The discourse of sustainable development will become enshrined in political exchanges alongside the norms of democracy, economic justice, human rights and participation. This process has already begun via democratic demands for accountability and transparency in the private sector, according to a report by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), which provides an outline and analysis of the outcomes of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).

National plans of action to combat trafficking in persons need to be integrated into national development policy to be effective, said UNIFEM Executive Director Noeleen Heyzer in her keynote address to the International Conference on The Human Rights Challenge of Globalization in Asia-Pacific-US: The Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. “Individual policies and especially development programmes in poor areas among vulnerable and marginalized populations at high risk of being trafficked need to be assessed in terms of their potential impact on trafficking.”

Dumping – or exporting at prices below production costs – is causing serious damage to domestic markets in developing countries, says an Oxfam paper which recognises the negative impact that European Union agricultural subsidies have on the economy and livelihoods of developing countries. The paper says the consequences of these subsidies are over-production, export dumping and a decrease of the prices of key commodities such as sugar, dairy and cereals.

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) last Thursday said it would continue to challenge the results of the March presidential election despite losing a court appeal for a computerised list of the voters' roll.

Foreign donors and aid agencies are to assist the Rwandan government to prepare for democratic elections due in July 2003, the United Nations reported last Friday. The UN Development Programme, British, Swedish and other aid agencies are to help Rwanda's electoral commission to draw up a plan for the July 2003 elections, train electoral monitors, provide ballot boxes and computerise voter rolls.

Allegations of vote-buying and irregular campaign financing have emerged in a court case challenging the legality of President Levy Mwanawasa's election victory. The Zambian Supreme Court, hearing an election petition by the three main opposition parties which began in September, opened this week with the testimony of top members of the ruling Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) who served under former President Frederick Chiluba.

Africa's plight is not as bad as the world thought, it is worse. More than 30 million people on the continent could be facing famine within months. In Ethiopia, the lengthening of dry spells and the shortening of rainy seasons have cast a long shadow of hunger. In southern Africa food shortages are compounded by pandemic levels of Aids. In Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe's misguided policies were designed to kill off the opposition, but have ended up starving a region. Meanwhile Congo, Angola, Sudan and the Ivory Coast are all caught between war and peace.

The Anti-Privatisation Forum expresses its full and sincere solidarity with you and your family during these difficult times. As the APF, we have resolved to contribute whatever we are able to assist you, and we will encourage further individual contributions as well as letters of support. You are known and respected by many on the left in South Africa. You have served the working class and poor in Southern Africa with principled commitment for many years. Indeed, you are one of the few who has dedicated your life to work with, and for, the oppressed and marginalized. You have resisted self-enrichment and personal gain. Your stellar work at Khanya College and at the International Labour Research and Information Group helped produce many leading activists and progressive left-leaning professionals in South Africa and facilitated important debates and discussions towards finding a working class way forward following the disorganisation and disorientation of left forces in South Africa due to the ANC ‘s betrayal of the liberation movement and its capitulation to neo-liberalism. We do not feel betrayed, tricked or taken for a ride with the revelation of your earlier activities. Rather, it is your life’s work here in South Africa that serves as the basis for our solidarity and support.

An unofficial audit of Kenya's electoral roll shows that nearly 16% of registered voters are dead. The study by the Institute of Education in Democracy (IED) found that an estimated 1.5 million people on the electoral roll of 10.4 million had died.

In the context of four of the OECD Development Assistance Committee's (DAC) development objectives -- reducing extreme poverty; providing universal primary education; lowering infant and maternal mortality; and transmitting health -- this book is particularly timely. The authors demonstrate that in the case of very poor countries, policies aimed at universal provision of education and health services benefit the poor significantly more than more expensive targeted schemes. The book draws attention to the absolute need for coherence and co-ordination so that schools are not built without teachers and dispensaries without drugs. Moreover, national macroeconomic policies have to be realistic if the health and education sectors are not to be deprived of resources. Finally, the quality of governance is shown to have a direct effect on the efficiency of social spending.

There is a joke that Zimbabweans lack so many basic commodities that they do not know which queue to join, but it no longer seems very funny. In Harare’s once comfortable suburb of Greencroft yesterday about 200 people queued outside the supermarket for bread. At the Shell service station next door about 20 lorries and buses were waiting at the diesel pump. At the Mobil station next to that the queue for petrol stretched down the road and out of sight. Bread shortages have been the norm for more than six months in Zimbabwe, but they are now being matched by fuel shortages that threaten to paralyse the country.

A growing humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding in Ituri District, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as rebels and ethnic militia battle for dominance, according to a UN official.

Thirty-something Beatrice Atieno [not her real name] speaks with conviction when she remembers her family's eviction from their land in 1992, around the time of Kenya's first multi-party elections for nearly thirty years. Some 3,000 people were thus forced off their land in the Rift Valley Province. Many were able to resettle in neighbouring Nyanza Province, populated predominantly by their Luo kinsmen. The rest, however, had not retained close links with their neighbours in Nyanza, and stayed at Thessalia, where they remain today.

The deputy commander of the Mozambican police, Jorge Khalau, has admitted that there is corruption exists in the force, but says it cannot simply be blamed on low wages and poor academic qualifications.

Finding ways to reduce poverty and inequity is a daunting challenge for local, national and international decision-makers. One important aspect of this challenge is the spatial heterogeneity of poverty: poor people tend to be clustered in specific places. Aggregated, national-level poverty data masks this subnational variation.

The African Union would be ultimately responsible for a comprehensive peer review mechanism, but until the necessary structures were in place, this task would fall on the New Partnership for Africa's Development, government representative Joel Netshitenzhe said on Wednesday.

Liberian opposition parties are proposing to unite and field a single candidate against the incumbent, Charles Taylor, in presidential elections in 2003, news organisations reported on Tuesday. "We want to become one single party ... and elect a new leader," the BBC quoted Chea Cheapo, co-ordinator of the Committee for the Merger of Liberian Political Parties, as saying.

Only half of the money which foreign donors pledged to Mozambique for reconstruction after the devastating floods of February 2000 has been disbursed. Public Works Minister Roberto White gave the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, the disheartening figures on Tuesday, showing that donors are much better at providing fine words than hard cash.

This report is adapted from a presentation for a workshop between Christian Aid and South African partners, held in Durban during October 2001. The report argues that knowing the difference development workers make is in itself a part of good development practice. In order to achieve this competence, certain processes and skills are required of organisations and individuals in development.

DFID in Southern Africa has outlined the new strategy to support poverty elimination in South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland as well as regionally across SADC. The new strategy emphasises the need to focus on jobs, growth and equity in addition to improved governance and service delivery, as well as to respond to the challenge of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.