This year’s conference seeks to tackle the broad theme of North-South power relations within development. The aim of this broad approach is to maximise active participation from as diverse an array of presenters as possible. As in previous years we hope to combine postgraduate students presenting their own work in a relaxed environment of research-exchange with a number of speakers from both academic and practitioner backgrounds.

With voluntary repatriation being increasingly promoted by governments, NGOs, and UN agencies as the ultimate solution to refugee's displacement, this paper tries to draw attention to some of the psychological complexities returnees actually encounter. The analysis focuses on the psychological difficulties that follow voluntary repatriation.

European and US officials and industry professionals will meet to discuss ways of tackling the proliferation of racist, xenophobic and anti-semitic materials via the Internet, blamed for a rising tide of hate-crimes. Delegates at the meeting, held at the initiative of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the French government, hope to find ways to trace the authors of racist propaganda, without reining in online freedoms.

On 26 May 2004, High Council for Communications (Haut conseil de la communication, HCC) President Moussa Dago threatened to order the closure of FM Liberté, a community radio station based in the capital, N'Djamena. In a letter to FM Liberté's director, the HCC president criticised the station for airing a commercial, between 19 and 25 May, in which a collective of civil society groups commented on the draft amendment to the country's Constitution. The HCC said the commercial was of a political nature, thereby violating the broadcast law governing private radio stations in the country and opening the door to penalties.

As the impacts of climate change caused by energy use becomes more evident to world leaders, more than 1000 delegates from over 100 countries met in Bonn, Germany, to discuss the role that renewable energy will play in the future of the planet. The participants include heads of state, energy ministers, regional leaders, business, public pressure groups, business and youth groups. The 2004 International Conference for Renewable Energies, Bonn was proposed by German Chancellor Gerhand Schroeder after the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg failed to deliver meaningful targets for the implementation of renewable energy.

Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Monday June 7, 2004
The Guardian

The head of the Zimbabwean central bank is due in Britain later this week to raise funds for the state's depleted coffers, despite a travel ban which prevents Robert Mugabe and other leading politicians entering the country, the Guardian has learned.
Gideon Gono, previously Robert Mugabe's personal banker, is due to address a group of Zimbabweans in Birmingham on Thursday to encourage them to send money home to their families through government channels, according to Zimbabweans invited to the meeting.

More than 100 million children around the world do not have access to primary school education. Out-of-school children in developing countries are especially vulnerable to poverty, hunger, violence, exploitation and disease, contributing to future generations of people with limited life chances and almost certain poverty. Achieving universal primary education - and its close correlation, gender equality in education - is so important that Goal 2 of the Millennium Development Goals is dedicated to it. Yet, without government and donor policies that advocate inclusive primary education, the basic human right to education may not be achieved by 2015.

This paper explores the potential of Higher Learning Institutions (HLIs) as agents of social, institutional and individual change. It argues that while HLIs have a clear role in building the capacity of individuals and organisations to undertake key development initiatives and to practice participation, they are often restricted by internal and external constraints.

In 2004, World Refugee Day will focus on the search for, and implementation of, durable solutions for refugees. Based on the theme, "A place to call home: Rebuilding lives in safety and dignity", UNHCR will look at the challenges and hopes that accompany refugees in their search for a new home through voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement. On 20 June 2004, people all over the world will gather around events and activities to commemorate this day.

The Public Integrity Index is the centrepiece of the Global Integrity report, providing a quantitative scorecard of governance practices in each country. The Public Integrity Index assesses the institutions and practices that citizens can use to hold their governments accountable to the public interest. It does not measure corruption itself but rather the opposite of corruption: the extent of citizens' ability to ensure their government is open and accountable.

Ahead of next week’s "Group of Eight" Summit in Sea Island, Georgia, Africa Action co-hosted a media briefing in Washington, DC entitled "President Bush’s G-8 Summit: Priorities of a Global Minority?" Africa Action also released a statement on "The G-8 and Global Apartheid", describing the G-8 as a form of global minority rule, whose policies and actions have resulted in patterns of gross global inequality that are clearly linked to race and place. At the media briefing, a panel of leading analysts discussed the inadequacy of the G-8 leaders’ policies on key global issues such as HIV/AIDS, poverty and the debt crisis in the world’s poorest countries.

Asylum seekers who launch appeals against being deported will no longer be allowed to remain in the UK while their cases are heard, Appeal Court judges have ruled. Lord Justice Brooke said that currently asylum seekers are usually allowed to stay in the UK when an appeal is launched regardless of its merits.
He said that this should no longer be the case due to the numerous challenges against deportation being made in the Court of Appeal by illegal immigrants.

This publication analyses legislation to determine whether minimum age legislation protects children’s right to education, as established in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Through an updated analysis of the most recent reports presented by States Parties to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the paper considers whether legislation on minimum ages for entry into work and marriage, and at which a child can be considered criminally responsible, are compatible with states’ legislation on children’s access to compulsory education.

In this illuminating book, Frantz Fanon reveals the various ways in which the people of Algeria, during the revolution, changed their centuries-old patterns of culture, or, conversely, embraced certain ancient forms of culture, or , conversely, embraced certain forms of culture long derided by their colonist oppressors as "primitive" in order to destroy their oppressors.

The phenomenon of under-age and youthful soldiers in violent conflicts receives much international attention, and the participation of young people in Sierra Leone’s ten-year conflict was no exception. Here and elsewhere, agencies working with children in demobilisation and reintegration programmes tend to view these young people mainly as victims of forced conscription by exploitive and unscrupulous warlords. This view might be correct for many of the very young child combatants. The older child and youth combatants, who together make up a large part of the total number of combatants in armed factions, do not entirely fit in this picture.

A total of Sh234 billion has already been traced by a firm contracted by the Government to track down loot stashed abroad by key figures in the previous Government. Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Kiraitu Murungi shocked MPs when he said that of the amount, Sh78 billion belonged to just three individuals.

The South African government is failing to disburse grant money from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria to organisations combating the disease "on the ground," Global Fund Executive Director Richard Feachem said this week, adding that the fund may withdraw the country's money as a result, Reuters reports. Speaking to the South African media, Feachem said, "It's intolerable that the money gets stuck in Pretoria and if Pretoria can't move it for any reason, we will simply withdraw it and establish direct relationships with the people actually doing the work."

This paper summarises from Save the Children UK's experience in facilitating children and young people’s participation in PRSP processes, highlighting in particular the experiences of Vietnam and Honduras, and drawing on insights from Lesotho, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the work of a Guyanese NGO. It discusses the effectiveness of a range of approaches, highlights challenges, outlines learning points and raises questions about the impact and cost-benefit trade-off of children and young people’s participation in PRSPs.

Assessing whether or not aid agencies are making a difference in developing countries and whether or not they are well organised in order to achieve this is difficult to answer because of the special nature of development business, organisational and functional differences within the aid community, and lack of terminological consistency. In response, DFID has developed a multilateral effectiveness framework (MEFF), which aims to be evidence-based, objective and to draw primarily on multilaterals’ own information sources. It will take into account differences in the mandates and organisational set-up of each organisation.

Economic analysts have hailed the launching of the JSE's Socially Responsible Investment Index, saying it will bring about an exciting era of corporate responsibility. The index will rate companies on how their operations will affect the country socio-economically and environmentally. Sean de Cleene, a director of the African Institute of Corporate Citizenship, says the index will demand that companies adopt a more holistic and integrated approach to sustainable development.