The Human Rights Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reviewed Ethiopia's compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights recently, including its press freedom record. Peppered with questions about an indefensible record of abuse - jailing the second largest number of journalists in Africa and leading the continent in Internet censorship - representatives of the Ethiopian government responded with cursory talking points and bold denials in contradiction of the facts, says the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has condemned the Democratic Republic of Congo's ban of a private broadcaster favourable to opposition presidential candidate Etienne Tshisekedi. Radio Lisanga Télévision (RLTV), based in the capital, Kinshasa, lost its signal without formal notice, the station's director-general, Basile Olongo Pongo, told CPJ. The same day, Congolese Communication Minister Lambert Mende issued a decree indefinitely banning the station across the country over 'programs that are promoting violence and contribute to disturb public order,' according to news reports.

The rights of access to information, public participation, and access to justice are essential to sustainable development. The 1992 Rio Declaration provided for these rights in Principle 10 and Agenda 21 moved them into reality in many countries. Now renewed commitment is needed for the full implementation of the rights in all countries. The Rio 2012 Summit provides an opportunity for governments to transform Principle 10 from aspirational goals into actionable rights. Governments and civil society should use the opportunity to commit together in adopting, implementing, and exercising these rights in support of sustainable development.

Kenya has launched an Open Data portal, the first African country to make government data accessible to the ordinary citizen on an Internet-based platform. The portal will allow users to compare information at national, province and county levels. Users will also create maps and other visualisations and directly download data on their computer or mobile phone.

In May, Decree No. 2011-41 was promulgated in Tunisia relating to administrative documents held or produced by public authorities. In its comment on the Decree, Article 19 notes that the exceptions to the right to information outlined in the Decree should be amended in order to comply with international standards. 'According to international law in this area, information should never be withheld unless it affects a legitimate interest protected by law, release of the information would cause actual harm to that interest and this harm would be greater than the harm caused to the public interest by non-disclosure. The provisions of the Decree on exceptions (Articles 16 to 18) should be replaced by a
single provision clearly laying down this three-part test.'

The book-length poem ‘Paradise of Idiots’ by Peter Wuteh Vakunta is a powerful wake-up call for the Cameroonian people, writes David T. Scheler, ‘in an exceptionally scintillating version of the political/poetic art form’.

Having been illegally evicted from a building in Johannesburg’s CBD, several hundred people were able to return to their homes after an urgent hearing at the Johannesburg High Court. The residents had been evicted from their homes without a court order by the City of Johannesburg’s Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) and Fire Brigade officials. Hundreds of women and children, including 50 blind people, were locked out of their home by JMPD officers. The officers readily conceded that they had no court order but said that they were 'only following orders'.

Alioune Tine, the executive secretary of the Dakar-based African Human Rights Organisation (RADDHO), who was on 23 June 2011 violently attacked by militants of the ruling Senegalese Democratic Party (PDS) during a demonstration, has gone into hiding after being discharged from hospital. The militants indiscriminately attacked Tine, a prominent human rights defender, to the extent that he was rushed and admitted at the Dakar main hospital.

Cotton production resumed quietly in the small town of Sara after farmers won a victory in their fight with SOFITEX, the leading company in Burkina Faso which buys and processes cotton, reports Farm Radio Weekly. The renewed interest in cotton contrasts with the violent protests in June. Some farmers threatened not to produce the valuable fibre this year. But others had already planted and did not support abandoning the crop. Angry farmers destroyed some of the newly-planted fields. Police intervened to prevent them from pulling up all the young cotton plants.

Early in June in Singapore, the International Centre for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board of directors announced that they will allow more gTLD (generic Top Level Domains). Currently, there are only 22 registered gTLDs like .com and .org. The expanded gTLD space means that Africa can too have its own gTLD like .africa. An organisation going by the name DotConnectAfrica (DAC) (http://www.dotconnectafrica.org/) has been spearheading this venture for a while now. DAC has even been on social media, communicating their agenda and advocating for the .africa gTLD long before the ICANN announcement.

Egyptian companies and multi-nationals are now using images of and references to the youth-led uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak in advertisements to sell internet service, mobile phones, soft drinks, tourism and more. The marketing has sparked something of a backlash among young Egyptians and has contributed to a rise in politicised street art and graffiti. 'Everyone sold us down the river. So all these people coming now and claiming that their phones, their kitchen appliances, their whatever, has helped the revolution - nothing has helped the revolution but the people that did the revolution,' said one Egyptian.

This discussion paper from the International Council on Human Rights Policy examines the human rights implications of the immense diffusion of data-gathering technologies across the world in recent years. It starts from the premise that the relevant issues, while much discussed, are not yet well understood and are evolving rapidly, both of which contribute to widespread anxiety. The paper explores the roots of this anxiety and attempts to determine its sources and effects. It queries the degree to which data-gathering technologies pose problems that represent (or are analogous to) human rights threats and asks whether and how human rights law may help to assess or address those problems.

Judge Modather Al-Rasheed of the Khartoum press court has sentenced Fatima Ghazali, a journalist with the daily Al-Jarida, to a fine of 2,000 Sudanese pounds (516 euros) or one month in prison in case of refusal to pay. As Ghazali refused to pay the fine, she was immediately taken to Omdurman prison to begin serving her sentence. The judge also sentenced Al-Jarida editor Saadeldin Ibrahim to a fine of 5,000 Sudanese pounds (1,290 euros) in connection with the same articles about human rights violations by the security forces.

A journalist who had recently reported about the arrest of locals accused of trafficking weapons for criminal activity was found shot to death last week in the eastern town of Kirumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo, report Journaliste en danger (JED) and other IFEX members. Kambale Musonia, the host of a daily programme on Radio Communautaire de Lubero Sud, was shot to death a few metres from his home on 21 June. Musonia is the sixth journalist gunned down in the past four years in North and South Kivu alone, says JED.

Last spring, Haiti’s minister of agriculture gave agribusiness giant Monsanto permission to ‘donate’ 505 tonnes of seeds to Haiti ‘to support the reconstruction effort’. A year later, Beverly Bell asks what has become of the seeds that Monsanto gave, and ‘how real was the fear of Haitian farmer organizations that the donation was a Trojan horse?’

Five detained journalists were on 26 June 2011 charged with conspiracy to undermine the state as part of probe into the political crisis following the defeat of former President Laurent Gbagbo in the second round of the November, 2010 elections. The five men including journalists and other media executives are part of 15 close associates of ex-President Gbagbo who have been charged with 'offences against the authority of the state'.

The Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) says it might have to institute public interest proceedings over the breach of the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) Act. LAZ President Musa Mwenye says that ZNBC’s news broadcast is unbalanced and mostly inclined to the MMD, a situation which has been compounded by the absence of a board of directors at the media institution.

The Ethiopian government has publicly accused an editor and a columnist of involvement in a terrorism plot, according to news reports and local journalists. Woubshet Taye, deputy editor of the leading Awramba Times newspaper and Reeyot Alemu, columnist for the weekly Feteh, have been held incommunicado under Ethiopia's far-reaching anti-terrorism law since last week. The anti-terrorism law criminalises writing the government deems favorable to groups and causes it labels as 'terrorists', including banned political opposition party Ginbot 7. This is the first use of the law against journalists.

Right at the bottom of the pyramid are phone users who can’t afford the minimum cost for a SIM to share in someone else’s phone, writes Russell Southwood from Balancing Act. Movirtu has produced a cloud-based, login account which will enable anyone who has access to a GSM phone to share it but still retain their own number. The product was being tested in 2010 and started being deployed as a pilot with several operators in Africa.

As protests mount over fraud in Kenya’s Ministry of Education, Henry Maina discusses the investigation and proposes lessons to be learned.