – fair trade and free trade. Neither is actually completely possible, as the world market that they exist in is complex and multidimensional. This article thus proposes to define the terms and situate Africa’s economies within these definitions.

Fair trade is both a goal and a movement, and promotes “international labor, environment and social standards for the production of traded goods and services,” according to Wikipedia. There are many different levels of fair trade – in Western countries there exist a number of organizations that rally for fairer trade in goods such as coffee and fruit. Commodities such as these are targeted because they are imported, yet sold at cheap prices, which means that those people who are producing the goods are not paid adequately. Groups like TransFair USA, The Fair Trade Foundation and Make Trade Fair work to ensure that workers are being paid fair wages, and provide labeling on their products so that consumers are guaranteed that they are not exploiting anyone through their purchases. Many organizations work in Africa to provide people, and women especially, with jobs that provide enough money to support themselves, often producing crafts or art.

Zambia's opposition has called for a halt to a just-begun voter registration campaign, arguing that alleged flaws in voters' cards could lead to rigging in next year's elections. Anderson Mazoka, interim leader of an alliance of six opposition parties, has urged the Electoral Commission of Zambia (ECZ) to correct the alleged anomalies before continuing with the scheduled 21-day registration exercise begun on 31 October.

President Lansana Conte retired off nearly 2,000 soldiers, including the head of the Guinean armed forces, in his largest single reduction of armed forces personnel, a military officer told IRIN. In total, 1,872 military personnel, including army chief of staff General Mamadou Bailo Diallo, were listed in a presidential decree issued on Friday but not made public, a senior officer in the Guinean army, who asked not to be named, told IRIN November 8.

Former finance minister Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf took an early lead November 9 in the race for the Liberian presidency, as her soccer star rival George Weah said that the run-off vote had not been free and fair. With results in from a third of polling stations across the West African nation, the National Elections Commission said that Sirleaf had won 60.4 percent of the ballots cast in Tuesday’s second-round vote and Weah had captured 39.6 percent. As the first preliminary and partial votes were being announced, the former AC Milan striker was declaring that the ballot had been fixed.

Weichegud! Et Politics - (http://weichegud.blogspot.com/2005/11/who-will-tell-their-stories.html) likens the present political violence in Ethiopia to 1978 when:

“The generation Ato Meles belongs to went on protest marches on the streets of Addis Ababa in the early 70s without the indignity of being mowed down. They were demanding a revolution - the usurping of the Ethiopian constituency, and the deposing of the Emperor. They held placards calling the Emperor a ruthless dictator who had to be brought to justice. They told the world that they were standing for the poor, the downtrodden and the forgotten.”

Yet they were not shot down whilst this time “those same people are pointing their guns at children” all in the name of “protecting the constitution". He concludes that hopefully when this is all over the people of Ethiopia “will have the strength for justice and not revenge!"

Freedom for Egyptians - Freedom for Egyptians (http://freedomforegyptians.blogspot.com/2005/11/freedom-of-expression-a…) reports on the detention of Egyptian blogger/writer, Nabeel Abdul Kareem who has a blog called “Kareem Amer”. Abdul Kareem was taken from his home by state security forces who confiscated his writings. Freedom for Egyptians writes:

“I have read Abdolkarim’s last blog on the Alexandria sectarian violence. Kareem has been a witness to this violence. He wrote his testimony on those black days in Egypt. Detaining him is considered an intimidation or assault on a witness.

In his article, he called for the rejection of hatred in Islam to non-Muslims, hinting to the position of the Egyptian Copts. He witnessed himself the sectarian violence in Moharm Bik district in his home city of Alexandria. He gave in his blog an example how some Islamist thugs burned a liquor store owned by an Egyptian Copt while at the same time allowing a Muslim man to sell alcohol.

Abdul Kareem is not the first North African blogger to be detained. In Tunisia, a blogger spent 18 months in prison and a similar sentence was given to Libyan blogger – both for criticising their respective governments.

The detentions of the three bloggers draws attention to the fact that in many countries the only “free press” are in fact bloggers. Even where professional journalists are subjected to arrest and harassment by their governments at least they are “public” people who have some, albeit often small, protection from their employers. Bloggers on the other hand have no protection; there is likelihood that they may loose their jobs; they may not have the funds for legal representation; their arrest may not become public knowledge.

The Moor Next Door (MND)- The Moor Next Door

The Economist fails in it’s report (at least this paragraph) by first referring to the two dead boys as North Africans when in fact, one was Senegalese. The report then states there is 10% unemployment and a poor Muslim population when in fact the unemployment amongst minorities is nearly double that and the religion of the rioters is not the issue.

What is amusing are some of the government responses such as:

Iran - “The Iranian foreign minister demanded that France respect its minorities and protect their human rights." (since when is such a "liberal" idea such as human rights believed in by the Islamic Republic?)

Libya – “The Colonel offers "help" to France! Perhaps he will enlighten Mr. Chirac as to how Libya deals with such youths, avec une balle.”

Italy – "Opposition leader Romano Prodi called on the Italian government to take urgent action, telling reporters: 'We have the worst suburbs in Europe. I don't think things are so different from Paris. It's only a matter of time.” I suggest they hurry with whatever they intend to do!

Senegal: “Senegal's president announced his belief that France should « casser les ghettos et intégrer les Africains qui demandent à être intégrés ». (Break the ghettos and integrate the Africans that ask to be integrated." The French need to listen to that one!

Zimbabwean Pundit - Zimbabwean Pundit (http://zimpundit.blogspot.com/2005/11/dell-treatment-for-would-be-prote…) reports on the unabated repression of Mugabe’s government of it’s own citizens.

“In yet another shameless display of how far Harare will go to quash any dissent to their iron fisted grip over the nation, they have arrested 150 leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).”

South African blogger, Floyd’s Perspectives – Floyd's Perspectives (://floydn.blogspot.com/2005/11/sascos-ideological-perspectives.html) has a comprehensive post on the South African student movement which he says has been at the forefront of the struggles in the country. He begins by tracing the origins of the National Union of South African Students (NUSAS) and the South African Students’ Congress (SASCO) and then goes on to examine the relationship between the student bodies and the ANC in the anti-apartheid struggle. He concludes by acknowledging that the contemporary struggles of SASCO are ideological ones.

“The major, persistent, consistent, and often indomitable struggles waged by SASCO in campuses are mostly class struggles...Financial exclusions, academic exclusions, democratisation, access and success, conducive learning environment and curriculum content are but some of the ideological struggles SASCO is waging in campuses."

Black Looks - Black Looks (http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks/2005/11/_members_of_par.html) – gives her perspective on the ongoing Paris riots together with a brief description of the events that led to the riots and why they spread after an initial calm down. She highlights some of the similarities of the French riots to those that took place in England in the mid-1980s

“The reasons then are the same as the ones facing North and West Africans in France today; inferior education, lack of job opportunities, appalling housing conditions in run down estates (three arson related fires have taken place this year in properties lived in by West Africans);exclusion from the political process with no representation in government or in the police force; institutionalised racism, racist police who systematically harass young West and North African males.”

She concludes that: “The riots are the outcome of a culmination of experiences and incidents over a period of time, they are not simply happening in a vacuum of nothingness. France will have to face the reality of this otherwise it and Europe will sink into further violence as communities become even more polarised.”

* Sokari Ekine produces the blog Black Looks, http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_looks

* Please send comments to [email protected]

The Government would save sh330b by eliminating losses incurred through corruption in public procurement, an official has said. Citing the recent Auditor General's report, the executive director of Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority (PPDA), Edgar Agaba, said about 20% of the value of procurement was lost through corruption. Agaba attributed the corruption to weak public procurement laws. "The law has many loopholes. The prescribed practices are laxly enforced or impractical to enforce.

The United Nations is asking donors for US $3.2 million to help six West African countries fight cholera, which the UN says has killed at least 700 people and stricken over 42,000 in the region since June. This is the first appeal of its kind for West Africa, where cholera appears every rainy season but where unusually heavy rains this year sent infections skyrocketing. The movement of populations throughout the region – including religious pilgrimages and rural-to-urban migration – also contributes to the spread.

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last month sent a three-member team to Morocco to interview dozens of sub-Saharan Africans with agency documentation reportedly being held in various parts of the country after having been picked up by the authorities in a crackdown on irregular migration. At the time, UNHCR called on the Rabat Government not to forcibly return them to a country where they might face persecution.

On 7 November, members of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) Tunisia Monitoring Group (TMG) will call on Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to intervene to end the persecution of journalists and Internet users in advance of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In particular, the group is concerned over the official response to the continuing hunger strike by human rights defenders and journalists and says the date of 7 November, the anniversary of the day President Ben Ali took power, is traditionally marked with the release of prisoners.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson met with West African Ministers on the 27th October in Brussels to agree on the next phase of the Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations between the two regions. Ministers agreed to start negotiations in 2006 and endorsed a calendar setting out a precise timetable for the talks. This will mean starting work on drafting the text and legal provisions of the EPA and issues connected with market access, including the effect of an EPA on productive sectors in West Africa. On October 27th 2005, Commissioner Mandelson held bilateral talks with a West African delegation led by the president of the West Africa Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU), Mr Soumaïla Cissé.

United States trade representative Rob Portman designated a new Qualifying Industrial Zone (QIZ) in Egypt and approved the expansion of two existing zones on October 31. QIZs, which Congress first designated in 1996 between Jordan and Israel and Egypt and Israel, give the two Arab nations the right to export products to the United States duty-free if the products contain inputs from Israel. Following the announcement, Israel and Egypt will create a new zone -the Central Delta QIZ - and expand the existing Greater Cairo QIZ and Suez Canal Zone QIZ. Portman’s announcement builds on the United States’ December 2004 designation of three zones in Egypt following an agreement between Egypt and Israel to cooperate in the establishment of the zones.

Zimbabwe's opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has split. While Morgan Tsvangirai, its leader, decisively won the battle to boycott senate elections, he lost most of his most senior colleagues in the process. Tsvangirai called yesterday's meeting of the MDC's national council and it voted overwhelmingly against participation in the upcoming national elections to establish a senate, reversing a narrow decision on October 12 to field candidates for the poll. Tsvangirai went against the party's constitution and ignored that decision. But with new-found energy, he embarked on a hectic campaign around the country to change opinion.

La République Démocratique du Congo (RDC) est dans sa phase cruciale de sa période de transition qui devra la conduire à l’établissement des institutions démocratiquement élues, et ainsi concrétiser les accords de paix de Sun City (Afrique du Sud).

Citizens' Summit on the Information Society (CSIS) will be held in Tunis, from 16 to 18 November 2005. The event coincides with the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). The UN- summit WSIS aims to ensure that benefits from the digital revolution in information and communication technologies are accessible to all by filling the gap between developed and developing countries in this field.

I can assure you, this has been a very informative source of development information for me. Great, critical analysis by seasoned scholars and more...

I take this opportunity to congratulate your team for your good work. Please accept my congratulations for the prize (Pambazuka News recently won an award). And thanks for your efficient correspondences.

The Global Call to Action against Poverty has expressed its alarm at the arrest of Ato Daniel Bekele, a GCAP activist and the Policy, Research and Advocacy Manager for Action Aid Ethiopia. On Tuesday November 1 at around 8 pm, Ethiopian security forces went to Bekele's house and arrested him without charge. Fikre Zewdie, a fellow activist who visited Bekele and saw him across the fence of the prison gate reports that he is in good health, although he continues to be held without charge and incommunicado.

Stephen Lewis, the United Nations Secretary-General's special envoy to Africa for HIV/AIDS, has been an outspoken critic of the United States administration as well as a number of Western and African governments. He has also condemned the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for their failure to alleviate the AIDS pandemic in Africa. His views on HIV/AIDS can now be read in his new book, 'Race Against Time,' which has just been launched. In this extract from the new book, Lewis criticises the way women have been left out of the fight against the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa, and blasts the governments that often applaud themselves for their "gender sensitivity."

There's just no way around the constant neglect in addressing the priorities for women. Perhaps the most recent glaring example of that truth is the report of the celebrated Commission for Africa, appointed by [British] Prime Minister Tony Blair. I can't get over it.

Let's start with the commissioners. There were 17 in total, three of whom were women. Three, or 17 per cent. Prime Minister Blair had the whole world to choose from, and he could come up with only three women. Tony Blair claims to be a social democrat; socialists are supposed to have greater sensitivity to such matters. But when it comes to women, sensitivity goes out the window. That commission was fatally flawed from the outset, simply by way of gender representation.

And the report showed it. This is a report that plowed new ground on foreign aid, on debt, on trade, on climate. It was justly saluted on all those issues for the sweep of its progressive recommendations in areas where others had always feared to tread. It recommended an immediate doubling of foreign aid, a cancellation of the debts of the poorest countries, and a vast reduction in agricultural subsidies as the centrepiece of a new trading regimen. Everyone applauded. As a matter of fact, the report even went so far as to challenge the intellectual underpinnings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in their dual adherence to fundamentalist monetarism.

On all those fronts it was bold, oh so bold.

But on women? The report is an absolute throwback. Other than the occasional paragraphs paying obligatory obeisance to women's rights, there's a feckless failure to recognize that women sustain the entire continent of Africa, and should have a definitive role in every single aspect of social, economic, political, civil and cultural life, from peacekeeping to agriculture to trade to AIDS. If there had been a Commission for Africa with 14 women and three men, I can absolutely guarantee that the final report would have differed root and branch from the report we now have in hand. One day -- probably in the next millennium -- such a commission will be appointed.

And just to demonstrate the absolute, unwavering consistency in such matters, allow me to mention, however heretical it may seem, the communiqué issued in July, 2005, by the G8 meeting in Gleneagles. Honestly, it's like a parody.

From my impeccable desktop printer, the document emerges as 18 pages in length, 35 paragraphs in all, 5,000 to 6,000 words, with two full appendices. There are five references to women: two in that most common linguistic fusion of "women and children," one mandatory reference to "pregnant women and babies," one in conjunction with youth employment, and one throwaway line, entirely neutral, incorporating "gender equality."

It is my contention -- a contention with which many commentators would take issue -- that the stunning absence of emphasis on women in the official pronouncement of the G8 is an ominous omen for the delivery of commitments made. You simply cannot be serious about Africa and treat women with such contempt.

It won't work. Mark my words: Come 2010, G8 excuses will be the order of the day. Bush, Blair, Chirac, Schroeder, perhaps even Martin, will all be out to pasture, shrugging shoulders of insouciance. Read the document, note the void, and weep.

But when all is said and done, the ongoing struggle to embrace gender equality was most poignantly brought home to me in confronting the pandemic of HIV/AIDS. [. . .]

Governments in Africa do not do well in the protection of women's rights. In fact, as I shall momentarily demonstrate, they are profoundly deficient. I've been completely taken aback, on more than one occasion, by the wall of indifference thrown up by cabinet ministers when I raise, for example, the plight of women in the era of AIDS. At one point, in the case of Angola, a very senior member of the administration lapsed into locker-room smirking at the mere mention of women.

My argument is quite simple: They would not be allowed to indulge in such asinine and/or negligent behaviour if there were a watchdog, a full-fledged agency or institution as part of the United Nations, whose job it was to ride herd on the recalcitrants. Governments get away with it because no one cares enough to prevent governments from getting away with it.

And what is the upshot? In the UNDP Human Development Report for 2003, there is a gender-related development index which rates most of the countries of the world according to a number of economic and social indices, taking into account, in particular, performance on the overall status of women.

Let me identify the 20 countries at the bottom of the list of 145 which are ranked for gender, starting with the country right at the bottom, and working up: Sierra Leone, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Burundi, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, Côte d'Ivoire, Chad, Zambia, Malawi, Benin, Tanzania, Rwanda, Senegal, Eritrea.

Twenty countries. All are African. While it is appalling that Africa occupies a place of such dishonour, that so many leaders are beyond redemption on issues of gender, it should also give everyone pause about the role of multilateralism.

It's not possible for the UN family in any of these 20 countries to grab the heads of state by the scruff of the neck and shake them into equality. But it should be the role of the UN family to shame, blame, and propose solutions, all the while yelling from the rooftops that inequality is obscene. Only then will change have a chance.

* This an excerpt from Stephen Lewis’s 2005 Massey Lectures, reprinted with kind permission of Stephen Lewis. This excerpt also appeared in a Saturday, October 22, edition of The Globe and Mail. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20051022…

* Pambazuka News will carry an interview with Stephen Lewis in our December 01 edition.