YEAR IN REVIEW 1999: PRESIDENT CLINTON'S AFRICA TRIP

PRESIDENT CLINTON'S AFRICA TRIP: SEEING THINGS AS THEY ARE by Kenneth Ingham On March 23, 1998, U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton arrived in Accra, Ghana, to begin a six-country, 12-day visit to Africa, the most extensive journey to that continent ever undertaken by a U.S. leader. He went with high hopes, hailing "the beginning of a new African renaissance." In retrospect, however, it seemed that the visit might instead have provided grounds for scrutinizing more carefully the premises upon which U.S. policy toward Africa was formulated. The visit began on an upbeat note with enthusiastic crowds assembling to offer their greetings. The president, in turn, seemed genuinely eager to improve trading opportunities between the U.S. and Africa. The African growth and opportunity bill was being debated in the U.S. Congress with the object of promoting his aim, and his slogan "Trade Not Aid" underlined his determination to replace the discouraging feelings of dependency on the part of the Africans with a dynamic and mutually beneficial partnership. To that end Clinton initially targeted a handful of countries deemed to have already demonstrated reformist tendencies--countries in which progress had been made toward a more democratic form of government, toward the establishment of internal security, and toward economic recovery and the elimination of corruption. These, henceforward, would be the criteria upon which further opportunities for profitable cooperation with the U.S. would depend. Eritrea, Ethiopia, Uganda, and Rwanda in particular were singled out as fulfilling these requirements and also because they were led, it was thought, by men of a younger, pragmatic generation with whom the U.S. could do business. Further, there was also South Africa, a nation that had set an example of magnanimity and renewal. Yet even for the most optimistic observer, there were discernible obstacles to the fulfillment of this well-intentioned plan. In the first place, all the countries on which the president focused attention had been, and still were, heavily dependent upon foreign aid for whatever economic progress they had made. In addition, discussions that took place in a meeting with East African heads of state, held in Entebbe, Uganda, forced Clinton to revise fundamentally his interpretation of what constituted progress toward a democratic form of government. Multiparty democracy, which he had taken as his aim, was conspicuously absent from the countries singled out for approval. Nor, to the dispassionate observer, was there much evidence that a multiparty system had provided the best recipe for internal political stability elsewhere in the continent. In South Africa too, the highlight of his visit, Clinton had to review his plans when Pres. Nelson Mandela made it clear that trade was no substitute for aid in countries as poor and as lacking in natural resources as were those in Africa. The outbreak of hostilities between Eritrea and Ethiopia on May 6 inscribed a powerful question mark against the president's faith in the good intentions of the pragmatic young leaders who were to bring in a new era of cooperation in the Great Lakes region of Africa. The rebellion that began shortly afterward, with the support of Uganda and Rwanda, in the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo raised yet further doubts. The question then arose as to why President Clinton, whose intentions were patently sincere, assumed that the African leaders with whom he was dealing were at one with him in his aims. One explanation was the information that had been supplied to him. U.S. policy in Africa since the time of the Cold War had been bedeviled by the phenomenon immortalized by the novelist Rudyard Kipling as the "Great Game." In the late 19th century, British attitudes toward Russian intervention in Asia had been coloured by the reports of official, semiofficial, and private adventurers enjoying the thrill of clandestine operations beyond the frontiers of India and not infrequently embellishing, if not actually inventing, accounts of Russian machinations and the vacillating loyalties of local chieftains. These activities were repeated in Africa during the Cold War by Americans of a similar cast of mind. As a result, an opportunistic power seeker such as Jonas Savimbi was regularly described as "pro-Western" and supplied with arms to conduct a profoundly damaging rebellion against the self-styled Marxist government of Angola. Similarly, the unscrupulous "pro-Western" Mobuto Sese Seko was helped to become president of Zaire and oppressor of his people as a "bulwark against the spread of Communism in Tropical Africa." Even before the Cold War had ended, the exponents of the late-20th-century version of the Great Game had discovered the wellspring of a new series of plots against the interests of the West in the Muslim governments of Libya and The Sudan. Thus accused, the Muslim leaders' not- unnatural reaction had been to conform more closely to the character defined for them by their opponents. In this situation of heightened tension, the readiness of the presidents of Uganda, Eritrea, and Ethiopia to give assistance to the rebels against the Sudanese government may well, whatever their underlying reasons, have been represented to U.S. policy makers as reinforcing the reformist and pro-Western character currently attributed to them. These considerations reveal the need for a reassessment of U.S. policy toward Africa. If, as President Clinton clearly intended to demonstrate by his visit, the U.S. is eager to help Africa overcome the constraints that poverty, corruption, and political instability have imposed on the continent's development, it is necessary to understand and give priority to the genuine needs and aspirations of individual African countries rather than using them as pawns in a geopolitical power struggle. Kenneth Ingham is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Bristol, Eng. Education Primary and Secondary Education. In a study of 34 nations by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Norway and Belgium had the highest percentage of high-school students who graduated, each with 100%. The seven next highest were Japan (99%), Finland (98%), Poland (94%), New Zealand (93%), Portugal (91%), South Korea (91%), and Russia (88%). Germany ranked 11th (86%), France 13th (85%), Canada 22nd (73%), the United States 24th (72%), Argentina 32nd (34%), and Mexico 34th (26%). According to the study's director, Andreas Schleicher, rates in the U.S. had remained much the same over the years, whereas many other nations had rapidly increased their rates in recent times. Test results were reported for students in the final year of secondary school who participated in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, sponsored by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. The program's three tests focused on science-mathematics literacy, advanced mathematics, and physics. Among 21 nations represented in the science-mathematics literacy program, the highest average scores were in The Netherlands and Sweden, with Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland somewhat lower. Countries performing below the international average were, in descending order, Hungary, Russia, Italy, the U.S., Lithuania, Cyprus, and South Africa. In all 21 countries except South Africa, males had significantly higher average achievement than females. Students who made the greatest use of electronic calculators during the testing performed better than those who made less use of them. The nine nations in which more than 50% of students reported using computers weekly were Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the U.S. Achievement tests for advanced mathematics and physics were administered in 16 countries. France ranked at the top in advanced mathematics, followed by Russia, Switzerland, Denmark, Cyprus, and Lithuania. The lowest average scores were in the Czech Republic, Germany, the U.S., and Austria. In physics Norway and Sweden were significantly higher than the other nations, followed by Russia and Denmark. The lowest physics scores were in France, the Czech Republic, Austria, and the U.S. In the U.S. the school voucher and charter school movements continued to gain momentum. Typical voucher programs conducted by selected states and cities furnished parents a stipend ranging from $1,500 to $5,000 per year to help pay the cost of sending a child to a school of the parents' choice. Whereas in 1994 only 45% of respondents in a nationwide Gallup Poll endorsed voucher plans, in a 1998 survey 51% favoured full or partial government subsidies to pay tuition costs at any public, private, or church-related school. Support for vouchers was also expressed in legal decisions and monetary contributions from nongovernmental sources. The U.S. Supreme Court accepted the Wisconsin Supreme Court's ruling that the state's voucher program did not violate the constitutional separation of church and state. This allowed Wisconsin to continue its voucher plan, under which many holders of vouchers enrolled their children in private schools. The growing list of donors offering voucher funds for poor families included officials of Gulfstream Aerospace and Wal-Mart Stores ($200 million), New York City's School Choice Scholarship Foundation ($11 million), and patrons of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York ($10 million). Advocates of vouchers asserted that such plans improved education by allowing parents to decide where to have their children educated and by fostering healthy competition between schools. Opponents contended that vouchers not only breached the law separating church and state but also siphoned off the best students from public schools and allowed private schools to reject less-competent and handicapped pupils. The first charter school in the U.S. opened in Minnesota in 1992. By the end of 1998, about 700 such schools were operating in 23 states and enrolling an estimated 165,000 students. The American version of a charter school was a primary or secondary institution financed by public funds but managed by either a nonprofit or a profit-making organization. The typical charter school was free to create its own curriculum, hire noncredentialed teachers, and monitor its own fiscal affairs. Such an arrangement, long practiced in other nations, was accompanied in the U.S. by heated debate. To evaluate the quality of charter schools, journalists visited dozens of them in the two states with the most charter institutions (Arizona and Michigan) and concluded that some of the schools were excellent but that many others displayed serious shortcomings--weak curricula, poor teaching, substandard buildings, and financial abuses. A growing debate in the U.S. was concerned with whether students should hold jobs while attending school. A study conducted at the University of Massachusetts reported that in some communities as many as 80% of high-school students engaged in some sort of employment, with nearly half of them working 20 hours or more each week. Advocates of school-plus-work maintained that having a job builds self-confidence and teaches youths responsibility, economic self-reliance, and the ability to get along with customers and fellow employees. Critics worried that a job, particularly one that required more than 20 hours a week, deprived students of needed sleep and exercise, diverted their attention from school tasks, resulted in a shallow education, and left little time for social life. In the U.S. the failure of educators to persuade teachers to enrich their lessons with advanced technology motivated officials of the Olympia, Wash., school district to create an 18-week course for training secondary-school students in computer technology so that those students could then help teachers improve their use of technology to enhance instruction. News of the success of the Olympia program caused other school systems to adopt the plan. In addition to forbidding students to carry guns or knives, American schools began to outlaw the laser pointer--a device in the shape of a pen or large bullet that could cast a red laser beam on anyone or anything within a quarter of a mile. Not only did teachers condemn laser pointers for disrupting classroom instruction, but critics also warned of likely damage to eyesight if the beam was directed into the eyes. Disappointing test results among black secondary-school seniors caused South African officials to question the effectiveness of their postapartheid public-school system. Over a one-year period the percentage of blacks passing the national matriculation exam dropped from 58.5% to 52.2%. During the three years of postapartheid South Africa, the former black, white, and Coloured (mixed race) education systems were slowly being merged, with the hope that test results for blacks would gradually improve. The current condition of the education system's infrastructure suggested, however, that this hope would not soon be realized, as 51% of schools still lacked textbooks and 57% were without electricity. Research in five countries (Mauritius, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe) of the 12-nation Southern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality led to a variety of educational policy recommendations. Prominent among the suggestions were the proposals that parental support of children's schooling be increased through use of parent meetings, educational forums, and radio programs; that teachers receive specific training in how best to work with parents; and that each government set a national policy concerning the frequency and amount of homework for different grades in its schools. A new study was launched for the 1998-2001 period to provide information about reading and mathematics achievement at the sixth-grade level that could guide governments' educational decisions in the 10 nations. Teaching computer literacy became an increasingly high priority in much of the world. The British plan for a "national grid for learning" set the year 2003 as the time that all 32,000 U.K. schools would be linked to the Internet. By late 1998 more than 6,000 schools were already linked. The plan was supported by a private charity organization, UK NetYear, which offered free E-mail address services to pupils and teachers along with a multimedia program for teachers titled "Computers Don't Bite." Initial funding included 50 million (U.S. $82.5 million) from the central government and 50 million from local authorities, with an additional 230 million ($380 million) for teacher training derived from the national lottery. Ireland's education minister, Michael Martin, announced his government's intention to establish Ireland as the "information services hub" for Europe by ensuring that all Irish children were computer literate by the end of their school career. In pursuit of this goal, the government planned to increase annual spending on education from $3.3 billion in 1997 to $4.6 billion by 2002. Of that amount, $71 million would be used to acquire information and communications equipment, training, curriculum manuals, and Internet connections for 4,000 schools. A new national education policy in Botswana aimed to prepare students for an industrial economy driven by information technology. A key feature of the plan would be a computer awareness program in all secondary and tertiary institutions. The program, organized in a 10-year basic computer education curriculum, was designed to develop students' skills in word processing and the use of spreadsheets and databases. China's new primary-school policies--introduced in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and selected provinces--reduced children's homework load by 50% and replaced the age-old 100-mark-exam tradition with a system that rated students' performance as excellent, good, pass, or fail. Sixty percent of a child's grade would be based on overall achievement and 40% on behaviour. Supporters of the change claimed it would improve children's mental health and allow them time for leisure reading, painting, and club activities. Critics worried that the change would make students lazy, decreasing their effort to work as diligently as they had under the 100-mark system. In South Korea a new primary-school textbook came under fire from conservative forces for portraying life in North Korea in too favourable a light. Government officials charged the author, Lee Chang Hee, with violating South Korea's national security law, but Lee's supporters contended that his "open attitude" toward the North was necessary if the North and South were ever to be united. Struggles between Japanese conservatives and liberals intensified over issues of teaching patriotism in the schools. In Tokorozawa High School students refused to participate in graduation ceremonies that involved the nation's flag and the national anthem, an act that reflected the national teachers union policy of resisting the use of the flag and anthem in schools. At the same time, the Ministry of Education directed all schools to fly the flag and sing the anthem. The new film Pride was lauded by conservatives for portraying Gen. Hideki Tojo, the architect of Japan's military conquests in World War II, as a gentle family man who was the victim of American bigotry. Evaluators of a voucher system that had operated in Chile since 1980 concluded that allowing parents to use a government tuition coupon to send their children to any school of their choice did not result in private schools' providing better education than public ones. Competition between public and private schools also did not raise the overall quality of education or reduce its costs. Instead, the new instructional materials, technical assistance, and teacher in-service training provided by the government was credited with the improved test scores that students had achieved in recent years. Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic fundamentalist government moved further in restricting educational opportunities for females by ordering the closing of private schools that had been teaching girls in defiance of the government's policy of keeping women and girls at home. Foreign-aid representatives reported that in 107 such schools in the nation's capital city of Kabul, half of the 6,500 children enrolled had been girls. Under a new set of rules, the schools could be licensed to reopen if they admitted girls no older than age eight and if the curriculum consisted solely of lessons about the Qur'an. As a means of curbing Islamic activism in Turkey, the government closed dozens of Qur'an schools, banned weekend and summer Qur'an courses, and placed additional restrictions on religious instruction in the remaining Islamic institutions. Under the court ruling only children who had completed their eight years of required secular education could be taught about the Qur'an, and the lowest age at which students could enroll was raised from 12 to 15. In addition, the president of the University of Istanbul, Kemal Alemdaroglu, banned from the campus men with Islamic-style beards and women wearing head scarves. Alemdaroglu's edict resulted in protest demonstrations by 2,000 Muslim students. Opinion questionnaires filled out by two million French secondary-school students revealed their overwhelming enthusiasm for sex education and for letting students grade themselves. The study also showed widespread concern among teenagers about finding a job in view of a national unemployment rate exceeding 12%. Higher Education. In the U.S. controversy increased over colleges' affirmative-action practices that had been introduced two decades earlier to admit students from disadvantaged minorities who had substandard entrance-test scores. After the University of California eliminated its affimative-action program, similar programs in the states of Texas, Michigan, and Washington came under attack by critics of preferential treatment for minority groups. In response to such attacks, students and professors at 25 colleges across the nation coordinated an array of rallies, lectures, and "walkout" strikes under the title "National Day of Action to Defend Affirmative Action." Advocates of affirmative-action programs contended that having more African-American and Hispanic students on campus was of educational value by introducing the white majority to minority students and their cultures. In defense of affirmative action, the University of Michigan's president, Lee Bollinger, asserted that "a classroom that does not have a significant representation from members of different races produces an impoverished discussion." A pact aimed at reducing alcohol abuse among students on American campuses was signed by 24 colleges in the Boston area. Included among the 50 items in the pact were measures for encouraging first-year students to live in alcohol-free housing, for providing more alcohol-free social events, and for banning liquor at sororities' and fraternities' recruiting events. The colleges also planned regular meetings with police, community groups, and owners of liquor stores and nightclubs to improve the enforcement of laws prohibiting underage drinking. The pact was created in the wake of the binge-drinking deaths of three underage students at fraternity parties in separate institutions (the University of Iowa, Louisiana State University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology). During 1998 an increasing number of national fraternities pledged to maintain alcohol-free housing after July 1, 2000. At a rapidly increasing pace, American colleges were requiring each student to own a personal computer or to have one available. During 1998 in Georgia, Floyd College in Rome and Clayton College and State University in Morrow, cooperated with local businesses to provide every student with a laptop computer, Internet access, and a student identity card that served as both a phone card and a credit card. At Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., each entering student was obliged to own a computer. Eighty percent of first-year students at New York University brought computers with them when they arrived, and the remaining 20% gained access to them in computer laboratories, in the library, and in the student centre. At Wellesley (Mass.) College, as on most college campuses, every new student was furnished an E-mail address and access to World Wide Web services. Nearly 70% of all courses at Wellesley used Internet technology in some form, such as allowing students to E-mail completed homework assignments to their professors or to run virtual experiments in class. Cleveland (Ohio) State University and MIT allowed students to register for courses from home by means of a computer modem connection. In late May France's oldest university, the Sorbonne, celebrated its 800th anniversary with seminars, celebrations, and an appeal for greater cooperation between European universities so as to provide more academic mobility for students and scholars. The festivities were attended by the education ministers of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, who pledged to try "harmonizing" degree programs in Europe so that there would be just two principal cycles of study, undergraduate and graduate. All four ministers supported a proposal to award students credit in their home universities for studies they pursued in other European Union (EU) countries. In the Erasmus program for the exchange of students between EU nations, Britain was the most popular recipient country, with 19,600 candidates from other European nations. France was second with 14,086 exchange students, and Germany third with 9,700. Among EU countries Germany provided the greatest number of exchange students, 13,000. As part of the Chinese government's effort to simplify bureaucratic procedures, several key universities throughout the nation were given permission to set their own student selection and enrollment regulations, choose their own teaching materials, and establish graduation requirements. This devolution of power included permitting universities to enroll foreign students directly rather than relying on the central government to determine which applicants to accept from abroad. According to government figures, during the year China was host to 40,000 foreign students, many of them from less-developed countries. The Malaysian government issued to Australia's Monash University, Clayton, the first license to establish a branch of a foreign university on Malaysian soil. The Monash program was expected eventually to enroll as many as 5,000 students, offering them a comprehensive array of studies that included degree programs in business management, engineering, and information technology. The decision to accept foreign institutions was motivated by Malaysian officials' concern over the drain of currency and talent that resulted from 50,000 Malaysian students' studying abroad in 1998. In a similar move Indonesian authorities for the first time allowed foreign institutions to establish programs in their country as joint ventures with Indonesian universities. The new policy was partly a result of the nation's economic crises that were preventing many students from carrying out their plans to study abroad. As a further step toward expanding the international scope of the country's higher-education system, all Indonesian universities could now teach a broad range of subjects in English, a practice limited in the past to language courses. Enrollment in The Sudan's Ahfad University for Women, Omdurman, reached more than 4,500, despite efforts of the country's fundamentalist Islamic government to curtail the institution's operation. Ahfad was originally established in 1907 as a private girls' school by a reformist Muslim, Babiker Bedri, under the British-Egyptian colonial administration. In 1998 the university was headed by the founder's grandson, Gasim Bedri, who espoused a philosophy of increasing women's independence through education. Administrators at Thailand's Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, threatened to reduce the grades of women students who persisted in wearing miniskirts on campus. Authorities asserted that short skirts violated the Thai cultural expectation that women behave in a modest fashion so as not to entice sexual predators. To illustrate their concerns, officials displayed posters around the campus showing a crocodile salivating at the sight of a woman in a miniskirt. Israel's finance minister, Yaakov Neeman, sought to abolish the government's half-century practice of subsidizing every man who wanted to study in a Jewish religious academy (yeshiva) for as long as the man wished. The approximately 30,000 yeshiva students not only received government grants but also were exempt from the military draft. Neeman's proposal was intended to pressure studious men to leave the yeshiva and take employment in the country's high-technology sector, which was very short of personnel. The Israeli Ministry of Finance also launched an investigation of "excessive salary increases" in the nation's top universities. Salaries of several officials at Tel Aviv University surpassed those of the country's president and two senior judges on the Supreme Court. The term excessive was defined as at least five percentage points above the standard rate of increase set in collective-bargaining agreements between the government and public-employee labour unions. The number of students at Al-Azhar University on the Gaza Strip rose from 10,500 in 1997 to 14,000 in 1998 as enrollments continued to rise in the region's Palestinian higher-education institutions. Officials attributed the rapid growth to the increased numbers of overseas Palestinians returning home in recent years and to Israeli security measures that prevented young people in Gaza from traveling to the West Bank to attend institutions there. The Japanese government planned to combine the nation's Science and Technology Agency with the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture to form a new Ministry of Education. Supporters of the merger asserted that the new organization would strengthen both the funding and the quality of research. Financial incentives to attract bright foreign students were offered in a variety of nations. As a means of encouraging students from other Asian countries to continue their higher education in Japan, the Japanese government established a fund to provide $390 per year for each student whose home nation's currency had declined in the recent recession. The plan applied to students from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, South Korea, and Thailand. Canadian universities, facing declining enrollments, sought to draw more students from the U.S. by reducing tuition costs. For example, Windsor (Ont.) University lowered tuition for foreign students from Can$9,188 to Can$5,000 (Can$1 = U.S. $0.67). The favourite areas of study in Russia's higher-education system in 1998 contrasted dramatically with the favourites two decades earlier. In 1978 more than two-thirds of Russian college students had been in departments of engineering, medicine, agriculture, and pure and applied sciences. By 1998 fewer than one-quarter of students were in engineering, whereas more than 25% were enrolled in economics, up from 10% in the 1980s. In addition, increased numbers were enrolled in language courses and such new fields as environmental studies. A survey of 14-year-olds in Moscow revealed that the majority wanted to go into business as high-level professionals--21% as economists or accountants, 20% as lawyers, 18% as financiers, and 14% as entrepreneurs. Around 2% chose each of the following occupations--politician, journalist, computer operator, physician, diplomat, bank teller, fashion model, car salesperson, translator, and hairdresser. Higher-education institutions in many parts of the world struggled to operate with diminishing financial resources. During 1998 the German government spent only 0.92% of the gross national product on higher education, compared with 1.32% in 1978. Over the same 20-year period, enrollment in the 296 state-run institutions expanded from one million to 1.8 million students. The result was too few instructors, overflowing lecture halls, deferred maintenance projects, inadequate library resources, and deteriorating laboratory equipment. To help reduce overcrowded classrooms, proponents of reform recommended shortening the six years typically taken to earn a university diploma. Canadian universities, faced with one-third to one-quarter less public financing than five years earlier, increasingly generated funds through connections with private corporations. At a growing rate faculties and buildings were renamed for donors, training programs were created for businesses, and research was designed to serve the needs of private industry. In 1997 the federal government encouraged this trend by agreeing to fund permanently the Can$47.4 million annual budget of the Centres of Excellence program that was designed to bring universities together with corporate partners and "accelerate the transfer of knowledge from universities to the private sector." Critics of close ties with corporations worried that schools were becoming too dependent on the whims of "unselected people with deep pockets" and that an injurious fiscal gap had developed between less-practical arts-oriented disciplines and business-friendly programs. As a further trend, from 1985/86 to 1994/95 tuition had risen 134% so that in some universities students now paid nearly one-third of their school's operating costs. Faculty and staff members in 51 of Brazil's 52 federal universities brought undergraduate education to a standstill in a strike over wages, leaving 420,000 students without classes to attend. Minister of Education Paulo Renato Souza refused to negotiate the strikers' demand for a 48% salary increase until they returned to work. Although more than half of Brazil's 1.6 million students attended private institutions, public universities were the source of most of the country's academic research and prestigious degree programs. Across Russia thousands of students and staff members staged demonstrations to protest overdue faculty wage payments, tuition increases, and staff layoffs. By March the government owed nearly $10 billion in back wages to the nation's combined public workforce, of which higher-education personnel were a part. Students' dissatisfaction with political events or campus conditions led to demonstrations in various nations. In India youths at the University of Delhi expressed their displeasure with the American criticism of India's nuclear tests by boycotting Coca-Cola and Pepsi products. Indonesian students were in the forefront of rallies that forced their nation's president, Suharto, to resign after 32 years in office. Kenyatta University, one of five national universities in Kenya, was shut down by antigovernment student demonstrators protesting ethnic violence in which more than 120 were killed. Later a mob of 3,000 students from Kenya's University of Nairobi demonstrated against a policy of lowering standards for medical school applicants; they chased off 24 riot police by throwing stones and chunks of wood. In Belgrade police broke up a protest by several thousand students and faculty members who objected to the Serbian parliament's approval of a law that reduced university autonomy by giving the Yugoslav Education Ministry the power to appoint rectors and deans. In Oman food poisoning was the target of the first student protest in more than 30 years, as 300 youths from the Institute of Health Sciences marched with banners blaming the institute's catering personnel for serving tainted chicken in the cafeteria. Students at National Taiwan University staged a hunger strike to protest their university president's trip to the capital of China to attend Beijing University's centennial celebration. Prisons and Penology Hardening political and public attitudes on crime and punishment continued to be reflected by the rising numbers of untried and sentenced prisoners in many parts of the world in 1998. In this respect Russia and the United States held the lead with incarceration rates of approximately 690 and 645 prisoners per 100,000 population, respectively. Whereas the Russian figures declined slightly during the year, this was not the case in the U.S., where there had been an annual growth rate of about 6% since 1990. With the probable exception of China (where data were unavailable), reliance elsewhere upon imprisonment was mostly some 50-75% lower. Although the overall pattern was one of steady growth in the incarceration rate, there were a few indications of reductions in Eastern and Central Europe, notably in Poland. Excessively crowded conditions, dismal standards of sanitation, and a shortage of basic medical resources remained the norm for many prison systems. The conditions endured by prisoners awaiting trial remained especially abysmal. In South Africa the number of children sentenced and remanded to prison had doubled since 1996, with many of them held 50 to a cell designed for half that number. In Russian prisons the rate of infection of tuberculosis was estimated to be 20-60% higher than the rate in the general community. Widespread deaths from infectious diseases were also reported among prisoners in Kenya and Uganda, and in Cambodia inmates frequently died of untreated diseases, exacerbated by malnutrition and overcrowding. In Venezuela, where 75% of prisoners were awaiting trial, 24,000 were held in facilities designed for 15,000. At the New-Bell prison in Douala, Cameroon, some 1,900 persons were crammed into a facility designed for 800. Severely crowded conditions were also by no means unknown to countries with more advanced economies. In Italy the Naples prison was housing twice its capacity, but even it compared favourably with Portugal's Oporto prison, which was designed for 500 prisoners but held 1,350. Extensive prison-building programs were under way in the U.S., The Netherlands, and elsewhere but with problematic results. In England and Wales, where the prison population had risen from 42,000 to 66,000 since 1993, a huge capital investment in prisons was achieved in part at the expense of education and other services. Despite an expansion of the prison system in New York state, it was decided (contrary to the standards laid down by the American Corrections Association) to place two prisoners in cells measuring 4.2 sq m (45 sq ft) that had been designed for one person, a determination made necessary by cuts in staffing levels. Elsewhere, imprisonment was made especially unpleasant as an explicit matter of public policy. It was reported in Chad that prisoners were bound with chains for the first three months of their detention. In China torture and ill-treatment of inmates remained widespread. With prisoners often denied protection from extreme temperatures, torture was also reported to be routine in Saudi Arabia. Torture and ill-treatment, including incidents of flogging and amputations, were widespread in prisons operated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Deaths in custody remained widely reported by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations. Prison riots and other serious incidents occurred in a number of countries. Sixteen prisoners died in a fire at the severely crowded Sabaneta prison in Venezuela, and seven inmates were killed during rioting at the Lurigancho prison in Peru, which at the time held 6,000 (mostly pretrial detainees) in 1,500 places. Riots were also reported in Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbuda, Mexico, and Jamaica. At the Soracaba prison near So Paulo, Braz., prisoners took 650 hostages, mostly visitors, in a protest against overcrowding that ended peacefully. Also in Brazil, at the Linhares prison eight inmates died when fighting erupted. As a result of increased prison populations, many commercial firms were becoming interested in the management of prisons. By 1998 such "private prisons" had been established in the U.S., the U.K., and Australia, with developments under consideration by governments in Canada and South Africa. The largest operator, Corrections Corp. of America, was responsible for some 62,500 prison beds worldwide. Death Penalty. According to Amnesty International, 104 countries had by 1998 abolished the death penalty in law or practice. In 63 countries abolition was for all crimes, in 16 it was for all but exceptional crimes, and in 25 abolition was a matter of practice rather than law. In 91 other countries the death penalty was retained. Since 1976 each year an average of two countries had abolished the death penalty, and most recently the abolitionist majority was joined by Georgia and Poland. Against this worldwide abolitionist trend, the scope of the death penalty was extended in 1998 by a number of countries. In Pakistan it covered gang rape. In Singapore it included the crime of trafficking in more than 250 g (8.8 oz) of crystal methamphetamine (during the first half of the year, at least six people were executed for drug offenses). It was reported in Tajikistan that the death penalty had been extended to cover "hooliganism." Executions for theft were reported under China's "Strike Hard" anticrime campaign. In April the United Nations Commission for Human Rights strengthened its call for a moratorium on executions. A UN official also declared that capital punishment in the U.S. violated international law. He concluded that "race, ethnic origin and economic status appeared to be key determinants of who would and would not receive a sentence of death." There were 68 executions in the U.S. during 1998. The number of death sentences carried out seemed likely to increase under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Statute, which imposed strict time limits on appeals, restricted access of prisoners to the federal courts, and empowered state courts to redress any constitutional violations. Worldwide, at least 2,375 persons in 40 countries were known to have been executed during 1997. Of these, 1,644 were in China, 143 in Iran (which included 3 persons stoned to death), 122 in Saudi Arabia, and 33 in Nigeria. In South Korea 23 persons were reported to have been hanged in a single day. ANDREW RUTHERFORD Refugees and International Migration In recent years complex ethnically based conflicts, mostly internal to one country and involving deeply divided communities, had resulted in increased numbers of displaced people. The total number of people of concern to the Office of the United Nations High Commissio