Aid worker Peter Dalglish, 62, sentenced for abusing two boys, aged 12 and 14
A former United Nations official has been jailed for sexually abusing children in Nepal after a trial that underscored the country’s growing appeal for foreign paedophiles.
Peter John Dalglish, 62, a high-profile humanitarian worker from Canada, was sentenced on Monday to two separate terms of nine years and seven years after being convicted last month.
Continue reading...Proposal could provide cheaper funding for charities, says finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, but critics warn against greater government control of welfare projects
India’s finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, has called for the creation of a “social stock exchange”, allowing ethically minded investors to buy stakes in social enterprises, volunteer groups and welfare organisations.
The proposal would be a radical experiment in a country characterised by stark inequality and rapid economic growth.
Continue reading...UK aid projects ‘actively undermine’ efforts to tackle climate crisis, MPs and campaign groups warn
A cross-party group of MPs, backed by campaign groups, has called for an immediate ban on all investment in fossil fuels and for all UK aid to be “nature positive”.
The 28 MPs, led by Tory Zac Goldsmith and Labour’s Kerry McCarthy, with support from Amnesty International, WWF and other organisations, criticised the UK for “actively undermining” its own investment in tackling the climate emergency by continuing to fund fossil fuels through aid and export finance.
Continue reading...With the registry office facing a backlog of 280,000 applications, some people have waited close to a year to work or study abroad
Every morning for the past two months Eldah Makuvise, 35, has braved the cold winter mornings to queue for her passport at the local registry office in Harare, Zimbabwe. Each time she’s been sent away in despair.
Makuvise’s application, like others submitted a year ago, is stuck in a huge passport backlog.
Continue reading...In Valenzuela City, residents blame recycling plants for pungent smells and respiratory illnesses
As noon approaches in Valenzuela City and residents prepare to have their lunch, a pungent smell of melted plastic swirls through the air, killing everyone’s appetite.
“It gets suffocating in the evening. We have to close our windows despite the heat and bury our noses under our blankets when we sleep,” says Rosalie Esplana, 40.
Continue reading...On two-day visit, DfID minister says outbreak is heartbreaking and very dangerous
The year-long Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is on the edge of spiralling out of control and the World Health Organization should declare it an international emergency, Rory Stewart, the UK’s international development secretary, has said.
Stewart is on a two-day visit to the DRC visiting emergency health centres and victims of the disease to assess the issues hampering efforts to bring the epidemic under permanent control. So far in the outbreak 2,400 people have contracted the disease and 1,606 have died, according to the WHO.
Continue reading...Ifrah Ahmed refuses to let the horrific female genital mutilation she suffered at the age of eight define her. “I don’t want to be a victim. I want to be a voice,” says the 32-year-old campaigner.
She is one of the first women to publicly speak out about female genital mutilation (FGM) in Somalia – a country where it is estimated that 98% of women have undergone the ritual – and now her journey from powerless victim to powerful role model has been dramatised in a film. A Girl from Mogadishu has just had its UK premiere at the Edinburgh film festival and will be released across the UK in cinemas later this year.
Continue reading...After five years in the brothel, Labonni stopped dreaming of being rescued. Ever since she had been sold to a madam at 13 years old, customers had promised to help her escape. None had followed through. Over time, their faces began to blur together, so she couldn’t remember exactly who had visited before, or how many men had come by that day. There’s usually one every hour, starting from 9am.
“Sometimes I wake up and I don’t understand why I’m not dead yet,” she says.
Continue reading...Journalists risk everything to hold power to account, crucial work for which a $1bn global fund should be established
Daphne Caruana Galizia was driving away from her home in October 2017 when a bomb planted under the seat of her car was remotely triggered, killing her instantly.
Caruana Galizia was a renowned anti-corruption journalist who had published damaging revelations about Malta’s prime minister and his political allies. The stories she was working on at the time of her death might have remained unpublished were it not for Forbidden Stories, an initiative run by a global network of investigative journalists whose mission is to finish the work of who have been imprisoned or harmed. The Daphne project, published last year, was a collaborative effort between 45 journalists in 15 countries.
Continue reading...Construction of a fence along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, one of the world’s most dangerous crossings, is splintering families while failing to halt the flow of smugglers and terrorists
Keramat used to visit her sons all the time, crossing the border between her home in Afghanistan’s Kunar province into Pakistan, where they live and work.
But a fence built to mark a border between the two countries, which has not been recognised by the Afghan government, has made the 55-year-old’s journey much longer, and more bureaucratic.
Continue reading...Two Mumbai athletes are converting old footwear into flip-flops for unshod schoolchildren
In the vast Indian interior, it is not unusual to see shoeless infants – whether walking barefoot to school or hopping around on makeshift sports pitches. Injuries are common and lead to infections such as hookworm and elephantiasis.
More than 250 million Indians live below the poverty line and footwear is usually a luxury. Tens of millions of children have no shoes. (By contrast, roughly 300m pairs of shoes are discarded in the US every year).
Continue reading...High court judge rules that gay asylum seeker who feared persecution in Uganda should have been allowed to remain
The Home Office has been ordered to help a woman deported to Uganda six years ago to return to Britain after a high court judge ruled that the handling of her case was “procedurally unfair”.
If the judgment stands, the woman may become the first deportee whose case was processed through fast-track rules operational between 2005 and 2015 to return to the UK and appeal against the decision to deport her.
Continue reading...Government dismisses UN allegations of summary executions, arbitrary arrests, torture and sexual violence
Opponents of Burundi’s government are being subjected to numerous human rights violations, according to a UN commission.
Returning refugees and even Catholic bishops are being targeted, the commission found, as well as those who refuse to join the ruling party or its youth wing, the Imbonerakure, which is accused of gang-rape and torture.
Continue reading...Doyte lives in South Omo, Ethiopia, one of the most remote areas in the world and hard hit by the climate crisis. As Lord of the Rain, it’s Doyte’s job to summon the rains, but for five years they haven’t come. Ethiopia’s economy is booming, fuelled by green power and climate-resilient policies. But neither the government, nor Doyte, can reverse the catastrophic change that’s devastating their environment
Continue reading...Academics warn of ‘success cartel’ of powerful organisations seeking to influence aid evaluations
A “success cartel” of major donor agencies, including the UK government, is exaggerating its impact in the world’s poorest countries, hundreds of researchers have warned.
Writing in the journal BMJ global health, academics raised serious concerns about the independence of evaluations into global health and development projects, and called for greater safeguards to stop powerful bodies from influencing results.
Continue reading...There’s been a $1bn boost in support in the last two years, but only tiny pots of money are trickling down to feminist groups
In the past two years alone, governments and international institutions have announced more than $1bn (£0.8bn) in new commitments to support gender equality globally.
These include: €500m (£440m) for the European Union and UN’s joint Spotlight Initiative, €120m by France for its feminist foreign policy and $114m by Norway to end sexual and gender-based violence in conflicts. Canada has announced CAD$490m (£290m) towards three programmes: women’s leadership ($150m), the LGBTQ2 Fund ($40m), and the Equality Fund ($300m). This fund was among the nearly $600m committed to women and girls in June at the Women Deliver conference.
Continue reading...Tributes pour in for head of Safaricom, who helped east Africa pioneer cashless payments long before Apple Pay
Bob Collymore, the chief executive of east Africa’s largest and most profitable mobile network operator Safaricom, died on Monday aged 61, after a two-year battle with cancer.
Tributes poured in from across east Africa for the Guyana-born British businessman, who steered Safaricom through nearly a decade of innovative expansion during which its user base doubled and profits increased 380%, turning it into a $10.8bn company. According to the company’s most recent annual report, Safaricom’s business contributed 6.5% to Kenya’s total GDP in 2018.
Continue reading...‘Cliff-edge drop’ in support after 45 days to be replaced by system tailored to individual needs
The Home Office has withdrawn a “nonsensical” policy that cuts off all support to modern slavery survivors after six weeks and will instead introduce a system individually tailored to victims’ needs.
The existing policy – which under the Modern Slavery Act provides safe housing, counselling and financial support for up to 45 days to people in the UK who have been formally identified as victims of slavery or trafficking – was suspended in April by a high court judge, who ruled that it risked causing “irreparable harm to very vulnerable individuals”.
Continue reading...Cancer rates are the highest in the country, drug addiction is rife, and 900 farmers have killed themselves in two years. How did Punjab turn toxic?
The road to Langroya village weaves its way through fields rich with crops that offer a vivid snapshot of India’s kitchens. There is wheat, rice, sugarcane, maize, mustard seed and a rich variety of vegetables that have made this corner of the country India’s most important agricultural region.
Like the majority of their compatriots in Punjab, Langroya’s residents rely on farming for their existence. About three-quarters of the state’s 30 million-strong population is involved in agriculture, with wheat the number one commodity. But while Punjab is known as “India’s bread basket”, there are challenges amid the abundance.
Continue reading...Human-rights lawyers are warning that abuse claims by Moroccans picking fruit in Spain for UK supermarkets could amount to “state-sponsored human trafficking”.
The international lawyers say Spanish authorities have a legal duty to ensure the allegations by the women – that they have faced exploitation and abuse while harvesting strawberries – are properly investigated by the courts.
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