Category Archives: Global development

Just $5 per person a year could prevent future pandemic, says ex-WHO head

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Cost would be billions, but represents a huge saving on $11tn response to Covid-19, estimates show

Spending $5 (£3.90) per person annually on global health security over the next five years could prevent a future “catastrophic” pandemic, according to a former head of the World Health Organization (WHO).

It would cost the world billions of dollars, but that amount would be a huge saving on the $11tn response to Covid-19, said Gro Harlem Brundtland, who, with other prominent international experts, sounded the alarm over the threat of a fast-spreading deadly pandemic last September.

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‘Lost decade for nature’ as UK fails on 17 of 20 UN biodiversity targets

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UK government said it failed on two-thirds of targets, but RSPB analysis is bleaker – and suggests UK is moving backwards in some areas

The UK has failed to reach 17 out of 20 UN biodiversity targets agreed on 10 years ago, according to an analysis from conservation charity RSPB that says the gap between rhetoric and reality has resulted in a “lost decade for nature”.

The UK government’s self-assessment said it failed on two-thirds of targets (14 out of 20) agreed at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan, in 2010, but the RSPB analysis suggests the reality is worse. On six of the 20 targets the UK has actually gone backwards. The government’s assessment published last year said it was not regressing on any target.

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Three Rohingya refugees die days after seven-month ordeal on trafficking boat

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300 people disembarked in Indonesia in a ‘terrible condition’ after being held hostage at sea by traffickers demanding payment

At least three young Rohingya refugees have died this week since landing in Indonesia after seven months at sea, relief workers have said.

After being refused entry by several countries and held hostage at sea by traffickers, 296 refugees disembarked in Aceh province on Monday, weak and in poor health. Two-thirds of them were women and children.

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Lesbos refugees protest after devastating camp fire – video report

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Thousands of refugees on Lesbos protested in the street on Friday outside what was the largest migrant camp in Europe, which burned to the ground on Tuesday night.

Greek officials have pledged new temporary tents for the close to 13,000 refugees who were staying in Moria, as 11 European countries agreed to take 400 unaccompanied minors from among those left homeless by the fire

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Save the Children can resume funding bids following sexual abuse scandal

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Charity has made ‘significant steps’ to improve safeguarding and can now apply for government funds two years on from withdrawal

The charity Save the Children can resume bids for government funding after it withdrew from the process two years ago over a sexual misconduct scandal.

The charity, one of the largest British recipients of government funding, receiving £139m in 2017, had taken “significant steps” to improve safeguarding and now meets government standards, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office confirmed on Thursday.

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Blow for Bangladesh’s female crab farmers as Covid stops exports

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Family incomes plummet at cooperative that helped empower women as lucrative trade with China is suspended

Female crab farmers in Bangladesh are struggling to feed their families after exports to China collapsed due to Covid-19, a charity has warned.

Despite the crab harvesting season being in full swing in Mongla, southern Bangladesh, continued lockdown across the nation and the closure of lucrative external markets have impacted not only farmers’ livelihoods but also the country’s GDP, which relies heavily on the $43m (£33m) crab export industry, according to the charity Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO).

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‘It’s unbearable’: Lesbos refugees sleep on streets after devastating fire

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Residents of Moria camp struggle to salvage what they can as protesters try to block efforts to rebuild

Plumes of smoke rise above the ashes and twisted metal. In many parts this is all that remains of Europe’s largest refugee camp.

Just a few days ago, the Moria camp in Lesbos was home to thousands of children and their families. Now all that is left are the smoldering ruins and jagged outlines of scorched tents.

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Amnesty investigation links brewer Kirin to Myanmar military crimes

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Billions in dividends from ventures with conglomerate MEHL funnelled to army units implicated in Rohingya crackdown

One of the world’s largest brewers, Kirin – whose subsidiaries include San Miguel and craft beers brewed in the US and UK – has been linked to crimes committed by the Myanmar military following an Amnesty International investigation.

Kirin is partnered with a Myanmar-based conglomerate with interests in mining, beer, tobacco, garment manufacturing and banking, whose shareholders include military units directly implicated in serious human rights crimes against Rohingya people, analysis by the human rights group found.

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MSF ran ‘white saviour’ TV ad despite staff warnings over racism

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Decision to show then withdraw video sparked crisis at MSF Canada, says review

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) broadcast a $400,000 (£307,000) TV fundraising campaign in Canada despite warnings from staff that it was exploitative, reinforced racist “white saviour” stereotypes and breached the medical charity’s ethical guidelines, the Guardian has learned.

A damning review of the decision to run and later withdraw the advert, which featured the REM track Everybody Hurts played over images of crying black children being treated by MSF medics, concluded it exposed a lack of trust in leadership and triggered an “organisational crisis” at MSF Canada.

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The women fighting sexual abuse in the factories where your jeans are made

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An investigation into working conditions in garment factories in Lesotho revealed widespread sexual abuse of women. Annie Kelly travelled to southern Africa to investigate

Last year, a report by the Workers Rights Consortium NGO revealed widespread rape, sexual assault and harassment at a number of garment factories in Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho.

The Guardian’s Annie Kelly tells Rachel Humphreys how she travelled to Lesotho to discover for herself what had been going on in factories producing jeans for top brands such as Levi’s and Wrangler. Sethelile Nthakana, a WRC researcher, explains how the factories would operate using casual workers chosen at the gates, who would then be expected to enter relationships with the bosses who had selected them.

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‘Catastrophe’ warning as thousands left homeless by Lesbos refugee camp fire

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NGOs accuse police of blocking access to hospital for families and vulnerable migrants injured in Moria blaze

NGOs in Lesbos have warned that a humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding on the roads around the still burning Moria camp, where thousands of migrants are allegedly being held by police without shelter or adequate medical help.

Annie Petros, head coordinator of of the charity Becky’s Bathhouse, said she was blocked by police from taking injured people to hospital as she drove them away from the fire.

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‘I had to kill so many people’: the battle to protect children in conflicts

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25,000 grave violations were committed against children in conflict in 2019, says the UN, which hopes to highlight issue with new international day

When Islamic State fighters rolled into Mosul, Iraq, they made promises.

“When they arrived they promised us salvation, a better life, but within months our schools were closed and we were living in fear, prisoners in our own city,” says Usama Salem, 11.

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School’s out in Kashmir: classes held in meadows amid closures

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Educators in the disputed region are fighting to keep pupils on track amid repeated lockdowns, curfews and internet blackouts

Asmat Jan, 15, practises her singing in a meadow, against a backdrop of Kashmir’s towering mountains. In front of her, around 50 other children squat in perfect, straight lines. A couple of adults hover nearby.

Education has gone open-air across the valley in Indian-administered Kashmir and this is one of the many makeshift community classes that have sprung up in response to the repeated closure of schools under two separate lockdowns, alongside a communication blackout in this hotly disputed territory imposed in August last year. While political restrictions have eased a little in Kashmir since India revoked the region’s special status and degree of autonomy, a brief reopening of education in February lasted only until April’s Covid-19 lockdown brought classes to yet another grinding halt.

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Closing the race gap in philanthropy demands radical candour

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Why should black founders jump through more hoops to earn funders’ trust?

I was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, when I heard about the shooting of another black man, Jacob Blake, by US police. Close by is a mural of George Floyd, painted on a wall near where I grew up, a reminder that the current upheaval surrounding race in the US has global repercussions. Just as calls for racial justice echo in American and European streets, government offices and boardrooms, we must not forget that the legacy of racial injustice extends far beyond those borders and any honest reckoning must include open dialogue around race in international development.

In Africa, white-led institutions have shaped the development and social entrepreneurship landscape, deciding who succeeds and who fails. Only recently has there been a growing recognition of these imperialist dynamics, which uplift foreign-led practitioners more than local ones. There is a growing consensus that the future should and must be created and led by Africans, because real progress requires it to be on our own terms. And yet, this is just talk until funders shift resources and power, at scale, towards local solutions.

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Why Covid school closures are making girls marry early

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The pandemic’s impact is long-term: the UN warns that it could lead to 13 million more child marriages over a decade

Samita (not her real name) is 17 and lives in the Lamjung district of Nepal. It was never easy, even before coronavirus, for her to attend school full-time. Living in a rural community in a family with little income she was expected to do housework as well.

Samita persisted though. At the beginning of the year, the Sisters for Sisters project run by international development charity VSO was supporting her with an “older sister” mentor, who was encouraging her to keep up her education.

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The girls and women fighting to stop child marriage – photo essay

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Five women affected by child marriage tell their stories – and of their struggles to protect others

  • Text and photographs by Thom Pierce

Twelve million girls are married every year before they reach 18, according to UN estimates. And in its first set of global statistics on child marriage rates among boys, the UN found one in 30 young men were married as children.

Advances have been made, however. Ending child marriage by 2030 is a target in the UN’s set of sustainable development goals, and many countries have launched strategies to stop the practice. But progress is slow and likely to be badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic as closed schools and financial pressures take their toll on families. In April, the United Nations Population Fund predicted that an additional 13 million children could be married over the next decade because of disruption to programmes.

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Trump’s tweets are felt in Ethiopia. Washington should use its power wisely | Mekonnen Firew Ayano

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Anti-democratic attitudes in America helped to scrub our election, while US-Nile geopolitics could become a powder keg

When US presidents comment on events in other countries, their remarks have impact.

When, for example, President Barack Obama congratulated the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) on an apparent landslide election victory in 2015, it signalled to some Ethiopians that the world’s most powerful country would not favour a legal challenge to the election results.

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‘A race against time’: the new law putting Somalia’s children at risk of marriage

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Child marriage in the country has increased during coronavirus – and now a newly-tabled bill would allow children as young as 10 to marry

Fardowsa Salat Mohamed was 15 when her cousin asked her parents for her hand in marriage. Her father did not hesitate to say yes. When Mohamed objected, her father asked her to choose between “a curse and a blessing”.

“That was not a choice for me, I was basically forced,” she says. “No girl would ever choose to be cursed by her parents so I had to accept the marriage,”

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Vaccine-derived polio spreads in Africa after defeat of wild virus

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Fresh cases of disease linked to oral vaccine seen in Sudan, following outbreak in Chad

A new polio outbreak in Sudan has been linked to the oral polio vaccine that uses a weakened form of the virus.

News of the outbreak comes a week after the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that wild polio had been eradicated in Africa.

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Uganda suspends three-quarters of refugee aid agencies from operating

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NGOs reportedly failed to meet rules, but sweeping move could impact many of the country’s 1.4 million refugees activists warn

The Ugandan government has suspended operations of three-quarters of refugee aid organisations over non-compliance with operational rules.

The move affects 208 aid agencies, including 85 international groups. Hilary Onek, minister for relief, disaster preparedness and refugees, said some organisations had been operating in refugee settlements illegally, without government approval.

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