A third of girls in Swaziland have experienced sexual violence by the age of 18, according to a study published in the May 9th edition of The Lancet. Such violence was strongly associated with sexually transmitted infections, pregnancy complications or miscarriages, unwanted pregnancy and mental health problems.

This document outlines a presentation given by the Salamander Trust at a meeting on women and AIDS at the House of Commons in Westminster. The presenter details how, because of global attitudes, women with HIV/AIDS have seen their reproductive health rights and rights to liberty systematically and institutionally eroded. The document shows how some countries are now sterilising young positive women, coercing them to sign consent forms when in labour, so that after delivery when they go for contraception, they learn that this is no longer needed.

President Obama's global health budget plan, pegged at $63 billion over six years and announced on May 5, one day in advance of the full budget statement, met with predictably mixed responses. The administration spin was that it was a major new commitment to a comprehensive approach; health activist groups charged that it actually marked a cut from prior commitments made in campaign promises and by Congressional pledges.

The Burundian government has released 203 National Liberation Front political prisoners as part of the ceasefire agreement signed between the government and the former rebel group, Ministry of Justice has said late yesterday in a statement.

Returning to Burundi after years as a refugee in Tanzania, Jonas Saya knew it would be difficult to reclaim his land from former neighbours who had settled on it. "I wanted my children to get a home of their own," he said. Saya, 56, returned with six children after spending 37 years in Ulyankulu old settlement, western Tanzania.

The Centre for Citizens’ Participation in the African Union invites representatives from civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations to participate in the fifth ‘Citizens’ continental conference on the African Union (AU) summit’ that will be held the 5th-6th June 2009 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to reflect on the issues on the agenda of the 13th ordinary summit of the AU. However, member states of the AU are yet to decide the venue of the upcoming summit following the suspension of Madagascar, which was to host the July summit, and it is not yet clear how they will decide on a host country without an official meeting, while some speculate that Mauritius will likely be the host country. Elsewhere, the AU and the Gambian government hosted an international meeting bringing together experts on gender and related issues to analyse the reporting and implementation process of the Solemn Declaration of Gender Experts in Africa, the lessons learned, challenges and opportunities. African ministers in charge of integration met in Yaoundé, Cameroon, under the theme ‘Partnerships and integration in Africa’. At the 10th East African Community (EAC) ordinary summit, leaders agreed on a programme of harmonisation of trade agreements among member states and approved the acceleration of the process of negotiations on all outstanding integration issues. EAC education experts are also gearing up for the harmonisation of education systems in the region to increase employment opportunities as well as enhance free movement of labour in the region.

In peace and security related news, a joint Senegal/AU mission led by the Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade and the chairman of the AU Commission Jean Ping arrived in Mauritania’s capital city, Nouakchott, for discussions with the stakeholders involved in the country’s democratic crisis. The AU peace and security commissioner announced that countries have pledged additional troops following a closed-door meeting on Somalia that was reviewing the situation and strategising on ways to strengthen the African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia. Furthermore, the AU chairperson has strongly condemned the killing of a Nigerian peacekeeper with the UN-AU mission in Darfur and stressed the need for all concerned parties ‘to facilitate the work of UN-AU mission and to fully cooperate with it in its endeavour to contribute to the restoration of lasting peace, security and stability in Darfur.’ The Libyan leader and chairman of the AU, Mouammar Gadhafi, received the UN and AU emissaries to the Democratic Republic of Congo who briefed him on the ongoing peace and reconciliation process in the country and the improvement of its relations with Rwanda.

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) election observer mission has sent its observers to Malawi to monitor the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections to be held on 19 May 2009 with a task of supporting ‘the delivery of a credible, transparent and legitimate election by the country’s electoral commission’. SADC is also pressing for the reinstatement of ousted Malagasy President Marc Ravalomanana and seeking to bring all parties together to restore constitutional order. Newly elected South African President Jacob Zuma has called for ‘the urgent strengthening of the AU to enable it deal effectively with the peace and security challenges in Africa’ and advocates tougher measures against coup plotters. Analysts propose the standardisation and harmonisation of the regional economic communities, the strengthening of election-monitoring missions and national electoral commissions as part of solutions to some of the problems of the continent. Meanwhile, the AU panel of eminent personalities welcomed the ruling by the speaker of the national assembly of Kenya, which put an end to an impasse regarding the designation of the Leader of Government Business in Parliament and the nomination of the Chairperson of the House Business Committee. The panel went on to ‘urge Kenya’s leaders and all Members of Parliament to put aside their partisan considerations and place the interests of the people first.’

In other news, the Women’s Working Group on financing for development, in a declaration emerging out of the second women’s consultation, called for structural, sustainable, gender equitable and rights based responses to the current global financial and economic crisis. Analysts of the International Food Policy Research Institute, which is working with the AU to develop guidelines on how to negotiate with foreign investors, warns of the negative impact on the continent if there are no regulations on how rich countries and firms lease or buy massive tracts of land for the production of food or biofuel. The Danish government launched an initiative that will target the private sector to rejuvenate the continent’s business and agricultural capacity by providing loans to entrepreneurs and small-scale businesses. The initiative’s committee members include heads of state, members of civil society, academia and international and regional organisations, mainly from Africa. Finally, a commentator analyses the state of democracy in Africa’s post conflict states and concludes that while ‘democracy is steadily taking root in many of these traumatised countries’ it is imperative not to ‘overlook the socio-economic component of the post-war recovery agenda’.

Three brightly-clothed women walk slowly around the fallen, charred trees strewn haphazardly across the blackened clearing, each carrying seashells filled with indigenous rice seed to bury in the rich soil. The women belong to a local cooperative, Women and Children Development Secretariat (WOCDES), and wake early for the 5-km hike down the dirt road to their farm near Zwedru, Grand Gedeh County, in Liberia’s vast forest region on the Ivorian border.

African LGBTI human rights defenders attending the 45th Ordinary Session of the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights (ACHPR) currently underway in Banjul, Gambia, are optimistic that a resolution aimed at ending all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in Africa will be adopted by the African Commission. On 14 May, the panel presented the resolution which has been continuously barred during the preceding ordinary sessions.

This issue of AfricaFocus features brief notices of 15 books published so far in 2009 that AfricaFocus readers are likely to be interested in. This listing, including 10 on continent-wide issues or countries outside South Africa and 5 on South Africa, is far from comprehensive. But it includes a good selection of thoughtful analyses by both African writers and experienced non-African observers of the African scene.

Reporters Without Borders has condemned an attempted murder of the editor of the independent Arab-language daily, El Wattan, and radio presenter Mohamed Ould Zeine in Mauritania. Mr Ould Zeine was allegedly attacked by two men with baseball bats and knives on the evening of 12 May. He reportedly suffered very serious injuries to his left hand.

Bars and nightclubs in several Tanzanian cities will soon have condom vending machines in the bathrooms as part of national efforts to combat HIV. "Our goal is to make condoms widely available to the people. The programme will start in Dar es Salaam [Tanzania's commercial capital] before it is scaled up to various upcountry regions," Stan Mwamaja, a ministry of health official, told IRIN/PlusNews.

The MDC is fully aware that some of the top civil servants and cabinet ministers from ZANU PF are working against the inclusive government, but are powerless to deal with them. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai on Wednesday said that hard-liners left over from the old regime were endangering the country's future. The MDC leader blamed what he termed ‘residual elements from the old government’ for violating the rule of law and the agreement that created the inclusive government.

When Margaret Mensah-Williams walked down the steps after presiding over the Namibian parliament for the first time, male parliamentarians rushed to ask her how she became so good at chairing the house. "I told them women are born leaders," says Mensah, Vice Chairperson of the National Council.

Reporters Without Borders condemns the foreign travel ban that has been placed on William Tonet, the editor of the independent Luanda-based biweekly Folha 8 (F8), whose passport was seized when he tried to cross by land into Namibia on 9 May. Tonet has been harassed by the authorities ever since the newspaper’s creation in 1995.

African science researchers and policy advisers have agreed to set up a foundation, endorsed by a range of African-based banks, to promote the use of scientific and other forms of knowledge by both public and private decision-makers in the continent. The body, to be known as the Knowledge Management Africa (KMA) Foundation, will be under the auspices of the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA) based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Many people in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are dying of treatable diseases because they attribute their symptoms to a poison they believe only traditional healers can cure, according to health officials. "Many people are dying in this region because of this phobia whose current spread has to do with the environment we are living in and the wars we have experienced," said North Kivu provincial medical inspector Dominique Bahago.

For the past year, Olive Mutabeni's home in Chitungwiza, a low-income suburb 20km outside Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, has been the makeshift centre of operations for the Life Empowerment Support Organisation (LESO). After 23 years as a nurse in the public health sector, most recently as the coordinator of prevention of mother-to-child HIV transmission (PMTCT) services at Chitungwiza Central Hospital, Mutabeni quit her job and started LESO to provide the sick and elderly in her community with emotional, medical and practical support. Four other nurses soon joined her.

Nigerian gunboats exchanged fire with militants in the western Niger Delta on Friday, security sources and a prominent ethnic activist said, the latest sign of deepening unrest at the heart of Africa's biggest oil industry. More than a dozen navy gunboats opened fire on militants along Chanomi Creek in Delta state, the sources said. The region is home to U.S. energy giant Chevron's Escravos export terminal and Nigeria's 125,000 barrels per day Warri refinery.

'Provinces on fire with kidnapping rumours; every day more stories of missing children', read the May 1 headline of independent daily Al-Dustour. For months now, the independent press has been carrying reports of the disappearance of young children, mostly from Egypt's rural provinces. On Apr. 11 two children from the Sharqiya province vanished without a trace; on Apr. 28, four young children - three of them under six years old - were reported missing in the northern city Mansoura. Dozens of other cases have been reported through this period.

Reporters Without Borders is alarmed by the decision to keep Radio Mada sports reporter Evariste Ramanantsoavina in detention and charge him with “inciting revolt against the republic’s institutions,” defamation and disseminating false information. He was arrested on 5 May and forced to reveal the location from which the radio was broadcasting in defiance of a closure order.