Failure to ratify the Protocol on the Rights of Women amounts to a great waste of resources. African governments cannot continue to spend money on conferences which yield no positive results for the people. Let us demand that all African Union member states ratify and domesticate the protocol to ensure women's rights are protected at national level.

Sign the petition on the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa at:

The Global Development Network has announced a call for proposals to undertake country studies in Sub-Saharan Africa for its global research project 'Impact of Rich Country Policies on Poverty: A Global View'. Applicants are encouraged for studies in areas of aid, investment, migration or trade. Deadline for submission is 15th October 2004.

US regulators have requested documents from Technip, the French engineering company, a partner of Halliburton in a controversial multi-billion dollar business deal in Nigeria. The Securities and Exchange Commission has sought the documents from the French company as part of its inquiry into whether TSKJ - a consortium jointly-owned by Technip, Halliburton and two other companies - paid bribes to win a Nigerian construction project.

Editorial: An Update On The Campaign For The Ratification Of The Protocol On The Rights of Women
Comment and Analysis: Rethinking relief operations: Idealistic and out of touch with reality?
Pan-African Postcard: Has Africa not suffered enough nightmares?
Conflicts and Emergencies: AU sees no genocide
Human Rights: Church leaders slam Zim government; AU buries rights report
Women and Gender: AU pledge on women’s rights
Development: Slow motion robbery – The WTO and developing countries
Health: War against disease failing, says AU
HIV: Record number of HIV infections in 2003
Media and Freedom of Expression: Call for media freedom
Books and Arts: Measuring success – Issues in performance management

The new African Union (AU) chairman, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, warned on Wednesday that "unfulfilled commitments" by rich nations pose one of the greatest threats to Africa’s development. Speaking in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, Obasanjo said that the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) was being undermined by inaction on the part of those nations.

Swaziland's constitution-drafting exercise has been postponed again, as parliamentarians resumed work this week under a royal system that limits their political influence. King Mswati's brother, Prince David Dlamini, who has been in charge of the constitution-drafting exercise since 2001, said the latest deadline set by the king for September would not be met because of a royal function - a gathering of women in traditional groups who pay homage to the Swazi Queen Mother.

The history of pastoralists' development reads like the afflictions of the biblical Job. Institutions after institution have conjured strategies that would be comical if their consequences were not so tragic. A respectable east African country thought that the best way to "develop" pastoralists was to "integrate them with the rest of society". It spent good million after good million building social halls in arid lands. Come weekends, the good government would host the "community" to a disco and western films. Needless to mention, the discos remained empty and the films exclusively patronised by pre-adolescent primary school boys. This was an Islamic culture yet no one thought of or gave due consideration to appropriateness.

Another government thought that Texan style ranching was the solution to "pastoralist problems", problems that pastoralists themselves did not know about. The consequence was the hiving off of huge pastureland by elitists at the expense of millions of patoralists to whom land ownership is as bizarre as owing a star (it is inherently everybody's). The reduced pastureland and interrupted livelihood came with their bedfellows; conflict over reduced resources (land, water points, etc) and chronic livelihood insecurity. It's a pity no one ever asked pastoralists whether they wanted "development" in the first place. It is a shame there was (is) no mechanism for reviewing and condemning the actions of the said government as they unfold.

To be fair, these are extreme examples of how wrong we, development professionals, can be and how long we can persist even when all evidence points to the fact that the idea was awfully faulty at inception. The noblest of humanitarian interventions is undoubtedly relief. Since its inception (in its modern familiar form) during World War I, humanitarian relief has redeemed masses from certain starvation, epidemics, massacres and annihilation.

But for all its noble intentions, relief is rife with the self-delusion that plagues community development and national economic development (remember the integrated rural development projects and the structural adjustment programmes?). Self-delusion seems a rather strong a term, but what better term explains the irrational adoption, defence and continued implementation of programmes, practices and policies that do not have the interest of the communities at heart? What is happening?

Relief programmes have become arenas for posturing and muscle flexing. Agencies compete for "visibility" while the needs of disaster and war victims are glossed, sometimes ignored. There are programmes strategised and implemented for their "visibility value" at the expense of less glamorous, potentially more effective programmes. Surveys and statistics thus become tools for validating an organisation's position rather than methods of identifying community needs and programme impact.

The sentiment of us-versus-them is unashamedly overt. Ask an implementing agency a simple question such as "how many refugees do you serve per day?" and your head will hurt from the complexity of the answer you get. Separately ask two donor agencies, in the same relief operation, how many beneficiaries their dollar (or yen) reaches and the variance is astounding. With a humanitarian crisis unfolding in Dafur, the subsequent stampede of humanitarian organisations in but a matter of time.

African governments have agreed to a peer review mechanism through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). Isn't it a pity we, humanitarian organisations, have not instituted one?

It would be a gross inaccuracy to say that nothing (good) goes on in relief programmes. We do a lot of good. The desperately poor survive in cases where they would have certainly perished without the desperately needed interventions. Opportunities are created where none existed before the relief agencies came.

What is contentious is the mandate we have found convenient to ignore. When we ask governments, corporations and individuals for money, we promise that we shall serve the poor with it, and serve them in ways that embraces humanity (remember the equality, empowerment, rights, participation mantra?). Our reports say that we are serving the poor with other people’s monies (often giving accounts of sterling performances). It is the gap between this promise and practice that is embarrassing.

It is a pity that in this day and age, we hold planning meetings for refugee operations with but token representation of the displaced communities. Inevitably, our plans allocate more resources to our conveniences (accommodation, transport, security, remuneration, technical support etc) than to actual basic refugee services (food, shelter and clothing). We make policies that convenience us (working five-day weeks, no working weekends, no entry for refugees into our offices, etc) with impunity.

The greatest betrayal yet, is the tacit collusion of silence. We dare not speak of the ills we perpetrate "in the interest of the organisation". And many an employee has lost his/her job for questioning organisational methods. This reasoning reeks of conservativism and fear of the very positive change we keep harping about. For how else do we work better without honestly critically analysing how we work now. A peer review mechanism would force us to analyse this.

Alternatively, a simplistic acid test would be to candidly ask oneself; Are we serving the less fortunate that we promised to serve in the way we promised to serve? If your answer is yes, sleep easy. If this note sounds idealistic and out of touch with current realities, then therein is the problem. Humanitarian work is meant to be idealistic and out of touch with reality. How else do you explain the actions of humanitarian founders and leaders?

* Job Ogonda is an experienced Development Professional with expertise in Programme Management. He has eight years experience in programme cycle management at community, national and Africa regional level. He has a wealth of experience in coordination/management of relief/emergency, sustainable development/livelihood programmes and advocacy/policy processes.

* * Please send comments to

According to a senior official at the UN Centre of Human Settlement, Malawi is now the fastest urbanising country in the world, with a projected 44% of the population due to be living in urban areas by 2015. This influx is attributed directly to the 'increasingly harsh condition many families are experiencing in the outlying areas of the country.' The small size of farms and the lack of access to improved agricultural technology means that it is no longer profitable for families to continue with agricultural work, officials noted, and they called for 'drastic measures to be implemented to improve rural livelihoods'.

This publication from the Forum on Debt and Development draws links between the HIPC Initiative and the Millennium Development Goals, and argues that debt relief will only provide a fraction of the funds required for poverty reduction and to avoid another build-up of unsustainable debt. It also presents an analysis of the successes and failures of the HIPC Initiative and some suggestions of what needs to be done.

PRSPs have largely failed to achieve the goal of effective country ownership, according to a new World Vision report released in April for the Spring Meetings, entitled 'One step forward, two steps back'. The report demonstrates how conditionalities, accompanied by the very real threat of closing the funding pipeline, have been used as a substitute for genuine ownership of reforms. It argues that conditionality is inherently contradictory to ownership, and is not an effective substitute for genuine commitment from governments to carry out reforms that have wide support.

In a report published last month, the NGO Global Witness has called for the issue of resource exploitation to be given a high priority on the aid agenda and for it to integrated into the anti-corruption policies supported by the country's vibrant civil society. The report, entitled 'Same Old Story' details the implications of the exploitation of the Democratic Republic of Congo's natural resources for the country's peace process.

Do political institutions affect citizens' satisfaction with democracy? Using cross-sectional Afrobarometer survey data on attitudes toward democracy for 10 sub-Saharan Africa countries together with country-level data on political institutions, this article - part of the Afrobarometer Working Papers series - demonstrates that political institutions do indeed influence citizens' attitudes toward the democratic system. Political institutions mediate the relationship between citizens' political status - i.e., as winners, non-partisans, or losers - and their satisfaction with the way democracy works in the country.

The Liberal Democratic Party has poured scorn on President Kibaki's broad-based government and accused him of replacing the multi-party system with a no-party movement similar to Uganda's. Sixty one MPs, who included the party's four Cabinet Ministers, had earlier held a Parliamentary Group meeting where they bitterly complained about the reshuffle, in which the party's ministers were demoted.

In an address at the inaugural session of the national assembly, President Bingu wa Mutharika promised to tackle corruption in Malawi. Declaring that he 'will deal with corruption and its perpetrators decisively' he announced his intention to resume the economic programme with the IMF. Under Muluzi's government, the IMF, EU, the World Bank and the UK and Danish Governments had suspended budgetary support over concerns of corruption and over-expenditure.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Uganda has congratulated the Government of Uganda on formally launching a national database that provides wide-ranging and updated information on social development in the country, including those directly linked to the lives of children and women. UgandaInfo, unveiled in an official ceremony in Kampala, was developed by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the Office of the Prime Minister and line ministries, with UNICEF support and in consultation with UN and NGO partners. The database features more than 200 key indicators in education, health, HIV/AIDS and other sectors.

UNICEF reports that a significant number of children displaced in Darfur have either been direct victims of violence or have witnessed violent acts. In interviews conducted in camps for displaced civilians inside Sudan, as well as refugee camps in Chad, UN and NGO workers say that with disquieting regularity, children report fleeing for their lives after witnessing the murder and rape of parents, siblings, and neighbours.

Children who "live rough" on the streets of Zimbabwe's capital and other cities, face a multitude of problems – including AIDS. Research by a Harare-based non-governmental organisation (NGO) – Futures International – in May 2004, indicated that at least 12,000 children eke out a living on the country’s highways and byways. Although no official statistics on HIV prevalence amongst street children exist, an NGO in Harare – Streets Ahead – says it helps treat as many as 150 of the children every month for sexually-transmitted diseases.

African leaders under pressure to intervene in Darfur urged Khartoum on Wednesday urgently to "neutralise" the Janjaweed militia but said the bloodshed was not a genocide, a term used by some rights groups. The African Union's ruling was immediately proclaimed as a victory by the Sudanese government, which has long denied that the Arab militia's attacks on black African civilians are part of a government-backed extermination campaign.

The African Union should make protecting civilians and fighting impunity for human rights abuses central to its initiatives against conflicts in the region, Human Rights Watch said in a briefing paper released ahead of the AU summit on July 6-8. "The African Union should take strong proactive measures to prevent and intervene in conflicts across the continent," said Peter Takirambudde, director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "By taking constructive steps to ensure protection for civilians and human rights, the AU can play a key role in stemming conflicts in the region."

Zimbabwe's church leaders say there is no chance of free and fair elections next year, and have accused South Africa of complicity in government human rights abuses. Meanwhile, the African Union, meeting in Addis Ababa, said on Wednesday it would not make public the AU Commission for Human Rights report on Zimbabwe and other countries.