President urged to act as rival gangs use death and intimidation in their brutal turf war for control of Buenaventura
Clenching a fist, Tatiana Angulo talked about the killings of her neighbours’ two teenage sons.
“They got mixed up in it,” said Angulo, 34, who runs a peace theatre group, reenacting the stories of local victims. “We used to be able to hang out and have a laugh on the street corners, but now that’s where the killings happen.”
Continue reading...Coverage of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala criticised by group who say such attitudes ‘discourage women from taking on leadership positions’
Senior African leaders at the UN have criticised the “sexist and racist” language used in coverage of the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the new president of the World Trade Organization.
Okonjo-Iweala, a graduate of Harvard University, was confirmed as the new head of the WTO last week, making her the first woman and the first African to lead the organisation.
Continue reading...Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue
More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.
The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.
Continue reading...Protesters compare date – 22.2.2021 – to 8 August 1988, when military cracked down on pro-democracy rallies
Protesters across Myanmar have held a general strike, taking to the streets across the country and shutting many businesses, in one of the largest nationwide shows of opposition to the military since it seized power three weeks ago.
Crowds assembled in Yangon, Naypyidaw, Mandalay and elsewhere on Monday, despite an apparent threat from the junta that it would again use deadly violence against demonstrators.
Continue reading...Civil war has drastically cut support services for women already at high risk of violence while displacing others who are now vulnerable to armed groups
Rima* was married the year civil war erupted in Yemen. She was 15 and for much of the time over the next five years, her husband kept her chained to a wall in their home in central Yemen. “He didn’t treat me as a wife, he treated me as a slave,” says the 21-year-old.
An aunt eventually took pity on Rima, taking her to a psychosocial support centre in the town of Turba, 90 miles (145km) north-west of Aden. According to a doctor there, Rima now suffers from a neurological disorder brought on by the constant beatings.
Continue reading...Fleeing to Kyrgyzstan in the 1960s, communities established mosques and villages but the local leaders, or dzhigit-beshchis, are a dying breed
Dzhigit-beshchi is the name Uighur people in Kyrgyzstan give to the leader they elect for their mahallah – or community. Usually it’s a respected person, mostly an elderly man.
Pushed out of China during the repressions of the 1960s, tens of thousands of Uighurs went to the former Soviet Union when these ageing leaders were just young men. Sticking closely to relatives and acquaintances who had come to Soviet cities and villages in previous waves, they built mosques and mahallahs, each with its own dzhigit-beshchi.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Freedoms have been crushed and free speech impeded by governments around the world, says António Guterres
The world is facing a “pandemic of human rights abuses”, the UN secretary general António Guterres has said.
Authoritarian regimes had imposed drastic curbs on rights and freedoms and had used the virus as a pretext to restrict free speech and stifle dissent.
Continue reading...The virus has been used as a pretext in many countries to crush dissent, criminalise freedoms and silence reporting
From the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic almost one year ago, it was clear that our world faced far more than a public health emergency. The biggest international crisis in generations quickly morphed into an economic and social crisis. One year on, another stark fact is tragically evident: our world is facing a pandemic of human rights abuses.
Covid-19 has deepened preexisting divides, vulnerabilities and inequalities, and opened up new fractures, including faultlines in human rights. The pandemic has revealed the interconnectedness of our human family – and of the full spectrum of human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political and social. When any one of these rights is under attack, others are at risk.
Continue reading...Lu Min taken from his home on Yangon as demonstrators take to streets in Mandalay after death of two protesters there on Saturday
Myanmar police have arrested a well-known actor wanted for opposing the military coup as Facebook deleted the military’s main page, saying it breached its standards prohibiting the incitement of violence.
Lu Min was one of six celebrities who the army said on Wednesday were wanted under an anti-incitement law for encouraging civil servants to join in the protest. The charges can carry a two-year prison sentence.
Continue reading...The killings, which took place between 2002 and 2008, were declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in war with rebel groups
A special peace tribunal in Colombia has found that at least 6,402 people were murdered by the country’s army and falsely declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in the civil war with leftist rebel groups. That number is nearly three times higher than the figure previously admitted by the attorney general’s office.
The killings, referred to in Colombia as the “false positives scandal”, took place between 2002 and 2008, when the government was waging war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc), a leftist guerrilla insurgency, which ultimately made peace with the government in 2016. Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.
Continue reading...We can rise to the challenge of a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid, but only if critical changes are made
The numbers are well-publicised but bear repeating. Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. A decade of progress in the most fragile countries wiped out.
Let’s put a human dimension on these numbers. More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.
Continue reading...Grocery store worker Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, is the first protest fatality since military took control in coup two weeks ago
A woman who was shot in the head by police during protests in Myanmar last week has died – the first protest fatality since the military took control in a coup more than two weeks ago.
Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, had been on life support since being taken to hospital on 9 February after she was hit by what doctors said was a live bullet at a protest in the capital, Naypyitaw.
Continue reading...Pressure mounts for patent waivers to allow poorer countries to develop their own manufacturing capacity to boost availability
The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines, a leading South African official has said.
The scramble over Covid vaccines should alert rich countries to the power of profit-driven companies that control production of crucial medicines, said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights.
Continue reading...Thousands more civilians could be displaced due to attacks by Houthi rebels in Marib province
The conflict in Yemen has taken a “sharp escalatory turn” and the country is speeding towards the worst famine the world has seen in decades, UN officials have warned, as the US under Joe Biden takes a renewed interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the war.
In one of his more downbeat monthly assessments, the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths told the security council attacks by the Houthi rebels in Marib province are threatening to displace tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom had fled to Marib from fighting elsewhere in Yemen.
Continue reading...Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid
Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.
New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.
Continue reading...Police are looking into allegations of so-called ‘wind vaccinations’ amid speculation about possible motives
Police in Brazil are investigating allegations that healthcare workers are giving fake Covid-19 inoculations, amid reports of nurses injecting people with empty syringes.
Cases of what local media are calling “wind vaccination” have been reported in four states, adding to the woes of the country’s halting and uncoordinated immunisation programme.
Continue reading...Priced out of online access, poor children are turning to backyard teachers as Covid closes state classrooms
It’s Friday morning and Help Mabwe is preparing to give the day’s illicit lessons. Round the back of his house the teacher has created a classroom out of some old canvas and some wooden poles.
A few broken chairs and benches, and an ancient chalkboard complete the furniture in Mabwe’s backyard college in Kuwadzana, a township 15km west of central Harare.
Continue reading...Campaign group calls for more testing at Mavrovouni, a temporary facility housing thousands of refugees on the Greek island
The Greek government is “downplaying” the risks of lead contamination in the refugee camp on Lesbos, according to Human Rights Watch.
The group is calling for further comprehensive testing at the Mavrovouni camp after results revealed that one area had particularly high levels of lead contamination.
Continue reading...Supporters say the politicians are prepared to die as government stands firm, with human rights lawyers warning consequences ‘could be huge’
For two hours the doctors had waited outside the gates of Kaliti prison in Addis Ababa. Bekele Gerba, a leading Ethiopian opposition figure from the Oromo ethnic group, was very ill and due to be taken to hospital for treatment. The 60-year-old is one of 20 senior political detainees, including the most prominent, Jawar Mohammed, who have been on hunger strike for the past three weeks.
After a flurry of phone calls, the prison authorities informed the waiting medical team that the prisoner, who has hypertension, would not be going to hospital on Friday. “They wouldn’t let us provide the emergency medical care he needs,” said Dr Illili Jamal, who alleged that the order to keep him in his cell came from senior government officials.
Continue reading...Activists warn new anti-trafficking law requiring permission from families to travel is evidence of ‘deep-rooted patriarchal mindset’
A proposed law in Nepal that would ban women from travelling abroad without permission from their families and local government officials has been called unconstitutional and “ridiculous”.
The proposals, introduced by the Department of Immigration last week in an attempt to prevent women being trafficked, would require all women under 40 to seek permission before they visit Africa or the Middle East for the first time.
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