NGOs

Zambian Home Affairs Minister, Lameck Mangani, says the country’s Drug Enforcement Commission (DEC) has arrested two NGO officials who allegedly transferred K200 million from the organisation's account to their personal favour.

According to Mangani, those arrested are John Munsanje, executive director of the Family Health Trust (FHT) and Harrison Chibale, who is the finance and administration manager at the same organisation.

There is a "clear and present danger" that the Copenhagen climate change negotiations are being set up to fail by the leaders of the rich countries backed by powerful vested interests. This is according to Tasneem Essop of the World Wide Fund for Nature’s international climate policy advocate.

The South African Red Cross Society has launched a R2 million appeal for emergency support for xenophobia refugees at De Doorns in the Western Cape.

The organisation is also calling on all South Africans to stand together for humanity.

The appeal comes as negotiators meet representatives of the local community in a bid to resolve tensions.

A NGO, the Prison Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN), has concluded plans to establish a N400 million Jubilee Rehabilitation Centre for ex-prison inmates.

PFN executive director, Barrister Benson Iwuagwu, says that centre will consolidate the activities of his organisation in its quest to re-integrate ex-inmates into the society.

"As there is no policy that guarantees the survival of ex-convicts, coupled with the stigmatization they face, we are disarming the crime in inmates and ex-convicts as the society is less caring," he explains.

Tens of thousands of children in Zimbabwe have been sexually assaulted over the past 10 years. This is according to Betty Makoni, founder of the Zimbabwean NGO Girl Child Network (GCN).

Makoni, a leading children’s rights campaigner who has been forced to flee the country, points out that the country’s political and economic collapse has created a climate in which its children have become increasingly vulnerable.

The Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) has blamed poor education for hindering Ghana’s development.

Education programme officer of the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), Ubald Sabogu, argues that the country could have attained the Millennium Development Goals of 2015 if development in three regions had kept pace with the rest of the country.

Sabogu has described the educational constraints in the Northern, Upper East and the West region as a “major problem hindering the development of the area.”

The United Nations (UN) says six non-governmental aid agencies have suspended operations in eastern Chad after the kidnapping of a Red Cross worker and a surge in attacks on relief agencies there.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says 37 000 people will be deprived of relief aid as a result of the temporary withdrawal.

OCHA spokesperson, Elizabeth Byrs, says that, “In two weeks one humanitarian worker has been killed and one kidnapped.”

Lives of AIDS patients in poor countries could be severely compromised if donors and rich nations continue reducing their funding commitments to AIDS programmes. This is according to an independent humanitarian agency, Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF).

MSF urges major donors not to ‘wipe out gains’ made by the roll out of anti-retrovirals (ARVs) by ‘retreating from their international funding commitments’.

On becoming Greenpeace International executive director, prominent human rights activist, Kumi Naidoo, has warned world leaders that there can be no excuse for not attending the upcoming United Nations Copenhagen Climate Summit and agreeing a fair, ambitious and binding treaty to save the climate.

Naidoo argues that the Copenhagen Summit offers the single greatest opportunity for leaders to come together and create a legally binding agreement to avert climate chaos.

Ghana’s deputy for northern regional minister, Moses Bukari Magbenba, has called for a legislation and regulatory body to monitor the activities both local and foreign NGOs in the country. Magbenba argues that some of these organisations are not operating in the interest of their proposed beneficiaries.

Magbenba says he observed that the legislative power is needed because some NGOs have lost their focus of being non-profit entities and are making huge profits at the expense of poor communities.