Category Archives: Global development

The group finding peace and purpose helping Spain’s elderly villagers through Covid-19

Posted on by

A group of migrants, former addicts and ex-prisoners have formed a collective which grows and delivers food to isolated villagers

At first sight, the 23 people who live together next to a petrol station in the Spanish city of Salamanca have little to bind them together.

Some are migrants who have braved sea crossings in small boats or the razor-wire fences of camps in Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco; some have struggled with drug or alcohol addiction; some have been in prison, and some have ended up on the streets.

Continue reading...

‘A bloody method of control’: the struggle to take down Europe’s razor wire walls

Posted on by

Spain is removing lethal razor wire from its borders in north Africa, but elsewhere the controversial ‘concertinas’ stay put


You could barely see that it was a finger. “The wound was large, with several deep cuts into the flesh. He had tried to climb the fence and was up there when he was caught by police in the middle of the night,” says András Léderer, advocacy officer for the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a Budapest-based NGO.

“He lost his balance. The wound was so horrific because as he fell, he tried to grab the razor wire – and also, he said, touched the second layer of the fence, which is electrified.”

The unnamed Pakistani refugee in his 30s had attempted to cross the fence near Sombor, Serbia, to get into Hungary in 2016. The coils of metal that lacerated his finger are ubiquitous at the perimeters of “Fortress Europe” and can be found on border fences in Slovenia, Hungary, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Spain and France.

Continue reading...

‘Finally, a virus got me’: Ebola expert on nearly dying of coronavirus

Posted on by

Peter Piot tells of his brush with death and predicts people will suffer effects of the virus for years

Peter Piot, the scientist who helped discover the Ebola virus, and the director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, has told of his brush with death after contracting Covid-19.

The professor had never previously been seriously ill, but after 40 years studying and leading the global response to infectious diseases including HIV and Aids, he said that “finally, a virus got me”.

Continue reading...

Unicef: 6,000 children could die every day due to impact of coronavirus

Posted on by

Disruption of essential maternity and health services is the biggest crisis faced by under fives since second world war

As many as 6,000 children around the world could die every day from preventable causes over the next six months due to the impact of coronavirus on routine health services, the UN has warned.

Global disruption of essential maternal and child health interventions – such as family planning, birth and postnatal care, and vaccinations – could lead to an additional 1.2 million deaths of under fives in just six months, according to analysis by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in the Lancet Global Health Journal.

Continue reading...

Croatian police accused of spray-painting heads of asylum seekers

Posted on by

UN has asked the government to investigate latest allegations of abuse against migrants crossing on Balkan route from Bosnia

Croatian police are allegedly spray-painting the heads of asylum seekers with crosses when they attempt to cross the border from Bosnia.

The Guardian has obtained a number of photographs of what has been described by charities as the “latest humiliation’’ perpetrated by the Croatian authorities against migrants travelling along the Balkan route.

Continue reading...

Just the tonic: app helps Iraqi patients locate vital medicines

Posted on by

In Mosul, sourcing essential medication can be an expensive struggle – but entrepreneur Ameen Hadeed may have found the solution

When Ameen Hadeed’s father had heart surgery in 2015, the tricky part was not the operation but finding the drugs to aid his recovery.

The clinic had no medicine, so Hadeed was told to hustle around his home city Mosul to find the prescriptions. It took hours and cost a small fortune, as he visited store after store.

Continue reading...

‘We wrap services around women’: Brazil’s innovative domestic violence centre

Posted on by

With violence against women endemic in the country, new initiatives are desperately needed but slow to arrive

Lucas da Silva* sits in a cell while he waits to hear from the court what will happen to him.

The 33-year-old is not in a prison, but at Casa da Mulher Brasileira (“house of the Brazilian woman”), a centre for survivors of violence in Campo Grande, central Brazil, that is open 24/7.

Continue reading...

Malnutrition leading cause of death and ill health worldwide – report

Posted on by

Coronavirus highlights weakness of food and health systems, as Global Nutrition Report finds one in nine of world’s population is hungry

An overhaul of the world’s food and health systems is needed to tackle malnutrition, a “threat multiplier” that is now the leading cause of ill health and deaths globally, according to new analysis.

The Global Nutrition Report 2020 found that most people across the world cannot access or afford healthy food, due to agricultural systems that favour calories over nutrition as well as the ubiquity and low cost of highly processed foods. Inequalities exist across and within countries, it says.

Continue reading...

‘We depend on God’: gravediggers on frontline of Kano’s Covid-19 outbreak

Posted on by

Outbreak in northern Nigerian city highlights difficulties faced by authorities in detecting and controlling the virus

Musa Abubakar used to dig two or three graves a day at the main cemetery in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Then overnight it became 40.

“I have never witnessed mass deaths like this,” the 75-year-old said, his white kaftan muddied from his work at the Abbatuwa cemetery, where he has dug graves for 60 years. “From the first day of Ramadan to date, over 300 people have been buried.”

Continue reading...

Women are on the Covid-19 frontline – we must give them the support they need | Mark Lowcock and Natalia Kanem

Posted on by

An effective response to the pandemic means tackling the violence and inequality faced by women

After a week in which people in some parts of the world have been given cause for optimism that they may have passed the peak of the pandemic, we have seen how extraordinary actions of individuals can change the trajectory for a whole nation.

Retired doctors putting themselves back on the frontline, nurses making their own face masks, parents voluntarily separated from their children so they can care for the sick.

Continue reading...

‘Finally, at last’: vulnerable migrants to leave Greece for UK

Posted on by

Group including teenagers Walid and Mustafa will be reunited with relatives after grim odyssey

Until last week, Walid and Mustafa had never met. Owing to their disparate backgrounds, they might not have had anything in common, bar their age: both turned 18 this year.

But the fresh-faced, bright-eyed teenagers have been brought together by a common desire to escape danger in their respective homelands – Syria and Somalia – and rebuild lives shattered by war.

Continue reading...

‘Love and desire’: how erotic poetry is helping Afghans through lockdown

Posted on by

A new generation of poets in Afghanistan is exploring the physical side of love – and isolation is their inspiration

It has been weeks in lockdown for Hoda Khamosh, but the 23-year-old has managed to stick to a routine. This includes sitting down in the afternoons to write poetry, mostly with an erotic spin to it.

In the absence of touch and seeing friends and loved ones, she – along with many others – has turned to erotic poetry, convinced that, “it will help to get through these difficult days”.

Continue reading...

Family reunion rescue flight to bring vulnerable migrants from Athens to UK

Posted on by

Exclusive: Greek PM intervenes to help 50 asylum seekers reach UK despite ban on direct flights

An unprecedented family reunion rescue flight is due to leave Athens, bringing 52 vulnerable migrants, including several minors, to join family in the UK.

The flight on Monday is the result of intense efforts by refugee families in the UK with the support of campaign group Safe Passage and the peer Alf Dubs. It was organised with collaboration from the UK and Greek governments after direct flights between Greece and the UK were suspended in March.

Continue reading...

‘You are still a soldier to me’: The forgotten African hero of Britain’s colonial army

Posted on by

Jaston Khosa was one of 600,000 men from African countries who fought for Britain. He was quietly buried on VE Day after a life of abject poverty

In a crowded, Zambian slum on VE Day, a family gathered to bury one of the last veterans of Britain’s colonial army. Jaston Khosa of the Northern Rhodesia Regiment was laid to rest on the day the world commemorated the end of the war in which he fought.

The 95-year-old great-grandfather was among 600,000 Africans who fought for the British during World War Two, on battlefields across their own continent as well as Asia and the Middle East. Although their service has largely been forgotten, the mobilisation of this huge army from Britain’s colonies triggered the largest single movement of African men overseas since the slave trade.

Continue reading...

Bangladeshi journalist is jailed after mysterious 53-day disappearance

Posted on by

Campaigners warn Shafiqul Islam Kajol faces a lengthy sentence as his family worries about his exposure to Covid-19 in prison

Fifty-three days after he disappeared, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol turned up on Sunday in police custody at a border town 150 miles from where he had last been seen.

“I am alive,” he told his son by phone, the first time the family had heard his voice since his disappearance in early March, a day after a case was filed against him and 31 others under the country’s controversial new Digital Security Act.

Continue reading...

‘Separation by sex’: gendered lockdown fuelling hate crime on streets of Bogotá

Posted on by

While men and women can go out on alternate days, trans people in the Colombian capital face increasing risk of violent attacks

A policy of making men and women leave their homes on alternate days during lockdown in Bogotá is fuelling violence towards the transgender community by the police and the public, activists say.

The mayor of the Colombian capital, Claudia López, announced last month that women were permitted to go outdoors for essential tasks on even-numbered days and men on odd-numbered days, in an effort to limit numbers on the streets.

Continue reading...

‘There is no future’: the refugees who became pawns in Erdoğan’s game

Posted on by

First the asylum seekers were used to further Turkey’s regional ambitions, now they are made to suffer in quarantine camps

At the beginning of March, thousands of refugees gathered in the shadow of the Pazarkule border gate in Turkey after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said he would “open the gate” to Europe.

The move was a reaction to the killing of 33 Turkish soldiers in Idlib province on 28 February and designed to exert pressure on the EU and Nato to support its military operation in northern Syria.

Continue reading...

Trouble brewing for tea producers as coronavirus lockdown hits harvests

Posted on by

India’s ‘champagne of teas’ among those affected as country’s tea board estimates output could drop 9%, amid strain in China and Sri Lanka

Trouble is brewing for the world’s tea producers as the coronavirus lockdown shut down the harvest in several important regions, including the picking of India’s “champagne of teas”.

Despite forecasts of increased demand from drinkers stuck at home across the world, producers have become frustrated by the enforced quarantining of their workforce, with India’s output expected to drop by 9% in 2020.

Continue reading...

‘We are living in a catastrophe’: Peru’s jungle capital choking for breath as Covid-19 hits

Posted on by

Iquitos, still reeling from a dengue fever outbreak and plagued by poverty, relies on air deliveries for medicine, equipment and oxygen

In the final hours before Covid-19 claimed her life, Cecilio Sangama watched helplessly as his eldest sister Edith gasped for breath.

Hospitals across Peru’s largest Amazon city had run out of oxygen, and the shortage had pushed the black market price of a cylinder well above $1,000 (£810).

Continue reading...

‘They’re fearless’: the women battling to free Myanmar from meth

Posted on by

From jungle stakeouts to burning drug dealers’ property, a group of mothers is willing to do whatever it takes to free their community from addiction

Sister Ester keeps several small plastic bags of colourful methamphetamine – or meth – tablets beside her bed, along with a pistol and a plastic box of bullets.

“All of these items were seized by our group in raids on houses selling drugs over the past few weeks,” she says.

Continue reading...