Category Archives: Global development

Central African Republic seeks a salve for the scars of war

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Conflict-ravaged country hopes trials at new court in Bangui will at last punish those responsible for massacres and rape

The moment they entered town, the rebel soldiers started firing on civilians. As terrified crowds fled into nearby woods, a 40-year-old disabled woman called Monique Douma realised she was trapped.

“I told Monique to come with me but she said she couldn’t,” a relative later told investigators. “She said: ‘I don’t have the strength to run.’” Militants set fire to Douma’s home while she hid inside.

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Zimbabwe on verge of ‘manmade starvation’, warns UN envoy

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Food shortages affecting 60% of country’s population threaten to make political instability worse, says UN expert

Zimbabwe is on the brink of manmade starvation with close to 60% of the population now food insecure, a UN envoy has said.

Hilal Elver, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, said the situation was likely to escalate political instability in the southern African nation. After an 11-day visit to parts of the country worst hit by the El Niño-induced drought, Elver said widespread food insecurity was being exacerbated by hyperinflation.

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Ebola health workers killed and injured by rebel attack in Congo

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World Health Organization chief warns violence will harm efforts to deal with Ebola outbreak

Four health workers fighting the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been killed and five injured in an attack by rebel militia, the World Health Organization has said.

The attacks occurred early on Thursday morning in the restive east of the vast central African country.

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Polio outbreaks in Africa caused by mutation of strain in vaccine

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New cases of highly infectious disease that should be ‘consigned to the history books’ reported in Nigeria, the DRC, CAR and Angola

New cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine have been reported in four African countries and more children are now being paralysed by vaccine-derived viruses than those infected by viruses in the wild, according to global health numbers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and partners identified nine new cases caused by the vaccine in Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic and Angola last week. Along with seven other African countries with outbreaks, cases have also been reported in Asia. In Afghanistan and Pakistan polio remains endemic, and in Pakistan officials have been accused of covering up vaccine-related cases.

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Reopening Sana’a airport ‘critical first step’ for Yemenis needing medical care

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Patients requiring life-saving treatment to be allowed to fly, but aid agencies say imports of medicine and humanitarian aid crucial

Aid agencies have welcomed news from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen that it will allow some flights out of Houthi-held Sana’a, for Yemeni civilians requiring life-saving medical treatment.

As many as 32,000 people in need of overseas medical care may have died since the airport closed to commercial flights in August 2016, according to ministry of health estimates. The figures have not been verified independently, but in 2017 the UN estimated that up to 20,000 people had been denied access to potentially life-saving healthcare due to restrictions on airspace.

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Refugees being ‘starved out’ of UN facility in Tripoli

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Aid worker claims refugees are being denied food to motivate them to leave

The UN has been accused of trying to starve out refugees and asylum seekers who are sheltering for safety inside a centre run by the UN refugee agency in the Libyan capital of Tripoli.

One group of about 400 people, who came to the Tripoli gathering and departure facility in October from Abu Salim detention centre in the south of the country, have apparently been without food for weeks.

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Fishing nations to lower catch limits for Atlantic bigeye tuna

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Plan aims to allow tuna population to recover from overfishing, but conservationists say endangered mako shark has been overlooked

Conservationists welcomed “long overdue” catch limits set this week for bigeye tuna and other Atlantic species, but criticised weak measures to rebuild endangered mako shark populations.

The International Commission for the Conservations of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) – responsible for the management of tuna and tuna-like species and bycatch including sharks and rays – set new catch limits for bigeye tuna at a meeting in Palma, Mallorca, this week. It also agreed to reduce juvenile fish mortality by limiting certain fishing practices.

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Soaring arches, broken tiles: why Gaudí’s style was perfect for Senegal

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Experts from Barcelona combined local techniques and materials with the tradition of the Catalan master to build new school

At first sight the school buildings that have sprung up in Thionck Essyl in Senegal resemble a lost work by Antonio Gaudí.

The strikingly-designed school, where classes began in October, is the work of a group of volunteers led by the Barcelona architect David Garcia and his colleague Lluís Morón, who established a foundation to crowdfund the project.

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African countries a ‘new frontier for child sexual exploitation’, warns report

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Researchers draw link between weak regulation of travel industry and rising levels of sex tourism and online sexual crime

Weak laws regulating sexual exploitation in travel and tourism are turning the African continent into a “new frontier for child sexual exploitation”, according to a new report.

The study, by the African Child Policy Forum, sheds light on the continued rise of child sexual exploitation, including new forms such as “tourism marriages” and cybersex.

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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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