NGOs

A Greek employee of the Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders - MSF) the medical charity, kidnapped in eastern Chad early last month, has been released.

However, army general, Oki Daggache could not reveal all the details regarding the release.

In March, British charity Oxfam estimated that 25 attacks occur every month on NGOs operating in eastern Chad.

The violence is often blamed on bandits, and NGOs have frequently denounced the lack of adequate security.

The Human Rights Watch (HRW) has urged Southern African leaders to put pressure on Zimbabwe's unity government to make greater political reforms to prevent the country from sliding back into turmoil.

"The region's leaders need to press Zimbabwe openly and publicly for human rights reforms to prevent the country from backsliding into state-sponsored violence and chaos," says HRW Africa director, Georgette Gagnon.

Gagnon further calls on Southern African leaders to stop looking at Zimbabwe through what she calls “rose-colour glasses”.

The National House of Traditional Leaders has vowed to continue with the customary circumcision of young Xhosa and Sotho men, and has warned "intrusive NGOs" opposed to the practice to stay away.

"The intrusive NGOs and groups are in for a real fight because they do not know anything about the importance of (male) circumcision," says chief Gcinikhaya Gwadiso, head of the house's national campaign for safe initiation schools.

Rwanda’s Directorate General of Immigration and Emigration has reminded unregistered NGOs operating in that country that their failure to register could result in punitive measures.

The Directorate started the registration exercise in January this year which was supposed to end in April, but four months after the deadline, a good number of these NGOs continue to operate illegally.

The Public Service Accountability Monitor (PSAM) says a key assessment document for the proposed pebble bed nuclear reactor was fatally flawed.

PSAM says that a decision on whether to go ahead with a Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) demonstration project involve choices on the use of substantial public resources.

Three regional countries, Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe are set to benefit from mini-hydro-power stations being developed by Practical Action.

Practical Action has started pilot projects in Manicaland to ensure communities and farmers in marginalised areas have access to electricity. The project involves generating power from small sources of water such as waterfalls and perennial rivers.

The 5th Annual SANGONeT "ICTs for Civil Society" Conference will be held in two parts - from 15-16 October 2009 in Johannesburg, and 20-21 October 2009 in Cape Town.

Following the success of the previous four annual SANGONeT conferences, the 2009 event will focus on the relevance of social media tools to the South African NGO sector.

Four influential organisations in the non-profit sector have launched a research project to establish why the National Lotteries Distribution Fund (NLDF) and the National Development Agency (NDA) have been ineffective  in their  roles to provide support for those in need in South Africa.