Category Archives: Global development

Poor nutrition in developing countries is costing firms $850bn annually – report

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Business is paying a high price for inadequate diets of employees, research shows, with experts calling on companies to provide living wage and subsidised food

Malnutrition among workers in developing countries is costing businesses up to $850bn (£676bn) a year, according to analysis of the hidden impact of poor diet on productivity.

Worst affected were industries relying on manual labour, including mining, agriculture and construction, according to a report [pdf] by Chatham House and the consultancy Vivid Economics. But it found big losses caused by malnutrition in all 13 business sectors studied, including health and education.

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‘We squandered a decade’: world losing fight against poverty, says UN academic

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Goal to eradicate poverty by 2030 ‘completely off track’, says outgoing special rapporteur, with Covid-19 likely to impoverish millions more

International institutions are losing the fight against global poverty despite “self congratulatory” messages to the contrary, according to the UN’s outgoing special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

In his final report in the post, the Australian academic Philip Alston warns that states and global organisations are “completely off track” to meet the goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, with more people instead likely to become highly impoverished by new shocks, including coronavirus and existing challenges like the climate crisis.

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Boris Johnson accused of misleading parliament over DfID merger

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PM claimed there had been ‘loads’ of consultations over department which faces a £2bn cut this year

Boris Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over who was consulted before the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee (IDC), said despite the prime minister’s assurances that there had been “massive consultation” ahead of the announcement last month, evidence suggested there had not been.

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‘Yazidi women are strong’: Iraq’s female landmine clearance teams

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Isis planted mines across Sinjar and displaced the Yazidi community. Now a group of women are clearing the way for the return of their people

Behind Hana Khider is a large grey wall map, with the minefields her team have been clearing marked in green. “This is the place where Yazidis lived together,” she says. “It’s where I lived in my childhood; I have so many memories here, it’s very important to me.”

The place is Sinjar, or Shingal as Yazidis know it, on Iraq’s north-western border with Syria. Khider, 28, is speaking via video call from her office in the region.

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It’s time the UN faced up to its own treatment of black people like me | Rosebell Kagumire

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An honest conversation about race has to recognise the marginalisation and exploitation of many aid workers

The global push for racial justice following the death of George Floyd in the US has resulted in a flurry of solidarity statements from within the international aid industry, including the UN.

After a shaky start, where its secretary general, António Guterres, was forced to backtrack on a note to staff that suggested they shouldn’t participate in Black Lives Matter (BLM), UN People of African Descent (Unpad) launched a survey to “allow staff to provide data, including on the extent of perceptions of systemic inequality inside the UN, its manifestations, and the responsiveness of the organisation to reports of incidents of systemic racism”.

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Farmers’ markets go hi-tech: how online sales are saving Indian farmers

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Facing the prospect of rotting crops and ruined livelihoods, Indian farmers have embraced virtual marketplaces to sell produce

When the call finally comes, the connection is so poor that Silme Marak can barely catch the words. After running upstairs to the roof of her house for a better signal, the 39-year-old farmer finally hears the first piece of good news to come her way in months: an order for 600 pineapples from a harvest that she had feared might have to be left to rot.

Marak lives in the Tura town of Meghalaya, a hilly place in north-east India whose name translates as “the abode of clouds”. She is among millions of farmers in India – agriculture contributes nearly a seventh of the country’s GDP – in despair at the prospect of seeing their produce rot as the country entered a severe lockdown in the third week of March. According to a Credit Suisse report, vegetable farmers alone have lost upwards of Rs 20,000 crore (£2.5bn).

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Shark finning: why the ocean’s most barbaric practice continues to boom

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The recent seizure of the biggest shipment of illegal fins in Hong Kong history shows the taste for shark is still going strong

In the narrow streets of Sai Ying Pun neighbourhood, the centre of Hong Kong’s dried seafood trade, most window displays give pride of place to a particular item: shark fins. Perched on shelves, stuffed in jars and stacked in bags, shark fins are offered in all shapes and sizes. Several shops even include “shark fin” in their name.

Fins are lucrative, fetching as much as HK$6,800 (£715) per catty (604.8g, or about 21oz), and the trade is big business. Hong Kong is the largest shark fin importer in the world, and responsible for about half of the global trade. The fins sold in Sai Ying Pun come from more than 100 countries and 76 different species of sharks and rays, a third of which are endangered.

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Have a heart, KitKat, don’t break with Fairtrade

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Nestlé is big in York, but the city is fighting the brand’s decision to make life harder for African cocoa farmers

Here’s a quiz question: how many KitKats are produced in the Nestlé factory in York each year? A hundred million? Keep going. The plant makes a billion of the UK’s bestselling chocolate bars annually. That volume is one reason that the company’s shameful decision to end the brand’s Fairtrade certification will have such a devastating effect on cocoa farmers.

I visited some of the Fairtrade-certified cocoa farms in Ivory Coast last year. Seeing the difference that a measure of financial security can make to some of the poorest villages on earth is a lasting lesson in the mechanics of hope.

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‘Get me back to Caracas’: desperate Venezuelans leave lockdown Bogotá

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Their ambitions for a new life in Colombia shattered, migrants are lining up for the bus journey back to an uncertain future

Rosa Vera, a 40-year-old from a small town in crisis-ridden Venezuela, thought moving to Colombia would give her the chance to find work. Five months ago, she left her family and began the arduous journey to Bogotá, the Colombian capital, to look for a job.

Instead, as coronavirus shut down economic life in the city, Vera and more than 400 Venezuelans had no choice but to camp out for a month, waiting for help to get them home.

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Alarm bells ring over aid spending amid lack of clarity on DfID merger

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NGOs warn of rising uncertainty over programmes to tackle poverty and Covid-19 despite assurances from ministers

The government’s plans to merge the Department for International Development (DfID) with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have been criticised for a chaotic lack of clarity as NGOs are told to cut aid programmes.

DfID said it was due to review its aid spending because of a fall in gross national income, but stressed no decisions had been made. However, experts in the aid sector say there are already signs of cuts among programmes tackling poverty and Covid-19.

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Refugee victims of Tajoura bombing still lie in unmarked graves one year on

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Coronavirus thwarts plan by survivors to light candles for dozens of detainees who died in airstrike on detention centre during Tripoli fighting

One year on from the migrant detention centre bombing in Tajoura, eastern Tripoli, dozens of refugees and migrants who died have never been formally identified.

At least 53 people were killed and 130 injured on the night of 2 July 2019, according to the UN, after an airstrike by a foreign aircraft supporting eastern warlord Khalifa Haftar’s forces hit a hall where migrants and refugees were locked up.

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$10bn of precious metals dumped each year in electronic waste, says UN

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A fast growing mountain of toxic e-waste is polluting the planet and damaging health, says new report

At least $10bn (£7.9bn) worth of gold, platinum and other precious metals are dumped every year in the growing mountain of electronic waste that is polluting the planet, according to a new UN report.

A record 54m tonnes of “e-waste” was generated worldwide in 2019, up 21% in five years, the UN’s Global E-waste Monitor report found. The 2019 figure is equivalent to 7.3kg for every man, woman and child on Earth, though use is concentrated in richer nations. The amount of e-waste is rising three times faster than the world’s population, and only 17% of it was recycled in 2019.

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Matsepo Ramakoae and Lesotho’s lost chance to elect its first female leader

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After the resignation of Thomas Thabane the small south African nation could have addressed its huge political gender imbalance. What happened?

Lesotho, a tiny mountain kingdom in southern Africa, has always been dwarfed in size and achievements by its neighbour South Africa.

Many people around the world were not even aware of Lesotho’s existence until the beginning of this year when then prime minister Thomas Thabane and his third wife, Maesaiah Thabane, were accused of murdering Thabane’s estranged second wife, Lipolelo, in 2017.

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‘I saw so much killing’: the mental health crisis of South Sudan refugees

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Therapy is helping some of the thousands forced over the border to Uganda to cope, but funding shortfalls mean resources are becoming scarcer

As darkness fell, Rebecca closed the door to her makeshift home. The day was over.

The 29-year-old, who had been uprooted from South Sudan to a north Ugandan refugee settlement, sat on the bed where her four children slept and, at around 10pm, tried to take her own life. “By then I didn’t care about anything – not myself, not even my kids. The pain was too extreme,” she says. Her children awoke and their cries brought help from neighbours.

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‘Decolonise and rename’ streets of Uganda and Sudan, activists urge

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Campaigners target statues of slave owners and roads named after imperial armies as protests spread to Africa

Campaigners have asked Uganda’s parliament to order the removal of monuments to British colonialists and to rename streets commemorating imperial military forces.

Uganda gained independence in 1962 after almost 70 years as a British protectorate, and more than 5,000 people have signed a petition to “decolonise and rename” the dozens of statues and street names which remain.

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Petrol sold to Nigeria from Europe ‘dirtier’ than black market ‘bush’ fuel

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Samples from illegal refineries in Niger delta found to be of a higher quality than imported petrol in new analysis

Black market fuel made from stolen oil in rudimentary “bush” refineries hidden deep in the creeks and swamps of the Niger delta is less polluting than the highly toxic diesel and petrol that Europe exports to Nigeria, new laboratory analysis has found.

Shell, Exxon, Chevron and other major oil companies extract and export up to 2m barrels a day of high quality, low sulphur “Bonny Light” crude from the Niger delta. But very little of this oil is refined in the country because its four state-owned refineries are dysfunctional or have closed.

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Colombian soldiers accused of raping indigenous teen in second case to emerge in a week

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Allegation comes as nation reels from similarly horrific crime and prompted protests in Bogotá

Colombian soldiers have been accused of raping a 15-year-old indigenous girl, in the second such case to emerge in a week.

Troops in the southern Guaviare region were accused in September of kidnapping, torturing and repeatedly raping a 15-year-old girl from the Nukak Makú tribe, but the case was not widely reported until this week.

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Iranian authorities move to block release of female rights activists

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New charges brought to circumvent Covid-19 prison release scheme, say human rights groups

Female human rights activists imprisoned in Iran are facing a slew of new charges to prevent them from being temporarily released because of the Covid-19 epidemic, rights groups say.

Since Covid-19 spread rapidly through the country in early March, Iranian authorities have been under pressure to release all prisoners who pose no risk to society. Around 85,000 prisoners were temporarily released under a furlough scheme earlier this year in response to the coronavirus outbreak, half of whom were believed to be political detainees.

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‘My day starts at 3am’: coronavirus fuels gruelling Harare commutes – in pictures

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Lockdown measures have meant getting to work is fraught with risk for those manning essential services in Zimbabwe’s capital. Three frontline staff reveal how they are coping with erratic buses, exhaustion and danger

  • Words by Angela Jimu and photographs by Cynthia R Matonhodze

It’s a dark, nippy June morning before dawn and a queue is forming at Glen View 8 bus stop. A dozen or so people, mostly men, are there as 41-year-old Mairevei Mupombwi and her friend arrive at 4.43am carrying fleece blankets. The two women spread cloths on the ground to sit on and cover themselves with their blankets to keep warm. Mupombwi starts dozing.

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Covid-19 intensifies elder abuse globally as hospitals prioritise young

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Older patients turned away or left untreated, while domestic abuse is also rising, leading charity reports

When Souzi Bondeko’s grandfather started showing symptoms of Covid-19 and was struggling to breathe, she took him to a hospital in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, where he was put on a ventilator.

She dashed home to get some food and returned to be told by a member of staff that he had been taken off the machine as it it was needed elsewhere.

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