Category Archives: Global development

How vegetarianism is going back to its roots in Africa

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Health and climate concerns are behind the growth of plant-based diets which were once prevalent on the continent

In the meat-loving capital of Burkina Faso, customers at a small roadside joint eat bean balls, grilled tofu skewers and peanut butter rice while a report about chickens unfit for consumption being dumped on the street airs on the midday news.

A sign above the door proudly welcomes customers: “Vegetarian restaurant Nasa. Food for the love of health.” In Ouagadougou’s first plant-based restaurant, there are no knives on the tables.

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‘The dates are drying’: profits shrivel for farmers as the heat rises in Tunisia

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Irrigation systems and oases in the arid south are failing to keep up with the demands of thirsty palm plantations

Mansour Rajeb is wrapping a plastic protective sheet around the branch of a date palm in his oasis near the village of Bchelli, in southern Tunisia. Tying it up, he lingers.

“I’m worried,” he says. “The quality is getting worse. The dates are getting drier.”

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Malawi police face legal action over failure to investigate alleged rapes

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Lawyers move to make headway with inquiry into accusations of police abuses during post-election violence

A group of lawyers in Malawi is taking legal action against the police for failing to investigate allegations of rape against their officers during post-election protests.

Mphatso Iphani, a spokesperson for the Women Lawyers Association of Malawi, said that three months since the alleged attacks, “no concrete action has been taken, despite the sheer amount of evidence that the girls and women were assaulted”.

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US states move to stop prisons charging inmates for reading and video calls

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Draft bill aims to curb rise of pay-per-minute ebooks and costly facetime calls in prisons where visits are banned or restricted

Lawmakers in three US states are drafting a bill that they hope will end the growing trend of prisons charging inmates high fees for reading ebooks or making video calls to their families, while paying under a dollar an hour for prison labour.

State prisons in nine states have struck deals with private equity telecom companies to introduce pay-per-minute reading and video conferencing services in their facilities.

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‘No debate, no democracy’: journalists in Nepal fight new threat to press freedom

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Bills introduced by ruling Communist party will bring in heavy fines and the threat of jail to stifle debate, say critics

Jail terms of up to five years could be imposed on people in Nepal who post “offensive” comment on social media sites, including Facebook and Instagram in the latest move by the government to crack down on dissent.

The information technology bill, introduced at the end of December, imposes fines of up to 1.5m rupees (about $13,000) for anyone posting content deemed to promote hate crime or ridicule. It would apply to all social networking sites.

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Trapped on Lesbos: the child refugees waiting to start a new life

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Thousands of children are living in appalling conditions on the Greek island. At the Moria camp, one Syrian teenager tells of trying to join his family in the UK

Outside the Moria refugee camp in Lesbos, a shanty town made of tarpaulin strung between olive trees is getting bigger every week. There are now 18,000 people living in this second camp, designed for just over 2,000.

Ahmed (not his real name), 17, and his friend Musa wind their way up muddy tracks towards their tent, swerving to avoid groups of children running in flip-flops through the dirt.

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Uganda’s thirst for hydropower raises fears for environment

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Murchison Falls is a magnet for tourism but energy projects, not least a possible dam, threaten the wildlife haven

Along the road that takes you into Murchison Falls national park, animals once roamed freely. Narrow roads provided the perfect environment for them, so “they [didn’t] feel like they are in a foreign land”, says tour operator Everest Kayondo.

But not any more. The park’s lush forest is being uprooted and red trucks and yellow diggers stand ready to pave the road – and the way for new energy projects.

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Ballooning debt forces poor countries to cut public spending

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Congo-Brazzaville and Chad among hardest hit as campaigners warn spiralling repayments could trigger disaster

Poorer countries are cutting public spending in response to a “growing debt crisis”, campaigners have warned.

Debt in some countries has trebled according to new figures that calculate debt reimbursements, and their impact on government expenditure, in 60 countries.

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Police in Bangladesh make arrest in connection with alleged rape of student

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Dhaka University demonstrators demand prompt action following reported rape of 21-year-old woman

Police in Bangladesh have arrested a man in connection with the alleged rape of a student at Dhaka University amid angry protests on campus.

More than 2,000 students and human rights activists – some brandishing placards asking: “Tell me, am I next?” – demonstrated this week following the alleged rape of the 21-year-old student. They demanded the death penalty for anyone found guilty of rape.

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Norway opens its doors to 600 people evacuated from Libya to Rwanda

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Refugees and asylum seekers who found respite in Rwanda camp after escaping conflict in Libya will be resettled in Norway

Hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers evacuated from Libyan detention centres to a transit camp in Rwanda are to be resettled this year in Norway, according to Rwanda’s foreign minister.

Speaking at a news conference in Kigali on Wednesday, Rwanda’s foreign minister Vincent Biruta said the African nation was currently hosting more than 300 refugees and asylum seekers at the Gashora transit centre south of Kigali, most of whom hail from Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea, according to CGTN Africa.

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Britain must spearhead action against sexual violence or relinquish the reins

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Only with senior government backing can the inertia gripping the global fight against sexual abuse in conflict be arrested

Rape and other forms of sexual violence in conflict are deliberate crimes against humanity, employed as a tactic of war and terrorism to systematically brutalise entire populations.

They are entirely preventable, which is why I launched the preventing sexual violence in conflict initiative (PSVI) in 2012 with UNHCR special envoy Angelina Jolie. From the start, we emphasised the crucial importance of addressing impunity. Without a realistic chance of justice being done, potential perpetrators of these crimes are unlikely to be deterred and the cycle of violence will continue.

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Aid workers toil amid crisis and corruption to give Venezuelans the drugs they need

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In Venezuela, hospitals lack the basics and medicine shortages are common, forcing humanitarian groups to pick up the slack

Feliciano Reyna masterminds a drug running network that spans Venezuela. His organisation moves substances through ports, trucks them across the country, and deliver them into customers’ hands. But he is not on any DEA watchlist.

“I am the biggest dealer in Venezuela,” says Reyna – though he is quick to qualify the remark – “If we’re talking about legal drugs.”

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‘They don’t help’: refugees condemn UN over failures that drove them to sea

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Pregnant women and children among dozens forced into perilous Mediterranean crossing to escape overcrowded centre in Libya

Dozens of people who were put under pressure to leave a failing EU-funded UN refugee agency centre in Tripoli have used smugglers to cross the sea to Italy in the last month, according to refugees and aid workers.

One Somali man who spoke to the Guardian said he was among a group of more than 50 who left Libya in November and December and were rescued by ships including the Ocean Viking, the Médecins Sans Frontières and SOS Méditerranée ship, in the Mediterranean. He is now in Italy.

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Hague and Jolie’s sexual violence scheme ‘letting survivors down’

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MPs blame failure to sustain momentum following William Hague’s departure from Foreign Office for project falling ‘far short’

A high-profile UK government programme to tackle sexual violence in conflict zones – launched by former foreign secretary Lord William Hague and Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie – has been criticised for falling far short of its ambitions and letting survivors down.

A review, published on Thursday by the aid watchdog, found that waning ministerial interest, severe funding cuts and a lack of senior leadership meant the scheme “never had a strategic vision” and as a result “nothing [was] done to translate … pledges into practical action”.

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Water wars: early warning tool uses climate data to predict conflict hotspots

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Tension over water scarcity is increasing across the globe. A new system flags up where this threatens to erupt into violence

Researchers from six organisations have developed an early warning system to help predict potential water conflicts as violence associated with water surges globally.

The Dutch government-funded Water, Peace and Security (WPS) global early warning tool, which was presented to the UN security council before it was launched formally last month, combines environmental variables such as rainfall and crop failures with political, economic and social factors to predict the risk of violent water-related conflicts up to a year in advance.

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The ‘ex-closeted gay jihadist’ bringing meditation to Jakarta

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Once a campus fundamentalist who hid his sexuality, today Bagia Arif Saputra helps others find harmony in Indonesia’s capital

When Bagia Arif Saputra was growing up in a university town near Jakarta, becoming a jihadist seemed a natural choice for young men like him, who were steeped in the teachings of Islamic fundamentalism. Less easy was reconciling this identity with his sexuality.

“I was living a double life,” says Saputra. “I would go to the campus mosque, try to focus on my prayers … and find myself checking out a guy and thinking, ‘Nice ass’. And then immediately, ‘Astaghfirullah [God forgive me]!’ So then I would have to redo my prayers. It was a vicious cycle.”

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Sir Fazle Hasan Abed obituary

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Founder of Brac, one of the world’s largest non-profit development organisations, which began its work in Bangladesh

When Fazle Hasan Abed set out to lower death rates among poor children in rural Bangladesh, by teaching mothers how to treat dehydration, he was careful not to pay his field workers per household reached, but on how well their subjects, often illiterate or semi-literate mothers, could answer questions afterwards.

His approach, to reward high-quality instruction and rigorously monitor results of a door-to-door pilot scheme in the 1980s, fed lessons from the field back to research labs in Dhaka, and has been credited with saving countless lives from being lost to diarrhoea, a major source of child mortality in the country. It also propelled Brac, which Abed founded in 1972 as the Bangladesh Rehabilitation Assistance Committee to help refugees returning to their homeland after the liberation war of 1971, to become one of the largest non-profit development organisations in the world.

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Yemen heads list of countries facing worst humanitarian disasters in 2020

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Venezuela also in top five as IRC’s David Miliband warns of devastating impact from war, floods, droughts and disease

Yemen has topped an annual watchlist of countries most likely to face humanitarian catastrophe in 2020, for the second year running.

Continued fighting, economic collapse and weak governance mean that more than 24 million Yemenis – about 80% of the population – will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year, according to analysis by the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which found that another five years of conflict could cost $29bn (£22bn).

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Surgery by candlelight: hospitals in Nigeria suffer losing power – and staff

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As a failing electric grid further burdens the creaking health system, doctors continue to seek opportunities abroad

The waiting rooms at the Ifako Ijaiye hospital in Lagos are overcrowded with patients waiting to see doctors. Often people have to stand outside.

“It is now like this every day. We have to come early and pick numbers before we can meet the doctors. Even though the doctors try to see everybody, it has got worse,” says Oluchi Ezegbo, a market trader from Okearo, in nearby Ogun state.

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Steep rise in civilians killed or injured in Libya by explosive weaponry

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Data showing downward global trend in explosive harm comes amid fears over rising violence and threat of war in Middle East

Civilians killed or injured in Libya by explosive weapons rose by 131% last year, with the number of incidents at its highest since 2011, the year of the Benghazi uprising, according to new data seen by the Guardian.

Most of the 900 people who died or were hurt in explosions in the country in 2019 – up from 392 in 2018 – were victims of airstrikes, according to statistics from Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), a charity based in London.

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