03/12/2003
Toolkit Comes to Crank up Democracy
By
Sanjay Suri
NO, IT isn’t something to fix an old
car with; it’s a toolkit to fix democracies not going
quite the way they should.
That name ‘toolkit’ was chosen deliberately.
“These are not general sort of recommendations on the
kind of things that should be done,” says Rajesh Tandon
who has been overseeing the development of the toolkit. “These
are examples of best practices that are out there and which
can easily be implemented in other places as well.”
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Women's
Issues to the Fore
“THE POLICE have taken over the
people’s forum,’ Nkoyo Toyo announced to
us. She spoke with the kind of strength and conviction
that has made many an insecure male quake (and there
are so many).
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Oil
Chokes Rights in Niger Delta
By
Toye Olori
THE NIGER Delta which spans five Nigerian
states suffers a cruel dilemma: located on some of the world’s
richest oil reserves, the region remains among the poorest
in the country.
30 Percent,
For Now
By Ferial Haffajee
NIGERIAN ACTIVISTS want one
in three politicians elected to be a woman. An affirmative
action campaign is gathering steam to push for thirty
percent legislated female representation at the next
election, slated for 2007.
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Women
Begin to Market their Power
"We have taken young girls
off the street and into the class room, the business
world and employment sector, all in one sweep,"
the glamourous Oluwatoyin Asuni,
says of her organization, the Centre for Rehabilitation
and Training (CERAT)".
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Two
Women with One Mission
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Nkoyo Toyo champions rights in Nigeria
By Toye Olori
SIX KEY areas of concern are likely
to form the nucleus of civil society’s representation
to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting later
this week, says Nkoyo Toyo, the executive director of
the Lagos-based Gender and Development Action (GADA)
and chairperson of the Commonwealth Peoples Forum 2003
steering committee.
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Labouring
Without Rights
By
Ferial Haffajee
MOST COMMONWEALTH governments are signatories
to the core set of labour standards that can guarantee decent
work, but few are enforcing the measures.
Solitary
Unions
By
Zarina Geloo
THE NIGERIAN labour movement union was taken
down a peg or two on Monday night when a well known gender
activist asked why it had isolated itself from the rest of
civil society and told it to get off its high horse and help
build the institutional structures of other civic bodies.
Around
Abuja
WHILE SOME may decry the Commonwealth goings-on
as irrelevant, the meetings may in fact be vital for the Nigerian
economy. Word is that the Naira is on a spiral downward because
Muslim pilgrims are buying up dollars ahead of the journey
to Mecca. Also leading the currency’s fall are citizens
going off to the good life in the North for Christmas.
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