A silver lining has emerged in Swaziland's current food crisis through the efforts of thousands of Swazi women who have been put in charge of food aid distribution. "We use the phrase, 'Teach one man, and you teach one man, teach one woman and you teach 50 women," Erika MacLean, emergency coordinator for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Swaziland, told IRIN.

Swaziland's health ministry has begun enlisting traditional healers in efforts to contain HIV and assist patients with Aids-related illnesses. The cooperation between modern and traditional medicine reverses decades of separation, and highlights the extent of the Aids emergency in Swaziland.

Time is running out for Swaziland to sell eleven ''orphaned'' elephants to zoos in the United States, even if the sale means incurring the wrath of powerful animal rights organisations. The position of the Big Game Parks of Swaziland, a private collection of three animal reserves whose unofficial but powerful patron is King Mswati III, is that too many elephants are ruining the habitats of other wildlife, including some endangered species.

A national crop survey conducted this week by the UN's World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation has found widespread crop failures in the most impoverished areas of Swaziland.

A new study has established the link between Aids and Swaziland's current food crisis, demonstrating that the epidemic is as damaging to agricultural production as drought and outmoded land policies.

King Mswati III delivered a much anticipated speech last Friday when he opened the Houses of Parliament, but his briefest State of the Kingdom address ever avoided mentioning the on-going political crises, and offered only one new initiative to combat AIDS, poverty and the current food crisis.

The first survey of Swazis' sexual behaviour and attitudes toward HIV/AIDS has found that high awareness of the pandemic has not translated into less risk-taking behaviour, and that HIV-positive people remain unwilling to admit their status.

According to agencies monitoring the Swaziland famine only 20-40 percent of the farming land has been cultivated in central parts of Swaziland this year and those lands cultivated are expected to produce low yields.

Virva Hautala and Sanna Simonen lend a hand at a pump, manually extracting life-preserving water from a borehole beneath the parched earth. The Finnish aid volunteers urge the children queued with plastic containers not to waste the precious fluid, as they pump and carry their water rations on their heads back to homesteads, up to 10 km away.

Preliminary figures from the latest vulnerability assessment indicate that the number of people facing hunger in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland has risen significantly. News reports from the kingdom quoted national disaster task team chairman Ben Nsibandze as saying that 297,000 out of a population of 1 million will require food aid to survive.

Swaziland's labour unions are once again taking the lead in the pro-democracy movement that seeks to transform King Mswati from sub-Saharan Africa's last absolute monarch into a constitutional monarch within the democratic framework of an elected government.

The landlocked African kingdom of Swaziland is believed to have the world's highest rate of HIV, with almost four out of 10 adults infected with the virus which causes Aids. In a new year's address, the prime minister, Sibusiso Dlamini, said the official rate of infection had risen to 38.6% from 34.2% in January 2002.

Soldiers and police are patrolling Swaziland's major highway and other main routes, as an anti-government stay-away begins. The action is to protest against King Mswati III's plans to buy himself a R720 million private jet, as well as government statements and decisions that defy the country's courts.

The disregard for the rights of women and girls by the king of Swaziland - where the King can abduct legal minors with a view to taking them as wives - is tied to a deeper disregard for the human rights of Swazi citizens.

After relative quiet, Swaziland's labour unions are about to embark on the first national stay-away in five years. Union leaders are confident that the time has come to press for democratic reforms in the country. This will happen despite a government ban on strikes and threats from the royal establishment, and if the stay-away takes place during the annual kingship pageant, strikers would be committing sacrilege.

What is the impact of HIV/Aids on agriculture and the private sector? The key finding in this report is that HIV/Aids has not affected the profitability and productivity of Swazi businesses, as the costs have been passed onto the households and the public sector.

The US has issued a warning to the government of Swaziland saying that if it continues to ignore democratic principles its eligibility under the US African Growth and Opportunity Act will be reviewed.

The Swazi government's deliberate and flagrant disregard for the rule of law and its attempts to undermine the independence of the judiciary jeopardize long term protection of human rights in Swaziland, says Amnesty International.

"There is no food at home. I am fed at school. I think I would die without school meals, like my sister did," Janice Simelane, an eight-year-old second grade student at Swaziland's Sobani Primary School, says.

Activists in Swaziland have been working hard to expose the fallacy that mistreatment of women and children is sanctioned by Swazi tradition. Challenging traditionalists who have hidden behind notions of "custom", the message has now reached isolated pockets of the country such as the northern Hhohho region.