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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Five women affected by child marriage tell their stories – and of their struggles to protect others
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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,”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Merging DfID and FCO will cement Britain ‘as a force for good’, Raab claims, but critics fear aid will be deprioritised
Dominic Raab pledged Britain will take the global lead in tackling coronavirus and the growing risk of famine in developing countries by combining diplomatic strength with “world-leading” aid expertise, as the newly merged Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) prepared to launch on Wednesday.
In his first appointment as head of the FCDO, the foreign secretary appointed Nick Dyer, acting permanent secretary of the former Department for International Development (DfID), as the UK’s first special envoy for famine prevention and humanitarian affairs.
Continue reading...Workers will be able switch jobs without employers’ permission, but rights groups say measure does not go far enough
Workers in Qatar may now change jobs without needing to obtain their employers’ permission, ending one of the most criticised elements of the country’s labour system.
The government has also announced an increase in the minimum wage, but rights groups have said the measure does not go far enough, leaving low wage workers earning as little as £1 an hour.
Continue reading...Number of glacial lakes rose by 53% in 1990-2018 to reveal impact of increased meltwater
Glacial lakes have grown rapidly around the world in recent decades, according to satellite images that reveal the impact of increased meltwater draining off retreating glaciers.
Scientists analysed more than quarter of a million satellite images to assess how lakes formed by melting glaciers have been affected by global heating and other processes.
Continue reading...Petitions issued to US authorities cite ‘integral role of forced labour’ involving Uighur Muslims and other minority groups
Human rights campaigners are calling on US authorities to ban all imports of cotton from the Chinese province of Xinjiang after allegations of widespread forced labour.
Two identical petitions, delivered today to US Custom and Border Protection, cite “substantial evidence” that the Uighur community and other minority groups are being press-ganged into working in the region’s cotton fields.
Continue reading...Covid could be ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’ health workers warn. Photographers Fardosa Hussein and Ismail Taxta captured a country battling seemingly insurmountable odds
Considering the country was in the middle of a pandemic, the silence at the entrance to Mogadishu’s De Martini hospital felt almost numbing, the expected noise replaced by stillness in its deserted, sanitised halls.
It sent a chill through me as I arrived in May to capture the work being done at what was, until recently, the Somali capital’s only hospital taking coronavirus patients. It felt like a prison.
Continue reading...Department for International Development gave ‘huge heft to global Britain’, says ex-secretary of state ahead of 2 September merger
Dominic Raab must recognise the “extraordinary influence and expertise” of staff at the Department for International Development (DfID) to maintain Britain’s position as a world leader, according to former Conservative development secretary Andrew Mitchell.
Mitchell, who was secretary of state from 2010 to 2012, said the DfID, which merges with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 2 September to become the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), had contributed “huge heft to global Britain” in terms of soft power.
Continue reading...Achuar people blame illegal logging for spread and are asking international community for aid
Climate change and multinational corporations have long posed a threat to the people of the Amazon rainforest. Now, however, the region’s indigenous tribes face an even more immediate danger: coronavirus.
Despite living deep in the heartland of Ecuadorian rainforest, the indigenous Achuar tribal people have fallen victim to the pandemic. Over the last several weeks, Covid-19 has struck at the heart of the Achuar community in Ecuador, which is made up of 13,000 people living in 88 groups over 800,000 hectares (3,000 sq miles) along the Pastaza River basin. A further 15,000 Achuar are based in neighbouring Peru.
Continue reading...The UK government has gone quiet on global safeguarding. The new FCDO must work with NGOs to hold abusers accountable
When stories of sexual abuse, harassment and exploitation in the aid sector surfaced in February 2018, a firestorm of blame and recrimination broke out across British NGOs. Household names were vilified, and the secretary of state for international development publicly declared that we had lost our moral compass.
Stories from victims and survivors were horrific and needed to be heard. NGOs were ashamed that abuse was still happening on our watch. We apologised, made promises of improvement and change. We came together as a sector and rapidly acted. Policies, processes and training were improved across hundreds of organisations and thousands of staff around the globe.
Continue reading...Thousands of ritual statues are dunked into the sea off Mumbai each year – but coronavirus and pollution concerns are forcing change
In the quiet housing estate of Angrewadi in the heart of Girgaon in south Mumbai, people are celebrating the 100th consecutive year of the Ganesh Chaturthi, the Hindu festival of the elephant-headed god of new beginnings. Statues of Lord Ganesh are brought into homes and put on display for offerings and prayers.
On the 11th and final day of the festival, the ritual of Ganesh Visarjan takes place – falling this year on 1 September. The statues, normally made of soluble plaster of paris, are traditionally carried in a public procession with music and chanting, and are then immersed in either a river or the sea. Here, they slowly dissolve in a ceremony that dramatises the Hindu view of the ephemeral nature of life – but also causes widespread pollution.
Continue reading...Yannick Glemarec responds to FT report of 40 complaints including racism and sexism
The head of the UN’s climate finance body has pledged to tackle complaints of misconduct at the organisation “as a matter of urgency”, after such claims against unidentified staff members were published.
Yannick Glemarec, the executive director of the Green Climate Fund, told the Guardian: “We need to continue working on building the culture of the organisation. Trust is key for our organisation.”
Continue reading...Local charities work constantly to support Lebanese society. It’s time they had a fair share of foreign aid
Every person in Lebanon has probably been asked: “Where were you during the Beirut port explosion?”
My response is always the same: I was here, in Beirut.
On 4 August, when the explosion ignited our skies, I was here – fighting for my life as windows, doors, and buildings collapsed around me. I was still here in the painful hours that followed, working with fellow activists to spearhead clean-up efforts, distribute food and rescue neighbours trapped under the rubble. And when it was revealed that our government’s alleged negligence led to the fatal blast, I remained here – on the streets with my sisters – to demand justice.
We were among the first to respond to this disaster. We were here before international aid workers arrived, before France hosted an international aid conference for the humanitarian response, and before the dust settled on our now devastated city.