With no recorded cases since 2017, the archipelago has had a long journey to become free of the disease, which killed 608,000 people globally in 2022
Cape Verde has become the fourth country in Africa and the 44th in the world to eliminate malaria.
Africa has the highest number of cases of the mosquito-borne disease in the world. In 2022, 94% of the 249 million cases globally and 95% of deaths were recorded on the continent.
Continue reading...Human Rights Watch’s annual report highlights politicians’ double standards and ‘transactional diplomacy’ amid escalating crises
Human rights across the world are in a parlous state as leaders shun their obligations to uphold international law, according to the annual report of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
In its 2024 world report, HRW warns grimly of escalating human rights crises around the globe, with wartime atrocities increasing, suppression of human rights defenders on the rise, and universal human rights principles and laws being attacked and undermined by governments.
Continue reading...Girls as young as 16 arrested in shops, classes and markets in Kabul by the Taliban, who labelled them ‘infidels’ for wearing ‘bad hijab’
Girls as young as 16 have been arrested across the Afghan capital, Kabul, in the past week for violating the Taliban’s hijab rules.
The girls – who were detained in shopping centres, classes and street markets – were accused of “spreading and encouraging others to wear a bad hijab” and wearing makeup.
Continue reading...Calvin Klein, Hilfiger and Barbour among brands to pay £400,000 after report alleges illegal hiring fees, deception and intimidation
Leading fashion brands including Barbour and PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, have said they will pay £400,000 to garment workers in Mauritius after an investigation found that migrant workers were forced to pay thousands of pounds for their jobs.
Transparentem, a US-based organisation that investigates workers’ rights, looked into conditions at five factories in Mauritius and interviewed 83 workers in 2022 and 2023.
Continue reading...The new president’s rightwing supporters are targeting journalists and women’s rights activists – but the fight goes on
Female journalists who write about gender issues say they are having to deal with a toxic wave of threats against them in Argentina. Some are fighting back, others are lying low and one has gone into self-imposed exile for her safety.
“We are facing a witch-hunt from the ultra-right,” said the author, journalist and activist Luciana Peker, who recently left Argentina for an undisclosed location due to the weight of threats against her.
Continue reading...Fixers with alleged links to Egyptian intelligence are making a fortune in ‘fees’ from people hoping to exit through the Rafah crossing
Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory through Egypt, according to a Guardian investigation.
Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing but those trying to get their names on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large “coordination fees” by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services.
Continue reading...A diplomatic breakthrough has allowed 62 refugees to start a new life in America. Yet a million still remain in fear and poverty in the Bangladeshi camps
After 23 hours on his first international flight, it was only after stepping off the plane in the United States that Nurul Haque finally felt the relief of escaping the refugee camps of Bangladesh, where he was born.
Haque was among the first Rohingya refugees allowed to leave Bangladesh in more than a decade. The 62 people who have flown to the US since late last year might be few, but resettlement has given them hope of opportunity and security that was denied them in Bangladesh.
Continue reading...There was outrage when the vice-president was mocked last month by an opposition MP, but social commentators say India is increasingly a country that cannot take a joke
It is rare for India’s politicians to laugh at themselves, but a row over an act of mimicry has exposed the extent of the lack of humour and intolerance of satire in the country’s political and public life.
Over the past two weeks, politicians have traded insults over an impersonation of India’s vice-president, Jagdeep Dhankhar, by the opposition MP Kalyan Banerjee.
Continue reading...People vent their frustration on social media as many given just beans and biscuits to eat, and donated food is found for sale in markets
A couple of biscuits and a can of beans is all that many Palestinians in Gaza say is being given to families to live on, if they receive aid at all, and that they are finding donated items for sale in the markets.
The risk of famine is increasing every day, according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), which said this week that Gaza’s entire population is suffering “catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity”, the highest proportion of a population with acute food insecurity the monitor has ever recorded.
Continue reading...Trials are under way for a treatment for newborns and infants, who are often wrongly assumed to have immunity through their mothers
When Rose Akinyi’s baby, Jayla Joy, would not eat or stop crying one night, she thought her newborn had a stomach upset. She gave her some mild pain medication, but her condition grew worse.
“She was burning hot, so I removed her clothes and gave her [more pain medication],” said 30-year-old Akinyi, from Kisumu, a port city in western Kenya on Lake Victoria.
Continue reading...South African court dismisses huge class-action lawsuit over toxic legacy of mining at Broken Hill in Zambia between 1925 and 1974
A South African court has thrown out a case brought against the multinational mining company Anglo American on behalf of 140,000 Zambian women and children, who allege they have suffered lead poisoning from one of its mines.
The lawsuit, one of Africa’s largest class-action cases, was filed in October 2020, accused Anglo American of negligence over its alleged failure to prevent widespread lead poisoning in the Zambian town of Kabwe, where its South African subsidiary is alleged to have played a key role in running a large mine from 1925 until 1974.
Continue reading...Ziad, a 35-year-old Palestinian, describes the extra hardship that winter rain brings and a friend reminisces about a cappuccino
8am
I have never been a fan of the sun nor the sunny weather. I am a lover of the rain, winter and tree leaves falling. I remember at high school – my English language teacher would always ask me and other students during the recess to stand in the sun. “Hug the sun, feel its warmth. It is full of vitamin D.” I did what she asked but never liked it.
On the other hand, this teacher opened the door for me to learn about literature, which I loved. In class, we would read summarised classics like Great Expectations, Pride and Prejudice and A Tale of Two Cities.
Continue reading...Activists see the killing as a setback in the efforts to eliminate the practice, despite it being illegal in the east African country
Efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation in Kenya have suffered a setback after a police officer was killed in a confrontation with a gang of youths.
Activists and local leaders condemned the murder, calling it a backward step in the fight to eradicate the practice in the country. Police in Elgeyo Marakwet county, in the Rift Valley region, had taken a group of girls who had been forced to undergo the illegal procedure to hospital when a mob of young men stormed a police station and stoned Cpl Mushote Boma to death.
Continue reading...Fatalities rose by 17% in a decade on the continent, despite falling globally, with campaigners calling for stricter safety standards on motorcycle helmets
The number of people who died in traffic incidents in Africa rose by 17% in the past decade, despite global road traffic deaths falling by 5%, according to the World Health Organization.
The Road Safety report found that nearly one in five fatal traffic incidents across the world occurred in Africa. “Part of the reason for increased fatalities in Africa is the increase in the number of vehicles on the roads,” said Nhan Tran, leader of WHO’s safety and mobility unit and the lead author of the report. “People who were not able to afford a vehicle 10 or 20 years ago can now buy one. Africa has seen a big increase in motorisation, but the infrastructure to facilitate it is not there.”
Continue reading...At least 38 people, including a new mother, have died in the month after the earthquake struck, among 40,000 people living under tarpaulin
At least 38 people who survived an earthquake in Nepal have died after spending more than a month living in tents in freezing temperatures. Among the dead is a woman who gave birth two days after the earthquake struck the west of the country on 3 November.
More than 40,000 people are now living under sheets of tarpaulin, according to the directorate of health for Karnali province.
Continue reading...The legislation, blamed for a rise in violence, has prompted the US to impose visa restrictions on hundreds of Ugandans involved in enacting it
Civil society groups in Uganda will meet constitutional court judges this week as they attempt to overturn the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ law.
The law, which received overwhelming support from MPs when it was passed in March, imposes the death sentence and life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts.
Continue reading...The portable unit, comprising mini cubes of medical equipment, enables surgeons to be operating within an hour, designers claim
India has designed and built a “flatpack” field hospital that can be flown to a disaster area by helicopter and assembled faster than an Ikea bookcase.
The hospital is contained in 72 small waterproof cubes, each weighing under 15kg and measuring 38cm x 38cm x 38cm (15 x 15 x 15in). They are packed with tents and specially designed medical equipment.
Continue reading...African-led trial ended a year early as researchers conclude there is ‘little or no chance’ new combination vaccines cut HIV risk
The first trial in Africa of two combination vaccines to prevent HIV has been halted after researchers concluded it was not working.
The vaccines (part of the PrEPVacc study) were being tested on 1,500 people aged between 18 and 40 in Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa.
Continue reading...Facebook and Instagram ‘enabled adults to find, message and groom minors’ for sexual exploitation, alleges state of New Mexico legal filing
Meta has allowed its social media platforms, Facebook and Instagram, to become marketplaces for child predators, the state of New Mexico alleges in a lawsuit filed against the company and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
The lawsuit claims that Meta “proactively served and directed [children] to egregious, sexually explicit images through recommended users and posts – even where the child has expressed no interest in this content”. It claims Meta “enabled adults to find, message and groom minors, soliciting them to sell pictures or participate in pornographic videos”. The company is also accused of fostering unmoderated user groups devoted to facilitating and selling child sexual exploitation content.
Continue reading...Salah Jama said vulnerable countries face ‘bureaucratic bottlenecks’ in receiving loss and damage funds and are often forced to take them on as debt
Funding to support vulnerable countries to repair the irreversible damage caused by the climate crisis needs to be fast tracked and easy to access, Somalia’s deputy prime minister has said.
Salah Jama said a deal on a loss and damage fund made on the first day of Cop28 last week was “welcome news for frontline states like Somalia” but, he said: “Implementation needs to be fast tracked. Bureaucratic bottlenecks in accessing the financing have to be fixed.”
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