Policymakers urged to act on climate and bridge digital divide as study shows soaring inequality is affecting millions
Inequality has reached unprecedented levels, with more than 70% of the global population living in countries where the wealth gap is growing, according to a new UN report.
Social and economic disparities have soared even in countries such as Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, where inequality had been falling in recent decades, found the World Social Report.
Continue reading...Unpublished report claims water from contaminated reservoir leaves 3 million in Zimbabwe’s capital at risk of disease
Water being pumped to millions of residents in Zimbabwe’s capital city came from reservoirs contaminated by dangerous toxins, according to a report seen by the Guardian.
A study conducted by South African company Nanotech Water Solutions concluded that the health of 3 million Harare residents may be endangered by the provision of water containing toxins that can cause liver and central nervous system diseases.
Continue reading...Rapidly growing sector could prove lucrative as Britain seeks post-Brexit trade opportunities
UK investors could seize a $24bn investment opportunity by helping to connect millions of people without access to electricity to off-grid home solar power systems.
The market for pay-as-you-go home solar packages is expected to boom in Africa, where millions of homes are using mobile technology to rent low-cost solar panels.
Continue reading...The 16-year-old, from Eritrea, had been in the facility for more than a year and died of an unknown illness and lack of medical care
A 16-year-old is the latest person to die in a network of Libyan detention centres where refugees and migrants are locked up indefinitely after they are returned to the war-torn north African country by the EU-funded coastguard.
Fellow detainees in Sabaa detention centre, Tripoli, named the boy as Adal Debretsion, an Eritrean who had reportedly been locked up for more than a year. They said the teenager died on 12 January of an unknown illness and a lack of medical care.
Continue reading...Far from promising an economic miracle, the UK has missed the boat on a continent on the brink of a painful debt crisis
Tony Blair’s cheerleading for the UK-Africa investment summit is of a piece with much of the former prime minister’s recent career. Trading in grand-sounding ideas, often very short on detail, he brings the pitch of an evangelist crossed with a lobbyist to the world’s biggest problems.
Blair’s latest piece of rhetorical woo-woo unites (and promises to address) a series of disparate preoccupations: eradicating poverty and encouraging good governance in Africa while solving the issue of Britain’s trading relationships post-Brexit. All seasoned with just a hint of post-colonial hubris.
Continue reading...Study also shows global unemployment due to rise for the first time in a decade
Nearly half a billion people around the world are struggling to find adequate paid work, trapping individuals in poverty and fuelling heightened levels of inequality, according to a UN report.
In a study published as world leaders fly into the Swiss ski resort of Davos to voice concerns over inequality and the climate crisis, the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) said more than 473 million people around the world lacked the employment opportunities to meet their needs.
Continue reading...Experts fear latest strain of virus may spread across planet from person to person
It is a novel coronavirus – that is to say, a member of the coronavirus family that has never been encountered before. Like other coronaviruses, it has come from animals, or possibly seafood. Many of those infected either worked or frequently shopped in the Huanan seafood wholesale market in the centre of the Chinese city. New and troubling viruses usually originate in animal hosts. Ebola and flu are examples.
Continue reading...Decreased flows caused by water-hungry neighbours, especially India, are damaging river communities
• All photographs by Kaamil Ahmed
Holding his downturned palm level with his waist, Musana Robi Das indicates how tall he was when he started working on Bangladesh’s rivers.
As a child he helped his father ferry villagers across local waterways. Now a tall and spindly 50-year-old, he has had to abandon that life as a boatman. The waters now sit so low that his services are unnecessary. So the past decade has instead been spent repairing shoes inside a dimly lit wooden booth in the village market.
Continue reading...Startling scale of inequality laid bare as Oxfam report highlights chronically undervalued nature of care work
The world’s 22 richest men have more combined wealth than all 325 million women in Africa, according to a study.
Women and girls across the globe contribute an estimated £8.28tn ($10.8tn) to the global economy with a total of 12.5bn hours a day of unpaid care work, a figure more than three times the worth of the global tech industry, claims an Oxfam report published on Monday ahead of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Continue reading...Economic growth in African countries has triggered a global race for influence. Britain cannot afford to be left behind
Africa is the coming continent. Its population is predicted to double to 2 billion people over the next three decades. That growth will mean enormous opportunities for business and investment, but will also create huge challenges around sustainability and the environment.
An Africa focus is therefore essential, particularly for a post-Brexit Britain.
Continue reading...Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned in Uganda after writing poem about president’s mother’s vagina, lambasts regime’s ‘fear of writers’
The Ugandan academic, writer and feminist activist Dr Stella Nyanzi, imprisoned for criticising the country’s president, has been awarded the Oxfam Novib/PEN International award for freedom of expression.
Nyanzi has been in Luzira women’s prison in Kampala, the capital, for nearly 15 months after writing a poem about President Yoweri Museveni’s mother’s vagina. The poem uses the metaphor of her vagina and Museveni’s birth to criticise his near 35-year rule.
Continue reading...Government races against time to contain threat to key food-producing regions in country still reeling from droughts and floods
The UN has warned of a “significant and extremely dangerous” escalation in the number of desert locusts descending on Kenya, as the government strives to contain the threat before it reaches the country’s food-producing regions.
The tropical grasshoppers have been wreaking havoc on Kenya’s neighbours to the north and east, devouring tens of thousands of hectares of crops in Ethiopia and Somalia since last June.
Continue reading...Money laundering and abuse of office also among allegations levelled at two senior figures
Two senior Ugandan government officials have been charged with money laundering, corruption and abuse of office over the awarding of contracts at refugee camps.
Robert Baryamwesigwa and Fred Kiwanuka, both at the time commandants at the Bidi-Bidi refugee settlement in Yumbe district in the north of the country, were charged this week with demanding and receiving bribes of more than 393m Ugandan shillings (about £82,000).
Continue reading...Originally intended to hold 3,000 people, 19,000 now live at the Moria refugee camp – with no electricity, scant water and, for many, no shelter at all. Journalist Harriet Grant and photographer Giorgos Moutafis met some of those attempting to cope with life there
Above a hill on the north shore of Lesbos, volunteers watch the sea and the twinkling lights of Turkey day and night with binoculars. The coastguard hurry to respond when they see a boat approaching, trying to arrive in time to stop children falling in the icy cold water as they clamber onto rocks and beaches.
On the morning of 11 January, a group of migrants from Afghanistan make it ashore without being spotted and walk to an olive grove where they light a fire and call for help.
Continue reading...British aid saves lives, commands global respect and chimes with the public mood. Merging DfID with the Foreign Office would be disastrous
Britain has a proud track record of supporting the world’s poorest through its aid commitments. This is not only morally the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do.
This cast-iron commitment to the poorest indirectly creates significant soft power for Britain. Disrupt this commitment by merging the Department for International Development (DfID) into the Foreign Office and diverting more aid to UK national interest, and you produce a lose-lose: the world’s poorest (wrongly) suffer, and significant British soft power immediately drains away, at precisely the time when the country is trying to redefine its role in the world.
Continue reading...EU countries need to act urgently to support Greece with ‘unmanageable’ levels of arrivals, UN warns
It’s just getting light on the north coast of Lesbos and in an olive grove by the side of the road a group of refugees are breaking up branches and feeding a fire to keep the children warm. They are a small group, 25 people, all of them from Afghanistan. They climbed out of a boat on the shore at 1.30am and lit the fire while they called for help.
Jalila is 18 and has travelled to the Greek island alone from Afghanistan. “But these people in the boat are my new family” she says cheerily. She is in good spirits, though shivering uncontrollably.
Continue reading...Women and children bear brunt as drought and extreme weather leave tens of millions short of food
Southern Africa is in the throes of a climate emergency, with hunger levels in the region on a previously unseen scale, the UN has warned.
Years of drought, widespread flooding and economic disarray have left 45 million people facing severe food shortages, with women and children bearing the brunt of the crisis, said the World Food Programme (WFP).
Continue reading...Researchers predict worldwide turmoil will continue in 2020, with Venezuela, Iran and Libya at greatest risk
A quarter of all countries experienced a dramatic surge in civil unrest last year in a worrying trend that is likely to continue into 2020, researchers have found.
Verisk Maplecroft, a leading risk analysis and strategic forecasting company, said in a report published on Thursday that 47 countries experienced a significant rise in the number of protests over the course of the past year. Hong Kong, Chile, Nigeria, Sudan, Haiti and Lebanon were among the states affected.
Continue reading...Interactive quiz: With only 10 years left to achieve the UN’s sustainability goals, find out how your priorities compare
Continue reading...Investment in health and education and an end to early marriage could transform Africa’s most populous country
If you want a window on the condition of children in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, there is no better vantage point than the Katanga health centre in the impoverished northern state of Jigawa.
In a hut that passes for a nutrition clinic, a group of 25 women wait with their children. Tiny bodies bearing the hallmarks of acute malnutrition – distended stomachs and twig-thin limbs – are lifted into a weighing harness and their arms measured to check for signs of wasting. Ali, who has just reached his first birthday, weighs only 5kg – the average age of a two-month-old in the UK. His mother is 14.
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