Fuelled often by little more than courage and dogged determination, we worked alongside individuals, communities and civil society organisations from war-torn Angola to the Red Sea Hills in the Horn, from the arid plains of Kidal to the floodlands of Mozambique, to try to address and redress the many imbalances in society and to provide support to some of the continent's most marginalised individuals.

Our long-term approach reasserted the need to go beyond so-called 'peace keeping operations' and 'humanitarian interventions' to investigate and address the root causes of inequalities and conflict and the underlying causes of human suffering. The importance of encompassing the wider global forces in our local analyses was also reasserted.

This is a record not only of our many and varied efforts to achieve our goals in often problematic and inauspicious circumstances in 2000. It is also, and primarily, a record and celebration of what can be achieved by ordinary people who face massive repression and overwhelming obstacles in trying to create a just and equal life for themselves.

Throughout 2000, the East Africa and the Great Lakes region continued to be turbulent and embroiled in conflict.

In Uganda, despite the ongoing insecurity in many parts of the country and the outbreak of Ebola in the second part of the year, the programmes continued to do research and promote peace and reconciliation through its activities. The rural development programme in Mbarara made considerable progress in developing a truly sustainable local credit and savings scheme. The four programmes in the north, Gulu, Kitgum,  Moyo and Adjumani, started to consolidate into a single northern Uganda programme to address the chronic problem of insecurity.

Our three separate interventions in Rwanda were also consolidated into a single programme of support to low income earners and we adopted a new methodology, which led to scaling down our direct involvement with communities and adopting a more indirect approach through local organisations and structures.

Research into marginalised groups in Rwanda led to new initiatives to strengthen the social and economic rights of children who, as a tragic consequence of the genocide, massacres, prison detentions and 'natural causes' such as AIDS, have lost their parents and been forced, often at a very early age, to take on the role of primary breadwinner and head of their household. Having to juggle these two responsibilities creates massive pressures for girls to become sex workers and to cope with an ever- present threat of violence. Access to legal support to safeguard whatever limited rights these children have is absolutely essential.

The year in Burundi was characterised by high insecurity and political instability. The peace accords did not result in a cessation of violence, the continuation of which meant further displacement of people. The drought severely reduced agricultural production, and resulted in widespread nutritional deficits. Despite the uncertainty caused by this context, the Burundi programmes made considerable progress in developing a countrywide image of ACORD as a base for future advocacy work. A new initiative was launched in which we played an intermediary role of establishing, supporting and managing collaboration between the Government of Burundi and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on the one hand and local and international NGOs on the other. This led to increased support to community-based organisations and structures in four northern provinces. In Bujumbura, we developed an interesting approach in our work with unemployed youth by enabling them to follow abridged technical courses, which provide them with just enough knowledge to be taken on as apprentices.

Despite continuing insecurity and the renewed upsurge of violence after the death of President Kabile in the Democratic Republic of Congo, work continued in our two programmes in Kisingani and a community development programme was launched in Kingabwa near Kinshasa.

The programmes in southern Sudan achieved astonishing gains and were strengthened and consolidated in spite of severe bombings and attacks in the programme areas. Tali was bombed on sixteen occasions, resulting in the deaths of five people and injuries to another fifteen and the attacks on Maiwut left 47 people dead and virtually all the houses burnt. Our Maiwut team was forced to evacuate.

The thirteen programmes in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia and Southern Sudan focused on three broad areas:

• microfinance and building the capacity of local community-based organisations.
• supporting the livelihoods of nomadic pastoralists and rehabilitating and strengthening food security
• exploring the role of civil society in remote or conflict affected areas.

The external situation in 2000 was not conducive to achieving the programmes' many goals. Conflict continued to affect the entire region. The civil war in southern Sudan entered its 18^th year, with an escalation of the conflict especially around the oil-producing areas of Upper Nile and increased bombings in non-governmental areas. In May, the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea once again erupted into conflict and saw Ethiopia occupy significant areas of central Eritrea, including our programme area. Many of the displaced people we had assisted in 1999 were again displaced, this time further north, and others found themselves trapped in occupied areas. During the second half of the year, intensive negotiations resulted in a cease-fire and a peace agreement. By December, over 4000 UN peacekeepers had established a 35km buffer zone between the two countries.

In November, the region's programme representatives came together in Nairobi to take their first shaky steps towards developing an area programme approach that groups existing programmes along thematic, geographical and logistical convergence. This was an important step towards developing an approach on regional issues. Given the current problems associated with conflict and border regulations that preclude multi-country area programmes in the region, three area projects were created, covering activities in Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Southern Africa

Many of the Southern Africa programmes were also beset by natural and man-made disasters. Mozambique was affected by devastating floods early in the year; Tanzania, Botswana and Angola were affected by drought and the AIDS pandemic reached record levels, particularly in Botswana.

Our programme in Mozambique was severely affected by the floods. We carried out an identification mission to implement an emergency programme with a long-term development perspective in Inhambane, one of the provinces worst hit by the flooding. Our approach tried to focus on sufficiently strengthening communities and civil society groups to improve their ability to cope with emergencies in the future.

In war-torn Angola, the nature of the armed conflict between government forces and UNITA changed from a war of attrition between two armies to a confrontation between the army and guerrillas. The many consequences of this conflict continued to have a dramatic impact on the population, 40% of which live below the poverty line, and there were widespread calls for peace.

The Total Child programme in Aminuis, Namibia, which promotes the educational, emotional, physical and intellectual development of children in post-apartheid Namibia, had a number of important achievements during the year. Most significantly, the Ministry of Education chose to adopt the values, principles and approach and to extend it to the rest of Namibia.

In line with the process for change and the new focus on area and thematic programming, the thirteen programmes in the region started to converge around two key regional themes; ‘Gender and HIV/AIDS’ and ‘Civil Society and Governance’.

The entire West Africa region was affected by the increasing tensions between Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. In response to the intensifying conflict in Lofa and Zorzor in Liberia, which left much of the population in complete destitution, we started emergency work to provide temporary relief to more than 3000 people, primarily women and children. Due to the escalating conflict in the area and the looting of our offices in September, we were forced to move to safety in Gbanga, 150km away. Despite these many setbacks and the logistical problems that ensued, we continued to be the only NGO attempting to do long-term development work in Lofa, all the others having either left the country or providing solely emergency relief.

Burkina Faso was also marked by regional and national turbulence, and faced the devastating effects of HIV/AIDS and the poor harvest. The economic and political crisis in the Ivory Coast had far-reaching effects on the Burkinabe populations who paid the price with executions, looting of property and massive expulsion. In the face of these many obstacles, we achieved a number of our goals for the year, including the successful hand-over of the Sahel activities to a local NGO formed by staff and community members.

In Chad, the socio-economic and institutional context continued to change considerably, with the government's adoption of a poverty reduction strategy based on the full and active participation of civil society, a strategy, which if effectively implemented, would open up real opportunities for vulnerable groups. Civil society is now expected to be a driving force in the process of development. One of our main achievements was the successful handing-over of the Bokoro and Bitkine activities to local NGOs.

The environment in Mali continued to be favourable to the development and strengthening of civil society and private sector initiatives. The Timbuktu region was relatively peaceful and the government decentralisation process was well underway with the strengthening of the capacity of elected delegates and agents in the 51 communes in the region. In Mali, as in Burkina Faso, we continued to successfully address the infringements of rights and supported communities to develop the skills and confidence to participate in the political arena.

We also went a long way towards addressing the infringement of rights in Mauritania, developing an approach that balances rights with support to livelihoods.