Category Archives: Global development

Coronavirus deaths reach 563, with fresh cases on stricken cruise ship off Japan

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WHO experts prepare to meet in Geneva amid further significant rises in confirmed cases in China

The death toll from the coronavirus outbreak in China has reached 563, as health experts prepared to meet in Geneva next week in an attempt to develop a vaccine and Japan reported 10 more infections among passengers aboard a luxury cruise liner quarantined outside Yokohama.

Chinese authorities said on Thursday the death toll had risen by 73 in the previous 24 hours – the third record daily rise in a row – with 70 of the deaths recorded in Hubei province, the centre of the outbreak.

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Hong Kong faces ‘double devastation’ as coronavirus and civil unrest take toll

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Reports of panic buying emerge as airlines drop city as a destination and lucrative tourism from China falls away

Hong Kong’s economy risks being plunged deeper into recession as the coronavirus outbreak wreaks havoc in the crisis-hit territory, with consumers panic buying staple goods and airlines stopping flights.

Hours after the city’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific placed 27,000 staff on three weeks unpaid leave, Virgin Australia said on Thursday that it would no longer fly to Hong Kong because it was not “commercially viable”.

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UK taxpayers funding African fossil fuel projects worth $750m

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Watchdog reveals huge sum ploughed into ‘world’s dirtiest fossil fuels’ despite climate vow

UK taxpayer funds totalling $750m (£577m) have been invested in new fossil fuel projects in developing African countries despite the government’s public commitment to tackling the climate crisis, according to an international watchdog.

Global Witness found that a London-based investment group raised $1bn from the UK government over 16 years and spent three-quarters of this supporting oil and gas projects in some of Africa’s poorest countries.

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How a new Sesame Street show is bringing Muppet magic to refugee camps

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Three new Muppets, Basma, Jad, and Ma’zooza, will star in new show for the millions of children displaced across the Middle East

Cooperation, kindness and the alphabet. For over 50 years, the characters of Sesame Street, from the Cookie Monster to Big Bird, have helped children from diverse backgrounds navigate the challenges of life as a small person in a big world.

From the moment it launched, Sesame Street has unflinchingly dealt with difficult issues – and from this week they are bringing their special brand of magic to the children who need them the most.

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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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