As Kenya puts more HIV-positive children on life-prolonging antiretroviral (ARV) drugs, experts are warning that unless more effort is put into ensuring the medicines are taken regularly, widespread treatment failure could result. 'It is very hard to maintain adherence in children because they rely on others to give them medicine, some change regimens as they grow into adolescence and they can hardly cope with the many drugs they are expected to take,' said Dr Andrew Suleh, medical superintendent at the Mbagathi District Hospital in the capital, Nairobi.

As one way of updating one another on latest fuel supplies at gas stations, Malawians are using Facebook in advising where they can fill up their tanks. Over 210 subscribers share updates on an open group called Malawi Fuel Watch, reports Global Voices. Malawians have been queuing up for hours for fuel since last year.

The World Bank has been told its report on the robustly reported land grabs by foreigners in Africa and elsewhere is questionable. 'The report is both a disappointment and a failure. Everyone was expecting the Bank to provide new and solid on-the-ground data about these large-scale land acquisitions that have created so much controversy since 2008,' said GRAIN, an international non-profit organisation that works to support small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.

Naome Ruzindana is a feminist and founding member of the Coalition of African Lesbians. She presented her paper 'The Great Lakes of Africa: Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi and their Position Towards LGBTI Rights' at the ILGA panel 'The Growing Consensus: Towards the End of Criminalisation and Human Rights Violations based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity' at the 17th session of the Human Rights Council 7 June 2011 at Palais des Nations, Geneva. You can read the full presentation from the Behind the Mask website.

An initiative to have Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lectures in every constituency in Ghana is starting with a Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Lecture in the South Dayi District in Volta Region. This event is being coordinated by Constance Ayer, an Nkrumaist based in the constituency.

Mohamed Kai, acting editor of The Satellite, a privately-owned Freetown-based newspaper, was on the night of 13 June 2011 violently assaulted and injured by armed assailants believed to be militants of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) Party. Kai sustained bruises all over his body especially his chest and arms. His face was also swollen. Kai was treated and discharged from hospital.

The nurse at Najembe Health Centre in Buikwe district says the centre’s supply of malaria drugs will be finished in two days. A malaria epidemic has hit the area and the demand for the drugs is high. But the centre, which serves the entire sub-county, will have to wait up to six weeks before their supply will be replenished. The Ugandan government changed the policy of distributing drugs to parish and sub-county health centres in 2009 by implementing a policy where the National Medical Stores decides what drugs to supply and in what quantities. (A parish health centre is a clinic that provides medical treatment for up to 12 villages.) Previously heads of these health centres requisitioned the drugs, depending on their needs. The National Medical Stores supply 70 per cent of the drugs in public health centres and district health officials locally procure the remaining 30 per cent.

A climate of non-disclosure pervades the sharing of basic school related information despite policies and pronouncements to the contrary. In a research brief titled 'Funding of Dar es Salaam Primary Schools: How accessible is school level information?', Uwazi at Twaweza shows that because of a climate of non disclosure, 80 per cent of the teachers interviewed could not correctly state the capitation grant amount entitlement per pupil, which is pegged at US$10 per year according to the Primary Education Development Programme.

At least 32 people have died and 800 others have been infected following an outbreak of measles in the southern Pointe Noire and Kouilou regions of the Republic of Congo, say health officials. 'The total of 32 deaths and 800 cases of measles has not changed,' said Hermann Boris Didi-Ngossaki, head of the World Health Organisation’s Expanded Programme on Vaccination. At least 3,000 cases of measles were recorded in a 2006-2007 outbreak.

Equatorial Guinea's government has spent lavishly on diplomatic accommodations while neglecting the rights of the country's poor in the lead-up to hosting the African Union summit, Human Rights Watch and EG Justice said. The government has also sharply limited public dissent and critical reporting. While most citizens of Equatorial Guinea languish in poverty, President Teodoro Obiang's government, which holds the revolving AU chairmanship, spent more than US$830 million to construct a luxury complex for the summit outside the nation's capital, Malabo.

Girl soldiers, who are often forced to marry militia commanders, tend to have difficulties leaving and reintegrating into civilian life. In 2004, the United Nations children’s agency UNICEF launched a national programme to help former child soldiers adjust to their new circumstances. But since it started, only two per cent of those it has assisted have been women. Juvénal Munubo, head of a child soldiers reintegration programme for the NGO Caritas in Goma, eastern DRC, argues that this is disproportionally low, compared to the number of women that are estimated to be members armed units.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay has publicly condemned the scourge of corrective rapes in South Africa saying they are 'a serious crime that should never be tolerated nor condoned.' In an article published on 14 June by The Star newspaper in South Africa, Pillay asserted that South Africa had 'given the world some powerful ideas, among them the concept of the Rainbow Nation, where diversity is a source of strength and everyone is entitled to equal rights and respect.' She added, 'However it is saddening that the country reborn under Nelson Mandela’s watchful eye should now be the setting for corrective rape, a far more sinister phenomenon that undermines everything the Rainbow Nation stands for.'

Hundreds of civil society organisations, including farmers' movements, women's groups and non-governmental organisations, will launch a global appeal against farmland grabbing during the G20 meeting on agriculture in Paris on 22 and 23 June. Over 500 organisations from around the world have joined the 'Dakar Appeal Against Land Grabbing' that was originally drawn up at the World Social Forum in Dakar last February. While agriculture ministers from the world's 20 richest countries are discussing what to do about food price volatility and the growing hunger crisis, millions of hectares of fertile land, along with their water resources, are being grabbed from peasants, pastoralists, herders, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples to be converted into massive agribusiness operations by private investors who want to produce food supplies or agro-fuels for international markets. As a consequence, millions of peasant families and other rural and indigenous folk are being thrown off their lands and deprived of their livelihoods.

Cote d’Ivoire authorities have released 17 associates of deposed president Laurent Gbagbo who had been detained inside an Abidjan hotel. Gbagbo and his wife Simone and about 50 of their relatives and associates, remain under house arrest in five cities across the country. According to the Justice ministry, they could be charged as early as this week. They face charges of economic mismanagement, and involvement in post-election violence or collaboration with an 'illegitimate' regime.

Commercial sex work, dominated by a focus on women, could be redefined as new research launched in Nairobi, Kenya, sheds light on the complicated HIV prevention needs of what may be Africa’s most deeply underground group at high risk of HIV - male sex workers. The report co-authored by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and South Africa's Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) seeks to better understand the social contexts, sexual practices and risks, including that of HIV, among these men. The professional debut of many of the 70 male sex workers surveyed in Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe was often prompted by the family rejecting the men’s sexual orientation; for others, it was a way to survive in a foreign country.

It will no longer be business as usual for those who have been discriminating against Aids patients, reports The Daily Nation. That was the message by the seven-member HIV and Aids Tribunal after they were sworn in at the High Court by deputy registrar Rose Ougo. Lawyer Ambrose Otieno Rachier, who will chair the tribunal, said it was a great occasion and a new dawn for those who have been victimised as a result of their HIV status, adding, the time for silent suffering was over. 'The tribunal is going to address fundamental human rights abuses as a result of an individual’s HIV status and come with remedies to redress the injustices,' Mr Rachier said.

Farmers in the eastern districts of Uganda that constitute the Elgon zone have rejected a proposal by Arthur Makala, the executive director at Science Foundation for Livelihoods and Development, to start engaging in the cultivation of genetically modified crops that are supposed to be drought resistant and give high yields. Makala had suggested that farmers should embrace the Genetically Modified Crops [GMC] for better yields but the farmers rejected it saying GMCs are contaminated with chemicals that may be harmful to their health.

The Burkina Faso authorities have sounded the alarm over the increased rate of degradation of forests in this Sahelian country. According to a study by the Ministry for the Environment and Sustainable Development, some 110,550 hectares of forest are destroyed each year, just over four per cent of the country's total wooded area – around three-quarters of this annual loss linked to farming. The data covers forest loss between 1992 and 2002, but the trend continues, according the ministry.

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has threatened to shut down pipelines carrying oil from South Sudan if there is no deal on oil before its independence next month. 'I give the south three alternatives for the oil. The North is to continue getting its share, or the North gets fees for every barrel that the South sends to Port Sudan,' Bashir said in a televised speech. 'If they don't accept either of these, we are going to block the pipeline,' he told his supporters in Port Sudan, the main terminal for all of Sudan's oil exports.

Gay Kenya has welcomed the passing of a United Nation Human Rights Council resolution that protects and defends the human rights of LGBT persons. 'The UN Human Rights Council resolution sought equal rights for everyone regardless of their sexual orientation, marking progress for gay rights despite strong Arab and African opposition,' said a statement.