CAFOD, one of the UK's leading development and relief agencies, is seeking a dynamic and strategic team leader to develop and manage CAFOD's humanitarian and development programme in Southern Africa.

Serve as the IRC representative in-charge of the Makamba Field Office (approx. 35 national staff); Supervise implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all projects in Makamba Province (currently water/sanitation; hygiene promotion; malaria prevention; school construction; youth development); and Provide technical guidance as required.

After seven months of isolation due to fighting, a UNICEF convoy delivered a consignment of medical supplies and relief food for children in the severely-stricken north-eastern district of Bouna, 600 km north-east of Abidjan. The supplies consisted of basic health kits, water purification tablets, mosquito nets, soap, disinfectants and plastic buckets, as well as four tons of rice, soya beans and cooking oil.

Since it was established in 1967 under a charter from the Child Welfare Society of Kenya, children have come to Arap Moi Children's Home from all over the Nakuru region of western Kenya. Some are placed at the home by the Children's Department in the Ministry of Home Affairs or by the Ministry of Health. Other children are abandoned in hospitals or recovered from the streets by police and later brought to the home. "The community knows we are here, and knows we can help," says Mrs Justine "Mama" Oduya, the home's director and regional coordinator of the Child Welfare Society of Kenya, Nakuru branch.

At the IMF-World Bank Spring Meetings in April 2002, Development and Finance Ministers launched a plan to address the education crisis in the world's poorest countries, and provide every child with basic education by 2015. Donors agreed to implement the action plan through an education Fast Track Initiative, that would strengthen sector planning, foster reform, improve coordination and mobilise the additional resources needed to reach the education goals. Despite progress, this report from Action Aid states that donors are not meeting their commitments on levels of finance, timetable for implementation and transparent, collaborative decision making.

The high esteem I have held you in for so many years has just been eloquently confirmed by the letter you addressed me and Professor Kenneth King (http://www.pambazuka.org/newsletter.php? id=14460). We addressed you our invitation on the basis of your moral and political integrity, your critical lucidity concerning hegemonic conceptions of human rights, and your struggles for participatory democracy, social justice, and solidary knowledge. It breaks my heart to realize that these same traits of your character force you to decline our invitation.

The use of minors in armed conflict has been a case for concern for years. Despite ratification of international conventions and protocols to contain the practice, the number of children in active combat around the world is as frightening as the experiences of those forcefully abducted to fight. Efforts to re-integrate former child soldiers into society hardly bear fruits.

Visibly traumatised, Antonio Manuel, 10, goes to Mahele primary school, a remote part of Maputo province, where the Mozambican capital, Maputo, is situated. Manuel, a shy boy, uses both his hands to hold a pencil as he writes in the exercise book. His fingers - on both hands - are joined together after his stepmother placed his hands on top of a hot stove. Manuel was only four when the accident happened.

Eritrea, Somalia and Sudan are among the world's most repressive regimes, according to the US-based independent advocacy group, Freedom House. In a report to the UN Human Rights Commission session underway in Geneva, the group has listed 16 countries and three territories it considers as the worst offenders in terms of civil liberties and human rights - among them China, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.

The purpose of the program is to provide Arab Ph.D. holders who have excellent academic track record with opportunities to conduct research or lecture in the best universities of the world. The program is also expected to build bridges between Arab and foreign universities, which will lead to mutual benefits. The Arab Fund’s Scholar Awards provide fixed maintenance allowances based on the cost of living in the host country, return tickets for the beneficiaries and their families and limited accident and sickness insurance.

In early March this year, over 2,300 Rwandans arrived at the Kibungo transit camp, a centre that receives Rwandan refugees returning from Tanzania. These were not the usual refugees. They were Rwandans living within the local community near the border and had never been in the camps. When the governments of Rwanda and Tanzania had signed an agreement to repatriate all Rwandan nationals living in Tanzania as refugees, these people had not considered themselves part of the target group. Over several weeks in early March, they had been identified and evicted as illegal immigrants. "Most of them left Rwanda in the 1980's, some of them were born there [Tanzania]," Odette Nyiramirimo, the Secretary of State for Social Affairs in the Ministry of Local Administration told Internews.

Over 680 teachers in KwaZulu-Natal - more than 55 a month - died in-service in the year 2000. Most died from unspecified illnesses, and the average age at the time of death was 36. Between 1999 and 2000, there was a massive 70% increase in deaths of female teachers between the ages of 30 and 34. This is according to figures released last week by the Health Economics and HIV/Aids Research Division (Heard) at the University of Natal.

The rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) has reportedly said the Ugandan government must declare an unconditional ceasefire before it will nominate a peace negotiating team.

Robert Mugabe's government has committed severe human rights abuses against the opposition party, has actively repressed the press and the judiciary and is largely responsible for the famine that is currently gripping Zimbabwe, according to a Commonwealth report distributed to heads of government this week.
Related Links:
* SADC Grills Mudenge
http://allafrica.com/stories/200304040682.html
* Opposition Leadership Face Crackdown
http://allafrica.com/stories/200304080601.html

The Canadian government has pumped more than R1,2 million into a water and sanitation studies project to be run at the Lovedale Public FET College. A Canadian delegation presented the study course to the college council. After two years the college will have to carry the project on its own.

Many important services are still not accessible to people with disabilities in Namibia, says a released report. The study found that only about 25 per cent of Namibian schools are accessible to disabled children while around 38, 6 per cent of disabled children older than five years have never attended school.

Kenyan president Emilio Mwai Kibaki, who was elected in December 2002, has instructed his lawyers to file contempt-of-court charges against two private dailies. The charges stem from stories that appeared in the March 31 editions of the independent East African Standard and the Kenya Times about a court case filed against President Kibaki by the local gas station chain Nyota Services Ltd. The company's owner alleges that Kibaki and other senior members of the ruling National Rainbow Coalition bought gas for their cars on credit and now owe the company a total of 10 million Kenyan shillings.

The succulent Karoo, the fragile source of many of the trendiest plants found in fashionable shops and restaurants, is set to benefit from a massive $8m in conservation grants from the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. The fund is a joint initiative of Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the World Bank and the Japanese government.

The can-do attitude of villagers in Magona near Thohoyandou in Limpopo has galvanised the Limpopo provincial government into investing more than R150 000 in the community. Premier Ngoako Ramatlhodi's office heard how villagers had raised funds to build a second high school so that children no longer had to walk 10km a day for their education. The funding was only enough to get the new school to foundation level.

The Five College African Scholars Program announces four and one-half month residency fellowships from January to May 2004 and August to December 2004. Junior and mid-level scholars, who are citizens of an African nation and who teach in African universities, are eligible to apply.