KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congo, home to the world's second largest tropical forest, launched a review of all timber contracts on Wednesday in an effort to clean up a business rife with corruption and to recoup millions of dollars in lost taxes.

Thanks to all who wrote letters to the World Bank, urging it to stop financing industrial logging in the Congo, the world's second-largest rainforest. Our letters demanded that the Bank carry out consultations with indigenous "Pygmy" communities throughout the vast rainforest region, and honor their needs and rights regarding any logging plan.

Under pressure, the Bank's Inspection Panel undertook an investigation of the Bank's policies and practices in the Congo. The Panel's report, just released, finds the Bank in violation of many of its own policies and standards.

YAOUNDE -- Two-thirds of the forests in the Congo River Basin could disappear within 50 years if logging and mineral exploitation continues at current rates, environmental group WWF said in a report.

On March 15, the United Nations General Assembly voted 170–4 to create a new Human Rights Council, effectively dissolving the oft-criticized Commission on Human Rights. Candidates for the Council will need to be elected by an absolute majority of 96 votes in order to secure a position, and once elected members can serve a maximum of two consecutive terms.

For the last 2 years, Global Response letters have urged the World Bank to halt its program of industrial logging in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's vast tropical rainforests. The campaign's first success was the decision by the Bank’s official Inspection Panel to investigate the complaints brought by 'Pygmy' residents of the rainforest. This week the Inspection Panel issued its preliminary report which sharply criticizes the Bank for not fulfilling its own environmental 'safeguard policie' and for not consulting with affected “Pygmy” populations.