Fifty years after the adoption of the UN Convention on Refugees, the decade we live in has seen more of the world's people than ever before seeking refuge from war, persecution or disaster. This special report tells the stories behind the statistics, using first-person testimonies and in-depth interviews to trace the journey from home into exile. It asks why refugees are still fleeing, where they go, and examines how we treat them.

Major global computer companies are now embracing Linux. IBM, for one, is currently running a series of television and online ads proclaiming that the future is open, as in open source computing.

"The survival of the human species depends on biological diversity. Without biodiversity, there would be no trees to produce oxygen, no water catchments and no biodegradation, so that organic waste would just accumulate," says Hamdallah Zedan, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity. "The services provided by biodiversity are inestimable and yet, because they are free, they are often overlooked, to the point where biodiversity is still being lost at an alarming rate." Zedan is in Kuala Lumpur at the Putra World Trade Centre with more than 2,000 delegates from around the world for the opening of the seventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP7).

Just the item security of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos cost nearly 18 million dollars. 2,000 people attended, among which CEOs of the largest global corporations and politicians of more than 100 countries, plus international journalists. In Mumbai, one member of the Swiss delegation interviewed the Chief of Police and learned that, in order to guarantee the safety of more than 100,000 people 700 policemen were on the streets. In Davos, 7,000 policemen, soldiers and agents, including the Swiss Air Forces, armed to their teeth, were mobilize to protect the world’s 2,000 richest and most powerful persons.

The General Assembly of the Global Anti-War Movement has called on the world to fill the streets on March 20 to demand an end to the occupation of Iraq. The General Assembly of the Anti-War Movement convened on January 19 at the World Social Forum (WSF) in Mumbai, India. Meeting for the whole day, the Assembly began with an assessment of the current political situation, followed by reports from various activists involved in various anti-war movements around the world. The Assembly ended with the call for an International Day of Action on March 20, the anniversary of the attack on Iraq. It calls for all movements in all continents to organize mass protests on that day to demand the end of the occupation of Iraq.

Can extreme, violent video games influence people's actions? Can playing a killer make you a killer?

It's been a week of gloom and MyDoom for computer boffins struggling to battle the world's fastest-spreading email worm.

Most refugees spend years living in border zones, in unsatisfactory and unsafe circumstances, with few means to support or educate themselves and their children, and few prospects. Their legal status in the host country is uncertain. They are not granted full asylum, nor are they likely to be resettled in a third country. These protracted refugee situations are characterized by a "care and maintenance" or "warehousing" model of assistance in countries of first asylum, meaning that the basic needs of refugees residing in camps are met. Local integration is a currently neglected, long-term solution that presents an alternative to refugee camps.

International donors gathering at the United Nations this week can best help Liberia by pledging funds to rehabilitate its tens of thousands of child soldiers, Human Rights Watch said in a new report released on Monday. The 43-page report, “How to Fight, How to Kill: Child Soldiers in Liberia,” documents how more than 15,000 child soldiers fought on all sides of the Liberian civil war, and that many units were composed primarily of children. The report argues that establishing a firm peace in the West African nation will depend on the successful reintegration of child soldiers into civil society.

The Lusaka High Court has ruled that it was wrong for former president Frederick Chiluba to award houses bought with public funds to lawyers Vincent Malambo and Eric Silwamba after they represented him in the 1996 presidential election petition. Judge Christopher Mushabati said this in the case in which Malambo and Silwamba were contesting the seizure of their houses by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).

This article on Women’s Human Rights Net explores the legal international advancements concerning the sexual rights of all people, and women's in particular, as well as the threats, challenges and opportunities of these achievements that go hand in hand with cultural progress. It also presents related international mechanisms and instruments and facts and figures that reflect violations to these rights. Various bodies of the United Nations system, among these the UN Commission on Human Rights (CHR), the Reports by the Special Rapporteur on Summary and Arbitrary Executions, the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, have interpreted the right to respect for private life, gender-based discrimination or categories such as "other condition or status" as inclusive of sexual orientation. They have also spoken of the importance of "sexual rights" within the human rights framework.

The governance of the WTO should be improved by developing new rules around decision-making procedures in order to ensure that multilateral negotiations are democratic, accountable and transparent. A paper produced by the International Development Committee (IDC) on the collapse of the WTO talks in Cancun last year further says that the EU and the USA must not expect to set the agenda and that the EU needs to reform its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) "more radically and more quickly".

With its successful democratic transition, South Africa emerged during the second half of the 1990s as a new political and economic factor on the continent. Within this process, Thabo Mbeki's foreign policy approach could be characterised as 'a complicated and sometimes contradictory mixture of ideology, idealism and pragmatism' (Gerrit Olivier in International Affairs, no. 4/2003). South Africa's Finance Minister Trevor Manuel, in a keynote address to the German Foundation for International Development, characterised as early as December 1998 the emerging South African strategy in a revealing way by asserting 'there is a new resilience and a new will to succeed in the African continent. We in South Africa have called it a renaissance, a new vision of political and economic renewal. It takes the global competitive marketplace as point of departure.'

Such understanding gave birth to The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NePAD), for which Thabo Mbeki and his team can be considered to be the midwives (if not fathers – due to the absence of women in the male dominated process). NePAD has managed to obtain - after some diplomatic manoeuvring and a number of strategic compromises - the blessings of the African Union and subsequently the United Nations General Assembly. It can be considered as a blue print for Africa's further socio-economic integration into the dominant global market.

Critical assessments of this strategy, which had been successfully promoted as the development paradigm by a number of African governments with the backing of the G8, have pointed out that its concept blends nicely into the neo-liberal mainstream of globalisation. It is fully in line with the economic strategy of South Africa's present government, seeking closer integration into the dominant structures of the world economy. As Ian Taylor and Philip Nel have warned (in Third World Quarterly, no. 1/2002), the inherent danger of such a strategic move might lie in the message that it serves to legitimise instead of aiming to restructure the existing global power relations, to which African countries have been a victim. They further articulate the suspicion that the driving force behind such a policy might be the 'linkage between globalisation, export-driven trade policies and a nascent transnational elite', and maintain that 'making neoliberalism somehow "work for all", rather than rethinking the overall global trading system, is the key strategy of South Africa particularly and New Africa more generally'.

As if to confirm, South Africa's Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, in his capacity as the Chairman of the Development Committee to the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey on 18 March 2002 stated: 'There is general consensus that globalisation provides an opportunity for countries to improve standards of living, but its not an end in itself … The key challenge is to attempt to manage globalisation in such a way that it does lead to poverty reduction' (http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/ffd253b.htm). But clearly so, NePAD will not be able to replace demands for a fair share in the world's resources by those who have been the victims of domination and exploitation for far too long. At best it might be able to slightly increase the far too tiny piece shared from the global cake with stakeholders in Africa (stakeholders should in this context of course read as shareholders). Instead of a meaningful radical alternative, NePAD seems to be much closer to "more of the same" - namely capitalism as a new form of global apartheid, as Patrick Bond keeps on warning in his recent writings. Along similar lines, Ian Taylor reminds of the active role elites in the South have played in this recent process of capitalist expansion termed (misleadingly) "globalisation" by supporting the new Washington Consensus, resulting in the promotion of the liberalisation of trade and capital movements. It remains to be seen if there is from the point of view of those outside of these elites any substance in the pragmatism, which argues: better this capitalism than no capitalism at all.

Such affirmative response to re-structuring the access to potential resources among others through a "trade as aid" paradigm has been articulated by the South African Foreign Minister Dlamini Zuma in an address on 22 March 2002 to the University of Alberta, in which she had the following to offer: 'To the private sector, the continent of Africa is endowed with the human capital, mineral wealth and unlimited opportunities for trade, investment and partnership as proposed in the NePAD programme. Other countries are taking advantage of this burgeoning market; it is imperative that you are not left behind. The opportunities abound in Africa.' (http://www.dfa.gov.za/docs/unal253a.htm) She did not need to send such a message to the capital at home: the windows of opportunity had already been discovered by the big companies operating from a South African base.

There is massive expansion of South African capital into the continent of hitherto unprecedented dimensions. This is illustrated in a chapter written by John Daniel/Varusha Naidoo and Sanusha Naidu to the "State of the Nation" volume for 2003-2004, published by the Human Sciences Research Council. Its title says it all: "The South Africans have arrived". And an article in the Financial Times (17 November 2003) identifies 'a strategic shift by South African businesses' through companies 'striking out in search of bigger profit margins in their backyard'. Already since 1991 South Africa has been the largest foreign direct investor (with an annual average of $ 1.4 billion) within the continent. Large scale operations are undertaken by a variety of private companies as well as (ex-)parastatals, ranging from Spoornet and Portnet via Eskom and Sasol to South African Airways. MTN and Vodacom compete as operators in the telecommunication business also abroad and invest in the potentially huge markets of Nigeria and the DRC. Financial institutions such as Standard Bank join the "traditional" multinationals in the mining sector, which have a longstanding experience in seeking other profitable opportunities to accumulate further.

Presumably greener pastures are explored and invaded by the local giants in the wholesale and retail business. South African chain stores mushroom all over the continent, South African Breweries owns and controls large parts of the beverage sector elsewhere. This penetration of neighbouring and continental markets goes hand in hand with the particular pro-active role of South Africa in engaging in and addressing international trade issues through a strategic involvement of the ministers for trade and for finance respectively in the current efforts to modify the global economy under the WTO. It is complemented by a parallel intensification of South-South cooperation seeking the consolidation of an alliance between the economically more powerful transitional economies such as South Africa, Brazil, India and China.

The South African economist Stephen Gelb, previously member of Thabo Mbeki's team drafting the original policy documents preceding NePAD, reminded in a recent analysis published with his Edge Institute of the South African president's earlier approach. In a 1997 speech the then-Deputy President referred to the need for South Africa 'to "walk on two legs" in its foreign policy – to cultivate strong relations with the South, as well as strategic relations with the industrialised countries'. Gelb concludes, that NePAD 'is grounded in the full realities of South Africa's relations with the continent, including those beyond its immediate regional neighbourhood in Southern Africa. At the same time it is also grounded in the realities of globalisation, especially the unevenness of its impact amongst and within nations, and reflects an attempt to shift the continent, including South Africa itself, towards a more effective engagement.' More radical critics, who had opted to remain outside of the centres of political and economic power in present South Africa, speak out more directly. This is among others reflected in a number of articles published in the South African Labour Bulletin (no. 3/2003) under the thematic title "NEPAD – a wish to build a dream on". They suggest from a more or less critical distance that NePAD offers the opportunity for South African capital to expand further in Africa by creating new market access. NePAD is hence considered as a lubricant for a South African expansion into other parts of the continent, which under an Apartheid regime until the early 1990s would have not been conceivable. Almost ironically, only a politically correct post-Apartheid government allows the promotion of and greases a process, which is again (though not exclusively) to the benefit of those who already profited from the previous undemocratic system at home and can now enter spaces abroad.

Confronted with this view on occasion of a public NePAD seminar in Stockholm (held on 9 October 2003 on occasion of the 3rd meeting of the Swedish-South African Binational Commission) the South African Vice President Jacob Zuma and the Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad seemed not amused. Their responses suggested that they perceive the South African type of capitalism as better suited for African conditions than other forms of capitalism (or no capitalism at all), and by no means a problem. The suggestion that the (class) struggle continues also in democratic South Africa was brushed aside as another example of the notorious "ultra-leftism". But maybe they should join in with Robert Zimmermann (aká Bob Dylan) to intonate the meanwhile classical refrain "and the times, they are a-changing" – or, for that matter, admit that they (the times) haven't changed as much as one might have thought a couple of years ago that they would.

* This editorial is a revised short version of a presentation to the Stockholm seminar mentioned in the last paragraph. It was based on a considerably longer manuscript on NePAD for a volume on Africa and International Politics, edited by Ulf Engel and Gorm Rye Olsen, to be published during 2004 with Routledge. The author is Research Director at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden and has been Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek from 1992 until 2000.

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Speakers at an event entitled 'Development induced displacement: Perspective and strategies', held at the World Social Forum not only stressed the struggle for the rights of those who are displaced but also called for the shunning of the World Bank. Sharing the experience in his country, the South African delegate Trevor Ngwane said that the peasants and working class never had peace in South Africa ever since gold was discovered. "Only two per cent of land has come back to our hands," he said.

The view most people have of colonialism and imperialism is largely negative. So any charge that a group, individual or government is guilty of them is bound to be resisted strongly by the recipient. Recently, in New York City, a broad charge of eco-imperialism was laid at the feet of the environmental movement. The Congress of Racial Equality (Core ) blames government officials, aid agency bureaucrats as well as sandal-wearing greens for mass disease and death in the poorest countries of the world because they export their most vile regulatory policies.

The image of companies working hard to make the world a better place is too often just that - a carefully manufactured image - says Behind the mask: the real face of corporate social government, a report timed to coincide with the World Economic Forum of business leaders, meeting in Davos in January 2004. The report, by Christian Aid, targets the misuse of ‘corporate social responsibility’ - or CSR - which is now seen as a vital tool in promoting and improving the public image of some of the world's largest companies and corporations. But, according to the case studies in this report - featuring Shell, British American Tobacco and Coca Cola - the rhetoric can also mask corporate activity that makes things worse for the communities in which they work. For example, Shell in Nigeria claims that it has turned over a new leaf there and strives to e ‘good neighbour ', says the report. Yet it still fails to quickly clean up oil spills that ruin villages and runs 'community development' projects that are frequently ineffective and which sometimes even widen the divide in communities living around the oilfields,” says Christian Aid.

Since 9/11, U.S. immigration authorities have become increasingly reluctant to release asylum seekers on parole even if they present no security threat, according to a new report, "In Liberty's Shadow" by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. The report found examples of those who clearly present no threat to national security and have been detained by immigration officials for long periods of time since 9/11, including a pregnant rape survivor from Kenya and a Liberian Pentecostal pastor, persecuted for his opposition to the use of child soldiers.

An essential element in the International Criminal Court's (ICC) efficient operation will be the cooperation of the States, since, orders and requests of the ICC are to be enforced through national jurisdictions. Like all international treaties, the enforcement of the ICC Statute will depend on States political will to implement it. Moreover, lack of universal support will seriously undermine the Court. Whether the ICC will develop as a truly important institution in international law enforcement remains to be seen. This is according to a paper in the latest edition of the Peace and Conflict Monitor that analyses differences in the jurisdiction of the ICC and the jurisdictions of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

The water crisis is an ecological crisis with commercial causes but no market solutions, argues Vandana Shiva, a physicist and activist who directs the Research Foundation for Science, Technology, and Natural Resource Policy. "Higher prices under free-market conditions will not lead to conservation. Given the tremendous economic inequalities, there is a great possibility that the economically powerful will waste water while the poor will pay the price. “The solution to an ecological crisis is ecological, and the solution for injustice is democracy," says Shiva, who argues that man-made water scarcity and ubiquitous water conflicts can be minimized with the recognition of water as a common resource. "The current war against water scarcity can be won only through massive movements for water democracy. People’s movements have shown the possibility of creating abundance out of scarcity."

Vitamin deficiencies are damaging the health of a third of the world's population and holding back the economic development of nearly every country in the Southern Hemisphere, according to a joint report released by UNICEF and the Micronutrient Initiative. The report, released at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, says vitamin and mineral deficiencies have left 2 billion people living below their physical and mental potential and are having devastating consequences on children.