Category Archives: Global development

Ebola staff in Congo on lockdown after angry residents storm UN camp

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Evacuation of responders in face of violent protests demanding protection from militia killings raises fears disease will spread

Ebola responders are on lockdown in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after angry residents stormed a UN peacekeepers camp in protest at fatal militia attacks on civilians, the World Health Organization has said.

On Tuesday, the WHO evacuated 49 non-essential staff out of the 120 people working on the epidemic in the city of Beni in North Kivu, one of the recurring Ebola hotspots.

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New UNAids chief vows to stamp out sexual misconduct and abuse of power

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Winnie Byanyima says known cases of sexual harassment were ‘tip of the iceberg’ as she pledges to restore trust in organisation

The new head of scandal-hit UNAids has vowed to transform the agency’s culture to safeguard staff not only from sexual harassment – which she called “the tip of the iceberg” – but any abuse of power by those at the top.

Winnie Byanyima said she would draw on lessons learned following allegations of sexual misconduct at Oxfam, of which she was international executive director until earlier this year, to address problems at the UN agency.

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Murals of Baghdad: the art of protest – in pictures

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Protests against the Iraqi government have drawn a deadly response from security forces. With 300 lives lost in less than two months, demonstrators are now taking spray paint to concrete walls in an attempt to sketch out their vision for a brighter future. Artists, many of them young women, have transformed a tunnel leading to Tahrir Square into a revolutionary art gallery

Arabic translation by Rana Haddad

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Whistleblowers on school paedophile ring in Afghanistan arrested

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Human rights defenders alleged that teachers and social workers were involved in abuse of more than 500 boys

Two people have been detained by Afghanistan’s intelligence services after they exposed a paedophile ring operating in some of the country’s schools.

Human rights organisations and the former president Hamid Karzai have called for the immediate release of Mohammed Mussa and Ehsanullah Hamidi, both well-known human rights defenders from Logar province, who were picked up by the National Directorate of Security last week when they were on their way to meet with the EU ambassador in Kabul.

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Nigeria launches first sex offender register

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Publicly accessible list will allow schools and hospitals to conduct background checks

Campaigners have hailed the launch of Nigeria’s first sex offender register as a vital step towards tackling reported cases of sexual abuse, which are rising across the country.

The publicly accessible onlineregister of people prosecuted for sexual violence since 2015 will allow public bodies and police authorities to conduct background checks and identify repeat offenders.

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UK development bank accused of failure to safeguard Congolese workers

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British-backed plantation firm vows to address claims that underpaid palm oil workers have been exposed to toxic chemicals

The UK development bank has been accused of failing to protect workers from exposure to dangerous pesticides and paying “extreme poverty” wages on palm oil plantations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Human Rights Watch said the CDC group, along with three other European development banks, had failed to properly oversee its investments in Feronia, one of Africa’s largest palm oil companies.

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Children bear the brunt as the world’s biggest measles epidemic sweeps Congo

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Children under the age of five account for 90% of deaths as disease claims 5,000 lives in less than a year

More than 5,000 people, mostly children, have been killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in what is currently the world’s biggest measles epidemic.

Measles, which is preventable through vaccination, has spread to all 26 provinces of the country, which is also battling a 15-month-long Ebola epidemic.

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British hotels accused of ‘lack of effort’ on forced labour and sexual exploitation

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Government urged to bolster anti-slavery legislation after damning review accuses firms of failure to protect workers

The British government has been urged to strengthen modern slavery legislation after hotels were accused of a “lack of effort” in preventing forced labour and sexual exploitation.

In a damning report published this week, human rights group Walk Free said three out of four hotels in the UK failed to comply with basic legal measures intended to protect workers from debt bondage and other forms of modern-day slavery.

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Rights activist Almaas Elman shot dead in Mogadishu

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Peace campaigner’s car struck by stray bullet while passing airport, security officials say

Almaas Elman, a prominent rights activist, was shot dead in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu on Wednesday.

Almaas, who came from a leading family of peace campaigners, was travelling by car inside the heavily fortified airport compound when she was hit.

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Labour vows to make UK development bank a champion of climate justice

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Key manifesto pledge includes ending investment in fossil fuel projects and supporting ‘green transitions’ abroad

Labour has pledged to review how hundreds of millions of pounds of foreign aid is spent through the government’s private finance arm and rebrand it as a green development bank.

In a key manifesto commitment, Labour promised to overhaul the CDC, which has received £2bn from the aid UK budget since 2016 to invest in projects in poorer countries.

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Children as young as five make up most of Madagascar’s mica mining workforce

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Investigation finds thousands of children are scavenging in deadly conditions for mineral widely used by car and electronics firms

Children as young as five make up more than half the number of miners scavenging for mica in Madagascar, according to a leading child rights group.

A year-long investigation by Terre des Hommes Netherlands found that at least 11,000 children between the ages of five and 17 are employed in quarrying and processing the shimmery, heat-resistant mineral, which is used in everything from makeup to car paint and hugely prevalent in the automotive and electronics industry.

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Less than 10% of EU aid reaches world’s poorest countries, study finds

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Contributions from European countries drop as progress on 0.7% target goes into reverse

Less than 10% of EU aid money reaches the countries where it is most needed, according to a study that found levels of assistance had dropped for the second year running.

The EU and its member states remain the biggest development donor group in the world – investing €71.9bn ($61bn) in 2018, more than half of global aid – but its contribution was 5.8% lower than in 2017, the European NGO network, Concord, found in its AidWatch report.

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Uganda bans thousands of charities in ‘chilling’ crackdown

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Government critics fear purge of sector as more than 12,000 organisations lose registered charity status

More than 12,000 charities have been told they can no longer operate in Uganda as critics raised fears that government regulatory measures effectively amounted to a purge.

The government said a review that took place in August and September would root out poorly performing organisations and create “a reliable data bank on all NGOs” in the country.

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Uganda recalls a million faulty condoms

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Charity takes action after holes are discovered in two batches of Life Guard condoms

The charity Marie Stopes International is recalling more than a million condoms in Uganda, after officials raised concerns that they were prone to breaking.

The charity began the recall of packets of Life Guard condoms after the National Drug Authority found they contained holes and did not meet quality standards. More than half of the affected products have since been recovered.

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Greece to replace island refugee camps with ‘detention centres’

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Government announces plans to relocate 20,000 people from islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos by early 2020

Greece has announced plans to close its three largest migrant camps and replace them with facilities on the mainland that campaigners have likened to detention centres.

People living in overcrowded camps on the islands of Lesbos, Chios and Samos will be moved to closed complexes for identification, relocation and deportation with a capacity of at least 5,000 people each.

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UN warns Burkina Faso could become ‘another Syria’ as violence soars

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Children bear the brunt as extremism and climate crisis drive almost 500,000 people from their homes

The UN food agency has warned of an “escalating humanitarian crisis” in Burkina Faso, driven by growing extremist violence and the long-term impact of climate crisis in the arid central Sahel region.

A sharp increase in attacks, the result of the west African country becoming embroiled in the jihadist insurgency that began in the region in early 2015, has forced almost half a million people from their homes.

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‘The clock is ticking’: race to save 2 million from statelessness in Assam

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A team of volunteer paralegals are fighting to stop Indians without proof of citizenship being sent to detention camps

When she was one, Suro Devi was rescued by a sewer cleaner from a rubbish dump in Assam, northeast India. When the state of Assam started a massive exercise to register its citizens in 2015, Suro Devi did not have a birth certificate, information about her parents, a voter list with her name on it, or anything to prove that she had lived in Assam before 25 March 1971. She seemed destined to be left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and become stateless, and perhaps spend the rest of her days in a detention camp.

But Zamser Ali, a citizenship rights activist based in Assam’s capital, Guwahati, heard about Devi’s case. He knew that documents were not the only thing that could prove your origins. He managed to track down five eyewitnesses to her rescue from the dump. And in August, when the draft NRC was published, Devi’s name appeared on it.

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‘We have nothing’: Somalia floods raise spectre of famine

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Communities already hit by war and drought face fresh disaster as 370,000 are forced from homes

Ciraa Farah Ali was asleep when she heard the flood. It was dark, and the 45-year-old mother of seven was alone with her children in her small home in Beledweyne, central Somalia.

Related: Global heating supercharging Indian Ocean climate system

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Global heating supercharging Indian Ocean climate system

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Indian Ocean dipole events, linked to bushfires and floods, are becoming stronger and more frequent, scientists say

Global heating is “supercharging” an increasingly dangerous climate mechanism in the Indian Ocean that has played a role in disasters this year including bushfires in Australia and floods in Africa.

Scientists and humanitarian officials say this year’s record Indian Ocean dipole, as the phenomenon is known, threatens to reappear more regularly and in a more extreme form as sea surface temperatures rise.

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$1 a week: the bitter poverty of child sugarcane workers in Zimbabwe

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Children as young as seven are doing hazardous work for meagre sums on sugar plantations

The blistering sun beats mercilessly on the Mukwasine sugar plantations near Chiredzi, in south-east Zimbabwe. It is Sunday morning and the soothing sound of hymns reverberate from a nearby church.

For most of the children living near the estate, it is time for Sunday school and listening to Bible stories.

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