Category Archives: Global development

‘Please help us’: child refugees running out of time to reach UK before Brexit

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Desperate relatives in Britain plead with Home Office for flexibility as paperwork holdups delay family reunions while deadline looms

The Home Office has said it will not allow a group of stranded refugee children to join their families in the UK if their cases do not make it through the Greek asylum system by 31 December when the EU family reunification programme comes to an end.

Around 20 children who are eligible to join their relatives in the UK under the current family reunification scheme are still waiting for their cases to be completed in Greece, before the UK government ends the programme when it leaves the EU on the 31st December.

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‘Sex for sanitary pads’: how Kenya’s lockdown led to a rise in teenage pregnancy

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Girls who got free sanitary products at school were pushed to desperate measures in what is being called a shadow pandemic

Thousands of girls in Kenya will not be going back to school when classes start again in January, because they became pregnant during the Covid 19-lockdown.

The African Institute for Development Policy puts the number of teenage girls who became pregnant in the country between January and May at more than 150,000, with Nairobi recording nearly 12,000 pregnancies. Anecdotal evidence from healthcare workers across the Kenyan capital suggest the true figures could be higher, as many pregnant teenagers are not coming to clinics.

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Dangerous spices: why India’s cooking powders pose a risk of lead poisoning

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Exposure to the heavy metal from spice powders and car batteries is affecting child health across the subcontinent

An outbreak of a mystery illness over two days in early December in the south Indian city of Eluru saw more than 560 people hospitalised, most of them children, and baffled doctors. Symptoms were described as being similar to epilepsy, with convulsions and vomiting accompanied by burning eyes and loss of consciousness.

Recovery tended to be quick although the death of one man was attributed to the illness. In the midst of the Covid pandemic theories circulated that it was caused by too much disinfectant or vegetables washed in chlorine. Local traders saw sales slump.

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At least 102 killed in massacre in western Ethiopia after Abiy visit

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Witnesses report knife and gun attacks and children shot by armed men after PM warning over continuing ethnic conflicts

More than 100 people have been killed in Ethiopia’s western region of Benishangul-Gumuz, in the latest massacre along ethnic lines in the country.

Witnesses and officials said that at least 102 people were killed in the attack early on Wednesday in the Metekel zone.

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Fire destroys migrant camp in Bosnia

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Lipa facility had been criticised by rights groups for failing to provide basic services

A fast-moving fire has destroyed a migrant camp in Bosnia strongly criticised by rights groups as inadequate due to its lack of resources.

The blaze broke out at the Lipa camp, close to the border with Croatia, on the same day the International Organization for Migration (IOM) had declared the effective closure of the facility, saying Bosnian authorities had ignored its appeals to supply basic services.

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Uganda detains leading lawyer for LGBT rights on money-laundering charges

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Opposition figures say charges against Nicholas Opiyo, known for defending the rights of society’s most vulnerable, are baseless

Security agencies in Uganda have arrested a prominent human rights lawyer over alleged money laundering.

Nicholas Opiyo, known for representing LGBTQ+ people, was arrested in a restaurant in the capital, Kampala, on Tuesday by plainclothes security and financial intelligence officers.

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‘Black book’ of thousands of illegal migrant pushbacks presented to EU

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Shocking dossier of systematic violations of asylum seekers along the notorious ‘Balkan route’ compiled by watchdog groups

A 1,500-page “black book” documenting hundreds of illegal pushbacks against asylum seekers by authorities on Europe’s external borders was released last week and handed over to the EU commission.

Compiled by the watchdog organisation Border Violence Monitoring Network (BVMN), the Black Book of Pushbacks is a collection of 892 group testimonies, detailing the experiences of 12,654 victims of human rights violations along the Balkan migration route, one of the most gruelling in the recent migrant crisis given the alleged violence of border police officers.

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‘The brides feel like Cinderella’: the free wedding shop helping India’s poor

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Fashion designer’s scheme provides secondhand shoes, clothes and jewellery free to women who can’t pay for their big day

A section of a boutique in Pappinisseri town in Kerala’s Kannur district brims over with colourful bridal lehengas, saris, gowns and shiny salwar suits.

An exuberance of fabrics adorns mannequins that stand next to tables spread with sparkly sandals, shoes, bangles and beaded bags. Tableware, bedlinen and miscellaneous items are scattered in other spaces.

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Hungry and afraid: life for factory workers meeting UK demand for cheap clothes

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Pakistani workers describe trying to survive on the less than £50 a month many of them earn making items for firms such as Boohoo

When Qasim Ahmed* arrived in Faisalabad a year ago, he didn’t want much – just enough money to pay for a roof over his head, buy food and send a little cash home each month.

Today, that seems like a fantasy. Instead of having enough to get by, he claims, he has found himself struggling to survive, frequently going hungry, feeling abused by his boss and fearing he is working in a factory that could go up in flames. “It makes me sad that I can’t help my parents and siblings the way I hoped before coming here,” he says.

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Boohoo selling clothes made by Pakistani workers ‘who earned 29p an hour’

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Guardian investigation finds claims of safety issues, with workers saying they sometimes work 24-hour shifts

The fast fashion brand Boohoo is selling clothes made by Pakistani factory workers who say they face appalling conditions and earn as little as 29p an hour, an investigation by the Guardian has found.

In interviews in the industrial city of Faisalabad, workers at two factories claimed they were paid 10,000PKR (£47) a month, well below the legal monthly minimum wage for unskilled labour of 17,500PKR, while making clothes to be sold by Boohoo.

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The roles I’ve played brought home to me the scourge of violence against women | Nicole Kidman

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There is a pandemic of violence against women and girls – and we can all act as the vaccine

• Nicole Kidman is an Oscar-winning actor, who played a lead role in 2020 drama The Undoing

We have been through the unimaginable this year. Separated from family and people we love, our dreams put on pause, while fearing for our health and our very lives.

In addition to Covid-19, a shadow pandemic has been unfolding: violence against women. Calls to helplines increased up to fivefold in the first few weeks of the pandemic. And an issue that was already pervasive before Covid-19 hit – evident on the streets, in the tube or a hotel room, on the news, in a conversation with a friend, in the scripts I read and the roles I played – became even more pressing.

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Alarm at Colombia plan to exclude migrants from coronavirus vaccine

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President Iván Duque says undocumented Venezuelans will be denied access in a move denounced as unethical and impractical

Colombia will refuse to administer coronavirus vaccines to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan refugees within its borders, President Iván Duque has announced, in a move which stunned public health experts and prompted condemnation from humanitarian groups.

Speaking to a local radio station on Monday, Duque that only Venezuelans with dual nationality or formal migratory status will have access to the vaccine when it is eventually distributed in the country.

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Tackling sexual harassment at UN ‘on the back burner’, says former executive

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Purna Sen says survivors of sexual assault and discrimination struggle to be heard at global organisation

The former executive in charge of tackling sexual harassment at the UN has said she fears the issue has now been “put on the back burner”.

Purna Sen was appointed at UN Women in 2018 to address harassment, assault and discrimination at work, including within the organisation. But after being told the role would not be renewed, she left in August.

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‘A mental health emergency’: no end to trauma for refugees on Lesbos

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Mental health problems are spiralling among adults and children at ‘Moria 2:0’ camp as winter sets in and security tightens

Nadia hasn’t slept. The mother of five spent last night trying to soothe her seven-year-old son, Matin, who is autistic, while heavy rain fell on the family’s tent. He was crying and asking for the noise to stop. “I tried to explain to him that the rain is not in our control,” she says, “but in these moments, you can’t reach him any more.”

The family, originally from Parwan province in Afghanistan, are living in the new refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos that was built in three days, after the fire that razed to the ground parts of the infamous Moria camp.

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‘Slaughtered like chickens’: Eritrea heavily involved in Tigray conflict, say eyewitnesses

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Despite denials by Ethiopia, multiple reports confirm killings, looting and forcible return of refugees by Asmara’s forces

In early December, Ethiopian state television broadcast something unexpected: a fiery exchange between civilians in Shire, in the northern Tigray region, and Ethiopian soldiers, who had recently arrived in the area.

To the surprise of viewers used to wartime propaganda, the Tigrayan elders spoke in vivid detail of the horrors that had befallen the town since the outbreak of war between the federal government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the region’s longstanding ruling party, which was ousted from the state capital of Mekelle in late November.

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Caste-based area names to be changed across Indian state to ‘increase unity’

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Millions of people in Maharashtra to have neighbourhoods renamed but critics say plan means little without behavioural change

The names of neighbourhoods in the Indian state of Maharashtra based on the caste of people who have traditionally lived there are to be be changed, to reflect the country’s evolving attitudes.

In the same way Indian surnames reveal the caste to which a person belongs, neighbourhoods have acquired names based on the caste of the community that predominates.

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South Sudan faces ‘catastrophic’ famine unless conflict ended

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UN agencies say millions at risk if aid can’t reach areas of country stricken by floods, violence and Covid-19

Parts of South Sudan are facing a “catastrophic” conflict-fuelled famine, humanitarian groups warned on Friday.

Three UN agencies have called for a halt to violence to allow urgent access to parts of Jonglei state, where they said people have already run out of food because of insecurity, flooding and the coronavirus pandemic.

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Covid is a chance to build a world where everyone has access to basic vaccines | David Miliband and Anuradha Gupta

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Preventable diseases still plague those missing out on vaccines. Efforts to halt coronavirus could help crack this issue

The massive public, private and foundation investments in a coronavirus vaccine are producing results at a record pace. And countries are reacting accordingly. A recent global assessment of purchasing agreements for Covid-19 vaccines reveals that high-income countries, as well as a few middle-income countries with high manufacturing capacity, have already bought enough doses for their populations.

But delivery of the vaccine needs a new level of focus. This is especially the case for populations in poor and war-torn countries, where the health system is weak or nonexistent. Even before the pandemic, approximately 20 million infants a year, often some of the most vulnerable in the world, were missing out on basic vaccines. For example, there are estimated to be more than 10.6 million children in the world’s poorest countries who in 2019 did not receive even a first dose of a diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus vaccine (DPT).

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‘Humanitarian crisis’: UN panel decries Covid rules that trapped crews at sea

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‘Legally and morally wrong to expect seafarers to work indefinitely while depriving them of their fundamental rights’

Governments around the world have breached the rights of seafarers during the Covid-19 pandemic, creating a “humanitarian crisis” in which hundreds of thousands of workers are stranded onboard ships, said a UN panel on labour rights in a landmark ruling.

Seafarers had reported physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety and sickness after spending months on board ship during the pandemic. There were also cases of people taking their own lives. Hundreds of people were denied medical care ashore, resulting in a number of deaths, said the UN’s International Labour Organization’s committee of experts.

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Africa steps up fight against HIV with trial of new combination vaccines

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African-led study expected to involve 1,600 people over next three years in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa

The first trial in Africa to test two new vaccines to protect against HIV got under way in Uganda this week, raising hopes of an end to the epidemic that affects millions of people across the continent.

The African-led PrEPVacc study will test two experimental combination vaccines to see if they can provide any protection against HIV in people most at risk of infection.

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