As the coronavirus lockdown clamps down on the informal economy and tourism dries up, Egypt’s most vulnerable are left without protection or food security
Continue reading...Category Archives: Global development
Covid-19 could trigger ‘media extinction event’ in developing countries
Critical reporting under threat as revenue losses leave independent news outlets hostage to government subsidies or whims of billionaires
Fake news laws and political interference along with growing financial pressures has left many independent media groups in developing countries fighting to survive during the pandemic.
News outlets around the world have faced measures to muzzle critical reporting in an environment that has already seen dozens of journalists harassed, arrested and censored by governments, according to editors and press freedom groups.
Continue reading...‘I had no choice’: the desperate Nigerian women who sell their babies
With limited access to abortion and antenatal care, many young mothers are falling prey to the country’s human traffickers
Two months after 17-year-old Ebere fell pregnant last year, she considered having an abortion. But she was told by a doctor that such a process – eight weeks into her pregnancy – could lead to complications.
Going home to her parents after visiting the doctor wasn’t an option for Ebere, who feared her strict father would beat her and shame her in their neighbourhood. The father of the baby had denied all responsibility and threatened to kill her if she ever tried to contact him again.
A nurse, who saw the troubled young girl sitting in the hospital, approached her to find out what was wrong. Ebere explained her situation and the nurse showed her a Facebook page of a man she said was a social worker who helped pregnant women in her position. She told her to call the phone number.
“When I called and explained my situation, he asked me to meet him at a popular restaurant in town,” says Ebere, speaking to the Guardian in her home city of Enugu, in south-eastern Nigeria. “When we met, he offered to take me to his home and care for me until I gave birth, but only if I was willing to sell the baby to him.”
Pollution causing birth defects in children of DRC cobalt miners – study
Researchers link exposure to mining pollutants to greatly increased risk of conditions such as spina bifida and limb abnormalities
Thousands of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are being exposed to dangerous levels of toxic pollution that is causing birth defects in their children as they mine for cobalt used to make rechargeable batteries for smartphones, laptops and electric cars, a new medical study has found.
Research published in the Lancet last week found that local people working in mines in the African “copperbelt”, a mining region stretching across Zambia and the DRC, are at significantly higher risk of having children born with serious birth defects.
Continue reading...Millions predicted to develop tuberculosis as result of Covid-19 lockdown
With attention focused on coronavirus, undiagnosed and untreated TB cases will cause 1.4 million to die, research suggests
The head of a global partnership to end tuberculosis (TB) said she is “sickened” by research that revealed millions more people are expected to contract the disease as a result of Covid-19 restrictions.
Up to 6.3 million more people are predicted to develop TB between now and 2025 and 1.4 million more people are expected to die as cases go undiagnosed and untreated during lockdown. This will set back global efforts to end TB by five to eight years.
Continue reading...Vietnam crushed the coronavirus outbreak, but now faces severe economic test
Strict quarantining and widespread testing have helped the country avoid disaster, but with tourism on hold the nation’s future is uncertain
Vietnam didn’t just flatten its coronavirus curve, it crushed it. No deaths have been reported, official case numbers have plateaued at just 271, and no community transmissions of the virus have been reported in the last two weeks. On 23 April, the nation eased lockdowns in its major cities and life is gradually returning to normal. It is a stark contrast to many other nations including the US, where more Americans have died from Covid-19 than during the entire Vietnam war.
Kidong Park, the World Health Organisation’s representative to Vietnam, has praised the country’s response to the crisis.
Continue reading...Chile: pandemic highlights health crisis as lockdown halts inequality protests
Coronavirus arrives against backdrop of unresolved social tensions that fueled last year’s explosion of protests
For six months, Chile was shaken by a wave of protests in which millions took to the streets to protest against inequality. Residents of the capital, Santiago, grew accustomed to the raucous crowds thronging the main square to sing and chant against the government.
Now, with parts of the capital on coronavirus lockdown, wind rasps through an empty Plaza Italia as a handful of shoppers hurry past security forces enforcing the stay-at-home order.
Continue reading...‘For the lives of our mothers’: Covid-19 sparks fight for maids’ rights in Brazil
Millions of domestic workers have been told to keep working or been laid off without pay. Now their families are fighting back against a ‘structurally racist’ system
For as long as Juliana França can remember, on weekdays her mother, Caterina, has made the four-hour round bus trip from the working-class area of Baixada Fluminense, outside Rio de Janeiro, to the city’s affluent South Zone to work as a maid.
But when Covid-19 arrived in Brazil, França begged her to stay at home.
Continue reading...Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in
Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy
The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.
On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.
Continue reading...Uganda megachurch criticised for choir tour as children stranded by Covid-19
Watoto church investigated over decision not to pull out as 48 children are among those stuck abroad due to border closures
The Ugandan government has launched an investigation into the activities of a megachurch in Kampala after seven members of its internationally renowned children’s choir were diagnosed with Covid-19 following an overseas tour.
The country’s child affairs minister, Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, told the Guardian the Internal Security Organisation was investigating Watoto church for allegedly breaching child labour laws, taking the children out of the country without permission and putting them at risk by not cancelling the tour as coronavirus cases escalated and countries closed their borders.
Continue reading...‘It’s being built on our blood’: the true cost of Saudi Arabia’s $500bn megacity
With an artificial moon and flying taxis, Neom has been billed as humanity’s next chapter. But beneath the glitzy veneer lies a story of threats, forced eviction and bloodshed
“The future has a new home,” proclaims the website.
“It’s a virgin area that has a lot of beauty,” says the voice over a string section soundtrack as the promotional video tracks colour-tinted panoramic shots of picturesque desert expanses, and deep azure lagoons.
Continue reading...Easing of lockdown a relief to Ghana’s poor – despite fears it is premature
As Accra and Kumasi’s markets and shops reopen, government defends decision to partially lift coronavirus restrictions
Since the sudden easing of a three-week lockdown in Ghana’s two major cities, Accra and Kumasi, daily life is gradually returning to normal.
Markets and commercial districts that had ground to an eerie halt have buzzed back to life. Stores and banks have slowly reopened. Modest traffic jams have emerged as many people who had escaped the lockdown return to the cities. But schools, places of worship, restaurants and bars remain shut.
Continue reading...Malaysia cites Covid-19 for rounding up hundreds of migrants
In move condemned by UN, refugees including Rohingya arrested amid rising climate of xenophobia
Malaysian authorities have rounded up and detained hundreds of undocumented migrants, including Rohingya refugees, as part of efforts to contain coronavirus, officials said.
Authorities said 586 undocumented migrants were arrested in a raid in the capital, Kuala Lumpur, on Friday. Armed police walked people through the city in a single file to a detention building, according to activists. The UN said the move could push vulnerable groups into hiding and prevent them from seeking treatment.
Continue reading...‘Let the boats in’: Rohingya refugees plead for stranded relatives to be saved
Two boats still stranded at sea as Malaysia accused of using Covid-19 as an excuse to turn them back
Rohingya refugees whose relatives, including children, have been stranded for weeks on cramped boats have urged international governments to act before they perish at sea.
Two boats carrying around 500 people were last spotted off Bangladesh about a week ago, but are believed to have returned to the high seas. The refugees on board, who were fleeing desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh, had attempted to reach Malaysia but appear to have been turned away. Bangladesh has also said it will not allow the boats to dock.
Continue reading...‘We needed to do more’: volunteers step up in lockdown Lagos
Groups of professionals are helping deliver essential packages in Nigeria’s largest city
Twelve friends fill hundreds of carefully arranged aid packages into four cars, then trail through Oniru’s empty streets, past sky-coloured luxury apartment blocks.
In what is notionally an affluent suburb along Lagos’s coastline, the cars stop outside the shells of abandoned, part-constructed buildings, and the friends file into the informal housing compounds that sprawl within.
Continue reading...Sudan to outlaw female genital mutilation
Campaigners welcome move to criminalise those carrying out FGM, but warn it will take time to eradicate practice entirely
Sudan looks set to outlaw female genital mutilation (FGM), in a significant move welcomed by campaigners.
Anyone found carrying out FGM will face up to three years in prison, according to a document seen by the Guardian.
Continue reading...Africa’s heavy-handed lockdown policing must not become the new normal | Karen Allen and Anton du Plessis
The coronavirus response in South Africa is an eerie throwback to apartheid. State control needs to be carefully monitored across the continent
In times of fear, rules go out of the window and the default position is often one of force. A recent doorstep tribute in a Johannesburg suburb to applaud the efforts of essential workers was dubbed an “illegal gathering” by police summoned to break up the event. A resident remarked that it was an eerie reminder of South Africa’s past – a throwback to the times of apartheid.
“The rules keep changing,” admitted one officer when it was suggested that the response was heavy-handed. No harm was done but the incident highlights the potential shifts in power dynamics that fear brings, as well as the disconnect between good intentions and how they are implemented.
Continue reading...‘No food, water, masks or gloves’: migrant farm workers in Spain at crisis point
Workers in lockdown trapped in dire conditions on fruit and salad farms that supply UK supermarkets, UN warns
Migrant workers on Spanish farms that provide fruit and vegetables for UK supermarkets are trapped in dire conditions under lockdown, living in cardboard and plastic shelters without food or running water.
Thousands of workers, many of them undocumented, live in settlements between huge greenhouses on farms in the southern Spanish provinces of Huelva and Almeria, key regions for European supply chains.
Continue reading...Covid-19 could mark a deadly turn in Ghana’s fight against fake drugs
With substandard medicines already in wide circulation, fears are growing that coronavirus could create a lethal ‘parallel crisis’
When Joana Opoku-Darko’s daughter Anna was 18 months old, she came down with malaria, a disease common in Ghana and especially deadly for children.
She bought medication from a pharmacy in Ghana’s capital, Accra; when Anna’s fever didn’t subside she took her to a hospital, where they ran some tests.
Continue reading...‘This moment is leaving a mark on me’: framing Rio under Covid-19’s shadow
Nicoló Lanfranchi arrived in Brazil to make a film about traditional medicine and ended up charting a tragedy that acquired a deeply personal dimension
Photographing a funeral is never easy, no matter how professional the photographer, and even more so amid a pandemic. But for Nicoló Lanfranchi, capturing the burial of Covid-19 victim Elizabeth Baez, 82, which took place this month at the São João Batista cemetery in Rio de Janeiro, was especially difficult.
As he photographed the gravediggers in protective clothing with Elizabeth’s son Henrique, 49, the only mourner allowed, watching on from behind a mask, Lanfranchi thought of his own father, Piero. At 72, Piero was in intensive care with Covid-19 in a hospital in Voghera, in Lombardy, northern Italy – one of the worst-affected places on Earth.
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