Category Archives: Global development

Stop ignoring us: Rohingya refugees demand role in running camps

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Refugees in Cox’s Bazar complain the international aid community does not utilise their experience and say the lack of education risks creating a ‘lost generation’

In a tea room just outside Bangladesh’s Rohingya refugee camps, a group of young activists fiddle with their phones, which have suddenly started pinging in chorus now they are finally reconnected to the internet.

To circumvent a government internet blackout around the camps in Cox’s Bazar, they have to break a ban on travelling to nearby Bangladeshi towns, from where they can communicate and coordinate messages for the international community.

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The coronavirus lays bare the limits of WHO’s health diplomacy with China

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The global body is accused of failing to act fast to halt epidemic but the true cost of doing politics with Beijing is still unknown

On social media this week the insults were flying thick and fast, some tinged with racism, but all with a common theme: how the World Health Organization, and its head, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was effectively doing the bidding of the Chinese government in the midst of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak.

It is a charge that has also been expressed in less offensive terms elsewhere in columns and articles, some of which have focused on whether, in praising China’s response to the deadly Wuhan coronavirus outbreak during a visit to Beijing, Tedros allowed himself to become complicit in China’s flawed handling of the outbreak in its early days?

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Greece sends more riot police to Lesbos after migrant clashes

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Government calls in further reinforcements after teargas fired during island protests

Greece has rushed in extra squads of riot police to Lesbos amid warnings of potentially explosive tensions on the island following clashes between security forces and thousands of migrants and refugees.

As hundreds of mainly Afghan asylum seekers converged on Mytilene, the local capital, on Tuesday to protest against conditions in the island’s vastly overcrowded camp, the government ordered in the reinforcements.

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‘I have no regrets’: Tanzania politician branded traitor over World Bank loan

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Opposition leader Zitto Kabwe received death threats after asking bank to suspend education fund over human rights concerns

An opposition leader in Tanzania said he was taking death threats he received after he urged the World Bank to withdraw a $500m (£382m) education loan to the country over human rights concerns “very seriously”.

But Zitto Kabwe, leader of the alliance for change and transparency party (Act), added that he would not be intimidated by comments made by the leader of the ruling party and other officials that his request to the bank was an act of betrayal and he should be killed.

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Sudan refugees pushed into Niger desert after camp burned down

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Majority of tents in Agadez were destroyed by fire following peaceful sit-in, leaving Sudanese living in fear

Sudanese refugees in Niger say they have been living in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation after security forces cracked down on protests calling for better living conditions.

Refugees have been sleeping in the desert despite low temperatures since their camp in Agadez was almost completely burned down last month after a sit-in was forcibly dispersed by Nigerien security forces. The Nigerien authorities said they arrested 355 people immediately after the fire.

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Coronavirus: Hong Kong reports first death as China’s leadership admits ‘shortcomings’

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Carrie Lam says measures would be taken ‘to reduce people movement across the border’ as death toll grows

Hong Kong has reported its first death from the coronavirus as the number of fatalities from the outbreak in China passed 420.

A 39-year-old man with an underlying health condition died on Tuesday morning, according to public broadcaster RTHK.

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FGM doctor arrested in Egypt after girl, 12, bleeds to death

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Child had been taken by her family to have the procedure, still prevalent in the country despite new laws to combat it

A doctor has been arrested after the death of a 12-year-old girl he had performed female genital mutilation (FGM) on.

Nada Hassan Abdel-Maqsoud bled to death at a private clinic in Manfalout, close to the city of Assiut, after her parents, uncle and aunt took her for the procedure.

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‘All we can offer is the chain’: the scandal of Ghana’s shackled sick

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For the families of Ghanaians with mental health or substance abuse issues, shackling their loved ones can seem the only option, as faith healers compete to fill the mental health void

All photographs by Robin Hammond

Under the baobab tree two goats are tethered to the great trunk by ropes. Baba Agunga, a man in his twenties, is held by chains. A bracelet shackle round each of his ankles leads to a chain rusted to the same tone as the Ghanaian mud and welded tight around a thick, solid tree root.

He sits naked on a cloth, hugging thin legs, his skin dusty dry and his eyes vacant. He has been there for three years says his mother, Aniah Agunga.

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‘I’ll put those monsters behind bars’: India’s law school for rape survivors

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Women who were forced into sex work are helped to seek justice by a unique scheme that trains them as lawyers

Saira* wants to become a lawyer so she can put her rapists in jail. “I want to fight my own case and put those monsters behind bars,” says the 31-year-old from West Bengal.

She may achieve her objective. In June, after three years of study, Saira will become the first student to graduate from a unique programme that offers survivors of sexual exploitation the chance to enrol in fully funded law courses.

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Coronavirus: first death outside China recorded as total fatalities pass 300

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Man from Wuhan has died in a Philippines hospital, says WHO, as Xi Jinping orders 1,400 more medical workers into Wuhan

The Philippines has reported the first death from the coronavirus outside China, adding to fears about the spread of the virus as more countries imposed travel restrictions.

The outbreak of the respiratory illness has killed 304 people in China since it was first detected in the central city of Wuhan late last year. Across China, there were 2,590 new confirmed infections on Saturday, bringing the total to 14,380, China’s National Health Commission said on Sunday. A study published on Saturday by scientists from the University of Hong Kong found that the virus may have infected as many as 75,815 people in Wuhan.

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Philippines races to trace those linked to first coronavirus death outside China

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A 44-year-old man from Wuhan travelled with a 38-year-old woman through Hong Kong and three provinces before his death

Officials in the Philippines are racing to identify people who had contact with a 44-year-old man who has become the first person to die from the new coronavirus outside China.

The man, who was from Wuhan, the centre of the outbreak in China, had visited three provinces after arriving in the Philippines from Hong Kong.

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Sudan accused of failing men who say they were duped into working in Libya

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Families protest amid claims men who went to work in UAE were given military training and then sent to Libya to guard oil fields

Sudan’s government has been accused of failing young men who claim they were tricked into guarding Libyan oil facilities by a security firm from the United Arab Emirates.

Families have been protesting outside the UAE embassy and the Sudanese foreign ministry in Khartoum over the past week, demanding action after their relatives were recruited by a company that they say offered jobs as security guards in the Emirates, not Libya.

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Coronavirus outbreak: Britons fly out of Wuhan as death toll passes 200

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Flight carrying 83 British people and 27 foreign nationals will land in the UK on Friday as US tells citizens ‘don’t go to China’

A plane carrying more than 100 British and other EU nationals trapped in Wuhan, the city at the centre of the coronavirus outbreak, has left for the UK after Chinese spouses and partners were given permission to travel.

The chartered flight left Wuhan at 9:45am local time on Friday, the Foreign Office said in a statement. The plane was carrying 83 British people and 27 foreign nationals, and was scheduled to land at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire at 1 pm UK time.

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‘Mollah’s life was typical’: the deadly ship graveyards of Bangladesh

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Khalid Mollah died while working among the thousands who dismantle old ships in Chittagong. Now, in a test case that could transform the industry, his widow is suing the firm that sold the vessel for scrap

Khalid Mollah was uneducated, illiterate and out of work when, in early 2009, he left his pregnant wife Hamida Begum to take the 200-mile bus ride to Chittagong from the small village of Gopai, in northern Bangladesh. The young man’s destination was Sitakunda, the notorious, 20km stretch of wide beach and tidal mudflats just north of Bangladesh’s fast-growing second city.

Here, nearly 25,000 people work in dozens of ship-breaking yards, steel-rolling mills and factories to recover and sell on every bit of plate metal, deck, mast, funnel, hatch, gangplank, wire, nut, cable, bolt, wood and rivet that makes up the world’s giant ships.

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Cumberbatch, Colman among stars urging action on climate and poverty

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Inequality also targeted as 2,000 high-profile figures champion sustainable development goals in open letter

Olivia Colman, Benedict Cumberbatch and Malala Yousafzai are among 2,000 leading activists, campaigners and public figures who have backed an open letter demanding urgent action to end extreme poverty, conquer inequality and fix the climate crisis.

Directed at the world leaders who in 2015 agreed a series of UN global goals – including tackling gender inequality, ending global warming and eradicating hunger by 2030 – the letter declares a state of emergency for people and planet.

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Drought leaves tens of thousands in Lesotho ‘one step from famine’

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Rural areas worst hit as massive fall in food production causes severe hunger for a quarter of country’s population

Tšepo Molapo gazes into space, worrying about where the next meal will come from. Next to him, his two-year-old granddaughter plays, oblivious of their desperate situation.

Molapo’s children all died at illegal mines in neighbouring South Africa, where they had trekked in search of work.

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Bangladesh grants Rohingya refugee children access to education

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Children aged 11-13 will be first to benefit as government eases long-standing restrictions in effort to avoid ‘lost generation’

Bangladesh has confirmed it will lift restrictions on education for young Rohingya refugees, easing bans in place since the existing camps were established 30 years ago.

The government’s move to allow schooling for children aged 11-13 has been widely welcomed by activists and teachers.

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Landmark case held on alleged sexual abuse of Ecuadorian schoolgirl

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Hearing on teen who later killed herself could lead to first standard for protection from sexual violence at schools in Latin America

An international court hearing that involves the alleged sexual abuse of an Ecuadorian schoolgirl between the age of 14 and 16 by her deputy head could transform girls’ rights across Latin America.

In a region where 30% of students between 13 and 15 claim to have experienced sexual harassment while at school, it is hoped that the case, heard on Tuesday at the Inter-American Court on Human Rights (IACHR) in Costa Rica, will establish the first international standards to protect girls from coercion and sexual violence in school.

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