Amid a rising number of deaths among boatpeople making dangerous voyages across the Mediterranean Sea, the Gulf of Aden and other stretches of water, the UN refugee agency and the International Maritime Organization (IMO) are calling for more action to prevent this humanitarian tragedy.

The UN refugee agency has begun the resettlement in the United States of some 700 ethnic Kunama refugees from Eritrea, flying out a first group of 29 from Addis Ababa after years of exile in northern Ethiopia. The refugees left Shimelba camp earlier this week and flew out from the Ethiopian capital on Wednesday evening after a pre-departure briefing by staff of the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which is handling the logistics of the resettlement operation.

The Somali government on Thursday carried out its first formal executions, killing two suspected Islamist insurgents convicted of murdering a government official just three days earlier. But even as the administration meted out capital punishment for the first time since its formation in late 2004, rebels kept up a campaign targeting government officials with a trio of blasts.

A Belgian court sentenced a former Rwandan army major to 20 years in prison on Thursday for the murder of 10 Belgian peacekeepers and an undetermined number of Rwandan civilians at the start of the 1994 genocide. Bernard Ntuyahaga was earlier acquitted on two other charges of involvement in the murder of then Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and killing civilians in the Butare district.

The Peacebuilding/Governance Program Manager will provide leadership and technical support to implement and grow the CRS / Sudan Peacebuilding program, including activities in the areas of Grassroots Peacebuilding, Advocacy and Global Solidarity, and Civil Society and Good Governance. The Peacebuilding/Governance Program Manager will also supervise the Peacebuilding project officer and provide guidance for CRS / Sudan’s Capacity Building and Partnership activities.

Transcend Peace University announces a series of online Expert Courses, specifically designed to address middle to senior level experts and mediators, who, due to their on-field or in-country assignments, can not travel to participate in intensive training programs. The training process will be constructed basing on groups of peace practitioners from various countries, joined together for 10-12 weeks in an online community, guided and advised by experienced TRANSCEND Course Directors, internationally recognized Experts and Global Consultant in peace-building and war transitions.

Please find a generous list of opportunities in different organizations that are involved with peacebuilding initiatives around the world.

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has condemned continuing attacks on schoolchildren and educational facilities in conflict zones around the world, citing recent incidents in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. “Attacks on schoolchildren are unacceptable,” said UNICEF Executive Director Ann M. Veneman. “Schools must be safe environments for children to learn and thrive.”

Climate change may be one of the causes of the Darfur crisis, but to consider it the single root cause would obscure other important factors and could hamper the search for solutions, climate and conflict analysts say. A number of commentators, journalists and analysts have recently focused on competition for natural resources, increasingly scarce due to global warming, as the trigger of the conflict in western Sudan.

A report released recently by the University of California, Berkeley, and Tulane University provides hard data on forced conscription into the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group accused of kidnapping tens of thousands of women and children to serve as soldiers, servants or sex slaves in northern Uganda.

Three weeks ago, when the trial of former Liberian president Charles Taylor opened in The Hague, the accused made headlines for failing to appear in court. In his former capacity as the president of Liberia, Taylor is accused of having presided over a criminal network of armed combatants, whose crimes in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2002 amounted to violations of international humanitarian and human rights law.

The peace agreement signed in Ouagadougou by Laurent Gbagbo and Guillaume Soro on 4 March 2007 is a major turning point in resolving Côte d’Ivoire’s armed conflict but is only a first step in the right direction. It is now essential that all Ivorians who want long-term peace work together to ensure the transitional government effectively delivers identity documents to all citizens, collects all weapons still held by militias, embarks on comprehensive security sector reform and provides a credible election process, says a new report by the International Crisis Group.

Joseph Yav argues that poverty alleviation requires a holistic approach with cooperation and collaboration between all stakeholders including governments.

In light of the enormous challenges facing the global community to eradicate poverty, the international development community in 2000 adopted specific targets for poverty reduction, now known as the MDGs. The eight MDGs seek to achieve a number of goals: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; fight HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases; increase environmental sustainability; and forge a global partnership for development. The overarching goal is to halve income poverty worldwide by 2015.

Despite the commitments contained in the MDGs, poverty and hunger is on the increase resulting in an ever-growing disparity between rich and poor, between and within nations. Africa exemplifies these particular challenges: the challenge of peace, the struggle against poverty and the struggle for development. It is not enough merely to recognise the fact that there are problems and challenges. The bigger issue is what can be done to respond to all of these challenges.

As many critiques have noted, among the shortcomings of the MDGs, it is always emphasized their insufficient coverage of human rights, gender and employment issues. This paper will address a shared commitment to promoting the interconnected goals of development, peace and security, and respect for human rights.

Human rights and poverty

Despite the international mandate for a human rights approach to poverty eradication, such an approach, though based on venerable antecedents, has tended to be neglected in justifications for the eradication of poverty.

From the human rights point of view, the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can be achieved only if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his or her economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his or her civil and political rights. In this regard, article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights stipulates that:

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, … or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

Therefore, the eradication of widespread poverty, including its most persistent forms, and the full enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights and civil and political rights remain interrelated goals. Human rights may not only be used as an approach to attaining the goods entailed in the MDGs. They are entailed in the goals set by the MDGs themselves in so far as they seek the attainment of a certain minimum way of life for people.

Democratic Governance

Democratic governance is central to the achievement of the MDGs, as it provides the ‘enabling environment' for the realisation of the MDGs and, in particular, the elimination of poverty. The critical importance of democratic governance in the developing world was highlighted at the Millennium Summit of 2000, where the world's leaders made a solemn resolution – “[to] spare no effort to promote democracy and strengthen the rule of law, as well as respect for all internationally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to development." A consensus was reached which recognised that improving the quality of democratic institutions and processes, and managing the changing roles of the state and civil society in an increasingly globalised world must underpin national efforts to reduce poverty, sustain the environment, and promote human development.

Since then, more countries than ever before are working to build democratic governance. Their challenge however, is to develop institutions and processes that are more responsive to the needs of ordinary citizens, including the poor. African leaders should develop a greater capacity to deliver basic services to those most in need. CSOs should assist in doing this process.

Links between development, Peace and security

Peace and security are a prerequisite of poverty elimination. In fact, without peace and security there can be no lasting development and poverty reduction. The lack of, and failures in development can be seen as contributing to instability and the eruption of conflict. Experience demonstrates that poverty, hopelessness, inequity and marginalisation are often among the root causes of devastating conflict. In crisis situations, and in societies emerging from conflict, human rights are often violated. International support for governance mechanisms leading to the restoration of the rule of law is important for the protection of human rights.

Development and security are inextricably linked. A more secure world is only possible if poor countries are given a real chance to develop. In one hand, extreme poverty and infectious diseases threaten many people directly, but they also provide a fertile breeding-ground for other threats, including civil conflict. Even people in rich countries will be more secure if their governments help poor countries to defeat poverty and disease by meeting the Millennium Development Goals. If completed, it will half global poverty by 2015. Consequently, the international community should not only view ‘soft’ threats as part of the development agenda but also be an important component of the peace and security agenda.

On the other hand, with the “blood diamond” effect, one can say that "war has become profitable". People, who are making money out of war, have a financial interest to ensure that conflict continues. Such phenomena are not unique to Africa. Conflict prevention and resolution and people centred development therefore demands a striving for good governance, inter alia, respect for human rights and rule of law, promotion of transparency and accountability in government and enhancing of administrative and institutional capacity.

What is needed is a holistic approach to the peace and security agenda. The root causes for conflict – poverty, human rights abuses, lack of democracy – must be tackled. There is a need for enhancing focus on conflict prevention, which includes both sustainable social and economic development to prevent conflicts in the first place and post-conflict efforts to prevent them from reigniting. While it is often more easy to raise money for humanitarian efforts than longer-term development assistance, it could in fact be cheaper to prevent conflict than to pay for the damage done afterwards.

Conflict after conflict demonstrates the importance of good governance and viable government institutions. Unequal distribution of economic and political power causes conflict, and governance deficits make conflicts unmanageable. The development cooperation should now consciously gear towards contributing to peace building and conflict prevention.

Conclusion

Alleviating poverty is too daunting a task to be just left to government. It needs an integrated and holistic approach of all stakeholders to harmonise their activities at national and State levels for all the peoples of the world. In developing countries, implementation of the Millennium Goals must focus on mobilizing domestic resources, prioritising budget expenditure on the MDGs, and strengthening human rights, democracy and good governance as specified in the Millennium Declaration

We need to link the agenda of development, human rights and extreme poverty, as well as efforts to empower people living in poverty to participate in decision-making processes on policies that affect them.. We cannot have security amidst starvation and we cannot build peace without alleviating poverty and we cannot have either without a better environment. Only a peaceful society can work its way up to creating the institutions ripe for development and free itself from injustices and human rights abuses.

Suffice is to say, every year around the world millions of families' lives and livelihoods are endangered, and entire communities are displaced due to conflicts - over resources like land, water or oil, between ethnic or religious groups, or over political and social control. In many places, addressing issues of hunger, poverty, and suffering cannot begin until conflicts are resolved and peace established. At the same time, peace building efforts must be tied to the very causes of conflict itself – inequities – and result in improvements in people's everyday needs.

* Joseph Yav is a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He works with a network of African research institutes in support of the African peace and security agenda.

* Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

Human trafficking is on the rise in eastern Africa and officials attending a meeting aimed at raising awareness of the problem called for concerted efforts by governments to curb it. "In the east African region, the statistical information is being gathered, but the crime is on the increase," Jeffrey Avina, director for operations at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), told the first regional anti-human trafficking conference in eastern Africa, under way in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, until 22 June.

After a lull of several weeks, the Israeli military have once again begun to arrest Sudanese refugees illegally crossing the Egyptian border into Israel. In the past month the refugees were released onto the streets of Israel's southern towns and cities, where volunteers from charity organisations tried to help, directing them to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

Search for Common Ground's Radio for Peacebuilding, Africa project aims: to help sub-Saharan African radio broadcasters' develop their potential to have a constructive impact on conflicts of all kinds, to build on other successes to share lessons learnt with other radio professionals across the continent.In order to measure properly the impact of the project, we are conducting a baseline, attitudinal survey among sub-Saharan African broadcasters. Throughout the project (2004-2006), we will monitor its impact on the radio professionals -specifically on how it changes what they produce and broadcast, and how they produce it.

ZOA Refugee Care is an international NGO operating in more than 10 countries worldwide. The Peace Building Advisor advises and supports the Head of Programmes of ZOA Ethiopia on all aspects of its Peace Building programme. He may also provide general advisory support to ZOA Ethiopia as requested by the Country Director. Deadline for applications is 1 August 2007.

The lives and well-being of hundreds of thousands of civilians are threatened by a rising tide of violence and lawlessness in Central African Republic (CAR), according to Amnesty International, which called Tuesday for the immediate deployment of U.N. peacekeeping force there.

An eclectic group of 53 refugees, including students, tailors, professional soccer players, musicians, artists and restaurant owners, returned home this week on the first UNHCR-organised voluntary repatriation of Liberians by air from Burkina Faso.

More than 3,500 people have fled the Somali capital Mogadishu this month amid an escalation of violence in the coastal city over the past few weeks. Meanwhile, only 123,000 of the estimated 401,000 civilians who fled the heavy fighting that raged in Mogadishu between February and May have returned to the capital, according to figures compiled by UNHCR and a network of partners.