The UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, Juan Miguel Petit, will visit South Africa from 16 to 26 September 2002. The Special Rapporteur intends to use the visit to examine in particular the situation of rape and sexual violence against children, trafficking of children into and through South Africa, and the use of children in prostitution. He will also seek further information about HIV/AIDS in the context of these abuses.

African countries have asked for poorer states in the World Trade Organization to be given the right to retaliate collectively against rich powers in disputes, trade sources said Wednesday.

The World Bank has decided that it will continue its support for a controversial project designed to bring oil wealth and development to Cameroon and Chad, two of the world's poorest countries. But on the ground in western Cameroon protests grow about the pipeline that will bring oil from Chad to the coast. Local people argue that the project has failed to bring the social benefits expected. The involvement of the bank, in the face of misgivings expressed by independent inspectors, has raised expectations on issues such as compensation for environmental damage and terms of employment.
* Related link: The World Bank's own Inspection Panel has backed many of the complaints by non-governmental organizations about a major oil pipeline in West Africa. See http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/topic/environment/e3004chadcam.html

An organisation called The Kenyan Community Abroad (KCA) has expressed concern about the political climate in Kenya and the conduct of the outgoing president, Daniel arap Moi.

Mozambique's two main political parties have been unable to agree on changes to electoral laws ahead of legislative elections due next year. For over two years a parliamentary ad-hoc commission has worked on the laws, but has been unable to achieve consensus.

Nigeria has started the massive task of registering voters in preparation for state and national elections but the complaints have also started. Election officials say registration started smoothly at 120,000 centres for a massive 10-day operation to enfranchise the country's 60 million voters.

President Olusegun Obasanjo, who came to office in 1999 after more than 15 years of military rule, has promised to help dispel widely held perceptions of Nigeria as an archetype of unethical business behaviour. Less than a year before he is due to stand for re-election, the country's continued notoriety raises questions about the effectiveness of the president's actions and highlights the manifold and deep-rooted difficulties that confront campaigns for greater public sector and corporate transparency in poor nations.

The World Bank pledged $120 million Thursday to help Angola rebuild after more than two decades of civil war, but told the authorities they must take measures to dispel suspicion of high-level corruption.

The ongoing public hearing about the perceived corruption in the Ghanaian judiciary by the Parliamentary Select Committee on the Judiciary made a stopover in Sekondi-Takoradi last week with shocking revelations by some members of the bar.

Four years after civil war broke out in Congo, President Joseph Kabila held out the prospect Saturday of national reconciliation and free elections if recent peace deals with Rwanda and Uganda are successful.

The drive to reduce poverty has stalled in many developing countries. The United Nations’ target – to reduce income-related poverty to 15 percent by 2015 – will probably not be met. This policy brief, reporting the main findings of a UNU/WIDER study on changes in income equality, argues that the slowdown is in part the result of a failure to include inequality within the growth-poverty equation.

In a surprise move, the Swaziland Cabinet announced on Thursday (12 September) that the proposed purchase of a private jet for King Mswati III's personal use was being shelved.
Instead, Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini announced that the government would use chartered planes for the king's overseas trips. Already government auditors have reported a loss of over R4 million in costs involving the hiring of chartered planes by the King when undertaking his trips.

As the political debate heats up over whether Swaziland is a democratic country, the leaders of the tiny southern African kingdom have been accused of being "looters" of state funds by using developmental projects as financial scams.

I would like to thank the fine women and men of Pambazuka, who very skilfully design such a comprehensive newsletter of information on all issues affecting Mother Africa.

Your work impacts not only on Africa, but on global issues of immense concerns and shared values, in the interests of mankind. I am a practitioner in International Peace and Conflict Resolution, Electoral Assistance and Democratisation, Humanitarian and Sustainable Development around the world.

I salute your commitment and dedication to making humanity and our beautiful planet a much better place in which to live. No doubts, through our individual and collective efforts and endeavours, we can make a difference around the world regardless of geographical location(s).

God bless you all and please kindly keep up the wonderful work for the sake of humanity.

Malick Ceesay
Sustainable International Development Program, Heller Graduate School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

A further comment anent the great march from Alex to Sandton. The gathering of multiple voices, multiple concerns and multiple demands at Speakers Corner, Sandton, was the new face of the new struggle. It is the face of resistance that will confront the new corporate power which threatens us globally. It comes at the necessary time. European power theorists are discussing worriedly, as they did at a recent meeting during the World Summit, "The future of Multilateralism". But in the U.S. talk of a new and greater unilateralism (under terms as various as "the grand strategy" or "the breakout strategy") which will greatly diminish national sovereignty and give the United States, as the all over-ruling power the right of pre-emptive and preventive strikes anywhere in the world, not merely to terrorist threats but also to any power which might threaten the superiority of the United States. It is for this reason that the new face of resistance comes at a necessary time.

Thirty years after the Stockholm meeting on the environment launched the era of massive environmental conferences, the World Summit on Sustainable Development ended not with a bang, but with a whimper. The 10-day conference pulled together 9,000 delegates, 8,000 NGOs, and 4,000 media representatives (well below the 65,000 originally projected) in what is widely viewed as an unworthy descendant of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. The most gracious comment one leading environmentalist could come up with was "at least it wasn't as bad as it could have been."

The tragic events of September 11 2001 represent different things to different people. The victims, the terrorists, western, Arab and Muslim governments, Europeans, Africans, Asians, Muslims and non Muslims, people of different political persuasions and leanings, the media, all perceive September 11 differently and all have no homogenous positions on the events of that day and its fall outs. It will therefore be incredulous to pretend that any single individual or group of individuals can speak for Africa or all Africans in relation to September 11.

The one thing that we can be sure of, is that the events of 9-11 as it is now fashionably described, have altered the trajectory of and interaction between international politics, foreign policy, international economic relations, religion, ideology, democracy, human rights and international law. To go a step further, many more people than previously now see how these issues are connected and interact to shape the perception and future of different societies and the world as a whole. In Africa, where slavery, colonialism the cold war, dictatorships and the inequitable nature of north - south economic relations have deepened the problems of poverty, lack of democracy and human rights, it is even more important to reflect on September 11 and its implications for Africa.

No one in his or her right mind will deny that the key problems facing Africa today are those of economic underdevelopment, poverty, lack of democracy and human rights. The proportions are different in all countries but the problems are the same. Without democracy and human rights, the problems of economic underdevelopment and poverty in Africa will never be fully addressed. The question therefore, is how has September 11 impacted on the development of democracy and human rights in Africa.

To a large extent, the reactions to and fallouts of September 11 have been driven by policies of the United States Bush administration and its allies. This is perfectly understandable for reasons that are self-evident. It is important however that in formulating and implementing policy, all governments have a moral obligation to consider its implication for others especially where such policy could negatively impact on democracy and human rights around the world. The available evidence suggests that this is not the case.

Prior to September 11, the rhetoric from a significant number of African governments suggested that even if not fully committed to good governance, human rights and democracy, many of them at least recognised the need to be seen to walking in that direction. After September 11, such rhetoric did not necessarily diminish but became qualified with “recognising the need to fight terrorism”. Many governments which for years have resisted the pressure from civil society to enact legislation, or adopt good practice upholding freedom of expression, assembly, association and other key rights, have suddenly began rushing through “anti-terrorism legislation” curtailing those same rights. In many of cases, the provisions of the laws are so broad that even peaceful and legitimate democratic opposition can be targeted as “terrorists”.

In Uganda for instance the Suppression of Terrorism Bill 2001 imposes a mandatory death sentence for “Terrorists and any person who aids, abets, finances or supports terrorism”. In addition Zimbabwe, South Africa, Mauritius and Egypt have adopted or are at advanced stages of adopting similar legislation that restricts freedom of expression, association and assembly, could define certain peaceful activity as abetting terrorism, erodes the right to a fair and open trial, legitimises arbitrary and prolonged detention, and increases powers of surveillance. Many more African countries are openly considering similar legislation. This in itself is a problem, but the problem is further compounded by the fact that major countries around the world have adopted similar legislation. Several Amnesty International reports document similar laws adopted by the United States, and key countries of the European Union. This in turn has created the international cover for less democratic countries. In many cases, some of these laws adopted in Africa could have been borrowed almost directly from US or UK laws.

The direct implication of this is an “unholy and unlikely” alliance of a variety of governments against civil liberties in the name of fighting terrorism. This creates a fundamental contradiction for instance within the United Nations system where the hitherto champions of civil liberties are now championing the restriction of these same liberties. The US government has also under the USA Patriot Act enabled the Secretary of State to declare as inadmissible into the US persons that may have undertaken activities including advocacy that undermines the Bush administrations approach to the war on terrorism. Considering that the United Nations is situated in New York, and that thousands of human rights activists visit the US in order to invoke United Nations documents in their struggle to uphold human rights, the Bush Administration could end up undermining the UN system in relation to human rights without necessarily meaning to do so.

Add to this the contradiction of key EU governments and the US administration turning a blind eye to “allied” undemocratic governments while condemning others. In the UK Guardian of August 22 2002, US Assistant Secretary of State Walter Kainstener outlined the Bush administrations plans for regime change in Zimbabwe on the basis that the government is undemocratic. The day before, the Pakistani military government headed by General Musharaff a US government ally amended his country’s constitution to give him powers to dissolve future elected parliaments and extend his rule for another five years. The Guardian and other papers also reported this with virtually no complaint from the allies in the war against terrorism. To date the US has not called for the removal of Musharaff [it is worth noting that the alienation of Pakistani civil society can in turn only help Al Queda hide in Pakistan]. Significantly, Pakistan’s earlier suspension from the Commonwealth for Musharaff's coup against an elected government has been conveniently forgotten.

It is an absurdity for major powers to create monsters or facilitate circumstances that create them and then embark on policy u-turns that can only worsen the situation. Without going into the complications of the legitimacy of the land problem in Zimbabwe while condemning Mugabe's methods, such contradictions can only strengthen the likes of Mugabe and undermine democracy in Africa. The International Federation of Journalists in its publication on “Journalism and the War on Terrorism” by Aidan White quotes a Mugabe Spokesperson “As for the correspondents, we would like them to know that we agree with US President Bush that anyone who finances, harbours or defends terrorists is himself a terrorist. We too will not make any difference between terrorists and their friends and supporters ” If Mugabe were to suddenly find himself in the unique position of facilitating a US attack on a neighbouring country harbouring terrorists it is easy to see how such rhetoric would suddenly endear him to the Bush Administration.

If we are to take only one example of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world can see how cold war politics, the assassination of the country’s democratically elected leader Patrice Lumumba and support for the dictatorship of Mobutu Seseseko by Western governments plunged the country into a crisis from which it is yet to recover after several decades. There is something deeply unsettling about sacrificing the future of millions of people for the convenience of foreign policy. African countries do not need any more of this.

The war on terrorism should not and cannot be fought outside an ethical framework. Any policies that sacrifice human rights for this war will only succeed in fuelling the conditions in which terrorists thrive. The fact that Islam is used as an ideological tool to recruit so called warriors should not obscure the fact that the Middle East is country for country one of the most undemocratic regions in the world. Elections have never been held in Saudi Arabia and will not be held for the foreseeable future. That the majority of the 9-11 hijackers are of Saudi origin cannot be a coincidence. If the same conditions are created in Africa, terrorism, which is by nature a clandestine activity, may well be provided with a popular base that will in turn appear to justify the suppression of democracy in the name of fighting terrorism.

African civil society needs to make it clear in policy and advocacy that they are one hundred percent opposed to terrorism, but also one hundred percent committed to democracy. There is no contradiction in this. There is nothing anti-American about upholding democratic rights. There should be absolutely no doubt that any laws that curtail freedom of expression, association, assembly, and so forth in Africa will be used against democratic opposition and human rights activists. One year after September 11, and, dozens of anti-democratic laws later, no one knows where Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and at least five thousand to ten thousand “graduates” of the Al Queda training camps are. It is therefore important to begin now to call for the immediate repeal of all provisions of anti-terrorism legislation that promotes the suppression of human rights and for a halt to such legislation in Africa. Not to do so may plunge Africa into strife and conflict from which it may never emerge.

Participants at the 10th International Freedom of Exchange (IFEX) general meeting in Dakar have led the way by adopting a declaration on September 11 2002 by condemning “acts of terror and crimes against humanity such as the attacks on the United States one year ago” but also criticising “anti terrorism laws passed in many countries in the aftermath of September 11 attacks” that “include provisions that undermine civil liberties and in some cases severely restrict the right to freedom of expression and freedom of information”. It is important that all national, regional and international human rights and freedom of expression organisations around the world follow this lead.

Sankore is Coordinator of CREDO for Freedom of Expression and Associated Rights.

Professor Makau Mutua, Chair, KHRC
Dr. Willy Mutunga, Executive Director, KHRC

On Wednesday, September 11, 2002, most of the world led by the United States will fittingly remember the tragic attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. While we at the Kenya Human Rights Commission join the international community in this sorrowful remembrance and mourn for the victims, their families, and loved ones we take this opportunity to call for the respect of the international rule of law, human rights, fairness, and an honest reflection by all states, especially the United States, in its war on terror. We were horrified by the wanton destruction of life and property visited on New York City and Washington DC by last September's suicide attacks. We in east Africa are no strangers to the acute suffering and agony of such attacks. The August 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-salaam killed hundreds and injured thousands. While we seek justice against the perpetrators of these horrible attacks, we must never waver in our resolve to respect the rights of suspects. We must never be vengeful or target entire communities or faiths in pursuit of justice. This, we believe, is a lesson that the Bush Administration has missed.

Since the attacks of last September, the United States has pursued domestic and foreign policies that imperil civil liberties and human rights at home and abroad. While the United States has a responsibility to protect its citizens and those who live within its borders, it must do so humanely and within the law. The promulgation of laws to establish military tribunals to try individuals designated as terrorists violate both American and international law, and set a terrible example to countries elsewhere. Policies and official pronouncements that target Muslims and Arab-Americans in the United States violate fundamental human rights. The passage of laws limiting the rights of suspects and their lawyers undermines the foundation of American democracy and invites dictatorships elsewhere to crush their dissenters. As the lone superpower, the United States has both a moral and legal obligation to set a better example.

We express deep reservations in the manner in which the United States has prosecuted its war against terror in Afghanistan. There have been far too many reports of needless civilian casualties. To our knowledge, no one has been held accountable for these killings. We think that such events only help to engender anti-American sentiments, and are therefore counter-productive. We think that the Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners held by the US at its base in Cuba should be accorded POW status and treated accordingly. We believe that such steps would indicate that the US was acting in good faith in its war against terror.

We do not think that there has been an honest, deep, and open debate and reflection in the United States about the motivations and implications of the September suicide attacks. Instead, the question, "why they hate us?," has been turned into a drumbeat for suppressing civil liberties and violating human rights abroad. We challenge the American human rights and civil rights movements to lead the nation in seeking answers to the attacks, and looking at US policies abroad as one possible arena for reform to alleviate the alienation and grievances that other cultures and countries hold against the United States. We do not believe that the September 11 attacks reveal a neat "good versus evil" dichotomy. Real dialogue between cultures, religions, the rich and the poor, and the North and the South is the only sure way to resolve the demons that unleashed September 11.

We add our modest voice to those opposed to a US military action against Iraq. Since the American-led Gulf War a decade ago, Iraq has been turned into a living hell. United Nations sanctions have crippled the country. Tens of thousands of children have perished of preventable diseases because of lack of medicine and medical equipment. It is the common people of Iraq, and not President Saddam Hussein and his cronies who have borne the brunt of the suffering wrought by sanctions. Any attempt to overthrow the Iraqi regime would lead to national disintegration, prolonged civil strife, and untold suffering by women, children, and the infirm. The warpath must be abandoned. Otherwise it will lead to more suffering and a coalescence of the belief that the United States is bent on the destruction of the Arab nation. Instead, we believe that US efforts ought to be focused on resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict -- ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine, stopping the killings on both sides, and establishing a sovereign Palestinian state, with security guarantees for Israel.

There was an outpouring of support for the American victims and families affected by the September 11 attacks. Even a Maasai village community in Kenya presented the Americans with cattle, as a token of its solidarity with the victims. It was a touching gesture. We feel that neither the Clinton, nor the Bush, administration has done enough to assist Kenyan victims and the families of the 1998 Nairobi embassy bombing. While the United States has rightly set up a fund for the victims and families affected by September 11, it should extend some of that caring to victims of the embassy bombing. This would go a long way in alleviating their pain and suffering. It would also show that Americans do not just care about their own victims, but all those others who, in effect, "have taken a bullet for Uncle Sam." On this first anniversary of the September 11 attacks, we want to remember the victims and their families, but also to underscore the obligations of states, particularly the United States, to lead by showing respect for the international rule of law and human rights. We urge and call upon the Bush administration to pull back from its confrontation with Iraq. We believe that only a balanced, internationally inclusive approach, devoid of unilateralism, can alleviate the hatreds and violations that continue to characterize our world today. Otherwise, the law of the jungle will make losers of all of us.

The UN Security Council has decided to keep UN peacekeepers in Ethiopia and Eritrea six more months to give the countries time to mark their border. The Horn of Africa neighbours fought a 2½-year war over the 1,000-kilometre border, a conflict that cost 80,000 lives. The fighting ended in December 2000, when they agreed to establish an international commission to draw the border.

The Social Movements Indaba, together with many social movements from all over the world, declare that: The World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in the super-rich suburb of Sandton, Johannesburg, has failed. The world’s poor, and the earth’s deteriorating environment have benefited nothing from the Summit. Instead of a lift out of poverty and a healthier environment, the world can look forward to a deepening of poverty on a global scale, and to a further deterioration of the environment.