Conditions of detention in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are such that a prison term of one to five years is tantamount to a death sentence, according to the Human Rights Section of the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC. In a 44-page report titled "Rapport sur la detention en RDC avril 2004", made available to IRIN last Thursday, the human rights section denounced as unacceptable the conditions of detention.

Police fired tear gas to disperse an anti-government demonstration in Lagos on Saturday and briefly arrested dozens of protesters, including the Nobel prize winning author and playwright Wole Soyinka. A coalition of opposition, human rights and civic groups under the name of Citizens Forum, called the march which began at Campos Square on Lagos Island. Many of the 500 or more protesters bore aloft banners and placards demanding President Olusegun Obasanjo’s resignation and describing last year’s elections that gave him a second term in office as fraudulent.

Corrupt individuals linked to former President Daniel arap Moi's regime are attempting to regroup and re-establish their old networks, governance and ethics permanent secretary, John Githongo, said. He said that even in the current government, a few individuals "may have become captives of these corrupt networks that are trying to regain their hold on the state." Githongo was addressing participants at a conference organized by the International Finance Corporation - the private lending arm of the World Bank - and London-based Financial Times.

Corruption may have sapped as much as $US100 billion from World Bank lending projects to help poor countries, a key US senator has claimed. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Richard Lugar said if the figures presented to his panel by one university professor were accurate, it would seriously undermine the organisation's efforts to fight global poverty. The World Bank hotly disputed the figure of $US100 billion, adding that there was no basis for that estimate, but said the organisation was working to stem corruption.

After months of urging the authorities to set a date for Angola's first post-war general elections, opposition parties have walked out of a commission tasked with laying the groundwork for a national poll. Opposition parties said in statement on Wednesday that they had "decided to suspend, as of 12 May 2004, their participation in the work of the constitutional commission of the National Assembly, until the President consults with the parties and a definite timetable is approved" for holding elections.

African ministers in the economic sector, meeting next week in Kampala, Uganda, plan to focus on what Africa can do to become more competitive in global trade. Current trade negotiations, as well as the perennial and unresolved issues of debt and aid, will feature in discussions at the meeting. But documents prepared for the meeting, including a preview of this year's Economic Report on Africa, stress that African countries must also build internal conditions for more competitive and diversified trade. An edition of the AfricaFocus Bulletin released this week contains excerpts from the overview of the Economic Report on Africa 2004, released by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in time for the ministerial meeting.

The government wants to amend the Electoral Act in a move that will further close any democratic space remaining in the country's political system. Under the proposals contained in the Electoral Amendment Bill 2003 which analysts say are clearly targeted at the opposition MDC, it will increasingly become difficult for poor urban dwellers - who are the opposition party's main supporters - to vote because they would, among other stringent requirements, have to produce proof of residence.

* Comment and Analysis: From Coffins to ABC's: Aids prevention in Uganda
* Pan-African Postcard: Truth is the first casualty of war
* Conflicts and Emergencies: Rights reports shine spotlight on Sudan's Darfur
* Human Rights: Focus on Eastern Angola
* Refugees and Forced Migration: Red cross cares for 7500 displaced by Plateau violence
* Women and Gender: West Africa and women's rights: What responsibility for judicial and extra-judicial stakeholders
* Development: Debt relief for poor faces $7.8b gap
* HIV/AIDS: Scaling up Aids treatment
* Environment: The politics of trash
* Books and Arts: A Deeper Wound: The South African/Azanian struggle for liberation

** Many subscribers may not have received Pambazuka News last week due to technical problems. Subscribers can read the entire edition – including last week's editorial on Zimbabwe, ‘The government wants the people to give up hoping’ by clicking on http://www.pambazuka.org/index.php?issue=155

The Youth Development Index (YDI), recently created in Brazil to measure the living conditions of young people, was launched at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris earlier this week. The index includes data on education (literacy rates, the number of youth in high school or higher education and the quality of teaching); health (mortality rates) and income (based on family per-capita income). "It will serve as an instrument for countries to evaluate the needs of improvement for the livelihoods of their youth,” explains Director of UNESCO Brasilia, Jorge Werthein.

At least 64 opposition supporters have been arrested this week in Zimbabwe's western region of Lupane ahead of legislative by-elections at the weekend, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) said. A senior party official and lawmaker from a neighbouring constituency, Abdenigo Bhebhe, said 20 were arrested early Tuesday after they clashed with ruling Zanu PF party supporters while they were putting up campaign posters at a shopping centre.

This guide is intended for people working in research and development. It introduces participatory development communication concepts, discusses the effective two-way communication approaches, and presents a methodology to plan, develop, and evaluate communication strategies to address the following questions:
*How can researchers and practitioners improve communication with local communities and other stakeholders?
*How can two-way communication enhance community participation in research and development initiatives and improve the capacity of communities to participate in the management of their natural resources?
*How can researchers, community members, and development practitioners improve their ability to effectively reach policymakers and promote change?

Street urchins popularly known as area boys who disappeared from Lagos Island when the current Oba of Lagos, Oba Babatunde Rilwan Akiolu, ascended the throne, have returned in full force to the area. Investigation revealed that the area boys who were chased away by Oba Akiolu last year when he was coronated have returned and they now terrorise traders and residents, especially, those around the popular Idumota market, demanding money from them. PMNews also gathered that the area boys molest load carriers in the area by demanding money from them. Anyone who refused to pay is attacked, a resident told PMNews.

Blinking my eyes to adjust to the bright African sun as we made our way through traffic from the Entebbe airport to the Ugandan capital, Kampala, I looked out the window and asked, “What are those?”

“Coffins,” the driver replied. “Because of AIDS,” he added, in case it wasn't obvious why the wooden boxes were displayed along the roadside with other goods for sale, things I recognized, like furniture, iron gates, tiny bananas, and the reddest tomatoes I had ever seen. The year was 1995, I was a naïve American grad student, and this was my first introduction to Africa.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic had hit Uganda with a vengeance. The infection rate peaked in the early 1990s, with a national prevalence rate of about 15% in 1991 and more than 30% of the population in some urban areas infected in 1992. It is now estimated that a million Ugandans have died from HIV/AIDS, leaving twice as many orphans behind, and more than one million are currently living with the disease. The wrath of the disease dealt a devastating blow to the country and its development efforts. But there was a growing market for coffins.

Yet, already by 1995, Uganda had distinguished itself as the first country to deal with the epidemic head on. A high level political commitment to action, constructive involvement of civil society including religious authorities, and excellent public information campaigns - among many other factors - all contributed to help the country stem the flow of the epidemic. In 1995, when coffins lined the road, the national prevalence rate was 18.5%. Within a few years, the rate dropped to one third of that number.

One element of Uganda's success in preventing infection has been a public information strategy known as ABC - Abstinence, Be faithful, and use Condoms. The key to the ABC strategy was to promote all three together, recognizing that no one type of behaviour change could work perfectly. The ABC model has been widely recognized internationally, and adapted for use in other countries around the world. The journal Science recently reported that it has been almost as successful as a vaccine in Uganda.

This is not to say that the battle is over. Few people living with HIV/AIDS have adequate access to anti-retroviral therapy that could prolong their lives, permitting them to participate in the workforce and care for their families. An estimated 25,000 babies are born HIV positive each year in Uganda. The situation of children orphaned by AIDS remains dire. Stigma and discrimination are still prevalent despite the best efforts of the government and AIDS advocates. And discrimination continues to make women most vulnerable to the disease.

While Ugandan activists agree that more must be done to treat people living with HIV/AIDS, they continue to stress the importance of prevention. Many analysts caution that it would be ill-advised to rely too heavily on the success of the public information campaign. Some even query whether the ABC strategy was really responsible for the decline in prevalence. A 2003 baseline study on knowledge, attitudes, and behavioural practices found that high-risk behaviour is still very common in Kampala. And recent data indicate that rates of infection could be back on the rise.

There can be no disputing that the scale of the problem in Uganda remains alarming, and that urgent action is required to save lives and prevent the epidemic from further eroding the country's development efforts. Thus, perhaps the most difficult challenge facing Uganda now is to build on the success of the past decade. Even if Uganda and its donors meet their target of providing ARVs to 100,000 people in the next five years, Dr. Coutinho of The Aids Support Organisation predicts twice that number could be newly infected. This is no time for complacency.

Many hope that the US$15 billion President Bush pledged last year for AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean might go a long way towards solving the problem. The money (known as “Bush money” in Ugandan parlance) finally started to reach 14 countries including Uganda last month, from the President's Emergency Fund for HIV/AIDS Relief. But it is not that simple.

In fact, while grateful for all the money available from international donors, many Ugandans I spoke to on a recent visit to the country were already skeptical as the Bush money took so long to start trickling in, and they were not convinced that it would necessarily be put to most effective use.

Organisations such as the US-based Centre for Health and Gender Equity and Physicians for Human Rights have expressed numerous concerns about the Bush administration's strategy for using the money, as spelled out in the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief: US Five-Year Global HIV/AIDS Strategy.

For starters, the process of developing the strategy was a closed one and key stakeholders were excluded. What's more, the administration has been widely criticized for following ideological and fundamentalist religious beliefs rather than evidence-based recommendations.

This is perhaps most evident in the strategy's excessive insistence on abstinence only, rather than a holistic ABC approach. The strategy focuses on abstinence for youth and being faithful within marriage, and emphasizes that condoms are only to be made available to and in the 'vicinity of' so-called high risk populations such as prostitutes. Potential funding for B and C approaches is further constrained by the United States Global AIDS Act of 2003, which limits prevention funding to 20% of the money allocated and mandates that one third of this be spent on abstinence-until-marriage strategies.

But this approach runs counter to the fundamental premise underlying the ABC strategy. As Dr. Coutinho explains, even though approximately 60% of his patients do embrace abstinence, they do not always do so perfectly. For example, someone may well remain abstinent for ten months, decide to have sex again, and then return to abstinence. For this and many other reasons, it is crucial to keep the C in the equation.

According to the Centre for Health and Gender Equity, the strategy also fails to guarantee that those most at risk will be provided access to comprehensive sex education information such as complete information on male and female condoms, frank discussions about sexuality, guidance for negotiating safe sex, etc.

Some NGOs in Uganda say they have sensed a rolling back of the space available for public information on AIDS prevention and sexuality, particularly information targeting youth. Though this is not directly tied to the Bush money, they do see a link. For example, much of the Bush money is earmarked for faith-based organisations. While all agree that religious institutions have a crucial role to play, some fear that this could lead to churches taking over much of the work that secular NGOs now do. This is especially worrying given that some churches have strong positions against condoms.

Many Ugandans are also familiar with other Bush administration policies (including domestic policies focusing exclusively on promoting abstinence outside marriage and ignoring or even opposing contraceptive and condom use, as well as the global gag rule). As a result, they fear there may be 'a change in the winds' towards more conservative public health policies informed by evangelical interests.

Numerous other serious concerns have also been raised with respect to the Bush money. One is the failure of the US to contribute its proper share to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. Another is the fear that funds will only be available for purchase of name-brand drugs. This will be a decisive factor in how many people receive treatment, as the funds available are finite and name-brand drugs can cost four times more than their generic counterparts.

Even beyond the Bush money and public health policy, Christian Aid recently issued a report decrying a 'dangerous drift' - encouraged by the US and the UK - of diverting aid funds in Uganda and elsewhere to the war on terror. Nearly a quarter of Uganda's social services budget in 2002 went to fund military operations in the North to fight the LRA (which has been added to the US terrorist list). Yet the report also found that the war and militarization of the area is actually contributing to increased spread of HIV in the region.

I recently took the Entebbe-Kampala road again on one of my frequent trips to Africa. My heart sank as soon as we drove out of the airport parking lot, quickly dashing the excitement I felt about returning to Uganda that had peaked during the breathtaking landing on the shores of Lake Victoria.

I confided in my fellow passenger - a Tanzanian law professor on his way to the same meeting I would be attending - how this stretch of road, my first impression of Africa, is branded in my memory together with coffins. Recalling the devastation that poverty and disease had wrought on the country in the mid-1990s, he sympathized. But he reminded me that Uganda had worked hard to slow the impact of the epidemic, and that things are actually much better today. Together, we looked anxiously out the window - not at the emerald green landscape, but at the roadside merchants and their wares. Together, we breathed a sigh of relief when we didn't see any coffins.

Ugandan AIDS advocates continue to work tirelessly to battle the epidemic. For example, Dr. Coutinho has suggested an improvement on the ABC strategy - adding a “D”, for determine and declare, to encourage people to get tested and be open about their status. The international community - including the Bush administration - should continue to rely on evidence, rather than untested strategies motivated by fundamentalist ideology. This may be the best way to keep the coffins off the road until we get to V for vaccine, and Z for zero.

* Sara Rakita is a consultant who travels frequently to Africa.

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Lesotho wants to sign up for the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), according to a New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) communique. Lesotho's intention was discussed at a recent meeting of the APRM Panel of Eminent Persons, held in Johannesburg, South Africa. The mechanism, overseen by the panel, monitors a country's progress towards political and economic reform and was put in place earlier this year. Seventeen African countries have signed up so far.

"When they were interrogating me, they kept asking about ‘Zvakwana!’," says activist Gorden Moyo, describing his recent detention by security officials in Zimbabwe. "I told them I don’t know what it’s about.” Moyo is one of several campaigners and opposition party members who have been questioned about this underground pro-democracy movement, whose Shona name means ‘enough’. Also referred to in Ndebele as ‘Sokwanele!’, the organisation has Zimbabwean authorities scratching their heads in exasperation. Its central message is that the 24-year rule of President Robert Mugabe should come to an end.

Former president Frederick Chiluba has asked German ambassador to Zambia Erich Kristof to leave him alone and stop talking about his corruption court case. Speaking through his deputy administrative secretary Emmanuel Mwamba, Chiluba said the Zambian government should censure Ambassador Kristof for commenting on his case including the disappearance of former intelligence chief Xavier Chungu and former Zambia's ambassador to the United States Attan Shansonga. He said he was worried by Ambassador Kristof's comments. "Their comments are undermining justice," Chiluba said. "That shows that they (diplomats) are controlling and determining both the pace and outcome of the trials."

Zimbabwe Finance Minister Chris Kuruneri, who has been detained for almost three weeks on charges of violating foreign exchange and citizenship regulations, was denied bail in the Zimbabwe High Court this week. Justice Ben Hlatshwayo ruled that Kuruneri was likely to abscond if given bail as he had "family connections, friends, and abundant means of survival outside the country".

An appeal by former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni against a four-year prison sentence for fraud was postponed in the Pretoria High Court to July. Yengeni sought the delay to enable him to obtain a full copy of the record of his trial on charges related to his acceptance of a near 50% discount on a luxury 4X4 Mercedes Benz.

A debt relief program for the world's poorest countries is facing a $7.8 billion funding shortfall, mostly from the World Bank, a U.S. Congressional watchdog told lawmakers on Tuesday. And the gap may be even higher because data for Laos, Liberia, Somalia and Sudan are unreliable, the General Accounting Office said. "The three key (development banks) we analyzed face a funding shortfall of $7.8 billion," Thomas Melito, acting director of International Affairs and Trade at the GAO told a House of Representatives Financial Service Subcommittee.

The Government was expected to announce this week the retrenchment of 20,000 civil servants, the East African Standard has learnt. Donor sources said the Government will reveal the number of civil servants to be laid off, a process expected to be carried out in three phases. It is understood that the Government has been in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on its promises on civil service reform, which it made to donors and which it has made little progress in fulfilling.