ITCH Online welcomes contributions from artists and writers to its fourth issue.

The World Health Organisation has called for governments to require all tobacco packets to have pictures showing the dangers of tobacco use. According to the WHO website tobacco is the only legalised product that kills when consumed as the manufacture intended. Tobacco has lead to more than five million preventable deaths every year – making tobacco a far worse killer than HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

South Africa was prepared to set up trade barriers with Botswana, Lesotho Mozambique and Swaziland to stop a flood of cheap imports entering the country. Trade and Industry Minister Rob Davies sounded the warning after SA’s neighbours broke ranks and signed trade deals in the form of an interim economic partnership agreement (EPA) with the European Union (EU).

The period from 1998 to 2003 is known in the Democratic Republic of Congo as The Great War of Africa, Africa's World War and the Second Congo War. Militias and armies from eight neighboring nations plundered the country's eastern provinces in a quest to control copper, gold, diamonds, tin and other high-value minerals to supply India and China's booming markets.

President Yahya Jammeh of Gambia has once again denounced homosexuality at a recent tour in Banjul, suggesting that the practice will not be tolerated in that country. The Gambian President made these remarks at the end of his People’s Tour held in Banjul at the Arch 22nd, an arch built to mark the rise of President Jammeh and his victory which put an end to the democratically elected government in Gambia in 1996.

Southern Africa's food security has "greatly improved", according to the USAID-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS-NET), and unofficial estimates predict a better cereal harvest than last year. "The total regional deficit for the 2009/10 marketing year is projected to be much lower [two million metric tons] than last year [2008], due to improved harvests, especially of maize, particularly in Malawi and Zambia," said the May issue of the FEWS-NET bulletin.

Sudan's draft press law will seriously impede journalists' ability to access and disseminate information if passed, say Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). ARTICLE 19 and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) have also expressed concern about the repressive provisions of the draft.

Rwanda is set to become home to the pilot learning centre for the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project in Africa due to its outstanding progress in promoting the child user friendly computer on the continent. The centre to be located at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) to be known as the OLPC Learning Centre will be launched on June 9 and it is aimed at supporting Rwanda achieve its objectives of promoting ICT in Education but also act as a reach out centre for the whole of Africa.

The hunter-gatherer Ogiek tribe of Kenya could become the latest in the world’s growing tide of ‘conservation refugees’ if Kenya’s government acts on its threat to evict them from their land in the name of conservation. The Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga have said that their government plans to remove the Ogiek from their ancestral land in the Mau forest.

"Our first demand in our new campaign ["Demand Dignity"] is to the G-2 leaders, USA and China. The United States does not accept the notion of economic, social and cultural rights while China does not respect civil and political rights. We call on both governments to sign up to all human rights for all." - Irene Khan, Amnesty International. This AfricaFocus Bulletin contains Ms. Khan's speech at the report launch on May 27, and excerpts from her foreword to the report, which elaborates on the same themes.

Trial for a rape case of a gay man known only as Luanda will be heard on 22 June this year following its postponement on Friday 29 May as two of the three accused did not pitch up. On Friday members of the Western Cape End Hate Alliance gathered outside the Blue Downs Magistrate Court to protest against this homophobic attack and to offer support to the victim. Luanda was allegedly raped and left in the ditch of his eMfuleni township home on 26 April last year.

“The crisis in Côte d’Ivoire is deeper than elections,” according to Patrick N’Gouan, national coordinator of a civil society coalition. “Too many people do not eat their fill, cannot educate their children and cannot access health care. All the social and economic indicators have plummeted… We cannot solve all of Côte d’Ivoire’s problems with just politics – and yet this has been the focus of everyone’s energy and resources for the past few years. Meanwhile the people have been sacrificed,” N’Gouan told IRIN on 2 June.

The Executive Director of Media Rights Agenda (MRA), Mr. Edetaen Ojo, has been elected Convenor of the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), the largest network of freedom of expression organizations in the world. As Convenor, he chairs the 13-member IFEX Council, the governing body of the Network elected by the general membership.

Implementing a policy of routine opt-out HIV testing led to the diagnosis of 3000 HIV infections in children admitted to hospital in Lusaka over an 18-month period, investigators report in a study published in the online edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

In 1994, hundreds of thousands of Tutsi were slaughtered by their Hutu neighbours, friends, and family members across Rwanda. Nine years later the killers came home from prison to live side by side again with their victims. The complexities of this homecoming are explored in director Anne Aghion’s emotionally powerful film "My Neighbour, My Killer", where, amongst the green hills and tiled roofs of the village of Gafunda, the memories of those horrors resurface as widows shell beans and peel vegetables.

Amnesty International's report, released in late May, covers economic, social, and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, stressing the ways in which the global economic recession has exacerbated previously existing patterns of human rights violations. As noted in the launch speech by Amnesty Secretary-General Irene Khan, this marks a new level of emphasis on economic rights for the organization, and is the basis of Amnesty's new global campaign "Demand Dignity."

The "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) scheme, which has sent over a million US$100 laptops to children in the developing world, has been criticised by researchers who found that, unless they are introduced with care, they become little more than distracting toys in the classroom. The study, conducted in Ethiopia, revealed that students wanted more content on the laptops and teachers were not adequately trained on how to make use of them.

Talk openly about rape. That is the gist of a new campaign in Cameroon, where according to a study an estimated 432,000 women and girls have been raped in the past 20 years. Some 200 rape survivors gathered on 28 May in the capital Yaoundé, several of the women and girls telling their stories during the campaign’s opening ceremony.

AU Monitor

The Head of Policy and Advocacy is responsible for providing strategic leadership, planning, delivery and reporting on ACORD’s thematic work. S/he will coordinate strategic analysis and monitoring of policy issues and provide leadership in the development and implementation of ACORD’s external advocacy and alliance building strategy. S/he shall promote a sound media relations strategy designed to influence internal and external processes and link national to Pan-African initiatives. Closing date for completed applications is: June 19th 2009