A new Eldis key issues page examines the delivery of education in states that can be described as "fragile". This page aims to provide a starting point for discussion on education in fragile states, and specifically provides literature on service delivery and aid effectiveness in fragile states, looks at why donors should focus investment on education in fragile states, and examines how this should be done.

In this paper, the author compares the context, themes and outcomes of the two United Nations conferences, held within six months of each other in 1995: the World Summit on Social Development at Copenhagen and the Fourth World Conference on Women at Beijing. The author finds that Copenhagen set the scene for the aid system’s over-arching policy instrument (the PRSP) while Beijing became invisible to the mainstream. Could it have been otherwise? Can the gender equality agenda still provide an opening to different ways of thinking about economy, society and politics that would allow international aid to support transformative processes for social justice?

In May 2003, a group of representatives of donor organisations agreed to undertake a collaborative evaluation process focusing on the theme of support to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). This synthesis report is based on 17 reports covering operations in ten countries: Angola, Somalia, Indonesia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Colombia, Liberia, Eritrea, and Sudan. Seven critical issues are identified: the rights of IDPs, the protection deficit, donor policy on IDPs, the categorisation of IDPs, needs assessments, coordination and the collaborative response, and when the need for assistance ends.

The Globalisation Studies Network (GSN), an association of over 100 institutions from nearly 50 countries around the world united by a shared preoccupation to promote a better understanding of the processes and structures of globalization, is pleased to announce its second international conference which is scheduled to take place in Dakar, Senegal, from 29 to 31 August 2005, and to invite abstracts and panel proposals from those wishing to be part of the conference.

Transparency International (TI) invites individuals and organisations to submit nominations for the 2005 Integrity Awards. The annual awards recognise the courage and determination of individuals and organisations fighting corruption around the world. The winners of the Awards are a source of inspiration because their actions echo a common message: corruption is surmountable.

It is important to question a few realities as all 53 of Africa's countries search for Universal Primary Education (UPE) by 2015 and ask why it will likely be closer to 2050 before this target is achieved. The goal is critical not only for people to achieve the dignity and equality that Nelson Mandela so eloquently advocates and for the path away from poverty that the Millennium Goals seek to achieve, but also for the radical transformation envisaged in the New Africa.  The latest February-May At Issue Ezine produced by Africa Files deals with education in Africa and is available for reading from their website.

Hundreds of thousands of activists, in 110 countries, are gearing up for the Global Action Week for Education. Across the world, children and campaigners are excitedly making model 'friends' in preparation for taking part in the 'Send my Friend to School' global action. Each one of these 'friends' represents a person missing an education. During the Global Action Week, from April 24-30, we will be confronting politicians throughout the world with millions of these 'friends'.

Jointly with its Global Unions partners (Global Union Federations and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD), the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) released a statement which called on finance ministers meeting at the spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to use the opportunity of the meetings to adopt an expanded debt relief initiative for low-income indebted countries and other measures that would provide additional resources to developing countries for achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, as part of the ICFTU's participation in the Global Call to Action against Poverty (GCAP).

The Global Fund's board is meeting April 21-22 in Geneva. Activists are demanding that the Global Fund do more to make sure that life threatening delays in disbursement of Global Fund money are corrected. We are also concerned that not enough Global Fund money is focused on treatment scale up programs, despite the fact that addressing the crisis in lack of access to HIV treatment was the main reason the Global Fund was created. Please send your organizational endorsements to Asia Russell (asia@healthgap.org).

The dates April 10-16 mark a Global Week of Action where organisations, networks and movements take part in a worldwide mobilization aimed at challenging the free trade myth. In Washington DC protestors will take to the streets to mark meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund on April 16 and 17. Pambazuka News interviewed NJOKI NJEHU, one of the organizers of the protests and director of 50 Years Is Enough Network, about the key demands the protestors are making, building links in the struggle against neo-liberalism and what the appointment of Paul Wolfowitcz as head of the World Bank means for global civil society. Njehu concludes: “We must absolutely recognize every day as the first day of the rest of our lives in struggle.”

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What will the people gathered in Washington DC be protesting about on April 16 and 17? What are their key demands? How many are expected?

NJOKI NJEHU : The people that will be gathering this weekend are part of long-standing movements that have demanded accountability, democratic practice, and transparency from the institutions. The four key demands articulated by the Mobilization for Global Justice are:
1) Open all World Bank and IMF meetings to the media and the public.
2) Cancel all impoverished country debt to the World Bank and IMF, using the institutions' own resources.
3) End all World Bank and IMF policies that hinder people's access to food, clean water, shelter, health care, education, and right to organize. (Such "structural adjustment" policies include user fees, privatization, and so-called economic austerity programs).
4) Stop all World Bank support for socially and environmentally destructive projects such as oil, gas, and mining activities, and all support for projects such as dams that include forced relocation of people.

In addition, the 50 Years Is Enough Network has broader demands that include reparations for the impact of structural adjustment and loans associated with environmental and social destruction; an end to assistance to the private sector; accountability for those in the institutions who abet corruption; and a process for democratically assessing the need for institutions like the IFIs.

In the U.S., global justice activists and IMF/World Bank campaigners have been energized by the nomination and appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to be the next President of the World Bank. We expect several hundred activists who will demonstrate in the streets, participate in teach-ins and strategy sessions, and as part of the Global Week of Action, call their members of Congress to denounce free trade as embodied by the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), which is currently pending in Congress.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: For many people in Africa these protests may seem like a million miles away – even if they sympathise with the objectives and the message. What are the issues facing protestors in the US that you believe are similar to those facing communities around the world?

NJOKI NJEHU: I hope that African activists and observers do not view the activities this weekend as a million miles away and not related to them. People in the U.S. used to think this way about human rights violations, worker rights violations, and environmental disasters. But that has changed. The emergence of global civil society and globalization from below that allows for people-to-people exchanges and campaigning has taught us what we had forgotten. As has been said before, no one is free when others are oppressed, and so local struggles are global and they link and help people make common cause across countries, cultures, and the globe.

It is also the case that the ravages of corporate-led globalization and neo-liberal economics have not spared people in the U.S., especially people in communities of color, rural areas, indigenous communities, and immigrants. The tenets of neo-liberalism are being applied in the U.S. and other developed countries, not because governments are forced by the IMF and World Bank, as is the case in Africa, but because many policy- and decision- makers believe in this economic ideology.

The work of the 50 Years Is Enough Network focuses on the World Bank and the IMF, but the key intention is to educate people in the U.S. about what is being done by their government in their name and using their tax dollars. When we talk about water privatization in South Africa and Bolivia, user fees for health and education in Kenya and Tanzania, corporate exploitation in the Niger Delta, or dams in India, Lesotho, and Uganda we find that communities in the U.S. are also fighting the same kinds of things. Furthermore, the lessons learned in this era of economic globalization include the lesson that we cannot win by fighting corporate excesses, environmental devastation, or worker rights violations in one country when those same problems are being faced by communities in another country.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: What needs to be done to build a greater sense of global solidarity against the polices of the World Bank and the IMF?

NJOKI NJEHU: We need to build people to people connections and to really understand what Samora Machel meant when he said: "International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible."   We also need to understand that these institutions are public institutions. They are funded by you and me, the taxpayers of the world and therefore we are the ones who can and must demand accountability and service for the common good, not corporate profits.

Malcolm X talked about the chickens coming home to roost, people in the U.S. and other developed countries have experienced World Bank and IMF-like austerity measures. If we do not drive these institutions out of Africa and defeat their policies around the world, our work will never be done and justice will just be a far-away unattainable dream.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: How deep is the understanding of the effects of neo-liberalism on communities worldwide amongst the kind of audience that will be protesting on April 16 and 17 and the American population at large?

NJOKI NJEHU: They get it. They see the effects of neo-liberalism in their communities and they fight against it. Here in Washington, D.C., otherwise known as the capital of the free world, privatization, corporate welfare, cuts in social programs for the elderly and children and lack of voting representation are everyday realities. In the last three years, we saw the closure of the last public hospital in the city. We see tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy, and just in the last year a huge tax break to bring a baseball team to D.C. while programs for the homeless, youth summer employment programs and health services for the elderly are decimated. These are the experiences of one city, but they are repeated in cities and communities across the U.S. every day. People in the U.S. are experiencing hardship similar to what people in developing countries deal with on a deeper and more frequent basis. Granted that in the U.S. there are provisions and programs to ameliorate the hardships, it is a new phase and new experience for many.

The tragedy is that many do not seem to translate these experiences into activism or political action. Given the results of the last elections, it is also clear that many people do not vote in their economic or class interests. There is much work to be done.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: It really does seem sometimes that every time these meetings come around there is a flurry of press releases, sign-on letters, petitions and protests. Then the meeting takes place following which nothing more is heard. Without being overly cynical, has anything changed over the last few years? Has there been any progress and are these institutions really fixable?

I share the cynicism and the despair that grips us all from time to time. But there is also hope. There are many reasons to be encouraged. I think that the flurry of press releases, sign-on letters, petitions and protests that you refer to is a reason to be hopeful and encouraged. People still believe that there is something that they can do, that they can make a difference. What is not evident is the work and organizing that takes place in the “in-between times”.

Yes, much has changed. We saw victory, albeit short-lived, in Cancun. We see the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) agreement stalled. And even once in a while we see politicians with some backbone. We come to this semi-annual meetings with the G7 discussing “up to 100%” multilateral debt cancellation. Much has changed in the way the U.S. environmental movement and the labor movement deal with environmental and labor rights issues. It is not just about the U.S. environment or U.S. workers anymore; it is about the global environment, and about all workers, union and non-union, documented and un-documented. Small steps, but huge political shifts.

On whether the institutions can really be fixed, it is a different matter altogether. I believe we need to apply our best thinking, strategies and tactics to this question. “Abolish the Bank and the Fund” is a fine slogan, but not much in the way of a policy approach. I think we’ve been limited and have forgotten the age-old African American saying: “the masters’ tools can never destroy the masters’ house”. If our goal is to abolish these institutions, I believe it has to happen in processes outside of the institutions. Self-preservation and perpetuation demand that they do everything they can to thwart an abolitionist agenda.

One of the challenges that we face is that in the post-Iraq war era, multilateralism for multilateralism’s sake is a very attractive policy. The specter of unilateralism ala the George W. Bush style stops many people in their tracks as they begin to contemplate reform of the multilateral system including the United Nations. I am of the view that we need multilateralism but the current version isn’t working from a democratic practice view or from a justice view, but perhaps I’m expecting too much of multilateralism.

We also need to be clear that reform or changes in the voting system of the UN or the IFIs does not mean UN Security Council seats for Germany, Brazil, India, Japan, etc. Nor does it mean a few more voting percentages for Japan, South Africa, etc. in the World Bank and IMF. We do not need to throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water, but we do need to acknowledge the fatally flawed foundation of the current multilateral system. For instance, 140 current members of the World Bank and the IMF were not at the table in 1944 when these institutions were formed. In fact, many of the current member countries did not even exist. As visionary as the founders might have been, they could never have imagined our world today.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: The global response from the social justice community over the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president has been one of despair. The appointment has also raised a number of questions: Will the appointment reinvigorate protests against the WB and IMF by creating links with the anti-war movement? Or could it also mean that people will be less informed about the impact of WB/IMF policies as this is overlooked in favour of a form of character assassination protest?

NJOKI NJEHU: The things you suggest are all possible, but not if we do our education, mobilizing, and organizing work. Wolfowitz’s nomination and appointment were a disaster on many scores. However, he is part of an entrenched system and that is the real problem. If Wolfensohn could not make progress in the opposite direction, as he professed to want to do, perhaps Wolfowitz will have the same kind of experience and the status quo will remain. And the world, especially the poor, will still be in peril.

We must hold Wolfowitz’s feet to the fire and keep the campaigns to delegitimize the World Bank and the IMF going. I was just listening to a nationally syndicated radio program called “Talk of the Nation” which featured Joseph Stiglitz and Washington Post op-ed page columnist Sebastian Mallaby. Mallaby made the argument that the U.S. is the right country to choose the leader of the World Bank, and elsewhere he has argued, as he alluded to today, that the world runs better with the U.S. in charge. What we have to fear about Wolfowitz is that he has these tendencies that assert U.S. exceptionalism, which is not only paternalistic, it is insulting, especially to the large number of countries who are always non-members of the right “G-grouping” of countries.

Wolfowitz is on record supporting the doctrine of odious debt in the context of Iraq. Here we agree with him. Our task will be to continue to push for the logic of odious debt to be extended beyond Iraq. Yes, cancellation of Iraq’s odious debt, but also cancellation of apartheid debt, Somoza’s debt in Nicaragua, Marcos’s debt in the Philippines, Suharto’s debt in Indonesia, Mobutu’s debt in Zaire/DRC, Abacha’s debt in Nigeria, and the debts of military dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere. Our work as global justice activists perhaps became more obvious but not narrower.

PAMBAZUKA NEWS: In the past the annual protests have made effective use of communication tools and the internet to get their message across through email lists, blogs, SMS, video streaming etc etc. How much of a factor is this in the preparation work, are there any innovations planned for this year and what websites would you recommend for people to monitor over the course of the next week?

NJOKI NJEHU: Any activist worth her/his salt must be willing to employ diverse tactics and have a fully-stocked toolkit. When we say that we are not anti-globalization, it is because we recognize that globalization has brought with it technology such as SMS, websites, listservs, etc. that have been invaluable in our struggles. I believe that the most effective way to campaign, mobilize, and educate the public as well as policy- and decision- makers is to use all the tools at our disposal. The list of things that are mentioned are all tools that we will employ this week and into future.

I believe that for every audience we need to speak to, there are different tactics/tools that we must employ. Sometimes a raucous protest gets the message across, sometimes a prayer vigil, sometimes civil disobedience, and sometimes thousands of people. We must learn all the tools in our activist toolkits. But we must also, most importantly, learn to recognize which tools are needed for each job. However, we need to remember that there is no substitute for people telling their own stories, and for people articulating their desire and processes for change. International institutions have failed the people; governments have failed the people; elected officials have failed the people; and even the would-be people’s representatives and spokespersons have failed the people. It is time for the ordinary and extra-ordinary people fighting for justice to come into their own, particularly their struggles, and take their rightful place for the challenges ahead.

This week is just one week in a continuum of struggles that stretch back further than recorded history and will stretch forward into the future as long as exploitation and oppression exist. This week is not important. What is important is what each of us does tomorrow, the day after, the week after, and every other day. We must absolutely recognize every day as the first day of the rest of our lives in struggle.

Some websites to watch this week: www.50years.org, www.ifiwatchnet.org, www.africaaction.org, www.jubileeusa.org, www.april2005.org

A luta continua!

* Interview conducted by email. Please send comments to editor@pambazuka.org

Coming home is what we want for all children who are displaced, separated from their families, abducted or recruited by armed groups or armed forces. Children who have been with armed groups and forces tell us that they look forward to the moment when they can go home with hope and longing. But the idea of coming home can also generate fear, anxiety, and trepidation, especially if you are a girl.

The Global Week of Action for Trade Justice has started. Ten million people will be taking action, thousands of events are planned and hundreds of organisations are involved in 80 different countries across the world. Find out more by clicking on the link below to read an information sheet from the organisers.

The World Summit on the Information Society that Tunisia will host in November 2005 will feature a number of side events in addition to the official summit program, due to take place from November 16-18 at the El Kram exhibition hall, near Tunis. Side events will include debates, workshops and exhibitions, from November 14 -19 at Le Kram exhibition hall. The deadline for the submission of applications for the organization of side events is April 30, 2005. Applications are available online at www.wsistunis2005.tn

Visit Action Aid's Get on Board website and find out about their travels from South Africa to the G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, in July. At the website you can send a postcard or a message to G8 leaders.

Madagascar is a country rich with weird and wonderful wildlife, plants found nowhere else in the world. There are unique orchids, trees, chameleons, frogs - hundreds of species trapped in time - which have evolved in their own peculiar ways. But Malagasy people are among the poorest on earth, the economy desperately needs a boost, and beneath the precious forests are minerals that could make the country wealthy.

This UNESCO publication clarifies the human rights imperative and logical dictates of child development knowledge for eliminating corporal punishment of children. It provides guidance for selecting and applying constructive disciplinary practices that respect the human dignity of children. The publication includes three major sections: The Human Rights Imperative for Ending All Corporal Punishment of Children; Corporal Punishment: Prevalence, Predictors and Implications for Child Behavior and Development; and The Way Forward to Constructive Child Discipline.

The World Movement for Democracy has announced a posting on "What's being done on...human rights networking?' This installment highlights different approaches to networking among organizations promoting and protecting human rights. Whether focusing on a single human rights issue or a broad spectrum of topics, all human rights groups share a common goal: human dignity and respect for rights. To achieve their objectives, they rely on a variety of methods, including networking. Some groups thus form unofficial or official human rights networks to become more effective.

Pambazuka News has received a number of responses to recent articles that we have carried about Zimbabwe. Two of these are reproduced here and below them are responses from two of the authors of recent articles.

Anti-Mugabe, pro-white supremacy
Simon Hinds, London

Why did so many liberals forge an alliance with imperialists when faced with black self-determination in Zimbabwe? Even liberal 'ownership' of human rights was a weapon of attack when black people said 'we want our land back from the descendants of white imperialists'.

According to a list of African-American groups, Zanu-PF has carried out one of the biggest land transfers in history. In the 2002 elections, most observer groups reported that the election represented the will of the people. In February, the Daily Telegraph reported that Tanzania's leader Mkapa exonerated Mugabe of blame for political violence, economic crisis and food shortages.

The Zimbabwe government finally rejected the IMF in the late Nineties after its policies caused unemployment and de-industrialisation. It finally succumbed to pressure for land reform. When regional governments decided militarily intervention was necessary in Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe alongside other countries went in. In areas held by Western-backed armies, diamonds were grabbed and hundreds of thousands were killed.

There was a clear neo-colonial response to this that included funding the Movement for Democratic Change and other opposition groups. The Commonwealth split on Zimbabwe along racial lines, when African regional states rejected the Western demonisation, when Mugabe was hailed as a hero by black South Africans. Amara Essy, secretary-general of the African Union, formerly the Organisation of African Unity, endorsed Mugabe's initial rejection of foreign election observer teams, and the Union has endorsed the recent elections. Yet still, liberals sided with neo-colonialists.

What was liberal opinion? New York Times opinion page editor Anthony Lewis in 5 May 2001, summed it up. He stated: 'The title of worst government on Earth, the most brutal, destructive, lawless...can probably be claimed by Robert Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe'. But this ridiculous exaggeration was echoed by The Guardian, The Independent, Amnesty International and other liberal organizations.

Black people were susceptible to this propaganda, but not entirely. In 2003, the UK black newspaper, The Voice reported that 40 per cent of the black people they questioned regarded Mugabe as a dictator. Yet, 30 per cent regarded him as a strong leader. The majority thought Western interest in Zimbabwe was motivated by racism.

Not all liberal organizations signed up for racist propaganda. On the media web site, Spiked, Barrie Collins, a researcher in African international relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, wrote:

"Since the end of the Cold War, the USA and the UK have got used to a high degree of compliance on the part of African governments - and they are no longer prepared to tolerate those that insist doing things their own way… It is Western meddling in Zimbabwe that is undermining the accountability of the government to its electorate, since it has forced the contestants to respond to an external agenda. This is a far bigger threat to democracy than any of Zanu-PF's bullying tactics." (http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000002D428.htm)

Pressure for land reform in other parts of southern Africa will occur. Will liberals continue to support white supremacy? Around the world, black people have worked with white liberals. Perhaps, black Africans can no longer afford to do this uncritically.

Mugabe, the social justice champ
Kuthula Matshazi, Canada

What kind of social justice do you advocate for in Africa when you denigrate the very man who wants to achieve social justice for the Black people through the land reform? Now are you going to tell us that the election was rigged? Are you sure that you not trying to confuse African people - and the world opinion indeed - that you are neo-colonialists in the making of missionaries of the 18th century colonisation?

MARY NDLOVU replies: Mugabe is a very shrewd and clever man, and it is sad that he has been able to dupe well-intentioned people into thinking that because he is black and because he has undertaken a large land transfer everyone that criticises him is a white racist. Perhaps it is easy for those who have run away from Zimbabwe to Canada or are sitting in London to theorise about the great revolution for social justice that has taken place. In Zimbabwe, one has to face the hard realities. Seizing land from productive farmers to correct an historical injustice may seem just to some. But it does not constitute a successful social revolution unless it is used to redistribute productive capacity to the dispossessed. While some disadvantaged individuals have received land and been able to farm it productively, the vast majority of recipients have been civil servants, members of the armed forces and ZANU PF hacks with other jobs; the award of land has been a means to reward party loyalists and compromise and silence potential critics. The effect of the transfers and the violence which accompanied it has been the complete collapse of commercial agricultural production, the disappearance of tourists, the decline of manufacturing, the disintegration of public services, the spread of hunger and starvation and the impoverishment of all Zimbabweans except the few. These few have established themselves as an exceedingly corrupt parasite class which produces nothing, but lives, through state revenues, off the taxes of the small minority who do work. Hardly the redistribution of wealth and the advent of justice about which so many of us dream.

Surely Zimbabweans would have to be the stupidest people on earth to choose to support a government which turns a once thriving society into chaos and desperation. Even those who received land have voted in large numbers for the MDC, because they are unable to use their land, and only hold it at the pleasure of the local ZANU PF bosses. Why should I vote for someone who is responsible for my unemployment, for my inability to access health care or my children’s education, and promises to get rid of Blair who I have never seen and never heard of and restore something called sovereignty which I cannot eat? Why can some people not accept that when African governments fail to deliver what the people want, opposition parties will gain the support of the people? Yes, most certainly the election was grandly rigged, and the facts and figures are now emerging to prove it.

The fact that Southern African regional governments choose to ignore the agony of ordinary Zimbabweans and endorse failed policies and gross human rights abuses does not mean that it is only whites who condemn elections which are not free and fair, or take a stand against injustice. It was President Obasanjo of Nigeria who blocked Zimbabwe’s return to full membership of the Commonwealth, and the African Union in January 2005 adopted the report of its own African Commission on Human and People’s Rights which roundly condemned human rights abuses in Zimbabwe. This gives us hope that before too long we may be able to move beyond black and white lenses and see reality in its full range of colours. Then we should be in a position to build democracy and create social justice simultaneously.

STEVE KIBBLE responds: Is it really so difficult to move beyond the simple binaries of black/white, imperialist/ anti-colonialist, (neo)liberal/ revolutionary nationalist etc? My article was precisely an attempt to situate the fight for social justice beyond these confining modes of thought into a genuine people-based politics. Furthermore it was based on a genuine solidarity between North and South, expressing the views of those in Zimbabwe who have consistently opposed the structural adjustment programmes instituted by ZANU-PF in the 1990s, the turn to authoritarian nationalism from 2000 as well as the ‘shock and awe’; of a resurgent US seeking to impose its view on the rest of the world. The sad aspect is not only that certain ‘anti-imperialists’ do not recognise this, but how similar authoritarian nationalism and neo-liberalism are in their stunted view of the world, their resort to demonisation, and their lack of engagement with the lives of people as actually lived on this planet.

The world continued to move closer to the universal abolition of capital punishment during 2004, according to a report on the death penalty worldwide by Amnesty International. In Nigeria, the National Study Group on the Death Penalty, set up by President Olusegun Obasanjo in November 2003 published a report recommending the imposition of a moratorium on all executions until the Nigerian justice system could guarantee fair trials and due process. The Federal Government had not imposed a moratorium by the end of the year. In Malawi, President Bakili Muluzi commuted 79 death sentences and there have been no executions in Malawi since 1992. Lastly, in Senegal the Senegalese parliament passed a law abolishing the death penalty for all crimes. The law was adopted by an overwhelming majority. Senegal had not carried out any executions since 1967 but continued to pass death sentences, most recently in July 2004. It is the fourth West African state to abolish the death penalty, following Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Côte d'Ivoire.

The growing tendency to refuse diversity is generating a new kind of discrimination based on a combination of factors including race, religion, ethnicity and culture, the Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Doudou Diène, said in an interview. According to Diène, discrimination exists both in the developed and developing world. In the former it is visible in the increasing rhetoric against migrant and refugee populations and in the latter poverty and conflict were renewing old and negative forms of identity construction.