Category Archives: Global development

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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Investigation begins into alleged abuse of more than 500 boys in Afghanistan

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Government says schools to face more scrutiny after report that thousands may have been victims of paedophile ring

Afghanistan’s attorney general has launched an investigation into the alleged abuse of more than 500 schoolboys, following the discovery of a paedophile ring in the country’s Logar province.

Jamshid Rasooli, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, said a committee had been appointed. “We are in the process of running a comprehensive, impartial investigation,” he said.

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‘She can’t say no’: the Ugandan men demanding to be breastfed

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A study is looking into the coercive practice in Uganda, amid calls for the government to address the issue

Jane’s* husband likes breast milk. “He says he likes the taste of it, and that it helps him in terms of his health. He feels good afterwards,” said the 20-year-old from Uganda, who has a six-month-old baby.

Jane said her husband started asking for her milk the night she came home from the hospital after giving birth. “He said it was to help me with the milk flow. I felt it was OK.”

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Africa is humanitarian ‘blind spot’: the world’s top 10 forgotten crises – report

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Climate emergency is fuelling drought, food poverty and disaster in the global south but humanitarian crises under-reported

The African continent is a “blind spot” for coverage of the humanitarian crises that are being fuelled by the climate emergency, according to a new analysis [pdf].

Madagascar’s chronic food crisis, where 2.6 million people were affected by drought in 2019, came top of the list of 10 of the most under-reported crises last year, Care International’s annual survey found.

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The disease always gets a head start: how to handle an epidemic

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Outbreaks such as coronavirus, Sars and Ebola have taught us communication is key, and that the world is only as strong as its weakest health system

A patient presents at an emergency department somewhere in the world. They are feverish and vomiting. Doctors suspect it is influenza, but they are wrong.

When the outbreak of a virulent new disease such as the coronavirus is identified, the starting gun is fired on a vast, multimillion-dollar international effort to try to contain it.

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‘It’s incredible what they see’: housing associations take on county lines crime

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Housing officers are using their local knowledge to spot abuse and exploitation, particularly ‘cuckooing’ of vulnerable residents by drug gangs

Housing associations are playing a growing role in tackling county lines crimes, using their knowledge of local communities to spot early signs of abuse and exploitation.

In the north west of England, the exploitation of young people by drug gangs – known as “county lines” crime – is a serious problem, not just in poorer areas but in York, Harrogate and places with good transport links. Now lawyers, housing associations and police are building networks of support to try and provide innovative solutions to the crisis.

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Changing roles in Burkina Faso – a photo essay

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In one of the poorest countries in the world, Burkina Faso, a very special school gives new hope to orphaned or disadvantaged girls

In Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso in west Africa, a school and training programme is combating entrenched attitudes and gender stereotypes that confine women to low-paid unskilled labour, or worse. At the CFIAM, girls and young women, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, can train to be car mechanics, a trade that offers them the skills necessary to enable them to pursue independent lives and achieve a measure of socio-economic progress. Such is the success of CFIAM and its students that it has been the subject of an award-winning documentary Ouaga Girls

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Mogadishu left reeling as conflict and climate shocks spark rush to capital

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Forced from their homes by floods and fighting, 800,000 people have crammed into informal settlements in the Somali capital. Now efforts are afoot to bolster local resources

The number of Somalians being pushed out of the countryside and into the capital Mogadishu has reached an unprecedented high, putting pressure on the city’s already poor infrastructure and threatening its faltering recovery from three decades of conflict.

More than 800,000 internally displaced people dwell in informal settlements across Mogadishu, according to the office of the mayor. They are crammed into makeshift shelters with little or no sanitation and limited access to the most basic services. There are “critical” levels of malnutrition, according to an assessment by Somalia’s food security and nutrition analysis unit.

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World Bank urged to scrap $500m loan to Tanzania over schoolgirls’ rights concerns

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Campaigners say education funding would be ‘inappropriate if not irresponsible’ in light of ban on pregnant girls attending school

An opposition MP and activists in Tanzania are urging the World Bank to withdraw a $500m (£381m) loan to the country, amid concerns over deteriorating human rights, particularly for women and girls.

In a letter addressed to the bank’s board members, Zitto Kabwe said he feared the money would be used by the ruling party “to distort our electoral processes’” and ensure an easy victory in an election year.

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Zimbabwe urged to prioritise children as record poverty causes food shortages

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Researchers sound the alarm after statistics reveal almost half of impoverished children in rural areas do not have enough to eat

Poverty has reached unprecedented levels in Zimbabwe, with more than 70% of Zimbabwean children in rural areas living in poverty, a UN study has found.

The report, compiled by Unicef and the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency, shows high levels of privation in rural areas, where 76.3% of children live in abject poverty. Statistics seen by the Guardian suggest that almost half of these children do not have enough of the right food to eat.

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Britain must be held to account for its role in the war in Yemen

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As the death toll in Yemen passes 100,000, questions must be asked about UK arms exports to the Saudi-led coalition

As British politics reverberates with the results of the general election and Brexit approaches, the announcement from researchers that the death toll in the war in Yemen now exceeds 100,000 went unnoticed in the mainstream press at the end of last year.

With heightened US-Iranian hostility after the US government’s killing of Qassem Suleimani, the prospects for the war in Yemen look increasingly bleak.

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Scandal overshadows Peru election’s focus on gender equality

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Allegations of domestic violence and marital infidelity have bogged down one of the most diverse parties

Scandals involving domestic violence and marital infidelity have overshadowed the campaign to elect a new congress in Peru, in which gender equality and women’s rights have been key issues.

Peruvians will elect 130 new lawmakers on Sunday after the previous chamber was dissolved by President Martín Vizcarra in a controversial but popular move in September.

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