A British landmine-clearing group launched a multimedia project Monday to throw a global spotlight on how a community in Angola copes with daily life around fields littered with unexploded weapons.

Monitor and evaluate impact of program on beneficiaries and affected communities. Recommend necessary changes to ensure objectives are met. Provide technical expertise for new proposals. Masters in Public Health desired.

"Once you join the army, that's forever," Pedro says. "You die there." Pedro, 26, is one of the many young Angolan men who are worried by a fresh initiative by the Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) to recruit new soldiers.

Angola is closer to peace today than it was a year ago, the UN's Special Envoy to Angola, Ambassador Mussagy Jeichande, told IRIN in a recent interview.

This is a country on the take, disfigured by a core group of senior government officials whose corruption is so malignant that it has metastasized to virtually every level of Angola's public sector, according to diplomats, relief workers, academics and Angolans from all walks of life, says Jon Jeter in the Washintton Post.

Angolan rebel movement Unita claims to have killed 298 government soldiers, police and militia forces in operations between November 8 and 19, according to a statement.

Sanctions against UNITA have reduced Jonas Savimbi's capacity to wage an expensive conventional war against the Angolan state, but according to analysts and a detailed UN report, they have not reduced the rebel movement's ability to indefinitely embroil the battered country in a state of war.

The impact of Angola's long war and a lack of investment in social services have had a devastating impact on the country's children, with basic indicators continuing to be "among the worst in the world", Save the Children Fund says in its latest emergency update.

Salary : $$58,000
Location : Luanda, Angola
Closing Date : 31 Dec 2001
Posted on : 24 Oct 2001

Salary : £26,679pa
Location : Luanda, Angola
Closing Date : 14 Nov 2001
Posted on : 2 Nov 2001

Civilians continue to seek safety in government-controlled towns across the country as they flee intensifying fighting between rebel UNITA forces and Angolan Armed Forces (FAA) troops, according to humanitarian officials.

The world's major diamond producing and trading countries have reported progress in drafting an international certification scheme for rough diamonds.

Increasing instability in Angola's interior had led to a steady influx of internally displaced people into "most provincial capitals" from 8-12 October, according to the UN's World Food Programme (WFP).

A dusk-to-dawn curfew along a 450 km stretch of the Kavango river could prevent Angolans fleeing intense fighting between government and rebel forces in Angola's southeastern Cuando Cubango province from seeking asylum in Namibia, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has warned.

The United Nations Security Council has asked Angola's warring parties to grant humanitarian workers access to at-risk communities, saying it is deeply concerned about humanitarian conditions in the country. UN statistics indicate at least 500,000 Angolans are in desperate need of food and medicine cannot be reached.

UNITA continues to fund its war in Angola through illegal diamonds sales worth an estimated $100 million last year, according to the latest report from the UN Monitoring Mechanism on Sanctions against UNITA, which was delivered to the President of the UN Security Council on 12 October.

Embargoed diamonds worth over $1 million are smuggled out of Angola every day, according to a report on Security Council sanctions against the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.

The humanitarian situation in Angola remained "serious, particularly in inaccessible regions where credible evidence indicates that conditions have deteriorated markedly", UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in his latest report to the Security Council.

In its latest outbreak update, the World Health Organisation says 332 cases of
meningitis and 30 deaths had been reported in Angola at the beginning of the month.

Unita rebels have abducted 16 children attending mass in a Roman Catholic church
in Angola's northern Kwanza Norte province.