An absence of boarding facilities for high school pupils in Zambia's northern province of Luapula is forcing children to share lodgings with their peers - unsupervised by adults - leading to teenage pregnancies and HIV/AIDS infections. Many children live a long way from school and prefer to rent accommodation nearby. Wamunyima Chingumbe, a Health Ministry director in Mansa District, said the absence of boarding facilities at day schools had led to teenage pregnancies and made pupils vulnerable to contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs). After malaria, STIs were the most common ailments recorded at makeshift boarding high schools.

A multi-national study shows that if an HIV-positive person starts taking antiretroviral therapy early on, that is, when their CD 4 count is still high, their chances of infecting their HIV-negative partner can decrease by as much as 96 per cent. The results of the study are viewed as confirmation of untested wisdom among clinicians who have for a number of years thought that people on combination antiretroviral therapy have a lower chance of transmitting HIV to their uninfected partners.

The Government of Liberia and the European Union have signed an agreement to end illegal logging in Liberia. The deal, in the form of a Voluntary Partnership Agreement, will ensure that all timber exported from Liberia to the EU comes from legal sources. It also contains provisions to ensure that the trade will benefit the Liberian people. Illegal logging was common during the country’s civil war in the 1990s. Former President of Liberia, Charles Taylor, was accused of selling timber to fund his regime. Much of this illegal timber found a market in the EU. In response, the United Nations placed sanctions on timber exports in 2006.

The so-called 'cabriolet' became a powerful symbol of failed service delivery ahead of local government elections last week. 'There is nothing more powerful than the image of a woman sitting on a toilet without an enclosure,' said Judith February, head of the political information and monitoring service at the Idasa democracy institute. 'Those are very powerful images and they show the lack of compassion there is when politicians are simply not listening to people. It’s a graphic description of local government failure.'

The wife of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was being held on corruption charges, has been released on bail after handing over assets. Suzanne Mubarak turned over a villa in a Cairo suburb and $3m (£1.9m) held in bank accounts in Egypt, officials said.

The March arrest, conviction, and sentencing of Roger Jean-Claude Mbede to three years in prison for being homosexual is a gross violation of Mbede's rights to freedom of expression and equality guaranteed by the Cameroonian constitution, Alternatives-Cameroun, Association pour la Defense de l'Homosexualitè (ADEFHO), and Human Rights Watch said in a letter to Cameroon's top leaders. Under section 347, a person who engages in 'sexual relations with a person of the same sex' can face a prison term of up to five years. Mbede was sentenced after admitting to his sexual orientation while in police custody. However, the law directly contravenes international human rights treaties, which, the Cameroonian constitution states, apply directly in the country.

The Draft Decree is an essential step in preparation of the Tunisian elections for the Constituent Assembly, set for 24 July 2011, which will in turn be responsible for drafting the new Constitution. ARTICLE 19’s analysis of the Draft Decree calls for an improved framework that would fully incorporate relevant international standards on freedom of expression.

While experts are working with the military council to amend the political rights law, news has leaked about the cancellation of the allocation of seats to women, known as the 'women's quota' and which is one of the positive types of discrimination in law. The women's quota is not the only type of positive discrimination. There is another type: the quota of workers and farmers which is 50 per cent of the elected seats. However, there is not any news on canceling this quota, which raises the question on the validity of canceling the women's quota.

The Federation of African Journalists (FAJ), the African regional organisation of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), has welcomed the historic move of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) to adopt a landmark resolution on the safety of journalists and media practitioners in Africa. The resolution, which expressed concern over 'declining safety and security situation of journalists and media practitioners in some African countries', noted that 'killings, attacks and kidnapping of journalists, which are contrary to international humanitarian and human rights law, are often committed in an environment of impunity'. To ensure the protection of journalists’ safety, the African Commission appealed to member States of the African Union 'to fulfil their obligation of preventing, and investigating crimes against journalists, as well as bringing the perpetrators to justice'.

The future of the regional human rights court remains uncertain, amid reports that justice ministers from across Southern Africa have agreed that the court’s decisions are null and void. The court was effectively suspended over Zimbabwe’s refusal to honour its 2008 ruling that Robert Mugabe’s land grab campaign was unlawful. The court ordered the then ZANU PF government to protect farmers from further attack, but Robert Mugabe and his party have repeatedly snubbed the court.

Elections for the presidency of the Seychelles will be held from 19 -21 May 2011. A Commonwealth Expert Team has been sent to observe the poll. The opposition leader, Wavel Ramkalawan, told Think Africa Press that the Seychellois people are 'ready for democracy' – a strange phrase to use in a country that has officially been a multi-party democracy since 1993. The current government has been in power since a military coup in the mid-70s overthrew then president, Sir James Mancham.

Bangladesh has leased tens of thousands of hectares of farmland in Africa as part of a government drive to improve food security in the poverty-stricken South Asian nation, an official said. Two Bangladeshi companies have leased 40,000 hectares of land in Uganda and Tanzania and another firm will sign a deal for a further 10,000 hectares in Tanzania this week, foreign ministry director Farhadul Islam said.

Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni has lashed out at the media for their coverage of recent opposition protests over the cost of living. In a letter published in the state-owned New Vision paper, he called them 'the enemies of Uganda's recovery'. He named Al-Jazeera, the BBC, regional NTV and Uganda's privately owned Daily Monitor as cheering on those behind the month-long 'walk-to-work' campaign.

Farming with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is becoming more widespread in Kenya due to the promotion of biotechnology through clever schemes, exacerbated by the lack of a legal framework for the commercialisation of these controversial products. The Syngenta Foundation is a not-for-profit organisation attached to the Syngenta Company that researches and produces GM seeds. The foundation is involved in the 'Safe Biotechnology Management' (SABIMA) project aimed at promoting GM technology among small-scale farmers in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

Facilities in refugee camps in northeastern Kenya have been stretched to the limit, aid workers say, as more and more Somali refugees flee the conflict at home. 'Dadaab refugee camps continue to receive a significant number of new arrivals who are often very tired and exhausted, having travelled very far, sometimes from as far as [the Somali capital] Mogadishu, in some cases on foot [over 1,000km],' said Emmanuel Nyabera, spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), in Kenya. As of 15 May, Nyabera said, Dadaab, the world's biggest refugee complex, was home to at least 348,605 people.

In the new Global Report on Equality at Work 2011, the International Labour Office (ILO) notes that in spite of continuous positive advances in anti-discrimination legislation, the global economic and social crisis has led to a higher risk of discrimination against certain groups such as migrant labour. 'Economically adverse times are a breeding ground for discrimination at work and in society more broadly. We see this with the rise of populist solutions,' said ILO Director-General Juan Somavia, adding that 'this threatens painstaking achievements of several decades'.

Sudanese armed forces have carried out another round of air strikes against a village in Darfur, this time striking a settlement in the north of the war-torn region, the joint United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) reported on 18 May. Government aircraft struck the village of Sukamir, about 100 kilometres northeast of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.

Tunisia lifted an overnight curfew in the capital on Wednesday (18 May) saying security had improved since authorities arrested 1,400 people linked to the latest anti-government protests. Protesters at recent demonstrations in Tunis have said they fear democratic change is not coming quickly enough and many complain about unfair working conditions in a country where unemployment runs at around 14 per cent.

Botswana's government closed all primary and secondary schools on Monday (16 May) after violent clashes between police and students angry over a strike by teachers and other public workers. The violence began last week at a secondary school in Molepolole, a village 60km south-east of the capital Gaborone, and spread to schools across the country. Students have missed most of their classes since teachers and other public-sector workers went on strike on 18 April. Public service employees are demanding a 16 per cent salary increment, while government is offering five per cent.

Urging the Angolan government to withdraw a cybercrime bill before parliament, Human Rights Watch said it would undercut both freedom of expression and information, and pose a severe threat to independent media in the country. Human Rights Watch expressed its apprehension that the bill would help security forces to confiscate data and create harsher penalties for crimes in electronic information technology. Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said, 'This bill fails to establish clear safeguards to protect the public's right to know and right to speak and deepening the existing restrictions in Angola's media environment, where many Angolans have turned for open debate on matters the government wants to restrict.'