Starting from the premise that finance is not about money, but about the relationships among people, states, markets and natural environment, this report from Jubilee Research provides three key features so that finance can become a tool for development. The paper warns that: In order to achieve the objectives of global security and meeting basic human development needs, the imbalance between free markets and human and environmental relations should be addressed; FDI scarcely contributes to local economic development, therefore a more democratic control over national and international financial institutions and encouragement of economic self-reliance is required; Since the South is paying the North three times over: in debt repayments, via the flow of mineral, agricultural and biological resources, and through the costs it is bearing from the impact of environmental degradation and climate change, contraction and convergence mechanisms to account for the ecological debt should be implemented.

Talisman Energy Inc. has finally bitten the bullet and shed its controversial oil investment in Sudan, making a determined bunch of human rights activists and church groups extremely happy. "We have here an extraordinary example of grassroots activism forcing a Fortune 500 company to withdraw from an extremely lucrative venture, because that venture is immoral," Eric Reeves, an English professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., and a tireless opponent of Talisman's Sudanese activities, told The Globe and Mail last week.

President Olusegun Obasanjo has again appealed to Nigerians to join the government in its crusade against corruption in the country. He said bribery and corruption were continued problems for the country.

Nigeria has put the blame for the endemic corruption in the country at the doorsteps of the international community which it accused of accepting looted fund from public officers. The attorney-general and minister of justice, Chief Godwin Kanu Agabi said that Nigeria's classification as the second most corrupt country in the world is untrue and a design to humiliate the citizens.

Hundreds of millions of pounds supposedly being paid by western oil companies to the government of Angola have been discovered going into secret offshore accounts in Jersey. The Lloyds TSB offshore accounts in the name of the Angolan state oil company, Sonangol, include cash payments by the companies to the government in return for exploration permits in the booming Angolan deep water oil fields.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) requires closer international financial supervision if the war-damaged nation is to fight official corruption, an International Monetary Fund (IMF) expert said last Friday. As the vast nation extracts itself from a four-year regional war, it must create a transparent government and banking system, said Jean Clement, assistant director of the IMF Africa Department, who is in Kinshasa to conduct an economic review.

What are the fundamental needs for development fieldwork? Of course there are technical skills, experience and organisation. But to surpass the status quo of fieldwork, to achieve real impact, it is also crucial to be innovative, flexible, interactive and collaborative. To be willing to break some of the old conventions and think "out of the box." This is according to the organisation CARE, who are showcasing their community based water and sanitation projects in Western Kenya.

A Federal High Court sitting in Abuja has restrained the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), from investigating the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Alhaji Ghali Umar Na'Abba, his aides and officers over alleged fraudulent withdrawal of N160 million from the reserves of the House.

Massive violations of human rights are still continuing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), especially in areas controlled by the country's two main rebel groups - the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie and the Mouvement pour la liberation du Congo - says the United Nations. A new report by the UN Special Rapporteur probing conditions in the DRC, Iulia Motoc, said that in rebel-held areas, especially in eastern DRC, "no human, civil, political, economic or social rights are observed".

Following upon the success of our region-based institute in South Africa during the past four years, we are pleased to announce the fifth Democracy & Diversity Graduate Summer Institute in Cape Town, South Africa. In an intensive two-week program, an international body of junior scholars and activists engaged in questions of civil society will examine critical issues of democracy and democratization as they manifest themselves in this region and beyond.

In May and July this year, nearly 200 women from six countries in sub-Saharan Africa participated in human rights and leadership development workshops organized by WLP and its partners. The workshops took place in Zimbabwe and Tanzania as part of the regularly scheduled programming for the Women's Self-Promotion Movement (WSPM) and Umoja wa Akina Mama Fizi (UWAFI). The response from participants and facilitators to WLP's empowering, cooperative leadership strategies was very positive. The workshops' success was largely due to the excellent planning and organization of the NGOs, whose commitment to new models of leadership and consensus-building provided the workshops with real-life context and problem-focused content.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), in the framework of their joint programme, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, would like to express their deepest concern regarding the break-in of the offices of the "HUREDICA Violence Victims Organisation" NGO that occurred in Nakuru, on 26th of October 2002. According to the information received from the Kenyan Human Rights Commission, five Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officers raided the offices of "HUREDICA Violence Victims Organisation," alleging that the premises were being used to print counterfeit Kenyan currency. No evidence was later found related to this allegation. The officers confiscated documents and files containing crucial evidence on the ethnic violence reported by the organization.

The presidents of the national and lower level election commissions are to be "proposed by civil society" and the other members of the election commission are to choose their president from those proposals by secret ballot. It is remarkable and, for Mozambique, unprecedented to give such a role to civil society. This posting from the Mozambique Political Process Bulletin also contains information on local and national election processes in Mozambique.

This annual report by EPIC and Privacy International reviews the state of privacy in over fifty countries around the world.  It outlines legal protections for privacy, new challenges, and summarizes important issues and events relating to privacy and surveillance.  The
2002 edition of Privacy and Human Rights examines the impact of government proposals after September 11, 2001 on privacy and civil liberties. The report documents many new anti-terrorism and security measures and identifies key trends including increased communications surveillance, weakening of data protection regimes, and increased profiling and identification of individuals. 

Neighbouring farmers looked down at them as they were farmworkers who knew nothing about "running a viable, sustainable commercial farm". Lenders refused to give them a loan as they believed they would lose on the deal. Besides, they were ordinary farmworkers and had no experience in running a business. Today they are the envy of their neighbours in Ceres, their farm is a success and they have a Christmas contract worth millions of rands with a leading chain store.

The Scorpions have arrested six senior Eastern Cape government officials at their offices in King Williamstown. This was apparently linked to government transport subsidies to bus owners.

Mozambique's Assistant Attorney-General, Isabel Rupia, has urged that any future anti-corruption law should criminalise the trafficking of influence, as well as the undue appropriation of public goods, by civil servants. Speaking at a hearing organised by the Legal Affairs Commission of the Mozambican parliament Rupia said that trafficking in influence was a "very subtle" form of corruption practiced by high ranking public servants.

African finance ministers have criticised the World Bank's debt relief programme for failing to keep step with goals to reduce poverty in some of the poorest African countries. At the end of a three-day UN-hosted meeting, the finance ministers called for the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative to be brought in line with the UN's Millennium Development Goals, which seek to halve poverty levels by 2015. African governments want the World Bank and donor countries to move beyond HIPC to offer greater debt relief and to extend relief to non-HIPC countries.

Political parties gave mixed signals last Friday on their willingness to reveal their sources of private funding. Their views, voiced at a seminar in Centurion, ranged from conditional support for disclosure to calls for a proper inquiry into the matter. The Institute for Democracy in SA (Idasa) is currently conducting a campaign to obtain details of private funding for political parties by using the Promotion of Access to Information Act.

Since the advent of constitutional democracy in South Africa eight years ago, the crucial rights of freedom of expression, assembly and demonstration were, for the first time perhaps, brought into sharp focus during the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. This much was borne out by the nature of the relationship that existed between the state and individuals regarding how these essential rights could be exercised during the summit. At best that relationship was steeped in confrontation. It is against this simmering background that the "right to dissent" workshop has been planned. By and large, the workshop aims to explore the tension between the right of individuals to express themselves freely through the medium of assemblies and demonstrations as guaranteed by the constitution, and the state's authority to regulate such right in terms of national legislation.