It has crept into the daily news bulletins - about a thousand Phomolong residents at Hennenman blocking access roads; the situation in Bronkhorstspruit; the Westville campus closing after a heated protest; and students threatening to render Tshwane University ungovernable after talks with management over fees fell through. A growing number of isolated riots have turned into what appears to be a current of protests across the country. Just a decade after the streets were burning, analysts are seeing evidence of a new season of symptoms of exclusion and frustration.

UNESCO Director General Koïchiro Matsuura was due to launch March 1 the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). The main goal of the Decade is to encourage the governments of Member State to integrate the concept of sustainable development into their education policies and into all aspects of learning to bring about behavioural changes that will usher in a more viable and just society. By placing education at the heart of sustainable development, the Decade aims to encourage stakeholders to improve the quality of teaching, facilitate exchanges among the various players and raise public awareness.

Will they or won't they? This question is on the lips of political observers in Malawi at present, as they wait to see whether substantial numbers of ruling coalition or opposition members will support the country's newest political grouping: the Democratic Progressive Party. At stake is the future of party founder, President Bingu wa Mutharika, who resigned from the United Democratic Front (UDF) earlier this month. The UDF, which only controls 49 of 193 parliamentary seats after last year's general and by-elections, rules Malawi with support from other political parties and independent legislators.

The Bush administration stands accused of trying to roll back efforts to improve the status of the world's women by demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights. America's demand overshadowed the opening of a conference intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing conference on the status of women, an event seen as a landmark in efforts to promote global cooperation on women's equality.

Food rations for 50,000 refugees in Rwanda will be cut by nearly one-third next month unless donors provide another $2.6 million, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said. Refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Burundi, fleeing unrest and violence, have been pouring into Rwanda over the past year.

I congratulate you for a wonderful issue - 'The dilemma of the inevitable'. It provided me with answers and filled in the gaps that I had. I am involved in community development and I am certainly very informed about issues of HIV/AIDS - I facilitate workhsops on the impact of HIV/AIDS in the  workplace. But when my friend died of the disease in 2003 I fell apart, I felt hopeless and helpless.

Now I know why and I feel very empowered about Kiiza's experience in Nigeria and I think we should really consider talking the language that's understandable and also look at HIV/AIDS holistically, not only as a sexual and a moral issue.

Thank you very much - Keep up your good work!!

“The exclusive group of WTO members meeting this week in Mombasa, must put development at the forefront of their talks, if the Doha Round will live up to its name of a ‘Development Round’”, warns Peter Aoga from EcoNews Africa. As the power games of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) move to Kenya for a few days, hundreds of workers, farmers, students and other representatives from civil society are gathering at a public meeting in Nairobi to raise their demands on the key contentious issues in the negotiations.

* EDITORIAL: HIV/AIDS messages need to be communicated in a language that is understandable so that efforts to save lives are not wasted
* COMMENT&ANALYSIS: Darfur and the struggles of a resilient people against all odds
- Might makes right in refugee camps – and it is women who suffer the most as a result of this power structure
* AFRICAN UNION WATCH: A summary of decisions from the recent AU meeting in Abuja
* CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES: Tough weeks lie ahead if peace is to be secured in northern Uganda
* ELECTIONS AND GOVERNANCE: As elections loom in Zimbabwe, are MPs representatives or godfathers?
* DEVELOPMENT: The skeptics doubt whether spending more money on aid will reduce poverty
* HEALTH AND HIV AIDS: Global Health Watch 2005 is set for release soon
* ENVIRONMENT: A Durban landfill site is a prime example of how the poor will suffer from carbon trading
* MEDIA AND FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION: A new IFEX report expresses concern for press freedom in Tunisia
* BOOKS AND ART: Two books by African women published in France

Even before the ballots are cast in Zimbabwe's legislative elections next month, controversy has surfaced over the fairness of the poll. The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) has argued that recent reform of the country's electoral laws has been too little and too late. They contend that repressive legislation governing public assembly and free speech remain on the statute books, and together with growing political violence, will serve to undermine the poll's legitimacy.

The unpayable debts of Africa's impoverished countries should be cancelled immediately, in full, releasing funds for poverty reduction. Meanwhile, the HIPC Initiative should be urgently and radically reformed so that debt cancellation for all heavily indebted African countries can proceed rapidly under a fair and transparent process that reinforces democratic institutions and processes and counteracts corruption. This is according to the report of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Heavily Indebted Poor Countries, produced in partnership with Jubilee Debt Campaign, that makes urgent recommendations on debt cancellation for a strong and prosperous Africa.

The Darfur Consortium, an umbrella group of more than forty mainly African civil society organizations, along with the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies and Human Rights First (formerly the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights), has urged the U.N. Security Council to refer the situation in the Darfur region of the Sudan to the International Criminal Court (ICC) without further delay. A Security Council resolution to refer the Darfur situation to the ICC would grant that court jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute the atrocities committed in the region. "The restoration of peace in Darfur is not possible unless those responsible for the grave crimes committed there are brought to justice and the damage done to the victims is satisfactorily repaired," said Magdi El Naim, Executive Director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, which is a member of the Darfur Consortium.

Every genocide is hideous, each in its own grotesque way. Searching for the origins and distinctiveness of the genocidal violence that has convulsed the Sudanese region of Darfur in the last year—leaving tens of thousands dead and perhaps a million people displaced and in danger—we must go to the remotest desert-edge settlements in Northern Darfur near the border with Chad, to the basalt stubs of mountains that march southward until they fuse in the 10,000-foot Jebel Marra massif in the center of Darfur, and to Sudan’s capital in Khartoum, far to the east.

Geography helps to explain much. Darfur is huge and distant from the capital, and events in neighboring Chad and Libya have often exerted more influence over it than the national government, whose ignorance of its western region and indifference to the welfare of its inhabitants spurred a rebellion in 2003, organized by the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

This journey will introduce us to these Darfur rebels, including members of the Fur, Zaghawa, Masalit, and Tunjur ethnic groups, who have been the primary victims of the violence; to their neighbors, the Darfurian Arabs—including the branches of the northern Rizeigat (Jalul, Mahariya, and Ereigat), Beni Halba, and Salamat—some of whom have been recruited to the infamous Janjawiid militia, the perpetrator of the worst massacres in the conflict; and to the Sudanese Government itself, which has suppressed the rebellion with brutal tactics rehearsed in the recently concluded 21-year civil war with southern Sudan.

We will see that the story is not as simple as the conventional rendering in the news, which depicts a conflict between “Arabs” and “Africans.” The Zaghawa—one of the groups victimized by the violence and described in the mainstream press as “indigenous African”—are certainly indigenous, black and African: they share distant origins with the Berbers of Morocco and other ancient Saharan peoples. But the name of the “Bedeyat,” the Zaghawa’s close kin, should alert us to their true origins: pluralize in the more traditional Arab manner and we have “Bedeyiin” or Bedouins. Similarly, the Zaghawa’s adversaries in this war, the Darfurian Arabs, are “Arabs” in the ancient sense of “Bedouin,” meaning desert nomad, a sense that has only in the last few decades been used to describe the Arabs of the river Nile and the Fertile Crescent. Darfurian Arabs, too, are indigenous, black, and African. In fact there are no discernible racial or religious differences between the two: all have lived there for centuries; all are Muslims (Darfur’s non-Arabs are arguably more devout than the Arabs); and until very recently, conflict between these different groups was a matter of disputes over camel theft or grazing rights, not the systematic and ideological slaughter of one group by the other.

As we dig through the layers of causation of this complicated war, we will come to see it as a deeply sad story about the struggles of resilient people, poor even by Sudanese standards, who have been pitted against each other by a forbidding environment, a long history of political neglect, and a ruthless national government.

>>>>Please click on the link below for the full article.

Members of a Rwandan human rights watchdog, Kangurirwa, are due to travel to Burundi this month to join other electoral observers during the long-awaited Burundian referendum on the new constitution, set for February 28, an official said here Sunday. "We shall dispatch a delegation of about thirty six observers for the Burundi Referendum," said Frank Asiimwe, the director of Kangurirwa. He said the organization also plans to send another team of observers to Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the presidential elections scheduled for June this year.

* Africa's self assessment
http://allafrica.com/stories/200502150932.html
Declarations and decisions at the AU summit in Abuja are only a rehash of similar ones in the past.
* AU mission arrives in Somalia
http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-02-14-voa46.cfm
More than a dozen officials from the African Union, the Arab League, and the seven-nation Intergovernmental Authority on Development arrived in Mogadishu to begin their assessment of Somalia's security situation.
* Media groups slam AU
http://www.ijnet.org/FE_Article/newsarticle.asp?UILang=1
&CId=294582&CIdLang=1
The African Union is neglecting press freedom on several fronts, according to journalists’ groups monitoring its policies.
* Anger at African Sanctions in Togo
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4290761.stm
The African Union meets on Thursday to decide if it will impose sanctions on the country.

This summary has been prepared for policy analysts working for Oxfam, international, continental and regional networks and allies to inform us on the key deliberations and decisions of the most important decision-making organ of the African Union. It captures key decisions, upcoming dates and opportunities for continental policy development.

The sequence of the Summits is as follows; one week of intense meetings starting with the Permanent Representatives Council (Addis based Ambassadors), Council of Ministers (National Ministers) and the Assembly itself (Heads of States). While the Assembly is the supreme decision making body, the discussions from Ambassador level are important to understand the issues being prioritized and deliberated.

The first briefing on health and HIV/AIDS is reproduced below. The rest of the briefings, including those on food security, refugees, trade and debt, are available through the link below.

1. Health and HIV/AIDS

Permanent Representatives Committee
Ninth Ordinary Session
PRC/Rpt (1X)

On HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and other related infectious diseases, the PRC observed;

The need for Africa to take the lead in Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) negotiations to promote access to affordable generic drugs - Africa has to plan properly for dialogue at TRIPs negotiations and other fora;

Assembly of the Africa Union
Fourth Ordinary Session
Decisions and Declarations

Assembly/ AU /Dec. 55 (1V)

CALLS UPON the international community, especially the rich industrialized countries,
to fully fund the Global Fund in line with previous commitments made in this regard, and taking into account the magnitude of the health emergency presented by these diseases in Africa;

URGES Member States to:
Take the lead in TRIPs negotiations and in implementing measures identified for promoting access to affordable generic drugs;
Ensure that every child receives polio immunization in 2005;
Prepare inter-ministerial costed development and deployment plans to address the Human Resources for Health crisis;
Prepare health literacy strategies to achieve an energized continent-wide health promotion endeavour;

URGES Member States to intensify efforts towards more effective and well-coordinated implementation of national programmes to promote health systems development as well as improve access to prevention, treatment, care and support; along the “Three ones initiative”; the “3 by 5 Strategy” and Global “Child Survival Partnership”;

RESOLVES to take all the necessary measures to produce with the support of the international community, quality generic drugs in Africa, supporting industrial development and making full use of the flexibility in international trade law and; REQUESTS the AU Commission within the framework of NEPAD to lead the development of a Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Plan for Africa;

CALLS UPON the International Community to match the US$19 billion gap in health financing which the WHO has determined that Africa is not in a position to self finance.

"While there is general agreement that trade can be a powerful tool for development, a growing body of literature argues that rapid trade liberalisation does not on its own automatically lead to positive development outcomes. Countries should be able to choose the trade-policy option that best suits their development priorities and needs. Trade liberalisation should not be seen as a substitute for a sound development strategy. Moreover, it needs to be timed and sequenced carefully: there are different optimal degrees of openness at different stages of development, and it is generally agreed that, in order for an open trade regime to bring growth and development, countries must first have certain necessary conditions in place such as healthy economic sectors, potentially competitive producers, reasonably well-developed market institutions, and effective state capacity." This is according to a paper that is a response from leading ACP and EU civil society organisations to some of the key arguments put forward in support of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) as currently envisaged by the EU.

A World Bank mission visiting Liberia has said the country's transitional government must crack down harder on corruption and show greater transparency in its finances if it is to secure donor funding to help the country recover from 14 years of civil war. The mission, led by Shengman Zhang, the World Bank's managing director, also warned that there was no prospect of the World Bank lending more money to Liberia until the country's current loan arrears of almost US$450 million had been paid off.

President Olusegun Obasanjo opened a conference to draft changes to the constitution on Monday with a warning that delegates should not question the fundamental unity of Nigeria. “The National Political and Reform Conference is not designed to dismember or disintegrate Nigeria,” Obasanjo told the 400 delegates assembled in the federal capital Abuja. Obasanjo is a retired army general who fought as a military officer against the attempt by the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria to form the breakaway state of Biafra in the 1967-1970 civil war.

It's election season, and candidates are at it again, promising voters the moon.  It happens all over the world and Zimbabwe is no exception.  It supplements our time-honoured campaign tradition of buying rounds of drinks and entertaining potential voters.  But in Zimbabwe in 2005, vote-buying has taken on a whole new dimension as ZANU (PF) aspirants vie with each other and with potential opponents to donate money and goods to their bemused constituents, long before the voting begins.  Rural schools have become prime targets for parliamentarians' largesse and computers one of the main items dispensed.  They are dumped here and there, with or without all the necessary components, in schools which may not even have the electricity required to operate them.

Faure Gnassingbe, who seized power in Togo following the death of his father, has caved in to international demands for quick presidential elections but has said he will not quit until they are held. Riots have erupted on the streets of the capital, Lome, since the army installed the burly 39-year-old as successor to his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled this small West African country with a rod of iron for 38 years until his death on 5 February.