Category Archives: Global development

Wiping out the daughters: Burkina Faso’s controversial mosquito experiment

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A radical experiment to genetically modify a strain of mosquito in order to stop them breeding malaria-carrying daughters is one of the latest efforts to tackle the deadly scourge of malaria

At 6.30am five-year-old Osman Balama and his mother reach the state hospital of Bobo-Dioulasso, the second-largest city in Burkina Faso. He hasn’t been feeling well for a few days and his mother is worried that he has contracted malaria. The waiting room is already full of mothers and grandmothers with young children on their laps, all with the same tired look as Osman.

“The rainy season has started,” says Sami Palm, head of the clinic. “That means more mosquitos. I’m certain that almost everyone here has malaria.”

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New emoji set aims to shatter image of Africa as zone of famine and war

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O’Plérou Grebet designs images that reflect culture of his country, Ivory Coast

In January 2018, O’Plérou Grebet set himself a challenge. For every day of the year, the graphic design student, then aged 20, decided to design an emoji that reflected the culture of his home country, Ivory Coast, and the wider region of West Africa.

“I wanted to create a project to promote African cultures to change the image the Western media have of Africa: hunger, poverty and wars,” he said. “I wanted to show a different and positive side.”

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The vanishing: Ghana’s defenders face new perils in fight against overfishing

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Illegal fishing by Chinese-owned trawlers is costing the country millions – and one of the officials trying to stop it has now been missing for months

In his cramped living room in an Accra backstreet, Bernard Essien pulls out a sheet of paper – a statement signed by his elder brother Emmanuel and addressed to the Ghanaian police. Two weeks before 28-year-old Emmanuel vanished at sea, his handwritten account and accompanying video footage alleged illegal fishing by a trawler he had been working on. If the allegation was proved true, the ship’s captain faced a minimum fine of $1m.

Emmanuel Essien was a fishing observer, one of Ghana’s frontline defenders against an overfishing crisis that is among the worst in west Africa. Illegal and destructive practices by foreign-owned trawlers are draining the Ghanaian economy of an estimated £50m a year. Along its 350-mile coastline, overfishing has driven small pelagic species known as “people’s fish”, the staple diet, to the verge of collapse.

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‘My job can be pretty depressing’: how Africa’s legal systems are tipped against girls

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Discrimination against girls is still entrenched in the laws of many African countries. Shocking examples are easy to find

I love my job, but it can be pretty depressing. I’ve spent the past year researching and writing the first-ever continental report of the routine, blatant discrimination suffered by African girls.

The fact that girls and women are treated as inferior citizens is hardly news, except that this report reveals the extent to which gender discrimination is frequently state-sanctioned – embedded into the laws, policies and practices of many African nations. We’re talking about legal, institutional discrimination with its roots in a deeply gendered and patriarchal society. We are also talking about the denial of respect for the dignity of the African girl.

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Rabies breakthrough offers fresh hope in battle against deadly virus

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New research raises hopes of oral vaccine for dogs, the chief source of transmission to humans

Researchers have discovered a way to stop rabies from shutting down critical responses in the immune system, a breakthrough that could pave the way for new tools to fight the deadly disease.

Rabies kills almost 60,000 people each year, mostly affecting poor and rural communities.

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Indonesia’s food chain turns toxic as plastic waste exports flood in

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Study of chicken egg samples reveals presence of dangerous chemical compounds around areas where waste is dumped

Plastic waste exports to south-east Asia have been implicated in extreme levels of toxins entering the human food chain in Indonesia.

A new study that sampled chicken eggs around sites in the country where plastic waste accumulates identified alarming levels of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls long recognised as extremely injurious to human health.

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Coca-Cola country in southern Mexico – photo essay

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In Los Altos, Chiapas, Coke has become a key part of indigenous ceremonies as well as a staple source of hydration. The photographer Diana Bagnoli visited the region to see the effect of this trend on public health

To enter the highlands of Chiapas, in southern Mexico, is to enter a world of vibrant indigenous culture, breathtaking natural beauty, entrenched racism and grinding poverty. It is also to enter the territory of Coca-Cola.

More Coke is consumed per capita in Mexico than in any other country, and some studies suggest the indigenous communities of the highlands, or Los Altos, may be the soft drink’s most loyal customers on the planet.

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Family planning schemes must offer options other than abortion, says US

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Campaigners urge global action on reproductive rights as US comments embolden anti-choice groups at Nairobi summit

The US will only support family planning programmes that offer alternatives to abortions, a senior policy adviser has told a conference in Nairobi.

In a statement that has emboldened anti-choice groups in the city, Valerie Huber, the US special representative for global women’s health, also told a summit on population and development that her country sought to combat gender-based violence by investing in programmes that respected the rights of women and girls, but didn’t compromise “the inherent value of every human life – born and unborn”.

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Why is the world losing the fight against history’s most lethal disease?

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Easy to catch but hard to diagnose, TB is almost as deadly today as it was 150 years ago. Better, cheaper drugs are a priority

Tuberculosis has killed more people than any other disease in history. Last year, 1.5 million people died from TB and 10 million more acquired it. A shocking one-quarter of the world’s population is infected. That’s not much better than 1993, when one-third of the world was infected and the World Health Organization declared TB a global emergency. We are losing the battle.

Earlier this month, experts gathered in Hyderabad for the 50th Union World Conference on fighting the disease. When the first such gathering was held in 1867, TB was the leading cause of death in industrialised nations. Today, it still ranks in the top 10 worldwide. Why, despite all the progress in medicine and public health over the past 150 years, is TB still the most common and lethal of all infectious diseases?

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Norwegian wealth fund blacklists G4S shares over human rights concerns

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Sovereign wealth fund cites risk of company contributing to ill-treatment of migrant labour in Qatar and UAE

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has banned all holdings of shares in G4S because of the risk of human rights violations against the British security company’s workforce in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

Norway’s Council of Ethics, which monitors investments in the country’s £860bn Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG), said there was an “unacceptable risk of the company contributing to systematic human rights violations”. Up to 30,000 staff could be affected.

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What happens to Afghanistan’s left-behind women as the Taliban rises?

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Separated from her family after an attempt to flee failed, Tahira is among a growing number of women left struggling and vulnerable in a country where lone mothers are harshly judged

On a bitterly cold day, Tahira* sits in her rented room in Kabul. She has a husband and three young children, but the last time the family were all together was in 2018 – the day they tried to escape Afghanistan.

Insecurity in their town in Maidan Wardak province led Tahira, 27, to try to flee to Turkey, via Iran, with her family. But when the time came, only her husband, son and seven-year-old daughter made it.

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Cost of ending maternal deaths laid bare as $115bn funding shortfall revealed

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UN urges major push to meet targets as researchers at Nairobi summit also sound alarm over family planning and violence

The global push to stop mothers dying unnecessarily in childbirth, meet family planning needs and end violence against women could be undermined by a massive funding shortfall, researchers have found.

World leaders have pledged to redouble efforts to end preventable maternal death, satisfy family planning demand and stop violence and harmful practices against women and girls by 2030.

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UN agency to take ‘aggressive’ action if sexual abuse claims substantiated

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An internal survey revealed hundreds of allegations of abuse, including rape and sexual assault, at the World Food Programme

The head of the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) has vowed to take “aggressive” action against sex abusers, following an internal survey that found multiple allegations of rape and sexual assault at the agency.

“If we have a claim of rape by anyone in the WFP, if we can substantiate, I can’t begin to tell you how aggressive” actions will be, executive director David Beasley told news agency Associated Press.

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Afghanistan paedophile ring may be responsible for abuse of over 500 boys

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Social workers claim teachers and local officials are implicated, and believe thousands more children may have been targeted

A paedophile ring involved in the abuse of at least 546 boys from six schools has been discovered in Afghanistan’s Logar province.

Some of the victims of the abuse have since been murdered according to the campaigners who first discovered videos of abuse posted to a Facebook page.

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More than 200 elephants in Zimbabwe die as drought crisis deepens

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Parks agency plans to move hundreds of animals in ‘biggest translocation of wildlife in Zimbabwe’s history’

Hundreds of elephants and tens of lions in Zimbabwe will be moved by the country’s wildlife agency as part of a major operation to save the animals from a devastating drought.

More than 200 elephants have died over the last two months due to a lack of water at the country’s main conservation zones in Mana Pools and Hwange National Park.

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Donald Trump plans to make foreign aid conditional on religious freedom

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President wants to apportion aid based on how countries treat religious minorities

White House officials are reportedly drafting plans to make US foreign aid conditional on how countries treat their religious minorities, in an effort that is seen as a sop to Christian evangelicals in Donald Trump’s base.

The move, which threatens to impose further constraints on a US foreign aid policy already heavily restricted under the Trump administration, was first reported by Politico after briefings from White House aides.

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We can’t allow Myanmar’s slavery-tainted shrimp to land on our plates

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Europe is in talks with Myanmar to increase seafood imports. It cannot ignore the widespread slavery within the industry

While forced labour and slavery in the fishing industry in Thailand and other parts of the world have been brought to light in recent years, the fishing industry in Myanmar has received less attention.

This is because fish caught there is mostly sold to local markets, but this may be about to change. Myanmar’s seafood businesses are increasingly seeking export markets, including the EU. And unless the EU responds to the clear evidence of widespread slavery and brutal conditions in Myanmar’s fishing industry, Europe could face another slavery scandal.

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Access to contraception falling far short of global targets – report

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Family planning services are reaching more women, but population growth is hampering efforts to reach 2020 goal

More women and girls in low income countries are using family planning than ever before, but global efforts to widen access to contraception are still falling well behind targets, according to a report.

One year away from a global deadline to widen access to modern forms of family planning, such services are accessible to less than half of the women that policy makers hoped to reach.

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Abuse and torture of mental health patients ‘rife’ across Nigeria, says report

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Human Rights Watch said people were chained and faced physical and sexual violence in both state and religious centres

Nigeria has been urged to end all forms of abuse in state-run mental health institutions as well as religious healing centres.

In a report published on Monday Human Rights Watch (HRW) said thousands of Nigerians with mental health conditions face prolonged detention, chaining, physical and sexual violence or forced treatment, including electroshock therapy.

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‘Geography is a problem’: slowing the silent spread of HIV in the Amazon

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A team of doctors and volunteers are travelling by boat to treat and educate indigenous communities at higher risk of Aids

As the serpentine Amazon river meanders through a sea of jungle, a little red boat speeds across its muddy brown waters. Powered by two outboard motors, the vessel carries a cargo of volunteers, medics and nurses, an awning, and dozens of HIV screening tests.

The first stop is Nueva Vida Yahua, an indigenous village 40 minutes down the Nanay river from Iquitos. The women are dressed in red skirts and grass tops worn draped over their shoulders, the men in long grass skirts and headdresses made from blue macaw feathers.

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