On average, the morals of IT professionals who work for an organisation with a code of ethics are significantly higher than professionals working for companies that do not have a code. Communication and enforcement of a code of ethics is essential in raising public awareness of the code and in minimizing unethical behaviour.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) aims to protect wild flora and fauna from threats posed by international trade. A paper from the Overseas Development Institute looks at the scope for the parties to CITES to commit themselves to linking conservation initiatives with measures to address rural poverty. It argues that it is time to give teeth to the belated, and still largely rhetorical, recognition that international conservationist goals must go hand in hand with a commitment to poverty reduction.

Delays in the approval of NGO proposals from the first round of grants from The Global Fund To Fight AIDS, TB And Malaria (GFATM) was causing great concern amongst NGO board members due to the fact that it was frustrating efforts by civil society to participate in the grassroots response to HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria. This is according to the first year update for Southern NGOs from the Southern NGO board team.

President Bush has received kudos for his announcement that the administration will propose $15 billion over five years to combat HIV/AIDS abroad. But, says a commentary from Foreign Policy in Focus, many AIDS activists and experts are still waiting to see whether the administration will actually be able to wrestle the money away from a less enthusiastic Republican-controlled House of Representatives. There is also concern that the proposal has slighted multilateral efforts to combat HIV/AIDS - particularly the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria - in favour of a renewed emphasis on bilateral initiatives.

Africans were challenged on Thursday to find ways to end their exclusion from the rewards of globalisation and make the system work for the benefit of the continent's 820 million people. The challenge was issued by international and regional leaders at the opening ceremony of the African Regional Dialogue of the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalisation in Arusha, northern Tanzania. "We cannot wish globalisation away. It is an inevitable part of the development process, and African countries must respond to its challenges to ensure they reap its benefits while minimising its risks," Kingsley Amaoko, executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa, told delegates.

"Africa didn't really shine here," South African finance minister Trevor Manuel told a press conference in snowy Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum last week. "There is a complete dearth of panels on Africa."

Nevertheless, in any five-star hotel gathering of powerbrokers, backslapping is crucial, no matter how artificial the camaraderie. Here is how former Johannesburg Star newspaper editor Peter Sullivan witlessly described the Davos experience for Sunday Independent readers this week:

"The SA contingent worked hard to get investment but partied equally hard: a real 'jol' was had by all with great jiving from Kader Asmal, Trevor Manuel and Alec Irwin (sic), while Bertie Lubner and his wife boogied the night away. We also drank a few bottles of KWV's best red." (Too many, apparently, to subsequently spell trade minister Erwin's name correctly.)

Sullivan regaled with stories of meeting "the beautiful Queen Rania of Jordan", Bill Gates and Bill Clinton. But as one shrewd journalist - not the social-climber Sullivan - reported on January 28, "Among the many snubs Africa received here was the decision by former US president Bill Clinton to cancel his presence at a press conference on Africa today to discuss the New Partnership for Africa's Development. Forum officials said Clinton did not give reasons for not attending."

The ingratitude!

Recall that over the previous eighteen months, Thabo Mbeki, Manuel and Erwin had either hosted, chaired or played a crucial backroom role on globalisation's equivalent of a big-five hunting safari - mainly for the benefit of the Davos club:

* At the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, Mbeki shot down NGOs and African leaders who argued in favour of reparations for slavery/colonialism/apartheid.

* Ten weeks later at the World Trade Organisation's Doha ministerial summit, Erwin split his continent's delegation to prevent a Seattle-style denial of consensus by African trade ministers, in the process promoting multinational corporate interests.

* Then, at the UN's Financing for Development conference in Monterrey, Mexico last March, Manuel was summit co-chair and endorsed the World Bank and IMF "Washington Consensus", relegating debt relief to the status of a dead duck.

* A few months later, at the Kananaskis, Canada Summit of the G8 powers, a grovelling Mbeki departed with a handful of peanuts for his hungry and now badly wounded African elephant - and yet, against all evidence to the contrary, declared that the meeting "signifies the end of the epoch of colonialism and neo-colonialism".

* Finally, at Johannesburg's World Summit on Sustainable Development, Mbeki undermined standard UN democratic procedure, advanced the privatisation of nature, and did virtually nothing to genuinely address the plight of the world's majority.

A little sympathy from the world's ruling class for Pretoria's men in kneepads would surely have been in order - even if just the face-saving sort, for the cameras, as is normally the case.

So let's leave the grey-monied set in favour of a hot, sunny, colourful place crowded with ordinary grassroots activists who took the world's problems rather more seriously last week. In Porto Alegre, Brazil, the World Social Forum attracted 100,000 leftist delegates from across the globe who insisted, "Another World is Possible!"

Here at least, South Africa - especially Soweto campaigners for free electricity, water, medicines, education and housing - shone as brightly as a house reconnected late at night thanks to Operation Khanyisa.

Several times in Porto Alegre, I witnessed the passion with which former Soweto city councillor Trevor Ngwane addressed the crowds, moving the agenda from basic human rights, to continent-wide organising in the year-old Africa Social Forum, to his widely-applauded declaration that the World Bank must now be defunded and decommissioned.

"Weakening the power of Washington is our main challenge," Ngwane announced, "especially now that Bush is in heat after Middle Eastern oil, and because the IMF and World Bank show they will not reform."

Moreover, the World Social Forum has spawned a variety of localised social forums of labour, women, environmentalists, community militants, church activists, and youth. In conjunction with the African Social Forum which met last month in Addis Ababa, Ngwane has been mandated to help get a Southern African Social Forum off the ground.

Decentralisation will help avoid, as Canadian author Naomi Klein warns, domination by the new "big men" of the left: Brazilian president Lula Inacio da Silva and embattled Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Crucial for a coming generation of bottom-up social forums, says Klein, is the chance to replant Porto Alegre's most radical seeds: "The ideas flying around included neighbourhood councils, participatory budgets, stronger city governments, land reform and co-operative farming - a vision of politicised communities that could be networked internationally to resist further assaults from the IMF, the World Bank and World Trade Organisation."

Icy Davos and friendly Porto Alegre will clash again - as elites marginalise Africa through intensified globalisation and as social forums break out across Africa uniting to demand, as Asian intellectual Walden Bello suggests, economic "deglobalisation". Which forum philosophy will prevail?

On two previous occasions, South Africa's famous two Trevors - Manuel and Ngwane - have seen their respective teams square off. Once, during an April 2000 clash covered by SABC's Special Assignment ("Two Trevors go to Washington"), Manuel chaired the World Bank board of governors for two days while Ngwane taught 30,000 protesters outside to toyi-toyi.

And again last August, when Manuel was negotiating some meaningless treaty or other at the Sandton Convention Centre, Ngwane and 20,000+ demonstrators marched over from Alexandra to demand that the elites pack up and end their charade.

With the world's environmental and developmental crises worsening ever more rapidly, lubricated by petro-warrior George Bush, can any conclusion be reached about the latest confrontation? Perhaps only this: one Trevor was cold and lonely fighting a battle he can never win; the other was flush with the warmth of solidarity, basking in the resurgence of a humanistic but uncompromising international left.

* Patrick Bond teaches at Wits University and recently authored ‘Unsustainable South Africa: Environment, Development and Social Protest’, published by University of Natal Press. This article was due to appear in the Sowetan newspaper on February 7.

* Send comments on this editorial for publication in the Letters and Comments section of Pambazuka News to

According to The Mercury, the South African National Aids Council (SANAC) - now constituted as a legal entity - has been appointed principal recipient of funding to South Africa from the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. SANAC will act as an intermediary grantmaker, disbursing grants to organisations and initiatives, monitoring their progress and reporting back to the Fund.

The International Committee of the World Social Forum has agreed that India would be the host for the next WSF in 2004.

The people of Ochigba community in Ahoada East Local Government, Rivers State, have staged a peaceful demonstration over the attitude of Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to an oil spillage in the area two months ago.

Global economic governance refers to the institutions, norms, practises and decision-making processes from which rules, guidelines, standards, and codes arise in order to manage the global economy. This paper - produced by the South Centre - recommends that in order to carry out a true reform of global economic governance, democratic participation and representation with a view towards reforming decision-making must be guaranteed; South-South cooperation through coalitions and groupings must be encouraged, and a realisation of the need to strengthen existing institutions, rules, and processes, or to even replace them with new ones, must be made.

The World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) has expressed “deep concern” about increased questioning of the prohibition of the use of torture in countries that had previously vigorously upheld the absolute nature of this prohibition. This was now enabling the nations allied in the so-called "war against terror" to actively engage in the use of torture, either through their security services or those of states known to have poor human rights records.

The pursuit of voluntary principles or guidelines regarding companies' responsibilities and obligations in the human rights field should be complemented by the development of a binding instrument guaranteeing the cessation and non-repetition of a violation. This is the view of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) with regards the drafting of the 'Norms of Responsibility of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with regard to Human Rights' by a UN sub-commission.

CIVICUS took its message of support for broader civic participation and engagement in global policy-making and processes to the recently-held World Economic Forum in Davos and World Social Forum in Porto Alegre. As an international alliance of civil society organisations in more than 100 countries, CIVICUS promotes the rights of citizens and citizen groups to be actively involved in decisions affecting their lives and communities.

What has the impact of recent advances in technology and movements towards trade liberalization been in Namibia? This paper attempts to extend the debate on globalisation and labour markets to Namibia, as the authors suggest the current debate lacks theoretical and empirical rigour.

US President George W Bush discussed possible war against Iraq with Djibouti President Ismael Omar Guelleh on Tuesday and said the United States would soon open an aid office in the tiny African nation. During a cordial half-hour meeting, Bush thanked his guest for his help in the war on terrorism and told him that Washington aims to open an office of the US Agency for International Development in Djibouti.

Back in 2001 the Doha declaration set the TRIPS council a deadline to find a solution to the issue of how developing countries - with limited or no production capacity - can take advantage of access to compulsory licences to respond to health emergencies. That deadline has now passed with no solution agreed and the post-Doha mood of optimism all but forgotten. This web page sifts through the political fallout of this failure to bring you analysis of how this situation came about and background to the declaration and the issues it aimed to address.

Global economic governance refers to the institutions, norms, practices and decision-making processes from which rules, guidelines, standards, and codes arise in order to manage the global economy. This paper from the South Centre looks at suggestions for ways of bringing about the reform of international institutions and therefore the global economic system.

Business leaders, politicians and the rich converge on the Swiss ski resort of Davos from 23 January for the World Economic Forum (WEF) - the annual gathering of the powerful which plays an important role in discussions of world economic and social policy. But the meeting takes place amidst growing criticism of corporate greenwash. Despite a high profile pledge made a year ago at the WEF in New York, WEF corporations have already demonstrated their unwillingness to embrace sustainability if it gets in the way of more profits. Friends of the Earth is highlighting cases of bad practices in the year since WEF 2002.

It has become clear that World Bank privatisation schemes are slated to be the new emphasis for that institution, says this article from The 50 Years Is Enough Network's Economic Justice News, which reviews three years of the global justice movement since large demonstrations and the meltdown in official negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO) ministerial meeting in Seattle, November 30 - December 3, 1999. The privatisation agenda is bad news for economic democracy, says the article, with essential services facing a sell off to the highest bidders.

The west's attitude to developing countries when it came to trade was akin to a football team improving its position on the log only to find that the number one team had changed the rules and said three goals had to be scored to count as one, according to a United Kingdom committee of peers, who accused the west of "unjustifiable and objectionable" protectionism in its dealings with developing countries, in a report attacking the "shameful" level of global poverty.