Category Archives: Global development

Conflicts drive number of forcibly displaced people to record high

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Sharp rise, equivalent to population of London, means nearly 120 million have been driven from their homes

The number of people forced out of their homes around the world last year was the equivalent of the population of London, according to the UN’s refugee agency.

The latest annual assessment from the United Nations high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) said a sharp rise in the number of people forcibly displaced during 2023 had brought the total to a record high of more than 117 million. Conflicts were largely to blame with many, such as those in Ukraine and Sudan, showing little sign of ending.

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Ugandan oil pipeline protester allegedly beaten as part of ‘alarming crackdown’

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Stephen Kwikiriza is one of 11 campaigners against EACOP targeted by authorities in past two weeks, rights group says

A man campaigning against the controversial $5bn (£4bn) east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP) is recovering in hospital after an alleged beating by the Ugandan armed forces in the latest incident in what has been called an “alarming crackdown” on the country’s environmentalists.

Stephen Kwikiriza, who works for Uganda’s Environment Governance Institute (EGI), a non-profit organisation, was abducted in Kampala on 4 June, according to his employer. He was beaten, questioned and then abandoned hundreds of miles from the capital on Sunday evening.

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Battlefield deaths from global conflicts hit 30-year high, study finds

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Since 2021, the overall number of deaths, including of civilians, has risen to the highest level in three decades, Peace Research Institute Oslo reports

Deaths from civil conflicts and battles across the world over the past three years have risen to the highest level in three decades, according to a new report.

Research by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (Prio) showed that while the number of battlefield deaths fell compared with the previous two years, since 2021 the overall number of conflict-related deaths, including of civilians, has risen to the highest level in 30 years.

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Revealed: drug cartels force migrant children to work as foot soldiers in Europe’s booming cocaine trade

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Exclusive: Guardian investigation shows white powder trail linking hundreds of vulnerable African minors with ruthless gangs

Hundreds of unaccompanied child migrants across Europe are being forced to work as soldiers for increasingly powerful drug cartels to meet the continent’s soaring appetite for cocaine, a Guardian investigation has found.

EU police forces have warned of industrial-scale exploitation of African children by cocaine networks operating in western Europe in cities including Paris and Brussels as they seek to expand Europe’s £10bn cocaine market.

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Under threat of jail, microfinance pioneer vows to keep lending to poorest Bangladeshis

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Muhammad Yunus tells the Guardian charges against him are politically motivated, and expresses concern about personal attacks from politicians

The Nobel peace laureate and microfinance pioneer Muhammad Yunus has said that years of fighting what he calls “dirty” politically motivated attacks on his work to alleviate poverty in Bangladesh have made life “totally miserable”.

Yunus told the Guardian he had come under 20 years of pressure from the Bangladeshi government for his work, which is credited with improving the lives of millions of poor people, particularly women.

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Argentina’s far-right president poised to shut down anti-gender violence agency

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‘Women at risk’ amid increasing number of femicides but assistance including emergency helpline will be cut

Javier Milei, Argentina’s far-right president, is poised to dissolve the government department responsible for tackling gender violence, prompting a furious backlash from human rights activists.

Claudia Barcia, the head of the undersecretariat for protection against gender violence, resigned on Thursday with a warning that the agency will soon be shuttered. “The Undersecretary of Protection against Gender Violence … will cease to exist,” Barcia wrote on Twitter, later confirming to the Guardian that she had received the news the previous day.

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Saudi Arabia accused of using forced labour ahead of Fifa World Cup decision

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Union’s claim of ‘epidemic of migrant worker abuses’ could force Fifa to reject state as 2034 host if it fails to meet rights obligations

Saudi Arabia, the likely host of the 2034 World Cup, is facing allegations of widespread use of forced labour among its vast migrant workforce, in a complaint filed at the UN’s International Labour Organization.

The complaint to the ILO alleges that migrant workers in Saudi Arabia are subject to a raft of labour rights violations including failing to pay wages, passport confiscation, illegal recruitment fees, debt bondage and preventing workers freely changing jobs.

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Improving energy supply in Pakistan could save 175,000 lives, says Unicef

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As a heatwave sweeps the country increasing demand for power, a new report says a more resilient network could also contribute $300m to the economy

A study by the UN children’s agency has found that developing resilient energy systems to keep the power on in health facilities in Pakistan could prevent more than 175,000 deaths in the country by 2030.

The study comes as Pakistan is experiencing a blistering heatwave that has overstretched an already poor healthcare system. Last week, temperatures in various parts of the country reached highs of 49C (120F), causing a huge demand for power.

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Nigeria to host first Lassa fever treatment trials for 40 years

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The viral disease kills 5,000 people a year in west Africa, and has been described as an epidemic threat to global health

Clinical trials for the first new treatment for Lassa fever in almost 40 years are planned to be held in Nigeria this year.

The neglected tropical disease kills about 5,000 people a year and is endemic in west Africa.

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Alarming levels of ‘forever chemicals’ found in water near Bangladesh garment factories

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Study confirms huge concentrations of potentially dangerous PFAS in rivers, lakes and taps in Dhaka

Rivers, lakes and tap water in areas of Bangladesh that host garment factories are swarming with dangerous levels of toxic “forever chemicals”, some with links to serious health issues, according to new research.

In the first study of its kind conducted in Bangladesh, a global fashion hub supplying international brands, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), commonly known as forever chemicals, were found in 27 water samples collected close to textile factories in the capital, Dhaka.

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Rwanda’s top UK diplomat oversaw use of Interpol to target regime opponents

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Exclusive: Johnston Busingye formally appointed days after UK agreed Rwanda asylum deal with Paul Kagame in 2022

Rwanda’s top diplomat in the UK oversaw the use of the international justice system to target opponents of the country’s rulers around the world, the Guardian can reveal.

New details of the Rwandan government’s suppression of opposition beyond its borders add to concerns about the regime at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s asylum policy.

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Tens of thousands flee camp in Sudan after attacks by RSF paramilitaries

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Concerns grow that Darfur is facing another genocide as Rapid Support Forces besiege city of El Fasher

Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes in a displacement camp in the city of El Fasher in Sudan’s Darfur region after attacks by the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, as concern grows that Darfur is facing another genocide.

The RSF has besieged the city for weeks, aiming to take the last major population centre in Darfur that it does not control. Hundreds of thousands are sheltering there after fleeing other cities taken by the group over the past year.

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Peruvian reporter is target of smear campaign after taking on political elite

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Gustavo Gorriti, who has long exposed corruption, is the target of a criminal investigation campaigners call ‘politically motivated’

For more than four decades, Gustavo Gorriti has been a thorn in the side of corrupt elites, relentlessly uncovering government wrongdoing in Latin America – most recently exposing an unprecedented level of graft in Operation Car Wash, the continent-wide scandal that has ensnared nearly every elected Peruvian president of this century.

Gorriti made his name reporting the bloody rise of the Mao-inspired Shining Path. He was kidnapped by military intelligence agents during Alberto Fujimori’s 1992 power grab after unmasking his shadowy spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos.

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Attacks on health workers in conflict zones at highest level ever – report

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More than 2,500 attacks in 2023, including medics killed and clinics bombed, in war zones such as Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine

Attacks on health workers, hospitals and clinics in conflict zones jumped 25% last year to their highest level on record, a new report has found.

While the increase was largely driven by new wars in Gaza and Sudan, continuing conflicts such as Ukraine and Myanmar also saw such attacks continue “at a relentless pace”, the Safeguarding Health in Conflict coalition said.

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Honduran city’s air pollution is almost 50 times higher than WHO guidelines

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San Pedro Sula is rated ‘dangerous’ as effects of forest fires, El Niño and the climate crisis cause a spike in respiratory illnesses

The air quality in San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city in Honduras, as been classified as the most polluted on the American continent due to forest fires and weather conditions aggravated by El Niño and the climate crisis.

IQAir, a Swiss air-quality organisation that draws data from more than 30,000 monitoring stations around the world, said on Thursday that air quality in the city of about 1 million people has reached “dangerous” levels.

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‘Bullet wounds are common’: crime rife in DRC’s rebel-besieged city of Goma

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Robberies, shootings, extortion and rapes have surged since the Rwandan-backed M23 militia cut off the eastern Congolese capital

In broad daylight on 16 April, three armed and uniformed men held up a city centre mobile phone shop.

Threatening staff, they helped themselves to about £700 worth of goods, before making off on a motorbike, disappearing into the busy streets of Goma, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

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Cop29 at a crossroads in Azerbaijan with focus on climate finance

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Fossil-fuel dependent country hopes to provide bridge between wealthy global north and poor south at November gathering

Oil is inescapable in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. The smell of it greets the visitor on arrival and from the shores of the Caspian Sea on which the city is built the tankers are eternally visible. Flares from refineries near the centre light up the night sky, and you do not have to travel far to see fields of “nodding donkeys”, small piston pump oil wells about 6 metres (20ft) tall, that look almost festive in their bright red and green livery.

It will be an interesting setting for the gathering of the 29th UN climate conference of the parties, which will take place at the Olympic Stadium in November.

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Nigerian activists condemn mass ‘forced marriages’ of 100 girls and young women

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Petition launched to halt mass ceremony that organisers say is for 100 orphans whose parents were killed by gangs

Human rights activists in Nigeria have launched a petition to stop a plan to push 100 girls and young women into marriage in a mass ceremony, which has caused outrage in the west African country.

The plan, sponsored by Abdulmalik Sarkindaji, the speaker of the national assembly in the largely Muslim north-western state of Niger, were criticised by Nigeria’s women’s affairs minister, Uju Kennedy Ohanenye. She said she would seek a court injunction to stop the ceremony next week and establish if any of the girls were minors.

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‘Nothing short of horrific’: Amnesty criticises arrest of man in Qatar ‘trapped’ by police on Grindr

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Manuel Guerrero Aviña thought he was meeting a date, but was confronted by police who charged him for drug possession

The family of a gay man who was arrested in Qatar say that he was “trapped” by a fake Grindr account and that he urgently needs access to HIV medicine or his health could collapse.

Manuel Guerrero Aviña, who has dual Mexican-British citizenship, was arrested in February after arranging to meet a man named “Gio” on the dating app. When he showed up to the meeting in his apartment lobby, Aviña was instead confronted by police officers.

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Starlink internet shutdown in Sudan will punish millions, Elon Musk warned

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With a widespread telecoms blackout already in place, emergency help and humanitarian aid at risk if satellite service withdrawn, say NGOs

Nearly 100 humanitarian groups in Sudan have warned Elon Musk he risks “collectively punishing” millions of Sudanese by shutting down his vital Starlink satellite internet service in the war-ravaged country.

Sudan has been grappling with a widespread telecommunications blackout for several months, with many aid groups using Starlink to operate during the humanitarian crisis which the UN has warned is the largest in decades.

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