Vice-President Nevers Mumba has declared that Zambia shall conquer corruption the same way colonialism was conquered. And the US government has committed US $1 million to enhance Zambia's fight against corruption. Officiating at the Transparency International Zambia (TIZ) stakeholders' workshop on a comprehensive anti-corruption strategy, Vice-President Mumba said the hour had come for Zambia to get rid of corruption.

"Who's Next?" is the provocative title of an award-winning TV talk show aimed at promoting safer sex and sexual health among Zimbabwe's urban youth. It stands out from the field of anaemic talk shows as a bold and refreshing approach to get young people discussing the issues. "'Who's Next?' basically centres around issues that affect young people generally and personally, including peer pressure, counselling, HIV and the issue of communication between parents and young people," explained Priscilla Mujuru, programme officer for Adolescent Reproductive Health at UNAIDS, which funds the show through the National AIDS Council.

By failing to act promptly and effectively, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights risks becoming irrelevant, said Irene Khan, Secretary General of Amnesty International, on the eve of the 60th session of the Commission, which begins on 15 March. "The Commission is the pre-eminent human rights body within the UN. It was created to uphold human rights and denounce violations wherever they occur. But instead, time and time again, the Commission has behaved in a highly fractious, self-interested, politically expedient manner, turning a blind eye to human rights violations and allowing perpetrators to operate with impunity," said Ms Khan. "Countries with appalling human rights records, such as Algeria, China, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Zimbabwe, have escaped serious scrutiny, while the scandalous situation of detainees held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has not even made it to the Commission's agenda."

The idea of an International Women's Day first arose at the turn of the century, which in the industrialized world was a period of expansion and turbulence, booming population growth and radical ideologies. International Women's Day has assumed a new global dimension for women in developed and developing countries alike. The growing international women's movement, which has been strengthened by four global United Nations women's conferences, has helped make the commemoration a rallying point for coordinated efforts to demand women's rights and participation in the political and economic process. Increasingly, International Women's Day is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in the history of women's rights.

Police in Zanzibar have begun investigations into the possible link between protestors who clashed with them recently and the main opposition party, the Civic United Front (CUF), a senior police official told IRIN on Monday. "Many protesters were CUF members," Juma Mtumwa Abdallah, the assistant regional police commander, said on Monday. He added that the police were also looking into the protestors' possible links with other anti-Western political parties and terrorist groups.

A senior UN official urged the government of the Central African Republic on Tuesday to reconsider its objection to a cost-sharing proposal in health care, so as to take into account the public's low purchasing power. The official, Ramiro Lopes Da Silva, is the special humanitarian adviser on the CAR for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs(OCHA).

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) should return to its original vision - revised to account for the impact of HIV/AIDS and some other key developments - before it becomes lost in a futile attempt to become an African 'ministry of planning' or worse still an implementer of projects. Can Nepad be rescued? Fortunately it can, if the heads-of-state recall that their role is to put Africa on a new development trajectory, and not to supervise programmes and projects. This is according to an article from Africa Analysis by Dr Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, general secretary of the Pan African Movement and Dr Alex de Waal, of the London-based Justice Africa.

The decision by the UN Security Council to send more than 6,000 peacekeepers to Ivory Coast will not only lift a huge burden off France's shoulders but also has underscored the pressing need for the world body to become involved in the troubled west African region. The Security Council on February 27 unanimously approved a resolution to deploy 6,240 soldiers in Ivory Coast for an initial period of 12 months starting from April 4, but only after a weeks-long standoff between Ivory Coast's former colonial power France and Washington over the issue.

An electoral official in central Nigeria has been shot dead by gunmen, police said on Monday, in the latest suspected politically motivated attack ahead of municipal elections later this month. The death of Philip Olurunipa, head of the Kogi State Electoral Commission, on Sunday triggered a riot in his home town of Kabba where the house of one of the suspected killers was set ablaze, police said.

A former military commander in Zambia was arrested and charged with corruption for allegedly engaging in illegal business deals while serving under former president Frederick Chiluba, an official said on Wednesday. General Wilford Funjika, former commander of the Zambia National Service (ZNS), was arrested for corrupt practices on Tuesday and detained along with a private businessman, Anuj Rathi, said Mpazi Sinyangwe, spokesperson for the taskforce on corruption.

Janine Umuhoza was seven years old in April 1994 when her parents were killed during the genocide in which hundreds of thousands of Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus died. On that fateful day, she bade the usual farewell to her parents before setting off to school. Later, Hutu militiamen marched onto their home compound and killed her mother, father and other members of the family. However, her two younger brothers and two sisters survived. As the eldest, and a lot sooner than she could have imagined, she became mother to her siblings in a country fraught with danger at the time.

President Robert Mugabe's government has terrorised almost every single opposition member of Zimbabwe's parliament with violence, intimidation and jail, according to a new report. A survey of 50 of the Movement for Democratic Change's 59 MPs and of 28 of its parliamentary candidates found that all claimed to have personally experienced human rights abuses in the past three years at the hands of the security services and supporters of the ruling Zanu-PF party.

In the mire that is opposition activism in Zimbabwe, the concepts of protest and mobilisation have been interpreted to mean the same thing. This is the root of the apathy and the general numbness of our society in the face of tyranny. Whereas mobilisation refers to preparing the people for struggle, protest is just a noisy statement of disapproval or disagreement. It is easy to be an activist and to protest. In fact any fool can protest and wear the jacket of an activist - more so if there is financial reward. But to mislead an entire nation that protest is mobilisation is a treasonous transgression, says this commentary.

The government has announced that parliamentary elections would be held before March next year. The Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP) fears that the main political parties will concentrate their energies on winning the elections and shift their attention from addressing the deepening political and socio-economic crisis. "The same conditions of impoverishment and political tension will be carried over to the period after the election. There is need to focus on the national crisis and not elections because the crisis of governance is deepening. ZLP's considered view is that without a new electoral framework and a new democratic constitution, the elections will be far from being free and fair."

"Time is on our side." (Pambazuka News 146: Zimbabwe: Four years after the plunge) WRONG. Every minute of procrastination allows Mugabe's regime to further entrench and more and more people suffer. A whole generation of youth are being indoctrinated through rape and torture.

A permanent United Nations counterterrorism body must have a strong human rights component, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch said on the eve of an open debate of the Security Council on the establishment of such a mechanism. The Security Council is currently discussing a draft resolution that would establish a Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter. This new body, operating under the policy guidance from the Council would monitor the implementation of counterterrorist measures by states worldwide.

Africa remains caught in a "commodity trap," says a new report on trade performance and commodity dependence from the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Africa is less competitive than in previous decades even in traditional primary commodities, its trade position undermined both by competition from Asia and Latin America and by agricultural subsidies in rich countries. Market solutions have aggravated this structural vulnerability, and it is time to reconsider a greater role for both national and international state actions, UNCTAD concludes. A recent issue of AfricaFocus Bulletin contains a press release from UNCTAD and brief excerpts from the 84-page report.

One of the questions raised in the ongoing debate in Pambazuka News on the International Criminal Court (ICC) is whether or not it is cogent to argue that ending impunity does not necessarily mean that prosecutions will have to be pursued in every case (Pambazuka News 144: Africa and the ICC: Is Africa ready and waiting?) It was suggested that there could be cases in Africa where it might genuinely be expedient or a requirement of justice that amnesties rather than prosecutions are pursued. The ensuing deliberations have turned the spotlight on the meaning of justice and the role of amnesties. According to the ICC statute, it looks like there is not only the possibility but also absolute necessity for the Prosecutor to consider other options besides prosecutions.

ICC was established to bring to justice perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community. The ICC statute affirms that ‘the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole must not go unpunished’. Toward that goal, the Prosecutor is empowered to receive information on crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court, examine them and conduct investigations and prosecutions. In deciding whether to initiate an investigation, the Prosecutor is enjoined to take into account ‘the gravity of the crime and the interests of victims’. Having done that, he or she is obligated to consider whether ‘there are nonetheless substantial reasons to believe that an investigation would not serve the interests of justice’. There are two all-important points to note here. Firstly, the Prosecutor must consider whether an investigation may not serve the interests of justice, and secondly, a determination not to proceed may be based solely on this consideration. Even if the Prosecutor were to initiate an investigation, the ICC statute says that, upon investigation, he or she can conclude that there is not a sufficient basis for a prosecution because ‘prosecution is not in the interests of justice’. This suggests that although the general approach is that ICC crimes must not go unpunished, there might be exceptions.

The fact that the ICC statute may not envisage investigation, prosecution and punishment in every situation where it is apparent that ICC crimes have been committed could mean that other sorts of justice may be resorted to. And so justice forms that generally aim to move away from criminal verdicts and toward reconciliation come into play. Justice according to ICC is largely built around prosecution and retributive justice. But one can capture certain other nuances of ICC justice that transcend the traditional retributive understanding. The key factor in tackling the problem is to determine the circumstances under which an investigation or prosecution might not be in the interests of justice as conceived in the ICC statute.

Some are worried that alternative remedies would open the floodgates to many perpetrators. Such a possibility must be slight because the bottom-line is that decisions must be based on the interests of justice. Thus, whilst in principle some ICC crimes can go unpunished, in practice it would be extremely difficult to predict which circumstances would make an investigation or prosecution incompatible with the interests of justice. For that reason, it can be argued that one is not opening a Pandora’s box when one suggests that amnesties might be worth considering in certain special cases.

Whether or not it would be in the interests of justice not to pursue investigations or prosecutions in a given situation is largely a question of fact rather than law. It is for the Court to establish the justifiable facts of the matter. In this regard, the ICC statute guidelines say the Prosecutor should take into ‘account all the circumstances, including the gravity of the crime, the interests of victims and the age or infirmity of the alleged perpetrator, and his or her role in the alleged crime’. This appears to suggest that the views of the affected population are crucial in the determination of decisions relating to initiating investigations or prosecutions. There could be cases, for instance, where amnesty might be acceptable if it does not deny effective remedy to the victim. However, there is need to consider how the impunity gap can be reduced in light of the possibility that there could be situations where ICC investigations would not serve the interests of justice.

Namibia, close on South Africa's heals, has entered the realm of compulsory land appropriation to speed the distribution of agricultural land to small farmers and to the poor. To use law (a blunt instrument) and arbitrary measures is unnecessary and dangerous. It is the result of policy failure that should be corrected. In South Africa a new economic reform movement, proposes a Land Tax and the Community Investment Programme that, together, provide the land market and the community wherewithal for the small farmer and the poor to enter the land market and to successfully buy additional land for themselves.

Politics and arbitrary actions should not be part of any market operation. Rather, the state can influence a market's general working and it can act to assist certain groups to enter a market on fair or even favourable terms. The Land Tax, only on land and not on improvements, will force under-used, unused and land held for speculation onto the market. It will not punish or inhibit development. The former will swell the supply of land entering the market and so act to lower its price.

Small farmers and poor rural residents need a programme to help them to gain organisation, investment and resource management skills as the prelude to their deciding that it is time they expanded their land base and entered the market to buy land. The Community Investment Programme provides annual Investment Rights to all adults who organise, register Community Development Associations and set up the management conditions needed to invest in and to care for land and other productive resources. Most poor communities can turn a hopeless village into a dynamic investment body because, being poor, they have abundant labour to invest which commercial farmers do not have (see under Ownership in the web page for explanation).

Within a few short years, there will be hundreds, if not thousands of communities that find that to invest where they are is no longer their best option. They will then wish to enter the land market to seek land suited to their ambitions - maybe for just some of the families - near a market, on certain soils or enjoying particular crop conditions. These reform communities will find that, thanks to the Land Tax, there is land to buy at prices they can afford. Government's role is to support, to 'get policy' right and to stand back and 'to see the wood for the trees' so as to improve policy as citizens make their own business decisions. A quiet, optimising, production maintaining agricultural revolution is possible on behalf the small and the poor. But not if government uses arbitrary measures and the blunt instrument of the law to fix its policy and programme failures.

* See the Land and Land Rights section of Pambazuka News for more coverage of this issue.

Swaziland's banned political opposition parties have slammed the indefinite postponement of the opening of parliament, saying it showed that the kingdom's highest democratically elected body had no real power. "This 'postponement' is actually a suspension of the legislative branch of government. Parliament used to be a rubber stamp for palace policy, but now it has ceased to exist," an official of the People's Democratic Movement told IRIN.