US military vows to be more open about activities after allegations that teenager and farmer were killed in Somalia airstrikes
Faced with new allegations of killing civilians with drone strikes in Somalia, the US military has announced plans to make its operations across Africa more transparent.
Amnesty International accused the US military on Wednesday of providing “zero accountability” for civilian victims of airstrikes by its Africa command, Africom.
Continue reading...Once hailed as a champion of democracy, Alpha Condé is threatening to outstay his welcome as Guinea’s president
Even before the pandemic there were postponements. Before that, there were protests. From a large armchair positioned beneath his own portrait, the 82-year-old president of Guinea is not answering the key question preoccupying his country whether or not he wants to remain in situ until he is 94.
In the Sekhoutoureah presidential palace in Conakry, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and trousers, Alpha Condé is flanked on one side by a large photograph of himself alongside Barack Obama in the White House. On the other, framed photographs on a table show him shaking hands with the Turkish leader, Recep Erdoğan, and with China’s Xi Jinping. There’s also a golden bust of Chairman Mao and a hefty book about the Beninese politician Robert Dossou.
Continue reading...When the people of Choropampa saw a bright, silvery liquid on the road, they imagined it was valuable. Two decades on, the toxic truth is all too apparent
When a truck spilled mercury from a gold mine on the dirt road outside her house, Francisca Guarniz Imelda scooped it up with her bare hands, thinking it had healing powers.
She took it home to her mud-brick house in Choropampa, in Peru’s northern Cajamarca region. The heat of the day vaporised some of the mercury, contaminating the walls and ceiling with the toxic metal.
Continue reading...Positive test for 20-year-old woman from Kokama tribe comes amid fears virus could devastate remote communities
An indigenous woman in a village deep in the Amazon rainforest has contracted the novel coronavirus, the first case reported among Brazil’s more than 300 tribes, the Health Ministry’s indigenous health service Sesai has said.
The 20-year-old from the Kokama tribe tested positive for the virus in the district of Santo Antonio do Iá, near the border with Colombia, 880km (550 miles) up the Amazon river from the state capital Manaus, Sesai said in a statement on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Local communities flee as boundaries with Lake Chad become a war zone following ambush in which almost 100 soldiers died
The Chadian army that lost nearly 100 soldiers to a Boko Haram ambush a week ago has declared the Lake Chad borderlands a war zone, heightening fears that civilians will suffer an escalation in violence.
President Idriss Déby travelled to the region to announce the Wrath of Boma operation, named after the island where Boko Haram launched a seven-hour assault that Déby said was the worst the country’s military had ever suffered.
Continue reading...Residents of Afghanistan’s capital face stark choice between providing food for their families and limiting risk of coronavirus
The streets of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, were packed on Friday; a hectic bustling in the markets and shops, pious whispers ringing from prayer gatherings at the mosques, the skies full of kites that children were flying.
But on Saturday the city of around six million people went into lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus in one of the poorest and most war-torn countries in the world.
Continue reading...Analysis of underwater photographs has demonstrated what marine biologists have long suspected – seasonal fish migrations
New research has finally demonstrated what many marine biologists suspected but had never before seen: fish migrating through the deep sea.
The study, published this month in the Journal of Animal Ecology, used analysis of deep-sea photographs to show a regular increase in the number of fish in particular months, suggesting seasonal migrations.
Continue reading...Returnees flood across the border after lockdown leads to loss of jobs, amid warnings that influx threatens health catastrophe
More than 130,000 Afghans have fled the coronavirus outbreak convulsing Iran to return home to Afghanistan amid fears they are bringing new infections with them to the conflict-ridden and impoverished country.
The huge spike in Afghans crossing the porous border from Iran, in one of the biggest cross-border movements of the pandemic, has led to mounting fears in the humanitarian community over the potential impact of new infections carried from Iran, one of the countries worst affected by the virus.
Continue reading...Efforts to achieve gender equality by 2030 are being hampered by lack of progress on reproductive health issues, says UN body
Almost half of women and girls living in more than 50 countries around the world are not able to make their own decisions about their reproductive rights, with up to a quarter saying they are unable to say no to sex, a new survey has found.
The findings, published by the UN population fund (UNFPA) on Wednesday, have been described as a “big wake-up call” in global efforts to achieve gender equality by 2030.
Continue reading...Violence and humiliation used to police coronavirus curfews around globe, often affecting the poorest and more vulnerable
As coronavirus lockdowns have been expanded globally, billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. Police across the world have been given licence to control behaviour in a way that would normally be extreme even for an authoritarian state.
Related: ‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?
Continue reading...Carlos Alvarado seeks solution that will end conflicts over land despite previous delays
Costa Rica’s president has pledged to protect the rights of indigenous defenders following a spate of violence against native communities in his country.
Last month, an activist, Yehry Rivera, from the Brörán indigenous community in Térraba, Puntarenas province, was shot and killed after he was attacked by an armed mob while trying to reclaim ancestral land. The murder happened just two weeks after an indigenous leader of the Bribri indigenous people in nearby Salitre was shot in a surge of unpunished violence against native communities in Costa Rica.
Continue reading...Decision hailed as ‘victory’ comes amid warnings that coronavirus could close schools and leave teenagers vulnerable in quarantine
Sierra Leone has lifted an internationally criticised ban that prohibited pregnant schoolgirls from attending school and sitting exams, in a move heralded by activists as a “victory for feminism” in the west African nation.
The decision, announced on Monday, follows a judgment last December by a top regional court that ordered the immediate overturn of the ban, which effectively barred tens of thousands of girls the right to finish their education. The Economic Community of West African States court instructed Sierra Leone to establish nationwide programmes to help pregnant girls return to school.
Continue reading...Plant virologist Dr Safaa Kumari discovered seeds that could safeguard food security in the region – and risked her life to rescue them from Aleppo
The call came as she sat in her hotel room. “They gave us 10 minutes to pack up and leave,” Dr Safaa Kumari was told down a crackling phone line. Armed fighters had just seized her house in Aleppo and her family were on the run.
Kumari was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, preparing to present a conference. She immediately began organising a sprint back to Syria. Hidden in her sister’s house was a small but very valuable bundle that she was prepared to risk her life to recover.
Continue reading...The British government refuses to track the use of its weapons in a conflict that has targeted civilians and healthcare facilities, and now a coronavirus outbreak looms
The coronavirus pandemic has forced questions of life and death to the fore around the world. National health infrastructures risk being overwhelmed, food supply chains are struggling to keep up with stockpiling, and restrictions on movement are enforcing social distancing. Worries about loved ones and fears for the future combine with outbreaks of neighbourliness and solidarity.
The questions about who is – or should be – responsible for mitigating the crisis and addressing its worst effects are being raised urgently. For many this is the new reality. But for those in conflict zones, such as Yemen, basic survival has long been the pressing preoccupation.
Continue reading...Video footage shows Indian health workers spraying disinfectant on a group of migrant workers, amid fears that a large scale movement of people from cities to the countryside risks spreading the coronavirus widely. The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has ordered the country's 1.3 billion people to remain indoors until 15 April, saying that was the only hope to stop the pandemic.
But the order has left millions of impoverished Indians jobless and hungry, prompting a mass exodus from cities to the countryside
India’s shutdown is catastrophic for Muslims driven from their homes by sectarian carnage and now without food or shelter
It wasn’t possible for Mohammed Idrish to watch Narendra Modi’s address to the nation last Tuesday exhorting 1.3 billion Indians to stay at home. His TV was looted along with everything else in his home in Delhi during the recent anti-Muslim riots in the Indian capital.
When Idrish, a carpenter, heard about Modi urging Indians to stay at home to stop coronavirus spreading, he shook his head again and again. “I don’t understand … I don’t understand. Doesn’t he know we have no home?”
Continue reading...As Western NGOs remove staff and the US strips support, an influx of Afghans from Iran could add pressure on an already depleted medical system
In the Guzargah reception centre for returnees and repatriates in Herat, Afghanistan, 17-year-old Yunos rests on a thin mattress in a small, empty room.
The previous night fatigued him. He spent it sleeping rough in the desert along with thousands of other Afghans, awaiting the opening of the Iran-Afghanistan border. The frigid desert air froze him to the bone and hunger disturbed his sleep.
Continue reading...With the country in lockdown because of coronavirus, deep social inequalities have been exposed more sharply than ever
“Sauvignon blanc or viognier”? As the words left my mouth, my son and I locked eyes, our expressions flashing from shame-faced to half laughing at the irony. My live-in maid Ranjita had just laid out dinner and, since the fish and lyonnaise potatoes looked appetising, I thought it deserved a bottle of wine.
For people like us, under lockdown, the existential questions that punctuate our daily lives are: is it to be Curb Your Enthusiasm or Line of Duty, Netflix or Hotstar?
Continue reading...Swipe at lawmakers as judge says only ‘undemocratic and authoritarian regimes’ seek to ban peaceful protests
Government opponents and human rights activists have welcomed a decision by Uganda’s constitutional court to overturn legislation that gave police “supernatural powers” to stop public gatherings and protests.
“It is only in undemocratic and authoritarian regimes that peaceful protests and public gatherings of a political nature are not tolerated,” said Justice Cheborion Barishaki in a ruling on Thursday.
Continue reading...From underground aqueducts to tree-bridges and fish that love sewage, indigenous customs could save the planet – but are under threat. Landscape architect Julia Watson shares her ‘lo-TEK’ vision
On the eastern edge of Kolkata, near the smoking mountain of the city’s garbage dump, the 15 million-strong metropolis dissolves into a watery landscape of channels and lagoons, ribboned by highways. This patchwork of ponds might seem like an unlikely place to find inspiration for the future of sustainable cities, but that’s exactly what Julia Watson sees in the marshy muddle.
The network of pools, she explains, are bheris, shallow, flat-bottomed fish ponds that are fed by 700m litres of raw sewage every day – half the city’s output. The ponds produce 13,000 tonnes of fish each year. But the system, which has been operating for a century, doesn’t just produce a huge amount of fish – it treats the city’s wastewater, fertilises nearby rice fields, and employs 80,000 fishermen within a cooperative.
Watson, a landscape architect, says it saves around $22m (£18m) a year on the cost of a conventional wastewater treatment plant, while cutting down on transport, as the fish are sold in local markets. “It is the perfect symbiotic solution,” she says. “It operates entirely without chemicals, seeing fish, algae and bacteria working together to form a sustainable, ecologically balanced engine for the city.”
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