After six years of economic crisis in their neighboring country, Brazilian officials say more and more unaccompanied minors are arriving
Jesús Pérez was 16 when he crossed into Brazil in June, fleeing a life of hunger on the streets of his disintegrating homeland.
In Pacaraima, the Brazilian border town that is the main entry point for fleeing Venezuelans, he told social workers he hoped for a fresh start.
Continue reading...Amid a global shortage of HPV vaccine, more must be done to steer supplies towards those most at risk: girls in poor countries
For too many women, cervical cancer is a death sentence. But it doesn’t have to be. A life-saving preventative vaccine can dramatically cut cases and put the world on track to eliminate this deadly disease.
The UK first began offering a vaccine against HPV – the primary cause of cervical cancer – in 2008. According to a 2018 study by Public Health England, infections of certain cancer-causing types of HPV have since fallen by 86% among 16- to 21-year-old women. A study conducted in Scotland last year found that the vaccine reduced pre-cancerous cervical lesions by up to 90%.
Continue reading...Landmark law expected to replace clan system and lay groundwork for long-awaited ‘one person, one vote’ poll
The president of Somalia has signed a landmark federal law, paving the way for the country to hold its first popular election in half a century.
A long awaited “one person, one vote” election could be held by the end of the year.
Continue reading...As the country goes to the polls, the ruling Gnassingbé dynasty has a stranglehold on power that looks unshakeable
A familiar quote in Togo comes from the president, Faure Gnassingbé, who once said: “My father told me to never leave power.”
He has heeded that advice. The first African country where a coup d’etat occurred after independence and where the elected head of state was assassinated, Togo stands to be the last country in Africa to see the lights of a democratic alternation.
Continue reading...Photographer Heba Khamis spent a year and a half documenting the lives of ‘black birds’: the male Afghan and Iranian sex workers in Berlin’s Tiergarten
The allure of romance is never far away in Berlin’s Tiergarten park, a vast 520-acre expanse home to manicured lawns, dense forest, a picturesque boating lake and the city zoo. As families lay out picnics and millennials fire up barbecues, those seeking something more illicit head to the park’s wooded north, where young male Afghan and Iranian refugees can be found selling sex to the hundreds of buyers who pass through Tiergarten each day.
Continue reading...Writer and activist who was imprisoned for insulting Ugandan president calls on him to go as 18-month sentence is revoked
The feminist academic and writer Stella Nyanzi has been released from prison after her 18-month sentence for insulting Uganda’s president was quashed.
Nyanzi collapsed as she left court in Kampala on Thursday, and scuffles broke out between her supporters and prison wardens, who fired live rounds into the air to disperse the crowd.
Continue reading...It is a place where worlds converge, a vast melting pot of different peoples, all in search of a better life. Yet the US-Mexico border is also, increasingly, a focal point for human suffering
Milson, from Honduras, sits with his 14-year-old daughter, Loany, on the reedy riverbank beside the bridge connecting Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with downtown Brownsville, Texas, across the Rio Grande.
On the far reach – a few yards but another world away – is a vast tent (officially a “soft-sided facility”) erected to cope with the sheer numbers seeking asylum in the US. In a few weeks’ time, on the date stipulated on their “notice to appear” document, the people staying here will have their “credible fear interview” by video link.
Continue reading...As villagers in Somali region fall ill in unexplained circumstances, some locals fear gas exploration has tainted the local water supply
At first, 23-year-old Khadar Abdi Abdullahi’s eyes began turning yellow. Then the palms of his hands did the same. Soon he was bleeding from his nose, and from his mouth, and his body was swelling all over. Eventually he collapsed with fever. He later died.
A deadly sickness is spreading through villages near a Chinese natural gas project in Ethiopia’s Somali region, according to locals and officials who spoke to the Guardian. Many of Khadar’s neighbours have suffered the same symptoms. Like him, some died.
Continue reading...As the country battles economic collapse, parents have been forced to migrate, leaving their offspring in the care of family, neighbours or sometimes alone
It has been four months since Isabel Carrasco skipped her crumbling country, entrusting her daughters to a neighbour to join modern South America’s largest ever exodus.
Carrasco’s destination was Guyana, although the woman now raising her children isn’t sure which part.
Continue reading...Young people found to be ‘overwhelmingly keen’ to tackle Africa’s challenges head on, challenging negative stereotypes
Young people across Africa are confident that the continent is heading for an era of success fuelled by technology and entrepreneurship, according to a new survey.
The Africa Youth survey, which claims to be the largest of its kind, said there is growing belief in the concept of “Afro-optimism”, fighting persistently negative stereotypes of the continent.
Continue reading...UN warns 25 million people could be affected as wartorn country is beset by fresh wave of insects
Swarms of desert locusts, which have been ravaging crops and grazing land across east Africa, have now crossed the border into South Sudan, a country already struggling from widespread hunger and years of civil war.
The UN has warned that an imminent second hatch of the insects could threaten the food security of 25 million people across the region.
Continue reading...Hotel bookings plummet by 40,000 in recent weeks as ban on incoming flights from China bites local businesses
The idyllic holiday island of Bali has been hit by the ripple effect of the coronavirus crisis, with tourism plummeting and suggestions it “does not have the capacity” to treat patients if they become sick.
Indonesia, the largest country in south-east Asia, claims to have no cases of coronavirus, but according to the Bali’s tourism board, there have been around 40,000 cancellations of hotel bookings in recent weeks nonetheless. In the first half of February about 740,000 people visited the island – 16.25% fewer than the same period last year – Bali’s airport spokesman told state news agency Antara this week.
Continue reading...Injuries and fatalities are common among thousands of debt-bonded men and children toiling in one of the world’s harshest work environments
All photographs by Mashal Baloch
The spectre of death hovers over the coal mines of Balochistan. Under scorching skies, this turbulent south-west region of Pakistan is home to one of the world’s harshest work environments, where tens of thousands of men and children descend below the surface each day to dig up thousands of tonnes of coal.
The threats of underground explosions, methane gas poisoning, suffocation, or mine walls collapsing are omnipresent and there is barely a single worker across the state’s five massive commercial coal mines who has not been touched by the fatalities that are common here.
Continue reading...Raised to hide her low caste, Yashica Dutt’s new book traces her realisation that her history is one of oppression, not shame
Pretending not to be a Dalit took a heavy toll on the young Yashica Dutt.
Her mother, Shashi, was so determined to protect her three children from the discrimination of the Hindu caste system that relegates Dalits to the periphery of society that she pretended the family were Brahmin.
Continue reading...Children in biggest carbon-emitting nations are healthiest, while those with tiny environmental footprints suffer twofold from poor health and living at the sharp end of the climate crisis
Every country in the world is failing to shield children’s health and their futures from intensifying ecological degradation, climate change and exploitative marketing practices, says a new report.
The report says that despite dramatic improvements in survival, nutrition, and education over the past 20 years, “today’s children face an uncertain future”, with every child facing “existential threats”.
Continue reading...The Atacama in northern Chile is the driest desert in the world, and may be the oldest. It also holds 40% of the world's lithium – an essential ingredient in the rechargeable batteries used in green technology. Indigenous leaders and scientists say Chile's plans to feed a global green energy boom with Atacama lithium will kill the desert. As violent protests rock the country, they are fighting for the mining to stop
Acid attacks have been on the rise in Uganda. Organisations such as End Acid Violence Uganda are pushing for a law that would see harsher punishments for perpetrators such as a ‘no bail policy’, satisfactory compensation for victims, and implementation of a medical care policy paid for by the government. End Acid Violence Uganda officers make regular home visits to survivors to offer support and guidance.
Continue reading...Once lauded as one of Sudan’s finest musicians, Abu Obaida Hassan faded into obscurity under the Bashir regime and was even pronounced dead. Now he is back – to global acclaim
The unpaved outskirts of Omdurman, Sudan’s second city, seem like an unusual place to find a musical superstar, but Abu Obaida Hassan is far from ordinary. The frail man in his 60s who holds court in the shaded yard of a squat brick house represents a musical revolution, one that electrified traditional Sudanese music. Stranger still, in the eyes of the Sudanese public he is back from the dead.
In his 70s heyday, Abu Obaida travelled from Merowe, the home of the Shaigiya people and a centre of Nubian culture, to Khartoum, finding fame as a renegade player of a local stringed instrument known as the tambour.
Continue reading...Rights groups and UN warn of rapidly accelerating danger as banned cluster weapons are deployed
The threat posed by unexploded bombs is rising exponentially in wartorn Libya, experts have warned, with the use of banned cluster weapons a source of particular concern.
The UN’s Mine Action Service (Unmas) said that even parts of the country previously cleared of explosive material had been recontaminated following a surge in fighting since April last year, when the warlord Khalifa Haftar launched a campaign to seize the capital, Tripoli.
Continue reading...Campaign groups unite in condemnation of ‘grossly inhumane and incompassionate’ verdict
Human rights groups in Malaysia are calling for the repeal of a law that criminalises attempted suicide after a man with a physical disability was sentenced to six months in prison for trying to take his own life.
Malaysia is one of the few countries where attempting suicide is illegal. Under existing legislation, people found guilty can be punished by up to a year in prison, a fine, or both. But the Malaysian government is now considering a change to the law, which advocates say cannot come soon enough.
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