Category Archives: Global development

UK modern slavery helpline receives over 7,000 calls in a year

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Arrests and prosecutions remain thin on the ground despite 62% rise in reports of suspected labour exploitation

More than 7,100 suspected victims of modern slavery were identified across the UK in 2018, with Romanian nationals comprising the largest victim group, according to a national helpline.

Labour exploitation – the majority of which was identified in car washes, beauty parlours, construction sites, hotels and on farms – accounted for the largest number of suspected modern slavery cases, with London the location for the highest number of suspected victims (1,477), found the helpline’s second annual assessment, published on Thursday.

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Footage shows refugees hiding as Libyan militia attack detention centre

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At least two people reportedly killed in shooting at Qasr bin Ghashir facility near Tripoli

Young refugees held in a detention centre in Libya have described being shot at indiscriminately by militias advancing on Tripoli, in an attack that reportedly left at least two people dead and up to 20 injured.

Phone footage smuggled out of the camp and passed to the Guardian highlights the deepening humanitarian crisis in the centres set up to prevent refugees and migrants from making the sea crossing from the north African coast to Europe.

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Vaccines by air as drone medicine service takes off in Ghana

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Up to 600 flights expected daily as largest service of its kind in the world targets country’s remote areas

Twelve million people in Ghana are set to benefit from the launch of the world’s largest drone medical delivery service.

Up to 600 drone flights will be made each day, delivering vaccines, blood supplies and life-saving medicines to 2,000 health centres in remote areas around the country.

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Cyclone Idai: ‘My family needs to eat, I don’t know how we will survive’

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In Mozambique, where many people rely on crops to live, Idai’s impact on two key agricultural areas has been devastating

Marie Jose stares out at her field of broken maize stalks, the cobs yellow and mouldy from days of excessive water followed by weeks of extreme sun. She should have harvested them last month, but Cyclone Idai struck her village in Buzi district, in central Mozambique, and destroyed them all.

She is still dealing with the trauma of losing her grandparents and niece to the tropical storm. “They couldn’t hold on in the trees where we were sitting and the wind pushed them into the water,” she says. Their bodies are still missing.

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Rotten eggs: e-waste from Europe poisons Ghana’s food chain

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Toxins from old computers, fridges and other electronic goods are polluting chicken eggs in an area where 80,000 people live

Some of the most hazardous chemicals on Earth are entering the food chain in Ghana from illegally disposed electronic waste coming from Europe.

According to a new report by two environmental groups tracking the disposal of e-waste, chicken eggs from the Agbogbloshie slum in Ghana’s capital, Accra – where residents break up waste to recover metals – contain dangerous levels of dioxins and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), among other harmful substances.

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Campaigners fight to lift ban on morning-after pill in Honduras

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Law against emergency contraception leaves desperate women, including rape victims, forced to buy medication on black market

A pioneering grassroots campaign to legalise emergency contraception is launched in Honduras this week amid ongoing false claims by church leaders, senior doctors and conservative politicians that the medication causes abortions, infertility and cancer.

Honduras is the only country in Latin America where emergency contraception is banned, forcing desperate women, including rape victims, to buy expensive and unregulated contraband pills on the black market.

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Rumour and violence rife as Congo Ebola outbreak surges out of control

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Attacks on health centres are impeding efforts to contain an epidemic that has claimed nearly 900 lives in nine months

Archippe Kamuha knows the signs of Ebola well: diarrhoea, bleeding, persistent fever. But if the 25-year-old developed such symptoms, she would not contact specialist health workers.

“I know that if I go [to a treatment centre], I’ll die. All my friends who go there don’t come home, they die,” said Kamuha, whose home town, Butembo, in north-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, is at the centre of the country’s escalating Ebola outbreak.

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UN waters down rape resolution to appease US’s hardline abortion stance

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Measure on sexual violence in conflict passes after Trump administration threatened to veto document over references to reproductive health

The UN has backed a resolution on combatting rape in conflict but excluded references in the text to sexual and reproductive health, after vehement opposition from the US.

The resolution passed by the security council on Tuesday after a three-hour debate and a weekend of fierce negotiations on the language among member states that threatened to derail the process.

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Malawi starts landmark pilot of first ever child malaria vaccine

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Immunisation gives partial protection against the killer disease, and lessens the severity of other cases

Malawi will begin immunising young children against malaria today, in a landmark large-scale pilot of the first vaccine to give partial protection against the disease, the World Health Organization said.

Although the vaccine protects only a third of children aged under two years from life-threatening or severe malaria, clinical trials have found those who are immunised are likely to have less severe cases of the disease. Earlier, smaller trials also showed the vaccine prevented four in 10 cases of malaria overall, in babies aged between five and 17 months.

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‘Stigma does not go away’: Mumbai’s dedicated LGBT health clinic | Payal Mohta

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After reports of transgender people being refused treatment, a new centre offers specialised services – and respite from discrimination

Vivek Sharma has travelled 20km from his home to the congested eastern suburb of Mumbai for his HIV treatment. But the journey is no hardship for the 23-year-old student.

“My file was shifted to this clinic. I am so happy that this has finally happened.”

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Kalashnikovs and no-go zones: east Burkina Faso falls to militants

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Locals say they live in fear of violence and face harsh punishment for breaking rules

When a stranger arrives in Bartiébougou, the Kalashnikov-wielding men in charge check his ID. But first they check his forehead. They are looking for the indent left by a beret – an instant indication he is a soldier and therefore an enemy spy.

Like much of eastern Burkina Faso, the government has no control over what happens in Bartiébougou; local militants, backed by west African extremist groups, do.

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‘The harder you look the more you find’: Nepal’s hidden leprosy | Rebecca Ratcliffe

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Almost two decades ago the World Health Organization declared leprosy eliminated, but millions of cases go undiagnosed

One summer’s morning Paniya Sardar noticed a strange mark on her leg. It was the size of her palm, light in colour and felt numb to touch. She had no idea what had caused it.

The family took Paniya, then 14, to a private clinic near their home on the outskirts of Biratnagar, a city in southern Nepal, where they were sold lotions and pills and told not to worry. Three months later, a deep wound appeared on her foot. “This particular blister was pretty big and wouldn’t heal,” her father, Sita Sardar, says through an interpreter. Six months later, it was still there.

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Honduran transgender woman freed after a year in US detention

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Nicole García Aguilar was granted asylum in October but was held another seven months while Ice appealed

A Honduran transgender woman who was detained in a US immigration facility for seven months despite being granted asylum has been released after a legal challenge.

Nicole García Aguilar was freed from the Cibola County detention facility in New Mexico on Wednesday night, a week after lawyers filed a habeas corpus writ challenging her unjustified and prolonged detention by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice).

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‘I don’t know how my children will survive’: Zimbabwe in crisis | Nyasha Chingono

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Cyclone Idai washed away the crops that survived a savage drought, leaving 70% of the population in dire need of food

Mutemarare, 61, walks through his corn field, desperately looking for remnants of maize.

He’s not expecting to find any, as most of his crop wilted before reaching maturity, the result of the devastating drought that has hit Zimbabwe.

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Bangladeshi teenager set on fire after accusing teacher of harassment

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Nusrat Jahan Rafi was doused with kerosene and burned at her school, dying 10 days later of her injuries

A teenage Bangladeshi girl who reported being sexually harassed has died after being set on fire at school. Police and school authorities had ignored her complaints.

The murder of 19-year-old Nusrat Jahan Rafi, who was doused with kerosene and set on fire at her school in Feni on 6 April, followed her allegations of sexual harassment against her headteacher two weeks before. Nusrat suffered 80% burns to her body and died 10 days later from her injuries.

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‘I lost consciousness’: woman whipped by the Taliban over burqa without veil | Haroon Janjua

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Aziza’s story reflects the growing number of violent public assaults on women deemed to be in breach of sharia law in Afghanistan

One of four women who was recently subjected to a brutal public lashing by armed Taliban fighters in Afghanistan has spoken about her experience, amid an increase of violent punishments given to those violating its strict interpretation of religious law.

Aziza, who like many other Afghan women only uses one name, was rounded up by the Taliban’s shadow police for being out of her house without her husband and not being fully veiled. She was beaten so badly she lost consciousness.

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Devastation of shelling in Hodeidah: ‘My daughters died hungry’ | Rod Austin and Karl Schembri

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As a voluntary agreement is struck for forces to withdraw from the port city, two friends recount the horror of conflict in their neighbourhood in Yemen

Friends Majed Al-Wahidi and Ali Al-Zazai remember the constant buzzing of drones overhead in Hodeidah on 18 November last year.

Majed, a teacher and father of six daughters, had left Ali’s house to return to his home nearby, but went back because he had forgotten his lighter. It was about 5pm and Majed’s daughters were in their bedroom, having taken a break from studying to pray in their modest, corrugated iron-covered home.

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High court suspends Home Office policy limiting support for slavery victims

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Judge rules that stopping access to safe housing, counselling and financial assistance after 45 days risks ‘irreparable harm’

A high court judge has suspended a Home Office policy that cuts off after six weeks all statutory support to slavery victims in the UK, ruling that it risks causing “irreparable harm to very vulnerable individuals”.

The Home Office must now immediately extend assistance to all slavery and trafficking victims requiring support in the UK, estimated to be about 600 people, over the next few months.

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Teenage girls most at risk amid rising sexual violence in El Salvador – report

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Study reveals 31% increase in sexual attacks since 2017, with many related to gang culture

Rates of sexual violence in El Salvador rose by a third last year, with the majority of cases involving teenage girls.

More than 60% of the 4,304 cases of sexual violence recorded in 2018 involved 12- to 17-year-olds, according to a report published this week by the Organisation of Salvadoran Women for Peace (Ormusa).

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Mounting concern over cholera health crisis in Yemen

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More than 2,000 new cases reported every day, with 25% of those affected being children under five

Yemen is facing a massive resurgence of cholera in what was already one of the world’s worst outbreaks, with more than 137,000 suspected cases and almost 300 deaths reported in the first three months of this year.

With well over 2,000 suspected cases being recorded every day – a doubling since the beginning of the year – aid agencies fear they could be facing a major new health crisis.

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