Category Archives: Global development

‘It’s over for us’: how extreme weather is emptying Bangladesh’s villages

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The frequency of natural disasters is making life in rural areas increasingly difficult, pushing inhabitants into city slums

The house Faruk Hossain grew up in has, for the last six months, resisted being claimed by the river, as the rest of the village already has been.

But slowly, as the waters have failed to seep away, he has come to accept that the family house has become uninhabitable. Like other villages nearby, Chakla in Bangladesh’s Satkhira district has not re-emerged from the flooding caused by Super-cyclone Amphan, which battered the south of the country in late May,

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Day off denied: how Covid confined Hong Kong’s domestic ‘helpers’

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Many migrant women have been cooped up in employers’ homes for months, unable to take time off or travel to families

On Sundays Hong Kong’s migrant domestic workers traditionally gather in their thousands in the city’s public spaces to enjoy their day off.

Congregating in shopping malls and parks or at bus stations, they take mats to sit on and crowd around rice cookers, sharing meals. “Mini villages pop up everywhere,” says Karen Grépin, associate professor at the University of Hong Kong.

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‘We could have lost her’: Zimbabwe’s children go hungry as crisis deepens

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As food shortages worsen due to drought and the economic insecurity of lockdown, one in three children are malnourished

Baby Grace lies quietly in the clinical ward under the watchful gaze of her mother, Rose Mapeka. Her parched skin, which hangs off her tiny body, and the milkiness of her eyes, show only too clearly that the 18-month-old is undernourished.

Grace is lucky to be alive. Health workers in Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, identified her as needing immediate hospital treatment for malnutrition during their home visits to the city’s nursing mothers.

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Landmine casualty rates in Nigeria now fifth highest in the world

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Mines laid by Boko Haram and other groups leave millions at risk, particularly in Borno state where insurgency most acute

More than 100 people were killed or injured by landmines across north-east Nigeria in the first three months of this year, according to a new report.

Mines laid during the conflict between Boko Haram, other armed groups and the Nigerian army left 408 people dead and 644 injured between January 2016 and August this year, says the Mines Advisory Group (MAG), a landmine clearance charity. Since March 2018, the country has recorded an average of five landmine casualties a week. Actual numbers are thought to be higher due to underreporting. The first 15 weeks of this year saw one casualty a day.

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Kidnap, torture, murder: the plight of Pakistan’s thousands of disappeared

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Despite promises in opposition to end enforced abduction by the security forces, under Imran Khan’s government numbers have increased


The abductors moved with an ease and stealth that suggested they had done this before. As Qayyum* and his family slept, 12 masked and uniformed soldiers used a ladder to scale the gate of the house, in an affluent neighbourhood of the Pakistani city of Quetta in Balochistan. The family woke as they burst in but the officers silenced them with an order: don’t scream or we will beat you. One demanded Qayyum’s national identity card.

“Bring your phone and laptop,” barked an officer. A bag was shoved over Qayyum’s head and he was dragged outside and thrown into the back of a car.

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They risked all to cross the Red Sea. Now a cruel fate awaits in Yemen

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Fleeing Ethiopia and Somalia, refugees made their way across the world’s busiest migration route, only to be left in the hands of smugglers in a lawless land

Saudi Arabia was Tigrit’s dream: a place where she could find work as a cleaner or maid, and send money back to her husband and young daughter in Ethiopia. Now, like hundreds of thousands of East Africans who have left home and travelled across the Red Sea in search of a better life, she finds herself stranded in Yemen instead.

“We’re stuck. I don’t have food or money for phone credit to call home. I don’t have anything,” she said, sitting on the floor in a building site with no electricity or running water on the edge of the desert.

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Israel establishes ‘formal diplomatic relations’ with Bhutan

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Himalayan kingdom is latest country to recognise the Jewish state in a normalisation deal

Israel established diplomatic relations with the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan on Saturday, the Israeli foreign ministry said, in the latest of a string of normalisation deals agreed by the Jewish state.

“The circle of recognition of Israel is widening,” the Israeli foreign minister, Gabi Ashkenazi, said in a statement. “The establishment of relations with the Kingdom of Bhutan will constitute a new stage in the deepening of Israel’s relations in Asia.”

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Death of father at hands of mob casts a dark light on rise in Malawi rape cases

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Police have warned against increased vigilantism after spate of sexual abuse cases

A father who was reportedly beaten by a mob after he allegedly killed the man who attacked his daughter has died in hospital, in a case that has drawn attention to Malawi’s rise in reported rape cases.

The death of the 47-year-old man in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe was reported on Thursday. He had allegedly been beaten and left for dead by a vigilante mob, said to be relatives and friends of the man he had killed.

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Sub-Saharan Africa named riskiest investment region due to violence

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Annual global terror index highlights attacks in Mozambique and DRC and says human rights abuses are driving violence

Militant violence and abuses by security forces have made sub-Saharan Africa the riskiest region in the world for business and investors, a new report says.

Seven of the world’s 10 highest-risk countries for militant violence are in the region with significant deteriorations in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), according to the annual Terrorism Intensity Index released on Friday by risk consultants Verisk Maplecroft.

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Digging in: on the frontlines as farmers lay siege to Delhi

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Donations flood in to community kitchens as farmers protest against liberalisation of agriculture sector

When the sacks were ripped opened, almonds poured out, more than 10,000kg of them. It was not the first donation that had been sent to the Indian farmers defiantly camped out along the periphery of Delhi. In previous days trucks had rolled up and disgorged sacks of rice, pulses, flour, vegetables, sugar, tea and biscuits.

“This is food being sent by supporters from all over India and from as far as England and Canada. There is no shortage of food. We have enough to eat for months,” said Jaswinder Pal Singh, a farmer from Punjab.

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Sudanese singer faces deportation from Netherlands despite safety fears

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Rejection of Mohamed al-Tayeb’s asylum case comes amid changes to immigration policy critics say are an attempt to placate far right

A Sudanese singer whose television appearance on The Voice brought him threats from security officers is facing deportation from the Netherlands, where he has lived for two years.

Mohamed al-Tayeb, 30, who appeared on the Arabic version of the show in 2015, has been told his request for asylum had been rejected. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) said it did not believe he would be harmed if he returned to Sudan, following the ousting of Omar al-Bashir last year, but critics accuse the Dutch government of playing politics over anti-immigrant rhetoric.

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‘I thought about killing my children’: the desperate Bangladesh garment workers fighting for pay

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Workers face destitution after the collapse of fashion retailers – and despite beatings and police crackdowns vow they will protest until they are paid

It was 4.30am when the police charged the hundreds of garment workers sleeping under makeshift shelters and in sleeping bags on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As blows rained down, the workers fled.

By morning the streets had been cleared of the non-violent protest that more than 700 garment workers had been peacefully staging outside the Dhaka Press Club calling for their unpaid wages as they faced mounting destitution and hunger.

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Rich countries leaving rest of the world behind on Covid vaccines, warns Gates Foundation

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Deals struck by wealthy nations to secure treatments could leave the world’s poorest people unvaccinated without urgent action

It could be too late for any kind of fair distribution of coronavirus vaccines because of the deals already made by rich countries, according to Mark Suzman, chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Despite the unprecedented pace of scientific progress on the development of vaccines, he said it remains “really, really complicated” to ensure they are produced and distributed fairly.

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‘Alarming’: female prison population rises by 100,000 in past decade – report

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New data finds number of women behind bars growing, despite most being convicted of low-level nonviolent crimes

The number of women being jailed globally has increased by more than 100,000 in the past decade, despite international rules aimed at reducing the female prison population.

New data released by Penal Reform International around the 10th anniversary of the “Bangkok Rules” adopted by the UN show there are now 741,000 women and girls in prison.

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A Nobel prize for feeding the world can’t erase the shame of Yemen’s starving children | David Beasley

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I feel pride, but can’t shake my sense of failure that the World Food Programme’s media moment comes as hunger rages

I have done the usual things you do before an awards ceremony. After extensive high-level consultation, I think I now have the right suit and tie. Carefully folded in my pocket is a long list of people to praise, many far more deserving of praise than I. I am ready.

Growing up in a small South Carolina town, I never imagined life would bring me to this moment and allow me to be part of the wonderful, blessed enterprise I have found in WFP, the World Food Programme.

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Met police to compensate child slavery victim arrested after reporting ordeal

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Police ordered to pay £15,500 to man trafficked to UK from Vietnam as a boy who was detained and threatened with deportation

The Metropolitan police is to pay £15,500 to a victim of slavery who tried to report his traffickers but was instead arrested for immigration offences and sent to a detention centre.

The man, referred to in court as KQT, was 15 when he was taken by traffickers from Vietnam through Russia to the UK in a refrigerated lorry. He was arrested on arrival and placed in foster care, but shortly after was collected by his traffickers and forced to work on a cannabis farm, where he was locked inside a storeroom and only fed one meal a day. In January 2018, he escaped his captors and walked into a police station to report his ordeal.

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‘It’s not a grave we must fit in’: the Kashmir women fighting for marital rights

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Women are slowly gaining rights and finding the strength to shake off the social taboos around ending a bad relationship

Parveena Jabeen was all set to get married, but in Kashmir weddings are extravagant affairs.

Traditionally, brides in the valley of Kashmir would take a trousseau with them to the groom’s house, including clothes, jewellery, makeup, gifts for the in-laws and even furniture.

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Argentina moves closer to historic abortion legalisation

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A pro-abortion movement, symbolized by a green handkerchief, has swept through Latin America, where abortion is punishable by law

Belén ended up in jail after suffering a spontaneous miscarriage. Unaware that she was pregnant, the 25-year-old went to seek medical care at a hospital in Argentina’s northern province of Tucumán when she suffered abdominal pain.

In accordance with Argentina’s stringent anti-abortion legislation, Belén (not her real name) was reported by the hospital to the authorities and sentenced to eight years in prison for homicide. She did not regain her freedom until almost three years later, in 2017, after a feminist lawyer who took up her case convinced the Tucumán supreme court to overturn her conviction.

“There are many Beléns in Argentina and this madness will continue until abortion is legalized,” said Ana Correa, pro-abortion campaigner and author of the book Somos Belén (We Are Belén).

That long-awaited moment may be about to arrive.

Argentina is expected to move one step away from becoming the first major Latin American nation to legalize abortion on Thursday, when the lower house of congress votes on a legal abortion bill sponsored by president Alberto Fernández. The president holds a majority in the lower house, and a government source said the senate could vote the move into law as soon as next week.

The push for reform in Argentina is part of a pro-abortion “green wave” sweeping through Latin America, symbolized by the green handkerchief that has become the campaign’s instantly-recognizable flag across the entire region.

“The women of Argentina now enjoy the encouragement of all Latin America, where the green handkerchief is being raised up high from north to south,” said Claudia Piñeiro, an Argentinian author who has spent years campaigning for legal abortion.

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Covid used as pretext to curtail civil rights around the world, finds report

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Free speech, LBGT+ rights and freedoms to peacefully assemble have deteriorated during the pandemic

The state of civil liberties around the world is bleak, according to a new study which found that 87% of the global population were living in nations deemed “closed”, “repressed” or “obstructed”.

The figure is a 4% increase on last year’s, as civil rights were found to have deteriorated in almost every country in the world during Covid-19. A number of governments have used the pandemic as an excuse to curtail rights such as free speech, peaceful assembly and freedom of association, according to Civicus Monitor, an alliance of civil society groups which assessed 196 countries.

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