Internationally known economist Jeffrey Sachs has called for African countries to stop paying their debts and to allocate the funds to AIDS and other urgent needs. "It's untenable to be paying debt that could be used to fight the pandemic," Sachs said in Johannesburg last month. "It's much more than a vicious cycle of poverty. There's a silent holocaust under way." African governments, however, fear retaliation by creditors if they should take such steps.

The trading house Marubeni Corp. has paid 400 million yen in penalty taxes for concealing about 1 billion yen in income over a three-year period, sources said. Of the hidden funds, hundreds of millions of yen went in kickbacks to Nigeria. Kickbacks were paid after Marubeni won a contract to sell printing machines to Nigeria.

The UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has expressed concern over recent advances made by rebel troops and the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) into territory recently vacated by the Ugandan army.

Center for Economic Justice has launched a new, updated website for the World Bank Bonds Boycott campaign. Colorful, easy to navigate, and updated with all the latest campaign developments, www.worldbankboycott.org is a valuable new resource for organizers and others interested in global economic and environmental justice.

* See the Corruption, Women and Gender, Environment and Development sections of Pambazuka News for more news on the World Summit on Sustainable Development.

* Visit http://www.worldsummit.org.za/ for Commission reports from the Global People's Forum and the final statement from Civil Society.

* See http://enn.com/news/wire-stories/2002/09/09052002/reu_48345.asp for a list of Summit winners and losers.

* The International Institute for Sustainable Development has released a 17 000 report on the WSSD. Find it at http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/2002/wssd/

* Find the two documents that make up the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development at http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/2002/wssd/0409_l6rev2_pol_decl.pdf and http://www.iisd.ca/linkages/2002/wssd/0409_l6_rev2_corr1.pdf

Liberalised international trade would not lead to sustainable development in Africa, with World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules written in a way that benefited rich countries at the expense of the poor.

The refugee crisis in Africa was a major obstacle to sustainable development and needed to be urgently addressed in order for gains to be made in poverty alleviation on the continent.

Africa faced enormous electricity supply problems in both urban and rural areas, with a large portion of the population relying on paraffin as the principle source of fuel in rural areas, and the lack of electricity exacerbating conditions of poverty.

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad) endorsed the free trade agenda of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund while failing to acknowledge how harmful these policies had been for Africa. In addition, the plan to boost Africa's position on the world stage was flawed because it had failed to consult Africa's people about the best way to uplift the continent.

It was useless to talk about sustainable development when people were starving and when there were poor education facilities and declining health care in a country, said Lucie Jessie Nyirenda of the Economic Justice Network in Malawi.

The food crisis has many causes but the most significant according to this report, is the failure of agricultural policies. The paper asks why, after years of World Bank and IMF designed agricultural sector reforms, do Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique face chronic food insecurity. The answer given is that reforms were carried out without first carrying out a serious assessment of their likely impact on poverty and food security. The 'one size fits all' liberalisation policies implemented have failed to lead to growth but have exacerbated the exclusion of the poor from the market.

One of the six men accused of murdering Mozambique's best known journalist, Carlos Cardoso, has escaped from Maputo's top security jail. A police spokesman confirmed on Monday to Cardoso's widow, Nina Berg, that the suspect, Anibal Antonio dos Santos Junior (better known by his underworld nickname of Anibalzinho), had escaped from the prison at about 23.00 on Sunday night. No further details of the escape are yet available.

Former Zambian President Frederick Chiluba can be stripped of his immunity and face prosecution on corruption charges, a High Court has ruled.

The government is to spend 150m shillings [1.8m dollars] to train public officials to fight corruption. Some 970 officers from government departments, parastatals and local authorities will be trained to help combat corruption at their places of work.

This paper is a case study into the impact of an export liberalization programme on cashew farmers in Mozambique. The authors argue that opponents of the reform felt that the policy did little to benefit poor cashew farmers while bankrupting factories in urban areas. It presents an analysis into the distributional and efficiency consequences of the liberalization program, and concludes that after 10 years, there was little to show for the reform.

Malawi has lost $40-million in the corrupt sale of maize, a staple food in a country where more than three million face starvation, a top government official says. The figure, supplied by an official from the country's national audit office who asked not to be named, follows last month's revelation that 160 000 tons of the country's strategic grain reserves had been mismanaged.

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Nigeria has said it can no longer afford to service its $33bn foreign debts because of plunging oil revenues and the failure of some of its privatisation plans.

The latest report from Jubilee Research (JR) shows how the debt relief granted so far has resulted in large increases in health and education spending in Africa. Entitled "Relief Works" the report also demonstrates that there has been no corresponding increase in arms purchases, showing that the proceeds of debt relief do indeed effectively contribute to increased development.

Well, it's over. People will be sifting through the ashes for some time and life will go on, but a milestone this was not. If the environment is to survive, it will be despite this conference, rather than because of it.