Category Archives: Global development

‘If I don’t have sex I’ll die of hunger’: Covid-19 crisis for Rio’s trans sex workers

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Brazil is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for transgender people. For trans sex workers, the pandemic has intensified the risk

  • All photographs by Ian Cheibub

Social distancing is keeping people off the streets of central Rio de Janeiro. And that has created serious challenges for its trans sex workers, who have seen their clientele, and their income, melt away.

“You can see what it’s like: empty streets, shops closed, the fallen economy ” says Elba Tavares, 44, from Paraíba state in north-east Brazil. “I am no longer in that rush of prostitution but yes, I sell my body.” But, she says: “There are very few customers.”

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Rwanda to release 50 women jailed for having abortions

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Activists welcome pardons, but call for relaxation of abortion laws and an end to punitive measures such as life sentences

Rwanda is to release 50 women who were jailed for having abortions after a personal pardon was issued by the country’s president, Paul Kagame.

Human rights activists welcomed the pending release of the women, six of whom had been given life sentences – the highest penalty available to the courts – two serving 25 years and the others terms ranging from 12 months to 20 years.

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‘It’s a disaster’: Egypt’s doctors plead for more PPE and testing

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Medics increasingly at odds with government that is urging citizens to ‘coexist’ with Covid-19

Egyptian doctors are increasingly at odds with their own government on the country’s coronavirus outbreak, pleading for protections and a full lockdown even as the authorities urge people to learn to “coexist” with Covid-19.

A wave of government propaganda has hailed healthcare workers as the “white army”, a reference to their white coats. But some of them told the Guardian they lacked protective equipment and were struggling to get vital tests for themselves and patients.

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Oxfam to close in 18 countries and cut 1,500 staff amid coronavirus pressures

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More cuts in the UK expected as global funding crisis follows Haiti sex-abuse scandal and charity shop lockdown closures

Oxfam International is to lay off almost 1,500 staff and close operations in 18 countries – including Afghanistan where it has worked for 50 years – after it emerged that the global aid organisation had been bleeding cash during the coronavirus crisis.

The agency has seen its funding model hit by an accumulation of crises.

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Peru’s coronavirus response was ‘right on time’ – so why isn’t it working?

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Peru was one of the first Latin America countries to go into lockdown – but the jump in new cases is undeniable, and experts say it’s due to people’s behaviour

Peru seemed to be doing everything right.

Its president, Martín Vizcarra, announced one of the earliest coronavirus lockdowns in Latin America on 16 March.

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US demands removal of sexual health reference in UN’s Covid-19 response

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Campaigners condemn letter from USAid’s John Barsa, calling it ‘a disgraceful and dangerous attack on essential health services’

Civil society groups have condemned calls by the Trump administration to remove references to sexual and reproductive health from the UN Covid-19 humanitarian response plan (HRP).

In a letter to the UN secretary-general António Guterres on Monday, John Barsa, the acting administrator for the US agency for international development (USAid), called on the UN to “stay focused on life-saving interventions” and not include abortion as an essential service.

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‘We can’t turn them away’: the family kitchen fighting lockdown hunger in Zimbabwe

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Samantha Murozoki bartered her jeans and sneakers to stop the food running out, inspiring others to pitch in

It is 7am and hundreds of children have come out on this chilly morning to queue for a plate of porridge.

With makeshift masks covering their faces, the children wait for Samantha Murozoki to start dishing up the warm food into whatever plastic tub, plate, tin cup – or even ripped-off corner of a cardboard box – is presented to her.

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Children of Darfur: revisiting those orphaned by the conflict

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Photojournalist Paddy Dowling travelled to Sudan to find out what happened to those growing up in the midst of genocide

The Darfur genocide claimed the lives of an estimated 300,000 civilians, forced 1.6 million people to flee their homes inside the country and a further 600,000 refugees to spill across borders of neighbouring countries.

Of those internally displaced people (IDPs) affected by the large-scale conflict in this region of western Sudan, more than 60% were children, according to the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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Afghan hospital attack: ‘I thought my baby had died and I would be next’

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Nineteen-year-old Soraya Ameri had just given birth when gunmen stormed the ward. She recounts her escape – and the desperate search for her daughter

Soraya Ameri’s premature baby daughter had been whisked off to an incubator and the new mother was lying down, exhausted and sore from her stitches, when the shooting started.

Gunmen – dressed in police uniforms – had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan, where Ameri had just given birth. She was bundled into a safe room with others, one woman next to her in labour, but her baby was outside.

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‘My angel’: man who became face of India’s stranded helped home by stranger

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Image captured the plight of the millions of migrant labourers left unable to return home in the pandemic

A photograph of a migrant labourer, his face contorted with anguish as he sits on the roadside in Delhi speaking to his wife about their sick baby boy, has come to symbolise the ordeal of India’s daily wage workers; penniless, and unable to get home to their families because of the lockdown.

Rampukar Pandit, a construction worker in the Indian capital, had heard that his 11-month-old son was seriously unwell. With no public transport to reach his home in Begusarai in Bihar, 1,200 km (745 miles) away, he started walking. He reached Nizamuddin Bridge where, exhausted and hungry, he could go no further.

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Tanzania’s president shrugs off Covid-19 risk after sending fruit for ‘tests’

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Magufuli caused alarm by branding lab tests a ‘dirty game’ and hailing natural remedies. Now he is calling for country to open up

Tanzania’s divisive president John Magufuli has said the economy is “more important than the threat posed by coronavirus”, adding that he wants to reopen the country for tourism despite warnings that Africa could face the next wave of the disease.

The comments by Magufuli, who has modelled his populist response on that of Donald Trump and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro – in repeatedly denying the risk of the pandemic to his country – come amid mounting alarm among Tanzania’s neighbours over his approach.

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Exclusive: 12 die as Malta uses private ships to push migrants back to Libya

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Survivor reveals further evidence to Guardian and La Repubblica of Malta’s deadly strategy to intercept migrants crossings

Further evidence of Malta’s strategy to push migrants back to the conflict zone of Libya has been revealed by a woman who survived a Mediterranean crossing in which 12 people died.

A series of voice messages obtained by the Guardian have provided confirmation of the Maltese government’s strategy to use private vessels, acting at the behest of its armed forces, in order to intercept migrant crossings and return refugees to Libyan detention centres.

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McDonald’s accused over ‘systemic sexual harassment’ of employees worldwide

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Complaint filed by international coalition of labor unions lists numerous incidents of harassment, including attempted rape

An international coalition of labor unions has filed a complaint against McDonald’s, alleging systemic sexual harassment of its employees around the world.

The complaint, filed at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s offices in the Netherlands, lists numerous incidents of harassment, including attempted rape and indecent exposure in the United States, a promotion in exchange for sexual acts in Brazil, and a hidden cellphone camera installed in the women’s changing room in France.

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DRC has seen epidemics before, but Covid-19’s toll on older people leaves me sleepless

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Many of the people I support in Kinshasa have no money, no soap, no water – and when they are struggling to breathe, no ventilators

We’re used to emergencies and people dying in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, whether it’s a result of the long-running conflict or Ebola, cholera and malaria. But coronavirus has knocked us for six, because it has affected people we are very close to.

I’ve been working in development for decades, but I have to admit I have shed tears these past few weeks.

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‘People are desperate’: floods and rock slides devastate western Uganda

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Villagers who have lost everything are sheltering in makeshift camps where food, bedding and water are in short supply

It was about 1am last Thursday when Dorothy Masika was woken by the rumble of water and boulders as they crashed down Mount Rwenzori.

Then came the alarms raised by those living in the hilltop areas, those who could run, racing down to warn people along the valley and lowlands to run. A torrent of water was on its way down the mountain. Four rivers in Kasese district – the Nyamwamba, Mubuku, Nyamughasana and Lhubiriha – had burst their banks.

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West Africa facing food crisis as coronavirus spreads

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Pandemic adds to jihadi and climate change threats to present ‘immense challenge’ for region

More than 43 million people in west Africa are likely to be in urgent need of food assistance in the coming months – double initial estimates – as the Covid-19 outbreak accelerates, the World Food Programme has said.

Food insecurity could also double this year to affect 265 million people across the continent; west Africa, where the outbreak of the virus is most severe, is of increasing concern.

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‘People are more scared of hunger’: coronavirus is just one more threat in Nigeria

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The pandemic has left many people in Orile, Lagos state, struggling for survival – and compounded the risks of the area’s heavily polluted air and water supply

  • All photographs by Nurudeen Olugbade

For Nurudeen Olugbade taking photographs of life in Orile-Iganmu, Lagos state, during the pandemic is a way to affirm that the disruption it has wrought on the neglected town does matter.

“We are not really seen. There’s very little attention paid to us but the struggle out here is real,” says Olugbade, 28, who has documented the crisis on his phone.

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Kenya’s pastoralists face hunger and conflict as locust plague continues

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As herds are devastated and crops destroyed across east Africa, there are fears of violence as competition for grazing increases

Tiampati Leletit had heard tales of massive desert locust swarms darkening Kenya’s horizon. But when they hit his farm the devastation was all too real. They ate everything.

“I have never seen anything like this. When the swarms of locust invaded, they consumed everything and all the vegetation was gone. The livestock had nothing to eat,” says the 32-year-old. In January, he had 80 goats. Today he has four.

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Africa facing a quarter of a billion coronavirus cases, WHO predicts

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But continent will have fewer deaths than Europe and US because of its younger population and other lifestyle factors

Nearly a quarter of a billion people across 47 African countries will catch coronavirus over the next year, but the result will be fewer severe cases and deaths than in the US and Europe, new research predicts.

A model by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) regional office for Africa, published in the BMJ Global Health, predicts a lower rate of transmission and viral spread across the continent than elsewhere, resulting in up to 190,000 deaths. But the authors warn the associated rise in hospital admissions, care needs and “huge impact” on services such as immunisation and maternity, will overwhelm already stretched health services.

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Gordon Brown: coronavirus must be ‘eradicated in every continent’

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Britain’s former prime minister says only international cooperation can bring the pandemic to an end

Gordon Brown has warned that a second or third wave of coronavirus infection could emanate from poor countries with undeveloped health systems, saying the risks can be controlled only by coordinated international action.

The global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic will not end until it is “eradicated in every continent”, the former prime minister said.

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