Category Archives: Global development

Uganda to US adoption scam: judges and lawyers sanctioned

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Judgment follows Guardian investigation into case of boy who was adopted by American couple without parents’ knowledge

The US has imposed financial sanctions and visa restrictions on two Ugandan judges and two lawyers over their part in an international adoption scam involving more than 30 children.

Judges Moses Mukiibi and Wilson Musalu Musene, and lawyers Dorah Mirembe and Patrick Ecobu, facilitated a network organising adoptions of Ugandan children, according to the US State Department.

“Together, these individuals engaged in corruption to arrange the adoption of Ugandan children by unwitting parents in the United States,” the statement said.

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Children forced to beg or work as hunger eclipses fear of Covid-19 in Yemen

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Hikes in food, water and petrol prices adds to ‘triple emergency’, as coronavirus spreads unchecked and humanitarian aid dwindles

Families in Yemen are having to send their children out to work and to beg as concerns mount over rising food, water and petrol prices, a survey has found.

Despite coronavirus spreading undetected across the war-ravaged nation, data collected from more than 150 households in three provinces of southern Yemen found that respondents were more worried about going hungry than contracting Covid-19. The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which led the survey, found nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents reported being unable to afford food and drinking water. Prices for sugar and vegetable oil have jumped by more than 25% in the past year.

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I’ve seen first-hand the toxic racism in international women’s rights groups

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White European and American practitioners have not taken charges of discrimination seriously. It’s time to do our homework and learn to change

We are long overdue a reckoning around race in gender and development work. The number of women who have recently issued public claims of racism or discrimination against global women’s rights organisations is testament to that.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative is the latest to come under fire with allegations of toxic workplace practices, joining the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and Women Deliver, among others. (I’ve previously been employed by IWHC and Women Deliver.)

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India’s invisible catastrophe: fears over spread of Covid-19 into poor rural areas

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Country is entering a dangerous new phase of rising infections in small towns and villages with limited access to healthcare

Where better to seek sanctuary from a virus roaring through a crowded metropolis than a remote mountainside with views of the Himalayas?

This was the reasoning that prompted Lalit Upreti, 34, to leave the Indian capital, Delhi, where he works as a cook, two months ago to return to his hamlet Khankari in Uttarakhand, near the country’s border with Nepal. Here, he thought, his family would be safe.

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Debt in developing countries has doubled in less than a decade

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Jubilee Debt Campaign reveals sharp rise in number of countries in distress since 2018

Developing nation debt has more than doubled in the past decade and left more than 50 countries facing a repayment crisis, according to a campaign group.

Data from the Jubilee Debt Campaign shows that even without taking full account of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a sharp jump in the number of poor countries in debt distress since 2018.

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‘I have destroyed my life for my children’: the families trying to cross the Channel

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More families arrive in Dunkirk each day and they would rather sleep in woods than seek asylum in France

“They are kids, so they are always playing. Like children in the UK play mums and dads or doctors and nurses, our children will re-enact boat crossings, getting patted down by the police, going to food distributions, meeting smugglers. Because one of the way parents safeguard their children is to present attempted border crossings as an adventure.”

In a nature reserve near Dunkirk, Caia Fallowfield runs a play project for migrant children who live among the trees with no running water or toilets. These are the children who vanish overnight off the French coast and reappear on the front pages of British newspapers, being pulled out of dinghies in Dover, often cold, wet and frightened.

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DfID scheme accused of ‘putting UK aid in pockets of wealthy companies’

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£6.85m programme places emphasis on benefit to businesses rather than protecting workers in the developing world, say critics

A newly announced aid programme that promises to help workers in the developing world supplying goods to British high street chains like Marks & Spencer, Primark and Morrisons has been condemned for using taxpayers’ money to “pick up the bill” for improving workforce conditions.

The £6.85m scheme, announced on Thursday by international development secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan, is being promoted explicitly as benefitting British consumers to ensure they “can continue to buy affordable, high quality goods from around the world”.

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With total control, President Déby is Chad’s greatest threat to stability

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‘President for life’ knows he is protected by France while Chadians die of hunger

Once a year, there is a ranking of the conditions of the world’s nations. It’s like a country’s report card, with health, education and living standards as key indicators. The UN’s Human Development Index tells citizens – and campaigners like me – how well or badly a country is doing.

Since 1990, the year Idriss Déby seized power, ousting his mentor Hissène Habré in a bloody war, Chad – a landlocked former French colony that separates the Sahara in the north from the savannah in the south – has consistently ranked at the bottom of the index, fluctuating between 160 and 187 (out of 189).

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Lagos’s poor lament Covid fallout: ‘we don’t see the virus, we see suffering’

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Lockdown has tipped many working-class Nigerians from struggle to crisis

Drawing open the curtains in Alapere, Lagos, unveils a sea of shanty roofs and watery-coloured housing blocks. “We don’t see any virus but we see suffering,” says Juliana Chokpa, a 38-year-old cleaner.

This working-class Lagos community has been reeling from job losses, a collapse in informal services, and rising food and transport costs. The pandemic, Chokpa says, has wrought a swift descent from struggle into crisis.

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Hidden survivors of sexual violence during Syria’s war must not be left behind

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Support for abused men, trans women and non-binary people is urgently needed

Yousef, a 28-year-old gay man, was raped by Syrian intelligence agents who had detained him for participating in protests during the conflict in Syria. He fled to Lebanon, but found only limited services to help him deal with the traumatic aftermath. By the time I interviewed him, he was resettled in the Netherlands. Geographically speaking, he was away from all the violence, but it still haunted him. “I look behind me when I am walking,” he told me. “I still wake up at night. It [the trauma] is not over.”

Yousef is one of dozens of sexual violence survivors from Syria whom I interviewed for Human Rights Watch. I found that since the beginning of the Syrian conflict men and boys – in addition to women and girls – have been subjected to sexual violence, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, by both government agents and non-government actors.

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‘Peace where rights aren’t trampled’: Afghan women’s demands ahead of Taliban talks

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With negotiations set to begin, women have been sharing their ‘red lines’ on the progress they refuse to see negotiated

Farahnaz Forotan was three when the Taliban had arrived in Kabul. It was 1996. “I have this memory of a snowy day, I was sitting on my mother’s lap, in a minibus, and she was crying. I didn’t understand why she was crying,” Forotan says. It was the day her family became refugees.

“It was the civil war, and we had to leave our home and country to live in Iran – alive, but living in pain and facing discrimination,” she says.

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Polio vaccinations resume in Pakistan and Afghanistan after Covid-19 delays

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Fight to eradicate disease getting ‘back on track’ after surge in cases due to pause in vaccination campaigns

Polio vaccination campaigns have resumed in Afghanistan and Pakistan – the last two polio-endemic countries in the world – after a “surge” in cases.

The pandemic halted campaigns in both countries in March and confirmed cases have now reached 34 in Afghanistan and 63 in Pakistan – where cases are being recorded in areas of the country previously free of the disease.

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‘Entire families are arriving at our shores’: Covid drives Tunisian exodus

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Italy is facing an influx of people trafficked on fishing boats, desperate to escape Tunisia’s deepening economic crisis

Unsurprisingly for a coastal town perched upon Tunisia’s border with Libya, it’s hot when Ahmed climbs into the back of the car outside the petrol station in Zarzis.

It’s clear from the outset he feels uncomfortable talking to a journalist. Nevertheless, he’s here.

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Covid to displace more than a million across the Sahel, new tool predicts

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Software hailed as a ‘game-changer’ in providing early warning for humanitarian relief efforts as virus fuels conflict

Coronavirus is predicted to push more than 1 million people from their homes across the Sahel, creating havoc in an already highly fragile region, according to new forecasting software.

Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria in west Africa are predicted to see displacement as a result of the increasing conflict, unemployment and human rights abuses brought on by fallout from the coronavirus, the analytical tool developed by the humanitarian group Danish Refugee Council (DRC) has found.

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Fighting for breath: how the medical oxygen industry is failing African hospitals

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Sub-Saharan hospitals are dependent on costly oxygen from multinational suppliers. As Covid-19 spreads, doctors are being forced to make terrible choices

As Covid-19 spreads throughout Africa, a potentially deadly lack of oxygen is leaving doctors unable to offer essential treatment.

Some experts put considerable blame on two multinational gas suppliers that dominate the market for oxygen cylinders across much of the continent, saying that their high prices and systems make the treatment unaffordable.

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Mexican families mourn workers claimed by Covid in the US – photo essay

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In July, the remains of nearly 250 migrant workers were repatriated to Mexico City. Two grieving families share their stories and loss

  • Text and photographs by Alejandra Rajal

On Saturday 11 July, a plane arrived in Mexico City with the remains of nearly 250 Mexican migrant workers who had died of Covid-19 in the US. A solemn ceremony was held with the participation of the consul general for New York, Jorge Islas López, who had helped organise the repatriation flight.

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Nobel Women’s Initiative founders ‘shaken’ as seven staff resign

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External review launched following collective resignation, which cited need for ‘profound organisational reforms’

Five women Nobel laureates said this week they were “profoundly shaken and saddened” by the resignation of seven staff at the organisation created to promote peace, justice and women’s rights.

Shirin Ebadi, Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkol Karman and Jody Williams said while they were aware of challenges within the Nobel Women’s Initiative, they “deeply regret not recognising the depth of their broader impact on staff”. They have launched an external review.

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Monsoon rains driven by high winds bring flooding misery to Mumbai

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India’s commercial capital grinds to a halt after heaviest August rainfall in 47 years causes widespread flooding

The heaviest monsoon downpour in nearly 50 years has brought Mumbai to a standstill, with stranded passengers at railway stations having to be rescued by dinghies from waist-high water.

People who live in areas normally unaffected by the annual monsoon flooding looked out from their high-rise flats at new swirling rivers outside caused by the heaviest single day’s rain recorded in August in 47 years.

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German Protestant church to send migrant rescue boat to Mediterranean

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Sea-Watch 4 is result of crowdfunding and is set to leave from Spain in few days

The German Protestant church will send a ship to the central Mediterranean to rescue migrants attempting to reach Europe from north Africa.

The boat, named Sea-Watch 4, will depart in a few days from the seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, in Spain, where volunteers are finalising preparations, the crew has said.

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