Category Archives: Global development

Crosses on our heads to ‘cure’ Covid-19: refugees report abuse by Croatian police

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Group of asylum seekers including minors say they were beaten and spray-painted near the border with Bosnia, as calls grow for EU to investigate

Details have emerged of more than 30 migrants allegedly robbed, beaten and spray-painted with red crosses on their heads by Croatian police officers who said the treatment was the “cure against coronavirus”.

The Guardian has interviewed asylum seekers, obtained photographs and collected dozens of testimonies, including from minors, revealing how the Croatian authorities were laughing and drinking beer while spray-painting migrants attempting to cross the border from Bosnia-Herzegovina, as EU parliamentarians have now begun pushing for an independent commission of inquiry to investigate the abuses.

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Argentina’s abortion campaign launches virtual events to revitalise movement

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Activists seemed on the brink of victory when they were stalled by the pandemic and a historic bill wasn’t formally introduced

Feminists in Argentina like to say: “la lucha está en la calle” — the battle is in the streets.  But with the country under a strict coronavirus lockdown, the women’s movement can no longer flood the streets.

So on Thursday, activists have planned a series of virtual events to mark 15 years of their campaign to legalize abortion – and inject new momentum into a campaign which was stalled by the pandemic, just as it seemed on the brink of victory.

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Denied beds, pain relief and contact with their babies: the women giving birth amid Covid-19

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Following reports worldwide, experts are warning that pandemic is pushing back progress on prenatal and maternity care

After Denisa’s son was born premature at 26 weeks she was unable to hold him, but spent as much time as possible near his incubator so he could get used to her voice. By the time he was well enough to be held by his mother, a state of emergency had been declared in Slovakia and Denisa was told to vacate her bed and leave the hospital to make way for Covid-19 patients.

The rush of patients never came, but strict rules meant she was unable to see her baby until he was discharged six weeks later. “Instead of a hug, I went home empty-handed only with my head full of questions,” she says. “Each day without my baby was taking away my strength and harming my mental health.”

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‘I realised my body was burning’: police brutality in Uganda lockdown

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Street vendor Alanyo Joyce says she was about to close her fried chicken stall for curfew when an official kicked a pan of boiling oil over her

In her small home in Gulu, northern Uganda, Alanyo Joyce dabs at her bare breasts. In some areas, pink and oozing, the skin has been burnt off. It hurts, deeply, from the bone, she says. She is also grappling with her new appearance – the burns extend across her face, arms and legs, as well as her chest.

On Wednesday, 8 April, the softly-spoken 31-year-old was cooking chips and chicken at her usual spot in the city when she realised it was approaching 7pm. A nationwide curfew had been in place for just a week, as part of Uganda’s coronavirus lockdown.

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How South Africa’s action on Covid-19 contrasts sharply with its response to Aids

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Country’s swift response is distinct from the handling of the HIV crisis 20 years ago. Have lessons been learnt?

Twenty years ago Nelson Mandela made an impassioned plea for international cooperation on “one of the greatest threats humankind has faced”.

Aids was ravaging lives and overwhelming health systems, at its peak killing up to 1,000 people a day in South Africa.

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Greece ready to welcome tourists as refugees stay locked down in Lesbos

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In Moria, Europe’s largest migrant camp, tensions are rising as life is more restricted and the threat of Covid-19 is ever present

Children fly kites between tents in the shadow of barbed wire fences as life continues in Europe’s largest refugee camp. There are 17,421 people living here in a space designed for just under 3,000. Residents carrying liquid soap and water barrels encourage everyone to wash their hands as they pass by, refugees and aid workers alike. While Moria remains untouched by the pandemic, the spectre of coronavirus still looms heavy.

Greece is poised to open up to tourism in the coming months and bars and restaurants are reopening this week. Movement restrictions were lifted for the general population on 4 May but have been extended for refugees living in all the island camps and a number of mainland camps until 7 June.

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Nigerian forces accused of torture and illegal detention of children – report

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Amnesty International alleges that at least 10,000 died while being wrongly held – some of them in a centre part funded by the UK

Widespread unlawful detention and torture by Nigerian security forces has aggravated the suffering of a generation of children and tens of thousands of people in north-east Nigeria, according to a new report.

At least 10,000 victims – many of them children – have died in military detention, among the many thousands more arrested during a decade-long conflict with jihadist groups, according to Amnesty International.

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Fast fashion: Pakistan garment workers fight for rights amid Covid-19 crisis

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Protesters demand wages at factory supplying global fashion brands, as coronavirus leads to layoffs in textile industry


Police in Karachi last week allegedly shot at hundreds of unarmed garment workers protesting outside a factory supplying denim for global fashion brands.

Garment workers such as Abdul Basit, 35, claimed to have been charged by police with batons outside a factory which is reported to have fired more than 15,000 workers since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Nasir Mansoor from the National Trade Union Federation. He said some workers had been terminated without written notice.

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Mary Tiffen obituary

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My colleague Mary Tiffen, the distinguished economic historian, who has died aged 88 from Covid-19, will best be remembered for the groundbreaking African drylands research she conducted from the 1970s to 2000, successfully demonstrating how much farmers’ own skills and capacity to innovate had been undervalued.

Her 1976 monograph on Northern Nigeria, The Enterprising Peasant, the work she led on Kenya in 1994 (More People Less Erosion) and the final comparative studies she undertook around 2000 comparing dryland areas of Kenya, Senegal, Nigeria and Niger, all focused on the ingenuity of the farmers who made a living from these difficult environments. Her research challenged, and continues to challenge, careless assumptions about the causes of desertification and appropriate policy responses.

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UK behind Yemen and Sudan in global index of children’s rights, report finds

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Report also warns of ‘dire impact’ of pandemic worldwide with large number of children failing to return to school after lockdowns ease

The suspension of vaccination programmes, school closures and a surge in domestic violence during coronavirus lockdowns are likely to derail a decade’s worth of progress for children, according to new global research.

The Kidsrights Foundation on Tuesday published its annual rankings of children’s rights in 182 countries with Iceland scoring top for the second year running followed by Switzerland, Finland and Sweden.

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Experts sound alarm over lack of Covid-19 test kits in Africa

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Global competition for kits and national constraints cause concern as lockdowns ease

Public health experts have warned about the risks of low supplies of coronavirus test kits as lockdowns in African countries begin to ease and urban populations become more mobile.

Different countries on the continent have adopted a range of testing strategies, but international competition for test kits and a lack of global coordination of resources have meant many African countries are testing with significantly limited reach.

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‘A lot of benign neglect’: how Ghana’s social changes are isolating older people

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The modernising economy is changing family structures – but can ‘western’ residential homes be accepted culturally?

After breakfast on a Friday morning, a small group of elderly people are engaging in gentle exercises – walking to one end of a walled compound and back. Some of them need the assistance of nurses or walkers, or both, to complete the journey.

“Usually, we do this a couple of times but it is a little bit cold today so we are going just once,” says Henry Ofori Mensah, administrator at Comfort For The Aged, a residential care home in Kasoa, a dormitory town west of Accra, Ghana’s capital.

At the turn of the century, a facility like this would have been hard to imagine in Ghana.

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‘Now we sleep peacefully’: life in Peru transformed by warm houses

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Thermal houses in the Andes are helping combat respiratory illnesses in villages that struggle with freezing temperatures

On a windswept plain more than 4km above sea level, families gather; a throng of colourful, intricately patterned hats, skirts and ponchos. They are gazing curiously at their revamped homes, which now glint in the sun.

Cladding the mud brick homes and absorbing the perpendicular rays of the sun are polycarbonate panels fitted at a slanted angle to the outer walls. In Hanchipacha, a poor village in the highlands of Cusco, in Peru’s southeastern Andes, these panels are a point of pride.

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From Kenya to Bangladesh mask-making has become a thriving cottage industry

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Charities, NGOs and garment factories are adapting to provide protective gear, generating income and keeping communities safe

From crowded informal settlements to conservation areas teeming with wildlife, cottage industries have popped up around the globe producing and distributing face masks for frontline workers, taxi drivers, market sellers and more. Usually comprised of two fabric layers with a disposable filter, mask-making enterprises are stoking local economies and helping communities.

In Bangladesh, where there have been over 25,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, shopping malls are once again open, and garment factories – which provide 84% of the country’s total exports – have resumed operations despite worker claims that mask-wearing and social distancing are not enforced.

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Lockdown gives asylum seekers reprieve and hope for change in policy

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After Covid 19 pauses threat of detention and deportation, campaigners call for rethink on UK immigration

As Britain takes its first small steps out of lockdown, there is one group of people quietly wishing that it wouldn’t.

For many asylum seekers, the two-month hiatus has meant reprieve. Freed from detention centres, liberated from the threat of imminent deportation and no longer obliged to report to the Home Office, many have welcomed the relief. And all this at a time when the general population have learned something of what it is like to live with severe curbs on civil liberties.

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‘Where are the women?’ Outcry over all-male government meeting in Afghanistan

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Tweet showed 12 male political leaders after Ghani promised women would be involved in high-level decision-making

People in Afghanistan protested on social media that no women were present at a high-level government meeting, despite assurances from the president that they would be involved in important decision-making roles.

The outcry followed a tweeted photo of a meeting of 12 political leaders at the presidential palace – all of them men.

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Guatemala’s white flags indicate pandemic’s deadly side-effect: hunger

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The coronavirus lockdown has brought the country’s informal economy grinding to a halt with desperate results

América Reyes sits on the steps of Guatemala’s National Cathedral, with her four-year-old son at her side and white flag in her hand.

It is a symbol not of surrender, but of gnawing hunger amid the strict coronavirus lockdown which has brought the country’s informal economy to a grinding halt.

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‘Planes spray the city at night’: Covid-19 conspiracy theories in Mexico’s motor town

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In San Luis Potosí, cases of Covid-19 are rising, but not everyone is taking lockdown seriously. Photographer Mauricio Palos looks at how the outbreak has affected his home town

In San Luis Potosí, a city in central Mexico, some people believe the coronavirus is an invention by the government. They are sharing memes, videos and recordings with misinformation, in which people tell you that in the hospitals they drain the fluid from your knees and planes spray the city with the virus at night.

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Manila lockdown diary: ‘I went into labour but had to walk to the clinic to give birth’

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Poverty, hunger and the threat of being shot by police make life under strict lockdown harder for one expectant mother

Millions of people in the Philippine capital, Manila, have spent more than two months under lockdown. The densely populated city, once notorious for its heaving traffic, has been transformed into a ghost town. Residents who do not perform essential work have been asked to stay at home and are barred from leaving their neighbourhoods. Rights groups have warned over the brutal manner in which the restrictions have been enforced. In one instance, curfew violators were put in dog cages, while others have been forced to sit in the midday sun as punishment. President Rodrigo Duterte has told police they can shoot anyone deemed to be causing trouble during the lockdown.

Last week, the government announced an extension of the lockdown until 31 May, making it one of the strictest and longest quarantines in the world.

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‘The issue now is surviving’: countries react with shock to Oxfam withdrawal

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Locals, NGOs and politicians express fears for world’s most vulnerable as charity announces withdrawal from 18 countries due to financial impact of Covid-19

Oxfam International’s announcement that it will close operations in countries including Afghanistan and Haiti has prompted fears that regions are being abandoned just as the coronavirus pandemic makes them more vulnerable.

Oxfam said the impact of Covid-19 on its finances had forced it to fast-track a global restructuring programme, which entails the closure of 18 country offices.

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