Category Archives: Global development

Praise for female aid workers rings hollow when harassment is pervasive

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Aid agencies should be champions for gender equality – so why do female employees face violence and discrimination from men who see them as ‘too pretty for complex issues’?

Is sexual harassment the most important issue facing female humanitarians? If you say yes, you are not alone. In a poll promoted on social media, 41% of respondents identified harassment as the top concern for female aid workers.

Our survey results reinforce decades of research – evidence that has fallen on deaf ears and failed to spark concrete change. For women working in humanitarian settings, the greatest risks they face in responding to emergencies come from their very own employers.

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Samson Otieno: ‘Without art I don’t think I would be where I am today’

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In the final instalment of the Kibera series, the musician describes his journey from Kenya’s largest slum to London

Samson Odhiambo Otieno’s early life was never going to be easy. Born into a life of poverty in Kibera, Nairobi, at a young age he endured the death of his mother and siblings, and rejection by his new step-mother. Forced out of the only home he knew he became one of Kenya’s street children, living on the road, making his way through life the best he could.

Otieno, now 29, attended the launch of the Guardian’s Kibera: living in the slum exhibition to catch up with the life he once knew and memories he treasures dearly, through the images of his hometown – a far cry from where he is now.

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Congo Ebola outbreak spreads to new province as epidemic continues to spiral

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One woman dead after two cases are confirmed in South Kivu’s Lwindi district, near DRC’s border with Rwanda

The year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has spread to a new province, with two cases – one of them fatal – confirmed in South Kivu.

The confirmed cases were reported in the Mwenga area, some way south of the city of Bukavu, which sits on the country’s eastern border with Rwanda.

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Ethiopians face beatings and bullets as Saudi ‘deportation machine’ cranks up

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Saudi Arabia denies claims that staff at detention facilities treat violent abuse of undocumented migrants ‘like a sport’

When police arrested Tayib Mohammed at the southern border of Saudi Arabia, they seized all his worldly possessions and set them on fire.

The 45-year-old undocumented Ethiopian migrant was trying to cross from Yemen after a five-day trek through the bush. “They told me to undress,” he recalled several weeks later in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, wearing sandals and pyjamas. “They took away everything I had – phone, clothes, money. They burned them in front of me.”

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Bosses force female workers making jeans for Levis and Wrangler into sex

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Women at factories in Lesotho owned by Taiwanese firm say jobs and promotions in jeopardy if they refuse advances, claims report

Women producing jeans for American brands including Levi Strauss, Wrangler and Lee have been forced to sleep with their managers to keep their jobs or gain promotion, an investigation into sexual harassment and coercion at garment factories in Lesotho has found.

Brands have responded to the “extensive” allegations by the the US-based Worker Rights Consortium by signing enforceable agreements with labour and women’s rights groups to eliminate gender-based violence for more than 10,000 workers at five factories owned by the Taiwanese company Nien Hsing, one of the southern African country’s largest employers.

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Iraq’s burning problem: the strange fires destroying crops and livelihoods

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Fires in northern Iraq have reduced a potentially bumper harvest to ashes. The government blames mischance – but is something more sinister afoot?

Plumes of smoke shroud the summer sky of Iraq’s northern plains, creating an ominous veil of grey. Fires in Nineveh province have broken out on a scale that farmers here describe as unprecedented, turning tens of thousands of acres of wheat and barley fields into barren patches of black.

“Look at that, the livelihood of the people is destroyed,” says Jalal Muamah as he picks up a handful of charred barley spikes that pepper his field near the town of Sinjar. “We won’t have a harvest better than this year, not even in the next hundred years.”

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‘The people have power’: Kenya’s gang leader turned community builder

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After rising to the top of the criminal pyramid in Nairobi’s Kibera slum, George Okewa rejected violence in favour of local leadership

George Okewa once terrorised his community. Spurred on by violence, drink and drugs, he believed that one day his lifestyle would cause his death.

The day he met Kennedy Odede, that changed. Following the realisation that their most powerful weapon was not guns but communication, they now use their skills to bring peace and resources to Kibera, Africa’s largest slum.

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‘Scores’ killed in Yemen as UAE-backed fighters seize parts of Aden

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Clashes between forces backed by former Gulf allies UAE and Saudi threaten ‘new civil war within a civil war’, says thinktank

“Scores” of people were killed and hundreds wounded during recent fighting in Yemen’s key port of Aden when southern separatists – trained by the UAE – seized key locations of the city from Saudi-backed government forces.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Aden told the Guardian that large parts of the city were also left without electricity and water during the fighting after services were targeted. Humanitarian staff warned that any further fighting between forces allied with the two coalition partners would be “devastating”.

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El Salvador rape victim who suffered stillbirth faces murder retrial

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Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz gave birth in a toilet and was initially jailed for 33 months before successful appeal

A rape victim who delivered a stillborn baby as a teenager is facing decades in prison for aggravated homicide as prosecutors in El Salvador seek to prove she deliberately induced an abortion.

On Thursday, Evelyn Beatríz Hernández Cruz, 21, from a poor rural family in Cojutepeque, will go on trial for the second time in a case that highlights the aggressive criminal persecution of Salvadoran women who suffer obstetric complications.

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‘Men said we were immoral’: the aphrodisiacs challenging taboos | Wana Udobang

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Nigeria’s traditional ‘Kayan Mata’ recipes have grown into a booming industry that’s empowering women to be more open about sex

When Amra Mansur was working as a makeup artist in Abuja, while she studied law, she would overhear conversations between would-be brides and older relatives about how to please their men in the bedroom.

The older, mostly female relatives would recite aphrodisiac recipes that involved ingredients like fenugreek, dates, honey, watermelon and the fruit silky kola.

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Sharp rise in number of children killed in Mali’s deadly attacks

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Death toll reported by Unicef highlights deepening crisis, with recent spate of violent ambushes attributed to ethnic militias

The number of children killed in Mali in the first six months of this year is twice the number who died for the whole of 2018, according to the UN’s children agency.

Inter-communal attacks are the main reason for the sharp rise in children being killed and maimed in the west African country, Unicef said, with most of these attacks concentrated in the central region of Mopti. More than 150 children were killed and 75 injured in violent attacks in the first six months of 2019.

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‘It has altered me forever’: trauma of child domestic workers in Pakistan | Saba Karim Khan

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Despite shocking reports of abuse and a social media outcry, there is little sign of stricter laws to protect children

Each night, after a 12-hour shift of domestic drudgery, Neelum, 11, and Pari, 13, leave their employer’s million-dollar mansion with its manicured lawns in Karachi’s glitzy Defence neighbourhood, and return to their servant lodgings. There they sleep on thin, termite-infested mattresses, under-nourished from their diet of leftovers.

Behind the glistening glass doors of the country’s most opulent neighbourhood, thousands of children work as maids and servants. Across Pakistan, an estimated 264,000 children are employed in such work, and claims of abuse by employers are commonplace. In January, 16-year-old maid Uzma Bibi was allegedly tortured and murdered by her employer in Lahore for helping herself to a small piece of meat. After tweets about her case went viral under the hashtag #justiceforUzma, three people, including her employer, were arrested and are now in custody awaiting trial.

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Joy, despair and determination: photographs from Kibera

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Despite its poverty, Kibera is a vibrant place where people survive in testing conditions, both physical and mental. These images by four photographers born and bred there capture the spirit of Africa’s largest slum.

An exhibition, ‘Kibera: Living in the slum’, is on show at the Guardian’s London offices until 31 August

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‘We won’t refuse someone in need’: the paramedics taking on Nairobi’s slum | Rod Austin

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In Kenya’s Kibera, where government ambulance teams daren’t go, a local has taken matters into her own hands

No day is the same for Evalyne Nyangweso, entrepreneur and owner of an ambulance service dedicated to an unforgiving community prone to poor health, disease and high crime rates.

Operating in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum, where traditional ambulances daren’t go and even police tread carefully, Nyangweso and her crew are the first responders to medical emergencies.

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‘I know how to use a gun’: children living on Afghanistan’s frontline – in pictures

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In a war that has been raging for decades, a third of the casualties are children. Last year, the UN recorded 927 child deaths and 2,135 injuries. In the first half of this year, 327 children were killed and 880 wounded.

Children across the country continue to live on the frontlines – and sometimes get caught in the middle of it all. Here, they share their experiences

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Schoolchildren in China work overnight to produce Amazon Alexa devices

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Leaked documents show children as young as 16 recruited by Amazon supplier Foxconn work gruelling and illegal hours

Hundreds of schoolchildren have been drafted in to make Amazon’s Alexa devices in China as part of a controversial and often illegal attempt to meet production targets, documents seen by the Guardian reveal.

Interviews with workers and leaked documents from Amazon’s supplier Foxconn show that many of the children have been required to work nights and overtime to produce the smart-speaker devices, in breach of Chinese labour laws.

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Kenyan MP forced out of parliament for bringing baby into chamber – video

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An MP was ejected from the Kenyan parliament after she brought her baby into the chamber. Zuleikha Hassan brought her five-month-old daughter into the chamber because of an emergency at home, but she was ordered to leave because house rules state 'strangers' are not allowed in the area 

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‘I fear for the children’: the families battling to beat the odds in Kibera – photo essay

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Family takes many shapes and guises – and in Africa’s largest slum the ties of love and blood are especially tested, cruelly sculpted by epidemics like HIV as well as strained by economic and climate crises

Rosemary Achia, 53, has two daughters. One has a job washing clothes in Nairobi and the other works in a hotel, so all seven grandchildren live with her.

“I am a little old for this,” she says. “I have been 11 years a widow. He was a good man but God gives and God takes away.”

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Free speech and privacy on the wane across the world

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Autocratic rule, increased media restrictions and use of mass surveillance affect almost half global population, researchers find

Nearly half the world’s people are living in countries where their freedom of speech and right to privacy are being eroded, researchers have found.

“Strongman” regimes seeking to squash voices of dissent and solidify political power are increasingly monitoring citizens through technology, cracking down on protests and jailing journalists, according to a ranking of 198 countries on issues including mass surveillance and data privacy.

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