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