SOUTH AFRICA: Give me a home, but not in a Temporary Relocation Area

Photo: Lee Middleton/IRIN Cape Town's 'Tin can town' - Blikkiesdorp

BLIKKIESDORP, 30 April 2010 (IRIN) - Blikkiesdorp - meaning "tin-can town" in Afrikaans - has become a source of controversy in Cape Town, South Africa's most visited city and the host of several important matches in the much-anticipated 2010 Soccer World Cup.



Created in 2008, Blikkiesdorp is sandwiched between sand dunes and the main road through the township of Delft, about 20km outside Cape Town, where over 1,500 box-like units made of metal sheeting line a bleak area of gravel and sand, with not a tree or a bush in sight.



Older units lack insulation and gaps can be seen between the galvanized metal sheets; problems with plumbing result in overflows when it rains - the odour of sewage is distinct.



Some residents have called Blikkiesdorp a "concentration camp", and have attracted media attention with claims that it was created as part of a "clean up strategy" to tidy away Cape Town's poor and homeless before the World Cup starts in June.



Most of the people were relocated from inner-city suburbs like Woodstock and Salt River - a move reminiscent of apartheid's forced removals - but this Temporary Relocation Area (TRA), as it

ZIMBABWE: Court ruling tests patience of blood diamond activists

Photo: Wikimedia Commons Cut diamonds

JOHANNESBURG, 29 April 2010 (IRIN) - Global Witness, a leading light in establishing the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), a global system to prevent "blood diamonds" being sold into the market, is facing a "dilemma" now that the Zimbabwe High Court has allowed the sale of stones from the Marange diamond fields.



There have been reports from Marange that "the military ... carried out widespread atrocities in the diamond fields, including murder, rape and forced labour", Global Witness said in a statement. The court ruling, "apparently" approving the

SWAZILAND: Not much benefit in preferential trade agreement

Photo: Clean Clothes Campaign Textile workers

MBABANE, 28 April 2010 (IRIN) - A decade after the African Growth and Opportunities Act (AGOA), a preferential US trade agreement, became law on 18 May 2000, there are questions over the benefits, if any, derived from the initiative.



AGOA was touted by the US government as offering "tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets"; in return, selected countries could access US markets without restrictive quotas or import taxes.



Neither Swaziland nor Lesotho had a textile sector before the advent of AGOA, but the quality of the jobs it created, and the labour conditions and working environment, are being examined by local as well as US authorities.



"We ask: who is the beneficiary of the textile factories that have opened here since AGOA?" said Comfort Gina, secretary general of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU), an umbrella body. "Jobs were created, but if you take the basic income versus expenditures of a worker, basics like transport, food and accommodation exceed income."



The average monthly wage for a textile factory worker is about US$117, according SFTU data.

Macedonia to head prestigious CoE committee

As officials pledge to continue the Council's work in promoting human rights and democracy, a quarrel with Greece has already erupted over the title chosen for the chairmanship.

By Goran Trajkov for Southeast European Times in Skopje -- 27/04/10

Council of Europe Secretary General Thorbjorn Jagland (left) met with Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (centre) in Skopje. [Tomislav Georgiev/SETimes]

For the first time in its history, Macedonia will preside over the Council of Europe's (CoE) Committee of Ministers starting in May. It will be the second high-profile chairmanship to have been held by the country, following senior diplomat Srdjan Kerim's 2008 stint as head of the UN General Assembly.

During a

WEST AFRICA: Polio campaign kicks off

Photo: UNICEF/SENEGAL/SHRYOCK/2010 A child receives a polio vaccination in Senegal in the first round of the 2010 campaign (file photo)

DAKAR, 26 April 2010 (IRIN) - The second three-day round of a synchronized campaign to vaccinate 77 million children against polio in 16 West African countries is now underway.



The wild poliovirus has been reported in eight countries in the region in the past six months: Burkina Faso, Chad, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal and Sierra Leone, according to the WHO and UNICEF.



In this second round immunizers will return to areas targeted in the first vaccination

ZIMBABWE: "I shout; I speak out on issues concerning women living with HIV"

Photo: Anthony Kaminju/IRIN Sisters doing it for themselves

HARARE, 22 April 2010 (PlusNews) - Evelyn Mashamba is one of Zimbabwe's most outspoken gender and AIDS activists and has being living with HIV for the past 10 years. She told IRIN/PlusNews how being HIV-positive propelled her into the movement to fight for the rights of women living with the virus.



"I started my work as an activist 2005 in Masvingo [Province in southeastern Zimbabwe]. It so happened that there was a workshop at the College of Primary Health Care and Physicians, and a doctor friend

SOUTH AFRICA: Less sex, more violence for teens

Photo: Anthony Kaminju/IRIN Less sex

JOHANNESBURG, 23 April 2010 (PlusNews) - Schoolchildren in South Africa are having less sex, and those that are, are doing it more safely, the second National Youth Risk Behaviour Survey by the Medical Research Council (MRC) has found.



Over 10,000 students in their last three years of high school participated in the survey, which showed "significant reductions" in risky sexual behaviour.



The first survey, in 2002, found that 41 percent had "ever had sex", but this dropped from to 38 percent in the current survey; the number with two or