Category Archives: Global development

Countries urged to step up spending as national goals go unmet

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Campaigners call for action as majority of big countries fall short of 0.7% aid target

The world’s major powers have failed to make progress towards meeting their commitments on aid spending, according to new data, prompting calls for countries to step up in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) update on spending in 2019, published on Thursday, showed aid contributions by its forum of the largest donors were less than half the targeted 0.7% of their gross national income.

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‘Race against time’ to prevent famines during coronavirus crisis

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UN calls for international solidarity to ease effects of Covid-19 on food security

Vulnerable parts of the developing world, particularly in Africa, are at risk of sliding into famine as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, while humanitarian relief efforts are being hindered by lockdowns and travel restrictions, according to the UN.

Experts raised the spectre of unrest similar to that seen in 2007-08 when food price rises sparked riots around the world, destabilising fragile states and fuelling conflict in ways that are still being felt. They told the Guardian that the world could still avoid such a crisis, but time was running out.

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Returning Venezuelans in squalid quarantine face uncertain future

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Migrants who lost their jobs in Colombia’s pandemic lockdown have been shocked by their confinement in a border town

When Jhoel Brito headed back to Venezuela last week he sought safe haven from an epoch-making global health emergency that has paralyzed scores of countries and claimed more than 120,000 lives.

After losing his job as a butcher in Colombia, the 25-year-old Venezuelan migrant believed he would be safer waiting out the coronavirus storm back home.

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Pandemic raises fears over welfare of domestic workers in Lebanon

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Covid-19 lockdown could leave migrant workers across Middle East confined to employers’ households without pay, NGOs warn

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    • Calls by NGOs for increased protection of domestic workers in Lebanon during the coronavirus crisis have cast a spotlight on the predicament of migrant workers across the Middle East, many of whom are highly vulnerable to the pandemic and without support.

    In parts of the Levant, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia, workers from south and south-east Asia account for a large proportion of labour forces. Closed airports, bonded labour, or other forms of unbreakable employment contracts, and little access to funds, have made it close to impossible for those who want to leave to do so.

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    Signing on: The deaf workers weaning a capital city off plastic bags

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    Ethiopian paper bag firm employs 18 deaf workers who use sign language to persuade clients to choose greener alternative

    What do you say to a business owner who has heard it all before? Answer: Don’t speak, use sign language.

    At least that’s the novel approach taken by Teki Paper bags, an Ethiopian enterprise developed by deaf women.

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    ‘We have nothing’: as lockdown bites, migrants in Tunisia feel the pinch

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    With Covid-19 yet to spread widely, business closures are already causing hardship for people dependent on casual work

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    • From 6pm to 6am, the security services enforce the curfew. Like most other countries in the world, Tunisia remains in lockdown.

    At all other times, tight restrictions on public movement are in place to limit the spread of coronavirus. Across the country, many businesses are shuttered up, with employees preparing themselves for the long and potentially economically devastating wait until something like normal life returns to the country.

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    Arcadia Group cancels ‘over £100m’ of orders as garment industry faces ruin

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    As owner of brands including Topshop and Dorothy Perkins cancels unshipped orders, thousands will be left without income, warn rights groups

    The Arcadia Group, which owns brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, is estimated to have cancelled in excess of £100m of existing clothing orders worldwide from suppliers in some of the world’s poorest countries as the global garment sector faces ruin.

    According to data from the Bangladesh Garments and Manufacturing Association (BGMEA), the Arcadia Group has cancelled £9m of orders in Bangladesh alone.

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    Suspicion and fear linger as Ethiopia’s campus wars go quiet

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    Violent unrest at Ethiopia’s universities has been quelled by police, but the root causes will prove harder to tackle

    On a December morning last year, students at Ambo University in Ethiopia’s Oromia region awoke to find threatening notices pinned to the walls of their dormitories. The message was simple: boycott classes. Anyone failing to do so would face punishment.

    Written by Oromo student activists calling themselves the Qeerroo, the notices demanded solidarity with fellow Oromos at universities in the neighbouring region of Amhara, after a spate of deadly ethnic clashes there. Similar boycotts had been called in universities across Oromia, the country’s largest region.

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    ‘Will we die of hunger?’: how Covid-19 lockdowns imperil street children

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    For millions of young people, coronavirus restrictions have made access to food, water and shelter even more precarious

    Timothy, a teenager on the streets of Mombasa, wonders how he will eat. “Rich people can stay home … because they have a store well stocked with food,” he says. “For a survivor on the street your store is your stomach.”

    However, says another, if the rumours are true and street children are arrested in the city during the Covid-19 crisis, he’d be happy to go to Shimo women’s prison, because there “you are sure to get free food, shelter and medical services”.

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    Deep inequalities of social distancing in South Africa – in pictures

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    In densely populated townships and cities, the army and police have been patrolling the streets to enforce strict measures to curb the spread of coronavirus

    All photographs by Jérôme Delay for AP

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    Food rations to 1.4 million refugees cut in Uganda due to funding shortfall

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    World Food Programme announce 30% relief reduction, as farms and businesses shut in Covid-19 lockdown, fuelling hunger fears

    Food rations have been cut to more than 1.4 million vulnerable refugees in Uganda by the World Food Programme (WFP) because of insufficient funds.

    Announcing a 30% reduction to the relief food it distributes to refugees and asylum seekers, mainly from neighbouring South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, the WFP in Uganda warned that further cuts could follow.

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    ‘We’re abandoned to our own luck’: coronavirus menaces Brazil’s favelas

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    Residents fearful how their families will cope as food runs out and Jair Bolsonaro undermines lockdown message

    Renato Rosas knows what poverty feels like. The musician and biomedical salesman grew up in one of Brazil’s biggest favelas, in the Amazon city of Belém. Relatives still live in the wooden stilt houses that line the black, polluted rivers running into Guajará Bay.

    “It is the most extreme poverty,” he said of the Baixadas da Estrada Nova Jurunas neighbourhood where floods, deadly sucuri snakes lurking in floating rubbish and armed drug gangs are among the challenges.

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    Second wave of locusts in east Africa ’20 times worse’, says UN

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    UN warns of ‘alarming and unprecedented threat’ to food security and livelihoods in the region

    A second wave of desert locusts is threatening east Africa with estimates that it will be 20 times worse then the plague that descended two months ago.

    The locusts present “an extremely alarming and unprecedented threat” to food security and livelihoods, according to the UN. A swarm of just more than a third of a square mile can eat the same amount of food in one day as 35,000 people.

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    Kenya is mobilising against coronavirus – but like the rest of Africa we need help | Kennedy Odede

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    Homegrown efforts are boosting preparedness, but they need to be strengthened before the pandemic gathers force

    When Covid-19 hits Africa, will we be ready? This was a distant thought just one month ago. Now, as cases climb, we are braced for impact.

    As the crisis deepens in the world’s largest economies, taking up most of the media bandwidth, Africa hardly makes the headlines. In international news outlets, the idea of crisis in Africa is met with resignation, not outrage. It is almost as if the media perceives crisis as the status quo in Africa, something expected. Unavoidable.

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    Photographing poverty’s pandemic: ‘It’s a different beast in South Africa’

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    In the first of a series focusing on the work of photographers during the coronavirus crisis, Jerome Delay trains his lens on South Africa

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    • We’ve become used to the images of western cities around quarantine. In the empty streets of industrial and post-industrial societies tightly connected by globalisation, absence has become one of the most powerful metaphors of the coronavirus.

    It’s a very different story in countries where inequality and poverty are much more acute; where access to a safe and distanced space in which to isolate is limited by poverty, social status and economics, and intimate social connections have a different importance.

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    Paraguayans go hungry as coronavirus lockdown ravages livelihoods

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    Early, aggressive measures seem to be controlling the disease but the pandemic has laid bare the country’s social inequalities

    When Covid-19 arrived in South America, Paraguay was one of the first countries to take measures to contain the virus, closing schools and banning public gatherings after just the second confirmed case on 11 March.

    The nationwide lockdown seems to be controlling the spread of the disease, but it has created another problem: large numbers of Paraguayans are going hungry in their own homes.

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    ‘It’s a very worrying time’: Sri Lanka’s recovery interrupted by coronavirus

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    As the anniversary of the bombs that shook the country looms, survivors working to build harmony face multiple challenges

    A year on from the Easter bombs that killed more than 250 people, Sri Lanka is now under pandemic lockdown and facing rising pressure.

    President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, whose decision to include individuals accused of atrocities during the country’s 25-year civil war among his political appointments has been a source of international opprobrium, is now under fire over the country’s repressive, militarised response to Covid-19.

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    Foreigners targeted in Central African Republic as coronavirus fears grow

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    Peacekeeping and aid operations face disruption as outsiders are scapegoated in one of Africa’s most vulnerable countries

    A backlash against foreigners in Central African Republic threatens to disrupt peacekeeping and aid supplies in one of Africa’s most fragile countries.

    Since an Italian missionary was identified as CAR’s first coronavirus case last month, xenophobia has been on the rise. Unfounded stories widely published in the country’s newspapers and on social media have portrayed foreigners as unwelcome importers of a disease that could further impoverish the country.

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    Declare abortion a public health issue during pandemic, WHO urged

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    Charities press World Health Organization to ensure women can get contraception and safe abortions during crisis

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    • The World Health Organization is being urged to declare abortion an essential health service during the coronavirus pandemic.

    In guidance notes issued last week, the WHO advised all governments to identify and prioritise the health services each believed essential, listing reproductive health services as an example.

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    Tanzania to ease education ban on pregnant girls – but not in classrooms

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    Official announcement greeted with cautious optimism but World Bank comes under fire over $500m education loan

    Tanzania has pledged to improve access to education for pregnant girls after receiving a controversial $500m (£402m) World Bank loan, but has stopped short of readmitting them to mainstream classrooms.

    The World Bank has been accused of undermining human rights and has faced criticism from local and international civil society groups over the Tanzania secondary education quality improvement programme loan. Campaigners say approval should not have been given without first securing a commitment from the government to reverse its discrimination towards pregnant girls and end compulsory pregnancy tests.

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