Military aid to Uganda should be tied to human rights performance in order to stem numerous human rights violations by both the military and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), says Human Rights Watch (HRW). 'It will be good for governments that give Uganda military aid of any kind, especially the United States, to tie such aid to human rights performance,' said Jemera Rone of HRW.

Under the direct supervision of the UNIFEM Program Coordinator for North Africa, based in Rabat, Morocco and in close consultation with the Morocco Ministry of Finance and Privatisation, the Project Manager will manage the Morocco Component of the Global Gender Responsive Budgeting Programme, Phase II.

The EU has pledged to increase its aid to Africa by $10bn (£6bn) to $30bn (£17bn) in the next five years, BBC News reports. The move comes after talks between the head of the EU's executive branch with his counterpart from the African Union in Brussels. The EU's new aid strategy would make Africa its top priority. However, it depends on EU leaders being able to agree their next long-term budget - something they have so far been unable to do.

The revenues paid by companies in the extractive industries sector are an important source of income for many developing countries. A lack of transparency in the disclosure of these revenues persists, however, preventing real progress in combating corruption, improving governance and ultimately reducing poverty. The International Accounting Standards Board has initiated a process that will lead to the definition of new disclosure standards for the industry. A report by the Publish What You Pay Coalition highlights why such standards should require upstream extractive industry operators to disclose revenue payments on a country-by-country basis.

Trade union representatives from the clothing, textiles, footwear and leather sector from Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Lesotho, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and South Africa met in Cape Town on the 10th and 11th of October to discuss the effects of the Multi-fibre Arrangement (MFA) phase out and its effect on the future of the African textiles, clothing and leather industries. The meeting was facilitated by the International Textile Garment & Leather Workers' Federation's Africa Region (ITGLWF-Africa). The representatives concluded that the African continent has lost more than 250 000 jobs over the past few years, resulting in more than a million African family-members having lost the stable source of their livelihood.

"Blogs get people excited. Or else they disturb and worry them. Some people distrust them. Others see them as the vanguard of a new information revolution. Because they allow and encourage ordinary people to speak up, they're tremendous tools of freedom of expression. Bloggers are often the only real journalists in countries where the mainstream media is censored or under pressure. Only they provide independent news, at the risk of displeasing the government and sometimes courting arrest." Reporters without Borders has released a handbook for Bloggers and cyber-dissidents, which is available from the link provided.

Who should have control of the Internet? www.theregister.co.uk has released two podcasts
that deal with the power struggle over who should have control of the internet. Part one covers the shock announcement by the EU for a new body to run the Internet. Part two reflects on why others want US control removed.

The fifth annual MIT Technology Review Emerging Technology Conference kicked off with a presentation from Nicholas Negroponte of the MIT Media Lab. Negroponte discussed his $100 laptop initiative, in which he is working to produce a low-cost laptop for mass distribution. But www.knowprose.com says the initiative is complete hype: "We wouldn't want to shake things up at all with open hardware. Oh no, that would shift power structures. That's what's been holding back the Simputer and similar initiatives."

1. Five years after the first international South-North consultation on debt was held in Dakar, Senegal, representatives from 51 countries convened the second, 'Resistance and Alternatives to Debt Domination', from 28 to 30 September 2005 in Havana, Cuba. We marked the 20th anniversary of the historic Havana meetings that focused the world's attention on the true nature of the debt crisis and strengthened the resistance to the payment of enslaving debt.

2. We, Southern and Northern people's movements and organizations, agree to work together to promote international recognition of the peoples and countries of the South as social, ecological, cultural and financial creditors of the North. We demand that Northern governments recognize these debts, caused by policies of plunder in violation of human rights, including the right to sovereignty and self-determination.

Africa's adoption of the social forum movement continues to deepen with the upcoming second edition of the Southern African Social Forum (SASF) to be held from 13-15 October in Harare, Zimbabwe. This year's theme 'People's Resistance to Neo-Liberalism' will bring together thousands from community-based groups, social movements and civil society organisations. The gathering acts as a preparation event for the African Social Forum to be held later this year and the World Social Forum (WSF) to be held early next year. For the first time, Africa is slated to host the WSF in 2007, Nairobi, Kenya. The Southern African Social Forum (SASF) is a continuation of the Africa Social Forum, (ASF) that takes place annually, since Bamako (2002), as a prelude to the WSF that was initiated in Port Alegre (Brazil) in 2001. The WSF annual event is deliberately organized to coincide with the World Economic Forum (Davos). The timing is meant to signify civil society opposition voices to the high-level one-sided pro globalization and neo liberalism deliberations between the world leaders and international financial institutions.

For Tony Blair, Africa needs saving - nowhere more so than Sierra Leone, limping out of civil war. But China sees Africa as a proving ground for its "go global" policy, sending burgeoning private companies across the world to create new multinational corporations. Nearly 700 Chinese companies operate in 49 African countries. Chinese trade with Africa will reach $30bn next year - triple the level five years ago.

Belgium's world-renowned chocolate could be linked to the murky world of child labour and slavery, according to a leading consumer watchdog. Belgium's Test-Achats warned that it was often unclear where chocolate-makers got their cocoa beans from and whether their suppliers treated their workers ethically.

For a large part of its history, UNHCR became involved in the response to Internal Displacement in an ad-hoc case-by-case manner, focusing especially on those situations where IDPs were mixed with, or in close proximity to refugees or returnees and shared much the same needs and vulnerabilities. It has now agreed to take on global lead responsibility for ensuring adequate and effective responses to situations of conflict-induced internal displacement in the key areas of protection, camp management and emergency shelter. This approach was endorsed on 12 September by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee, the main international humanitarian coordination body, and is expected to be tested in two to three major new emergencies starting in 2006.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres called on the international community to join forces to fight intolerance, preserve the institution of asylum and bridge the gap between humanitarian relief and long-term development so that millions of uprooted people can rebuild their lives without fear of renewed conflict and displacement. Guterres said combating intolerance is perhaps the most difficult challenge faced today by UNHCR and its partners.

By the end of the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society this November in Tunis, the role to be played by civil society in bridging the digital gap and democratising communications will be clearly defined. But many activists are less than optimistic about the eventual outcome. Until now, governments have included civil society and the private sector in discussions on all of the themes addressed, including the most controversial ones, like the issue of Internet governance. Nevertheless, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have doubts about whether this cooperation will be maintained in the future.

Since 2000, the United Nations has launched four global initiatives, all of which focus on education. A new publication explains the common values and ideals of these initiatives. The four initiatives are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Education for All (EFA), the United Nations Literacy Decade and the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. UNESCO is the coordinating agency for three of the four goals. While the initiatives are distinctive in many respects, they have common traits: a concern with the improvement of the quality of life and the promotion of human rights, a commitment to education (especially primary education), and an emphasis on the importance of the participatory role of each human being in education and development.

"At the Monterrey and Millennium summits governments worldwide pledged to achieve a series of important poverty-related goals by 2015. Among other important measures, the industrialized world promised to increase aid flows to enable increased social investments by those countries that are struggling to guarantee a future to their citizens. While it is encouraging that a number of governments have announced increased aid levels in recent years, we are very concerned that many governments are falsely inflating their aid figures by including debt write-offs. Export credit debts alone increase the stated aid total of many countries by one quarter of their real amount."

Bantubonke Biko once said, "it is better to die for an idea that will live than to live for an idea that will die.” In the noughties/zeroes/post-nineties  I believe the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP) is that idea. It is what the Anti-Apartheid Movement was to the eighties. While no-one is calling on anyone to die (since enough people are dying because of poverty anyway), the Call is certainly an idea that should bring all global citizens, across the economic barriers, to action. While there is no doubt that GCAP is a brilliant idea, there definitely have been some questions on whether GCAP as a campaign should continue.
 
Like all great revolutions in recent memory, GCAP is an idea that was articulated by the middle class. Using the very minimalist Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), GCAP activists have pushed so that the upper classes, as personified by the global political and economic leaders, can make the end of poverty a reality. However, GCAP is in danger of becoming just another cool thing for the middle class symbolized by the very cool-looking white band unless and until we get the lower classes and the people affected on a day to day basis by poverty involved. The poor people, do, after all, constitute the majority of the world’s population.
 
It is true that coalitions in countries such as Bangladesh and Kenya have managed to take the MDGs to the people but much more needs to be done globally. Again to give comparison to the Anti-Apartheid Movement, being an anti-apartheid activist at that time meant death, jail time, or constant watch by the Special Branch and therefore a sacrifice of one’s self or freedom if one was in South Africa. To those that were elsewhere it meant being in constant danger of receiving a parcel bomb and boycotting the very tasteful South African wine (and other South African goods)  in order to bring the South African economy to heel. It was the combined actions in South Africa and abroad together that managed to bring about the end of apartheid. Somehow I do not see the same sacrifices being made by GCAP activists and yet I feel that, if GCAP is to be successful and to continue, we need to do the same. It is true that many of us have participated in marches globally but when one marches and places their feet in a  foot spa at the end of the march, they cannot really relate to a woman who has to walk ten miles back and forth to fetch water daily and feed her family. 
 
Granted we live in a different world than the one that existed two decades ago yet it seems that much more was done then and more needs to be done now. We need to sensitise ourselves to poverty through working with the poor and thereafter we can better appreciate this very noble cause that we claim to be working for. For instance my comrades in the north can volunteer an hour at the soup kitchens or be a mentor to some child in a children’s home while we in the south can take time to volunteer with the ground organisations in the tents of Manila, the favelas of Sao Paolo, or the mkhukhus of South Africa. That way, when we tell Bretton Woods institutes to cancel the debt, when we tell them that 1.2 billion people are living on less than a dollar a day, we will be saying it with conviction because we would have walked the talk. An additional bonus is that we will no longer be talking for the poor people. They will be able to talk for themselves when they have been politicized to their poverty. As it is, while we sleep in five-star hotels and ask for an increase in aid on their behalf – they have absolutely no idea what the MDGs are and probably could not care because nobody has cared to communicate with them and show them their importance to the cause.
 
It is up to us, we who are living in these times to become that great generation that is revolutionary enough to ensure that the Global Call to Action against Poverty becomes, “an idea that will live." Together, across the economic barriers, we can!

The adoption of an international treaty against forced disappearances at the United Nations is a great step forward in the fight against this crime, said Amnesty International, the International Commission of Jurists, the International Federation of Human Rights and Human Rights Watch. The four human rights organizations called on all U.N. member states to ensure that the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance is quickly adopted by consensus in the U.N. General Assembly. All countries should ratify the treaty as soon as possible.

The first millenium development goal - to halve global poverty by 2015 - has become an unlikely prospect. If poverty is to be significantly reduced, its terms of definition, measurement, explanation and resolution need to be re-examined and reformulated. The new human rights instruments need to play a vital role in this process. They can have a huge impact on the measurement of poverty, deprivation, exclusion, and development.