More children in Zimbabwe's cities are going hungry, according to a UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) study examining nutrition in Southern Africa. "Malnutrition levels in Harare [the Zimbabwean capital] have doubled over the past four years and significantly worsened in Bulawayo [the second city]," according to UNICEF's nutrition and health officer, Claudia Hudspeth, who conducted the study.

Fasika Kebede, a 15-year-old girl, works seven days a week, but earns only US $1 a month. She is one of the thousands of children who have travelled from southern Ethiopia to the capital, Addis Ababa, hoping to earn some money to support their families back home.

The world is turning to dust, with more land becoming desert wasteland every year and the problem threatening to send millions of people fleeing to greener countries, the United Nations says. One-third of the Earth's surface is at risk, driving people into cities and destroying agriculture in vast swaths of Africa.

I would like to thank Tajudeen [Abdul-Raheem] and Gerald [Caplan] (Pambazuka News 160, Pan-African Postcard and Letters) for those mind blowing comments on the late Ronald Reagan. These two articles are a splendid entry point for an argument I have always made. I totally disagree with Baroness Thatcher when she gushes that Reagan freed the world. Not the African world as far as I am concerned. The pro democracy movement in Africa owes its roots not to the goodwill of the “free world” in Cold War language but quite to the contrary it is a direct consequence of the struggles of African people on either sides of the Atlantic, struggles that are intertwined in one Pan African aorta pumping for justice.

On making "America walk tall again by beating up tiny poverty-stricken nations”, I still shudder when I remember the TV clips of the eerie formation of the USAF's 82nd Air Division flying out of Barbados to go and hit Granada in1983. I still remember the pretexts used to bomb the Cuban airport construction engineers: the runway was too long and could be used to attack the US. That at a time when the USSR could have as easily deployed their Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles.

In classic doublespeak, the bad guys are up to no good on the island. Strangely however, work resumed on the airport, the long runway of which was required for long haul aircraft in the tourist industry as in its only wrong when Africans and those of African descent say or do it. But even for the Reagan White House, the day of reckoning came at the Battle of Quito Cuenavale where the CIA- backed UNITA and apartheid South African forces were taught a lesson they'll not forget any time soon. For me it was that defeat in Angola and not the fall of the Wall that marked the beginning of the end of the Cold War. The spirits of Yemaya and Nehanda oversaw the Independence of Namibia and the release of Nelson Mandela to avenge not only the fallen in Grenada and Angola but in all the struggles where the cry still is: Not yet Uhuru!

A luta continua.

Thanks for your insistence that issues such as this remain in the public domain and consciousness, and for providing a vehicle for those who want to express what they feel about them. (With reference to the Petition on the Protocol on the Rights of Women).
Lanre Obafemi, Nigeria

Sign the petition at:

The GAIN Issues Brief is being launched in response to a perceived gap in current news analysis on the issues of HIV/AIDS, its implications for democracy and governance in Africa, and the challenges of ensuring that the response to HIV/AIDS is consonant with democratic principles. This Issues Brief is a product of the African Civil Society Governance and AIDS Initiative (GAIN), launched in October 2003. The aim of this Issues Brief is to provide civil society activists, journalists and policymakers with a concise analytical digest of developments in the field of HIV/AIDS, governance and democracy.

Non-Governmental Organisations, Non-profit Organisations, Media, Grassroots, Religious bodies, Volunteers, Individuals in humanitarian courses and all other organisations that are involved in developmental missions will find this gathering relevant.

African community leaders are expected to make strong calls for the UK government to engage African communities in the fight against child trafficking in a conference to be held on Tuesday, 22 June 2004. The conference, organised by children's charity AFRUCA - (Africans Unite Against Child Abuse) aims to provide a platform for the African community to deliberate on the increasing number of its children trafficked to the UK.

Olive publish and distribute a wide selection of titles on various aspects of organisation development; change; learning; and development practice. Many of these publications provide practical tools while others offer the space for organisation leaders and others working with change in development to reflect upon their experiences and learning. Books in stock include: Learning to Train; Project Planning for Development; Planning for Monitoring and Evaluation; Planning for Implementation; Good Governance; Evaluation; Contracting; Financial Management for Self-Reliance; Managing a Department; Teaching and Learning; Effective and Efficient Meetings. Titles in our very popular "Ideas for a Change" series include: Developing and maintaining teams; Choosing and forming teams; Learning for change; People in organisations; Financing your organisation; Developmental partnerships; Capacity development; Developing policy; Finding the value of resistance; Approaching change; Organisation diagnosis; Strategic Processes; Ways of seeing organisations. Please contact Evangeline Govender on [email][email protected] for more details.

With the World Bank facing a decision on whether it should continue backing oil and mining projects, its chief environmental official says it should stay involved to ensure high standards of environmental protection. Ian Johnson said in a recent interview that halting the bank's criticized role in lending money for major oil, gas and mining projects in Africa, Latin America, and other developing regions would bring greater environmental and social harm.

The U.N. Conference on Trade and Development opened its 11th ministerial meeting with officials from developing countries urging rich nations to cut subsidies to their producers and vowing to find ways to promote national development while increasing trade liberalization. Unlike World Trade Organisation meetings, in which developed countries are heavily represented, UNCTAD meetings are mostly attended by developing nations, which often accuse rich countries of calling for an increase in trade liberalization while protecting their own markets with high subsidies.

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) invites proposals from researchers for possible inclusion in its new multinational working group (MWG) on the theme of Land in the Struggles for Citizenship, Democracy and Development in Africa. The changing political economy of land in Africa is one of the twelve thematic areas at the core of the current intellectual agenda of the Council.

"We members of Africa Jubilee South Group, representing Angola, Cameroon, Cote d' ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo(DRC), Kenya, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe, together with our solidarity partners from Brazil, Argentina and the Philippines as participants in the Illegitimate Debt Audit Workshop gathered in Cape Town, South Africa declare: We are united by our common history of slavery, colonization, neo-colonialism and struggles against domination arising from the policies of globalisation advanced by International Financial Institutions and driven in particular by the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and western industrialized countries..."

The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Human Rights Defenders, Hina Jilani, and that of Internally Displaced Persons, Francis Deng, welcomed the appointment by the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights of special rapporteurs on human rights defenders and on refugees and internally displaced persons. The Commission appointed Bahame Tom Mukirya Nyanduga of Tanzania as Special Rapporteur on Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons in Africa. Mr. Nyanduga faces a daunting challenge, as Africa is the continent most affected by forcible displacement, with almost 13 million internally displaced persons, out of a global total of 25 million, and over three million refugees, the majority of whom suffer from the most acute violations of human rights.

Dozens of countries, large and small, have foreign debts so large that their interest payments on the debt are a crushing burden. The Republic of the Congo, for example, has annual debt service payments equal to 50 percent of its export earnings; Uganda's debt service equals 44 percent of its exports. Not surprisingly many countries cannot keep up with their interest payments, let alone ever hope of paying off the principal.

Activist groups concerned about Africa expressed deep disappointment last Thursday with what they called a failure of the leaders of the Group of Eight (G-8) richest nations to respond seriously to the ongoing crises that afflict the region. They were particularly downcast about the G-8's refusal to grant comprehensive debt relief to the continent's poorest nations, as had been promoted by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the failure to commit major new funds to combating the HIV/AIDS epidemic which is killing roughly 6,000 Africans every day.

Commenting on Shell's announcement that it would remain in Nigeria and "help reduce conflict by changing our operating, security and community development practices,'' Friends of the Earth Executive Director Tony Juniper said. "At long last Shell is facing up to the impacts of its activities in Nigeria. The company must take responsibility for the damage it has caused in the Niger Delta, compensate the communities devastated by pollution from Shell's oil spills and gas flaring, and work with people on the ground to find a sustainable way forward.”

Please accept our apologies for the late delivery of this week's Pambazuka News and for the fact that this week it is shorter than usual. This has been the result of staff travels during the week. We will be back to normal service next week.

Comment and Analysis: Ending impunity in the Great Lakes region
Conflicts and Emergencies: How arms exporters are failing development countries
Protocol on the Rights of Women: Ethiopia ratifies protocol
Refugees and Forced Migration: Ugandan rebels raid fourth IDP camp
Elections and Governance: Angolan political and civic forces reject new constitution before elections
Development: Debt relief bread for Iraq, crumbs for Africa
Education: How educating excluded children can break the cycle of poverty
Environment: Governments discuss future of renewable energy

Both Nigeria's federal and state elections in 2003 and its local government elections in 2004 were marred by serious incidents of violence. The scale of the violence and intimidation, much of which went unreported, called into question the credibility of these elections. This report documents cases of electoral violence in 2003. It also refers to incidents of violence reported around the 2004 local government elections, although most of Human Rights Watch's detailed research was undertaken before those elections took place.