The story of Baba, chained to a tree for three years, moved people around the world to help. Mental health nurse Stephen Asante witnessed his journey to freedom
Last November I travelled with the Guardian to the upper-east region of Ghana. Our aim was to see how mental illness is treated in communities that have scant access to health services.
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Loophole allowing marriage with parental consent undermines UK’s global stance on child marriage, parliament to be told
The UK is undermining its international efforts to end child marriage because an exception to the law in England and Wales that allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with parental consent is putting children at risk, parliament will be told today.
Pauline Latham MP will ask the House to back a bill criminalising child marriage and civil partnership before the age of 18. She will argue that current legislation is at odds with the legal requirement since 2013 for young people to remain in education or training until then.
Continue reading...Solicitors and barristers say they feel unsafe and warn Home Office attacks on lawyers are undermining the legal system
Leading immigration lawyers have told the Guardian that increasingly hostile rhetoric from the home secretary is putting them at risk of being attacked as well as undermining the legal system.
On Sunday home secretary Priti Patel used a speech at the Conservative party conference to criticise lawyers who defend migrants, linking them directly with traffickers who help asylum-seekers to cross borders.
Continue reading...Adults and children are regularly shackled and locked up in 60 countries, report finds
Hundreds of thousands of people with mental health conditions in 60 countries are still being chained, according to a comprehensive and damning new study.
Human Rights Watch says that men, women and children – some as young as 10 – are regularly shackled or locked in confined spaces for weeks, months, and even years, across Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas.
Continue reading...New law to boost investment is a ‘tragic miscalculation’, campaigners say, as unions plan strike action in protest
Indonesia has passed a wide-ranging bill that will weaken environmental protections and workers’ rights in an attempt to boost investment, a move condemned as a “tragic miscalculation” that could lead to “uncontrolled deforestation”.
Groups representing millions of workers said they would strike on Tuesday in response to protest against the bill, which will amend about 1,200 provisions in 79 existing laws after it was pushed through parliament with unprecedented speed. Police said that a permit for the protest had not been approved, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Continue reading...An acute shortage of sanitiser, PPE and clean water is putting pupils and school staff at risk of Covid-19, say unions
Teachers in Zimbabwe are refusing to return to work after the resumption of some classes this week, accusing the government of failing to adequately prepare for the opening of schools.
Schools reopened last week for pupils due to sit exams in early December, six months after they were closed because of a rise in Covid-19 cases in the country. But teachers say the government is ill-prepared to deal with a possible outbreak of the virus in schools.
Continue reading...Cyberstalking, body shaming and being sent explicit content among issues highlighted by Plan International
Most girls and young women using social media have experienced abuse that has driven them offline and left them traumatised, according to a new global survey.
More than half of the 14,000 15- to 25-year-olds interviewed by Plan International said they had been cyberstalked, sent explicit messages and images, or abused online.
Continue reading...Almost all planned work against the disease has gone ahead this year, delivering nets, drugs and the world’s first malaria vaccine
More than 90% of anti-malaria campaigns planned this year across four continents are on track, despite disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research.
The delivery of insecticide-treated nets and provision of antimalarial medicines in the majority of malaria-affected countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas were still going ahead, a high-level meeting organised by the RBM Partnership to End Malaria heard on Thursday.
Continue reading...Women lead protests against conflict violence in Democratic Republic of the Congo, amid calls for action on hundreds of civil war crimes
Women led thousands of people in demonstrations in four cities across the Democratic Republic of the Congo on Thursday, demanding justice for historic murders and rapes committed in the east of the country.
Organisers said police beat protesters in Kisangani, one of the cities, as they marked a decade since the UN documented hundreds of crimes in DRC between 1993 and 2003 that have not been prosecuted.
Continue reading...The recently freed documentary maker says jails are inhumane, overcrowded and present a massive coronavirus risk
Zimbabwean journalist Hopewell Chin’ono, jailed for 45 days and charged with inciting violence, has spoken of the appalling abuse and prison conditions he witnessed.
Chin’ono, a prominent documentary maker who was released on bail last month, said he saw inmates at Chikurubi high security prison assaulted by guards for minor offences.
Continue reading...Human rights campaigners warn reinstating capital punishment ‘would be a huge step backwards’, as attack on young woman reignites debate
The brutal killing of a young woman has reignited a debate in Tunisia over capital punishment, with the country’s president suggesting an end to a decades-old moratorium on the death penalty.
President Kais Saied told a meeting of the country’s national security council on Monday that “murder deserves the death penalty” and urged the security forces to redouble their efforts in countering what he characterised as a nationwide increase in crime.
Continue reading...Female musicians say abuse by gurus has been an open secret for years in a culture where ‘toxic and old-fashioned patriarchy’ holds sway
One of India’s most venerated cultural traditions – the centuries-old guru-shishya (disciple) method of learning classical music and dance – has been hit by allegations of sexual abuse.
A group of 90 female classical musicians issued a statement in September, alleging sexual abuse and exploitation of female disciples by their gurus. They described a “fear-driven culture of silence” that forced women to submit to the sexual demands of their gurus for fear of having to end their careers.
Continue reading...Coronavirus tracking measures handing ‘unchecked powers’ to authoritarian regimes, experts warn
Draconian surveillance measures introduced during the Covid-19 epidemic are handing “unchecked powers” to authoritarian regimes across Asia, human rights experts are warning.
In a report out today, risk analysts warn that “extreme measures and unchecked powers” brought in to tackle Covid-19 could become permanent features of government across the region, and have an impact on the rights and privacy of millions of people.
Continue reading...During South Africa’s strict lockdown, groups of activists decided to distribute parcels of vegetables as wells as seedlings and gardening materials as well as to hundreds of vulnerable households
Photographs by Miora Rajaonary
Just like every emergency, Covid-19 is racist, ageist, classist and sexist. The world response to the pandemic must reflect this
In the early days of coronavirus, there was a view that a global pandemic would act as a great equaliser. “A virus doesn’t discriminate,” they said. “We’re all in this together.” It didn’t take long for such a credulous perspective to vanish.
Just like every emergency, every disaster, Covid-19 absolutely does discriminate. It’s ageist, it’s racist, it’s classist and it’s worst of all for those with pre-existing health conditions or disabilities.
Continue reading...LSE finds country’s sex-segregated distancing rules may have reproduced inequalities and injustices for trans people
Each day when Pau González wakes and looks at his phone, he feels as if he is running a call centre. As the founder of the activist group Hombres Trans Panama, he has been inundated by members of the transgender community seeking advice on how to navigate Panama’s sex-segregated social distancing laws. Some callers have been cautioned or abused by police. Others report feeling suicidal and scared to go out.
In April, Panama announced one of the most aggressive Covid-19 policies in Latin America – dictated which days its citizens could go out according to their sex as stated on their national identification cards.
Continue reading...Race against time to save plants and fungi that underpin life on Earth, global data shows
Two in five of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction as a result of the destruction of the natural world, according to an international report.
Plants and fungi underpin life on Earth, but the scientists said they were now in a race against time to find and identify species before they were lost.
Continue reading...With 17 children missing every day, the city’s police commissioner hopes a promise of fast-track promotion will inspire officers to reunite more families
New Delhi Police Commissioner SN Srivastava was particularly troubled over the 17 children who went missing in his city every day. So he decided to light a fire in the belly of his force and came up with a new approach.
If any officer could find 50 missing children in a year their promotion would be fast-tracked. It usually takes constables at least five years to be promoted to head constable, and meeting the target would dramatically speed that up.
Continue reading...Global gender tracker assesses how governments address violence, strengthen women’s economic security and support unpaid caring
Most countries are failing to adequately protect women and girls during the fallout from Covid-19, according to a new UN database that tracks government responses to the pandemic.
The global gender tracker has looked at how 206 countries and territories address violence against women and girls, support unpaid care workers and strengthen women’s economic security.
Continue reading...Over 1,000 public figures call for Alberto Fernández to stay true to his election pledge despite distraction of coronavirus pandemic
Pro-choice campaigners are renewing pressure on president Alberto Fernández to make good on his electoral pledge to legalise abortion in Argentina.
More than 1,000 public figures, writers, journalists and artists added their names to an advert published in three Argentinian newspapers on Sunday, calling for the government to keep its commitment.
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