Agenda Feminist Media is seeking a consultant to explore options for maximising the reach and effectiveness of its journal. The scope of the research includes evaluating possibilities for maximising the efficiency and effectiveness of the journal, as well as costing the different options. Interested parties should send a CV and statement of interest to [email]tanja.bosch@gmail.com The time frame for completion of the project is until end-July. Further information and full TOR can be provided upon request.

It seems government will go ahead with its controversial plans of privatization without employing a holistic, inclusive and participatory approach. The ZCTU believes there is need for genuine social dialogue whereby all stakeholders are consulted before major decisions are made. Social dialogue has been used the world over as a means of decision-making and programme implementation at all levels.

The ECOWAS Community Court in Abuja, Nigeria hearing the case of Musa Saidykhan, Gambian journalist allegedly tortured in custody of the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) will on June 30, 2009 give its ruling on preliminary objection raised by the Gambian government, the defendant in the case. After boycotting the court on two occasions, the Gambian government in a 20-page document called on the Community Court to dismiss Saidykhan’s case because it has no jurisdiction to hear the matter and that the plaintiff had also not exhausted all the local remedies.

Sexual violence is a brutal reality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo: Tens of thousands of women and children were raped in the region last year alone. In a guest editorial, François Grignon of the International Crisis Group urges the West to fight the epidemic before more lives are shattered.

Niger’s media regulatory body, the High Communication Council (CSC), on June 8, 2009 banned all live discussions on the prevailing political situation in the country by privately-owned electronic media outlets. The CSC Chairman, Daouda Diallo, who announced the ban, said it has become necessary as it would prevent what he termed as “risk of media excesses”.

The World Youth Movement for Democracy (www.wymd.org), a youth network of the World Movement for Democracy (www.wmd.org), is pleased to announce the launch of its Global Essay Contest. Fifteen winners (3 in each region: Asia, Central/Eastern Europe & Eurasia, Middle East & North Africa, Latin America & Caribbean, and Sub-Saharan Africa) will be invited to participate in the upcoming 6th Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Jakarta, Indonesia, in April 2010.

The Partnership for Change has written an open letter to the IMF, stating that the latter's odious loans to Kenya are impoverishing the country through collusion with corrupt agents.

This year’s eighth Annual Lecture welcomes an exciting panel to discuss the topic "Foreign Aid: Dead Right or Dead Wrong?":
* Dambisa Moyo is the author of Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way for Africa.
* Yash Tandon published Ending Aid Dependence at the same time last year.
* George Biddle is the IRC's executive vice president.*

Global financial pressures have added new urgency to the well-established debate around issues of aid effectiveness, issues which are particularly critical in the contexts where the IRC works – contexts of extreme vulnerability, war and displacement. What is the appropriate international economic response to these populations in dire need?

Across the continent, African women play a significant role in improving the quality of life of their communities. From grandmothers to young girls, there are women in each country on the continent whose achievements have been stellar, whether in a small community, in their nation or across the continent. Yet many of these women and their achievements go unrecognised and unlauded. This initiative seeks to change this by highlighting the work of African women who are making a difference in the fields of agriculture, business and science and technology either at local or national level.

The 13th Summit of the COMESA Heads of State and Government which kicked off on Sunday 8th June launched with pomp the COMESA Customs Union in Victoria Falls - Zimbabwe. Zimbabwean President Robert G Mugabe who assumed the Chairmanship of the COMESA Authority for the next one year presided over the launch Ceremony.

The 'Seven Portuguese Wonders' around the world, selected in a government-supported contest, include sites that played a key role in facilitating the slave trade without making mention of their history. The public are invited to sign a petition denouncing the omission of the role these sites had in the Atlantic slave trade out of respect to the memory of millions of victims of the trade.

South Africa has been framed as a villain for the woes of the Southern African Customs Union (Sacu ) in the wake of the fallout from the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) between the European Union (EU) and the Southern African Development Community. Reports have cast SA as the bullyboy and have attacked its position as obstructionist. The implication is that it is only the EU that has Africa’s best interests at heart. Nothing can be further from the truth.

Baba Leigh, Imam of Kanifing and outspoken critic of the President Yahya Jammeh’s administration was on May 22, 2009 warned by President Jammeh to stop criticizing the administration or risk going to prison. Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) sources reported that President Jammeh, who was addressing a rally in Kanifing castigated Leigh and accused him of misleading his followers and using his position as a religious leader to engage in money making ventures.

AFRODAD a pan-African regional organization providing research-based advocacy in issues of Debt, Development Aid and Economic Governance is seeking to recruit an Executive Director to be based in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Executive Director will be accountable to the Board of Directors for planning and implementation of all program activities; sourcing and management of human and financial resources and will among other things represent the organization at high-level meetings.

Implementing a policy of routine opt-out HIV testing led to the diagnosis of 3000 HIV infections in children admitted to hospital in Lusaka over an 18-month period, investigators report in a study published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours, friends, and family members across Rwanda. Nine years later the killers came home from prison to live side by side again with their victims. The complexities of this homecoming are explored in director Anne Aghion’s emotionally powerful film "My Neighbour, My Killer", where, amongst the green hills and tiled roofs of the village of Gafunda, the memories of those horrors resurface as widows shell beans and peel vegetables.

Amnesty International's report, released in late May, covers economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, stressing the ways in which the global economic recession has exacerbated previously existing patterns of human rights violations. As noted in the launch speech by Amnesty Secretary-General Irene Khan, this marks a new level of emphasis on economic rights for the organization, and is the basis of Amnesty's new global campaign "Demand Dignity."

The "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) scheme, which has sent over a million US$100 laptops to children in the developing world, has been criticised by researchers who found that, unless they are introduced with care, they become little more than distracting toys in the classroom. The study, conducted in Ethiopia, revealed that students wanted more content on the laptops and teachers were not adequately trained on how to make use of them.

Talk openly about rape. That is the gist of a new campaign in Cameroon, where according to a study an estimated 432,000 women and girls have been raped in the past 20 years. Some 200 rape survivors gathered on 28 May in the capital Yaoundé, several of the women and girls telling their stories during the campaign’s opening ceremony.

AU Monitor