Category Archives: Global development

More than 70 million people now fleeing conflict and oppression worldwide

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One in every 108 people were displaced in 2018, yet offers of resettlement were half level of previous year

The number of people forced to flee their homes across the world has exceeded 70 million for the first time since records began, the UN’s refugee agency has warned.

About 70.8 million – one in every 108 people worldwide – were displaced in 2018. This includes people who were forced to flee their homes last year, as well as people who have been unable to return home for years.

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‘The fight isn’t over’: nurses’ leap of protest from an Indian hospital roof

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The two medical workers in Punjab who survived a dramatic end to their rooftop hunger strike over staff rights

Everyone who works at Rajindra hospital in Patiala knows Karamjit Kaur Aulakh. Their eyes follow the 35-year-old nurse as she walks around the hospital with the support of her crutch. Others stop by to ask how she is after her fall.

On 28 February Aulakh jumped from the dome of the main building at Rajindra hospital, where she had sat for 23 days on a rooftop hunger strike. The leap of almost 15 metres was a desperate cry for attention to her cause, and left her with three major fractures in her right leg. Joining her in the protest was her colleague Baljit Kaur Khalsa, who was not injured in the jump.

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Yemen’s Houthi rebels accused of diverting food aid from hungry

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Head of UN’s World Food Programme threatens suspension of food aid if safe delivery not assured

The head of the United Nations food agency has accused Yemen’s Houthi rebels of diverting food from the country’s hungriest people and threatened to suspend food aid.

David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme (WFP), said the agency had found “serious evidence” that food supplies had been diverted in the capital, Sana’a and other Houthi-controlled areas in the country, which is in the midst of a four-year civil war. He called on the Houthis to implement agreements that would allow the UN agency to operate independently.

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Bomb attack on busy market kills 30 people in north-east Nigeria

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Further 42 people wounded as three people detonate devices in Konduga, Borno state

Thirty people were killed when three people blew themselves up on Sunday night in a busy market in north-east Nigeria, which has seen a recent increase in attacks by militant groups.

Many were watching the evening news and waiting for the football to come on when the bombs went off in the village just outside Konduga, Borno state, wounding a further 42 people.

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‘I told my daughter I’d be home’: long ordeal ends for crew stranded at sea

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Abandoned at sea in desperate conditions for 18 months, the MV Azraqmoiah’s crew have finally been reunited with their families

After 18 months stranded on a cargo vessel miles off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, with little food or water, no wages and little means of communication, Captain Ayyappan Swaminathan’s ordeal is finally over.

In April, the Guardian reported the story of Ayyappan and his 10-strong crew, one of the most extreme cases of seafarer abandonment in recent years.

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‘I’ll never have another child’: the mothers failed by Mexico’s hospitals

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In one of Mexico’s poorest states, women from minority backgrounds are increasingly at risk of abusive treatment during pregnancy and childbirth

Nancy Martínez was 17 when she went into labour. Though her age meant she was considered a high-risk pregnancy, she was left alone for several hours without monitoring or pain medication.

Nurses told Martínez to be quiet and put up with the pain, while doctors mocked her mother, Nancy Ceron Diaz, denying her information about her daughter’s condition.

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WHO calls for more funds to fight DRC Ebola outbreak

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Panel backs off from declaring international emergency despite spread into Uganda

The World Health Organization has backed off from declaring that an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an international emergency despite it spreading into Uganda.

After long discussions, a WHO committee ruled that although the outbreak was an emergency for DRC, it did not fit the criteria to be declared a public health emergency of international concern.

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Progress on ending child labour stalls in countries supplying goods to west

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China, India and Bangladesh among otherwise thriving countries failing to make headway on issue affecting 152 million minors

Progress towards ending child labour has stalled in the countries most likely to be supplying goods to the west, a study has found.

Despite high economic growth and big improvements in education and development, countries such as China, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia have made little progress in tackling child labour.

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Uganda jails hundreds of men for sex offences against women and girls

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Campaigners applaud move to curb gender-based violence after courts hold special sessions to clear backlog of cases

Hundreds of men in Uganda have been jailed for sexual offences against girls and women during a month of special court sessions to clear a backlog of cases.

Between November and December last year, 414 men and nine women were found guilty during 13 trials held in selected courts in 13 districts around the country, according to the justice, law and order sector, a body that brings together government ministries working on legal matters.

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State projects leave tens of thousands of lives in the balance in Ethiopia – study

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Giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations mean people in lower Omo valley face starvation and conflict, says US thinktank

A giant dam and irrigated sugar plantations are “wreaking havoc” in southern Ethiopia and threaten to wipe out tens of thousands of indigenous peoples , a US-based thinktank has claimed.

The Oakland Institute says that while the Ethiopian government has made considerable progress on human rights under prime minister Abiy Ahmed, it has yet to address the impact of state development plans on indigenous populations in the lower Omo valley, where people face loss of livelihoods, starvation, and violent conflict .

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Oxfam’s ‘hypocrisy’ is not unique: the aid system is built on a power imbalance

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Money and power are the cornerstones of exploitation, and rich donors have both. No wonder saints have become sinners

Just over a year since the allegations of sexual abuse in Haiti were revealed, Oxfam have been through the equivalent of a reality TV colonoscopy: the organisation has been turned inside out and upside down to reveal what lurks beneath.

An independent investigation on sexual misconduct found abuse far beyond Haiti. The independent commission’s conclusion, after visiting 20% of countries where Oxfam works, was that the issues were endemic.

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Five-year-old boy dies in Uganda as Congo Ebola outbreak spreads

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Ugandan authorities confirm two other patients also undergoing treatment as officials consider declaring global health emergency

A five year-old-boy who became the first confirmed Ebola case outside the Democratic Republic of the Congo during the current outbreak died in Uganda on Tuesday night.

The child’s three-year-old brother and 50-year-old grandmother are also being treated, according to the Ugandan authorities. They have been isolated at a hospital near the Congo border.

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Patients sleep under the stars in long queue for medical visas | Stefanie Glinski

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Sick and elderly Afghans queue outdoors for several nights for their chance to get into Pakistan for medical care

Surrounded by barbed wire and without shelter from rain or dust, outside Pakistan’s embassy, hundreds of sick Afghans pass days and nights waiting for their visa appointment.

Abdul Ajan is first in the queue for when the embassy opens the next morning, squeezed into a space that smells of urine and is littered with rubbish and stale bread.

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Oxfam failed to report child abuse claims in Haiti, inquiry finds

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Damning Charity Commission report warns incidents in country were not isolated events

There were “serious problems with the culture, morale and behaviour” of Oxfam staff in Haiti according to a damning report which has found that the charity failed to disclose allegations of child abuse.

The Charity Commission report surveyed 7,000 pieces of evidence related to allegations that Oxfam had covered up its investigation into staff paying for sex while working on the response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

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Forest twice size of UK destroyed in decade for big consumer brands – report

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Greenpeace estimates 50m hectares cleared by 2020, warning companies must evolve to prevent ‘climate breakdown’

An area twice the size of the UK has been destroyed for products such as palm oil and soy over the last decade, according to analysis by Greenpeace International.

In 2010, members of the Consumer Goods Forum, including some of the world’s biggest consumer brands, pledged to eliminate deforestation by 2020, through the sustainable sourcing of four commodities most linked to forest destruction: soya, palm oil, paper and pulp, and cattle.

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Lights out: the price hikes leaving millions of South Africans in the dark | Kimon de Greef

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Electricity costs have tripled in the past decade under a utility company plagued by debt and corruption claims, wiping out decades of progress

Electricity, when it arrived in Nosisi Rasmeni’s life, seemed to promise a better future.

Like most black South Africans who grew up during apartheid, she was raised with gas stoves, candles and paraffin heaters. Her family’s shack was poorly lit and smelled of fumes. “Electricity was only for whites,” says Rasmeni, 37.

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Political violence against women tracked for first time as attacks soar

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Analysts to compile database to track spike in cases, with female politicians and campaigners increasingly targeted

Violence targeted against female politicians and activists will be tracked for the first time by a global database, amid indications of a recent rise in attacks.

Researchers reviewed thousands of events dating back to 1997, where political violence was targeted at women – ranging from wartime sexual violence to attacks on female civilians and crackdowns on female-led protests.

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Aid groups need a major shake-up to meet the challenges of a fractured world | Simon O’Connell

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Humanitarian assistance is too siloed, inefficient and expensive to achieve lasting impact for billions of people in need

It is just over three years since the “Grand Bargain” was struck.

It was signed by the world’s major donors and aid providers, promising structural reform and committed to getting more money directly through to local and national organisations. But the deal has seen little change. The system remains dominated by a familiar group of UN agencies and international NGOs. Progress is at a glacial pace.

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It’s not just girls – one in 30 young men were married as children

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Central African Republic has the highest rate of boy grooms, followed by Nicaragua, Madagascar, Nauru and Honduras

One in 30 young men were married as children, according to the first UN analysis of child marriage rates among boys.

Around 115 million boys and men around the world were married before they turned 18, according to Unicef, which warned the issue is often overlooked.

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Honduras abortion misery a ‘frightening preview’ of America’s future – study

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Reproductive rights pushback could leave American women facing same life-or-death choices as Hondurans, say researchers

One woman handcuffed by police after suffering a miscarriage, another forced to bear her rapist’s child. A doctor who risks imprisonment to end pregnancies that threaten the lives of patients. The reality of healthcare in Honduras provides a “frightening preview” of what could happen in America if the pushback on reproductive rights continues, Human Rights Watch has warned.

Researchers from the organisation spoke of the “enormous suffering” of women and girls in Honduras, where there is a total ban on abortion in all circumstances.

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