Aid agencies were poised to start substantial emergency supplies to the stricken Congolese town of Goma on Tuesday after a leading expert said Africa's deadliest volcanic eruption in 25 years appeared over.

Fresh concerns over the impact of coltan mining in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo were raised this week by a local pressure group following a marked decline in the livelihoods of communities close to the sites where the rare mineral is extracted.

After the international community overwhelmingly reaffirmed its commitment to the 1951 Refugee Convention, UNHCR's Global Consultations process moves forward on an Agenda for Protection -- a series of activities which will serve as a guide to humanitarian organizations and governments in strengthening refugee protection.

Terence P. Stewart, Amy S. Dwyer
This unique handbook studies the important area of WTO trade remedy disputes. Since the WTO Agreement entered into force in 1995, over a third of all requests for consultations filed with the WTO have concerned a trade remedy dispute. The book summarizes over 40 decisions issued by WTO panels and the Appellate Body in trade remedy disputes during the first six years of the WTO Agreement. The issue—specific format of the book provides the legal researcher-whether practitioner, government official, or panelist—with a useful and concise guide to WTO precedent in trade remedy disputes. Transnational Publishers, 2001, 1-57105-195-3.

Gordon Brown's recent speeches on a "New Deal" for the global economy have been generally welcomed, especially for their suggestions that aid budgets should be increased. But some of his more detailed proposals on the World Bank and IMF are controversial.

Primary school children cannot form a political party, get elected to parliament and secure budgetary allocations for their education. The proportion of children in the northern part of the world is small and their parents can secure funding for education, combining their political voice with paying tax. In many developing countries, children constitute the majority of the population but obtain a vote only after becoming adults; hence they have to rely on their parents and their teachers. Few of their parents pay tax, many because they earn too little, and their vote seldom affects budgetary allocations because there often is simply too little to distribute. Their teachers habitually have to battle to get their rights recognized and their salaries paid so that they could teach. Children thus need to have their right to education fully recognized, and this right necessarily goes beyond national and regional borders.

More than 17 million people have received aid over the last five years, according to an Ethiopian government aid agency. The Ethiopian Social Rehabilitation and Development Fund (ESRDF) says it has set up over 3,000 projects countrywide.

The government's anti-corruption commission has filed charges against 54 current and former officials of the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), as well as a number of businessmen, according to the private 'Reporter' newspaper.

The top United Nations environmental official is calling for a speedy ratification of the Kyoto climate protocol before September.

The move to liberalise African banking is gaining momentum. Do African banks have reasons to fear the consequences of liberalisation or does it give them opportunities to restructure and compete with international banks in African-wide or regional markets?

InterWorld Radio is a source of daily news bulletins and broadcast quality features for radio stations and online listeners. We commission local journalists all over the world to file reports on the critical global issues of our time - economics, human rights, environment, international trade, science and technology.

The LINK Centre, School of Public and Development Management, University of the Witwatersrand, in conjunction with the University of Michigan School of Information has a limited number of places still available on the Global Graduate Seminar on Globalisation and the Information Society: Information Systems and International Communications Policy.

The West African IT Training and Education Forum will run concurrently with the 6th AITEC West African Computing and Telecommunication Conference and Exhibition. The Forum will among other objectives brainstorm on a wide range of issues pertaining to the enhancement of IT training and education at all levels in both formal and informal educational system of West African states.

The first volume of a three volume study "Abortion Policies: a Global Review", prepared by the Population Division of the UN has been published with financial support from the United Nations Population Fund. The study comprised an analysis of abortion laws and policies in every country of the world, both developed and developing. It includes information on the social and political settings, the ways in which these laws and policies have been formulated, and how they have evolved. Information on the incidence of abortion and the setting in which abortion occurs is included wherever possible in order to complement the policy picture.

Many Third World countries feel they have no easy solutions, and thus turn a blind eye on the "embarrassment" of slavery. They would even deny its existence. Sudan is one country where reports of slavery have persistently emerged, and the Khartoum government is accused of having a hand in promoting this act.

Legislation is urgently needed to help fight the growth in the sexual trafficking of women and children into Europe, the British government was told Monday.

Thousands of civil-society organizations have completed a major multi-country assessment with the World Bank of the impact of the economic adjustment policies of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund on local populations in the developing world. The results, summarized in a 25-page report, The Policy Roots of Economic Crisis and Poverty, show a systematic weakening of the productive capacity of the countries implementing Bank policies and the inability of these countries to generate productive employment at a living wage. Poverty has been further deepened by the inability of the poor to access essential services at affordable rates.

Throughout the 1980s, incomes, living standards and investments in Africa plummeted, while poverty declined in South and East Asia. With world attention now focussed on global issues, not least damaging effects in Africa, this timely book argues that structural adjustment programmes in Africa, enforced by the international financial institutions, have produced a tighter dependency than colonialism achieved. 978156475X, 2001, Fourth Dimension.

Recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, along with well-known economist Paul Krugman, have of late made a flurry of public statements critical of the policies and processes of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank / IMF, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) — while leaving plenty of harsh words for the blatantly pro-corporate actions of the Bush Administration. Both economists point to the disruptive and distorting influence of large corporate entities through their dominance over both domestic and international institutions.

Although the European Union is developing the capacity to become a fully-fledged crisis management actor in the international arena and is co-operating with the United Nations, it does not regard its humanitarian work as a crisis management tool and is not in favour of a humanitarian alliance.