Category Archives: Global development

Europe accused of financing Eritrean project based on ‘forced labour’

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Campaigners say €20m EU scheme uses recruits from Eritrea’s national service, a system likened to mass enslavement

Eritreans in exile have launched legal proceedings against the EU, accusing it of financing a scheme in Eritrea that uses “forced labour”.

The Netherlands-based Foundation Human Rights for Eritreans (FHRE) has called on the EU to immediately stop a €20m (£17m) road construction project, which it says violates human rights law as well as the EU’s own charter, since it uses national service recruits.

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‘He thought he’d ruin me’: Indian acid attack survivor and model speaks out | Ruchi Kumar

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Reshma Qureshi’s makeup tip videos put a spotlight on violence against women, but survivors still face an uphill struggle for justice

When catwalk model Reshma Qureshi offers makeup tips, her online tutorials end with the message that an eyeliner or lipstick is just as easy to buy in India as a pot of over-the-counter acid.

The point, coming from a woman who was left disfigured and partially sighted by an acid attack, has already proved so powerful that it has helped lead first to an international petition, and then to the supreme court of India ordering states to enforce the ban on sales of the chemical.

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Bangladesh could take over workplace safety despite ‘shocking unreadiness’

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Exclusive: government’s own data shows no factory it inspects has eliminated high-risk safety hazards

Bangladesh’s government could assume responsibility for safety in workplaces producing clothing for major western brands this week despite demonstrating a “shocking level of unreadiness” to do so, according to an analysis of the state’s own data.

The country’s supreme court is scheduled to decide on Sunday whether to kick out the Bangladesh accord on building and fire safety, an international initiative to remove life-threatening hazards from factories that was put in place after the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in which more 1,100 people died.

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Ads about bus stop harassment and ‘bonus wives’ normalise sexism | Rosebell Kagumire

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In the race to attract customers, Ugandan firms show scant regard for the intimidation faced by women on a daily basis

Uganda’s leading telecom company MTN has launched a new advert. It depicts a scene at a city bus stop, which in Uganda we call a stage.

A man approaches the stage, where two women are sitting on benches, one either end. Before he takes his seat between them, he launches into some forced conversation with one of the women reading a magazine. Before the woman responds, the man moves closer to her. The second woman looks on, perhaps just curious, but perhaps concerned.

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‘The metro smashed the old rules’: Indian women drive change – and trains

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Run by an army of women and equipped with solar power and dedicated breastfeeding pods, Kochi Metro is altering the status quo in Kerala

Down on the platform, where the air is intensely muggy in the March heat, a train glides in. The driver is a woman.

The ticket office is run by a woman. A transgender woman helps customers at the inquiry desk. On four of the metro’s stations, passengers can go into a special cubicle to breastfeed their babies.

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Venezuela: Red Cross brokers Maduro-Guaidó deal to allow aid delivery

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  • First shipment for 650,000 could reach Venezuela in two weeks
  • Red Cross says aid must be ‘neutral, impartial and unhindered’

The Red Cross has brokered a deal with representatives of Venezuela’s embattled leader Nicolás Maduro and his rival Juan Guaidó to allow humanitarian aid into the country, indicating a seldom-seen middle ground between the two men that contest the presidency.

The first shipment of aid for about 650,000 vulnerable people could reach Venezuela in two weeks, Francesco Rocca, the president of the International Federation of the Red Cross told a press conference on Friday.

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Home Office limit on support for slavery victims may be unlawful, court rules

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Judge orders immediate extension to safe housing, counselling and financial support beyond existing 45-day threshold

A high court judge has ruled that Home Office policy to cut off all statutory support to people six weeks after they have been formally identified as victims of slavery is potentially unlawful, ordering that assistance must immediately be extended.

All statutory support under the Modern Slavery Act, such as safe housing, counselling and financial support, currently ends 45 days after the Home Office has informed someone they have been officially recognised as a victim.

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Mayor in Mozambique says negligence led to cyclone deaths

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People in rural areas were not told about red alert days before Idai struck, says city official

The Mozambican government failed to warn people in the areas worst hit by Cyclone Idai despite a “red alert” being issued two days before it struck, the mayor of the city of Beira has said.

The southern African country was completely unprepared for the disaster and “profound negligence” led to many deaths, said the mayor, Daviz Simango, who is also the leader of an opposition party.

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Housing in sub-Saharan Africa improves but millions of people live in slums

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Study identifies major transformation in quality of living conditions, but governments urged to improve urban sanitation

From cities to the countryside, Africa has undergone a dramatic transformation in living conditions over the past 15 years, according to a new study.

But the research, based on state of the art mapping and published in science journal Nature, also found that almost half of the the urban population – 53 million people across the countries analysed – were living in slum conditions.

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Kenya steps up Aids battle as building starts on $100m drug factory

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Nairobi facility will be largest of its kind in Africa, boosting Kenyan economy and supplying 23 countries

Construction has started on a multimillion dollar Aids drug factory that will become the largest in Africa when it opens later this year.

The $100m (£75m) facility will bring 1,000 jobs to Kenya and reduce the reliance of almost half of the continent’s countries on European imports.

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US-China soy trade war could destroy 13 million hectares of rainforest

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Study suggests Brazil likely to rush to fill China’s sudden soy shortfall by boosting farming

The Amazon rainforest could be the greatest casualty of the trade war between the United States and China, warns a new study showing how deforestation pressures have surged as a result of the geopolitical jolt in global soy markets.

Up to 13m hectares of forest and savannah – an area the size of Greece – would have to be cleared if Brazil and other exporters were to fill the huge shortfall in soy supply to China that has suddenly appeared since Donald Trump imposed hefty tariffs, according to the paper published in Nature.

US exports of the commodity, primarily used to feed livestock, to China plummeted by 50% last year, which the authors say is an unusually sharp level of decline between two trading partners outside wartime.

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Cyclone Idai crisis deepens as first cases of cholera confirmed in Mozambique

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Five people test positive for waterborne disease in flooded port city of Beira amid warnings outbreak will spread

The first cases of cholera have been reported in the cyclone-ravaged Mozambican city of Beira, complicating an already massive and complex emergency in the southern African country.

The announcement of five cases of the waterborne disease follows days of mounting fears that cholera and other diseases could break out in the squalid conditions in which tens of thousands have been living since Cyclone Idai struck on 14 March, killing at least 700 people across the region.

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Amid din over Brexit and US border wall, spare a thought for South Sudan | Father James Oyet Latansio

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Civil war has ravaged the world’s youngest state, killing 400,000 people. The international community must prioritise peace

I have met both Donald Trump and Boris Johnson in the course of my work. You might associate one man with his campaign to build a wall along the US border with Mexico, and the other with Brexit. But I was trying to convince them to spare a thought for my country, South Sudan.

I quite understand that they have other things on their minds. When I visited parliament on the fraught opening day of the Brexit debate, Johnson recognised me from his trip to South Sudan, and sought to reassure me. But he had resigned as foreign secretary, because of Brexit.

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Trump expands global gag rule that blocks US aid for abortion groups

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Policy bans aid going to foreign groups that support abortion rights as secretary of state Pompeo says: ‘This is decent and right’

The Trump administration has expanded its ban on funding for groups that conduct abortions or advocate abortion rights, known as the global gag rule, and has also cut funding to the Organisation of American States for that reason.

Related: How Trump signed a global death warrant for women | Sarah Boseley

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US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan beset by ‘theft and abuse from security forces’

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Government watchdog reveals contract workers subjected to assault and unlawful detention, with property confiscated

A report into US efforts to rebuild Afghanistan’s war-damaged infrastructure has called for urgent action after revealing that Afghan security forces have been harassing, abusing and stealing from contractors at military bases.

Members of the Afghan national defence and security forces (ANDSF) have held workers at gunpoint and confiscated their equipment, costing the US hundreds of thousands of dollars, a US government watchdog said.

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Children’s chances of surviving cancer less than 30% in poor nations – study

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Stark differences revealed in five-year survival rates between rich and low- and middle-income countries

Figures reveal a striking disparity in five-year cancer survival rates for children in developing nations compared with those from rich countries.

More than 80% of children diagnosed with the disease in high-income states will live for more than five years, yet fewer than 30% of young people with cancer in low- and middle-income nations have the same chance of survival, research has shown.

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‘Yet another killer for children left starved by war’: cholera grips Yemen

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In the last two weeks, 1,000 young people a day have been infected with the disease

Yemen is seeing a sharp spike in the number of suspected cholera cases this year, with 1,000 children a day infected in the last two weeks alone, agencies said.

More than 120,000 cases have been reported, with 234 deaths in the country, which has been at war for four years this month. Almost a third of the 124,493 cases documented between 1 January and 22 March were children under fifteen. Increasing rates of malnutrition among Yemen’s children have left them more prone to contracting and dying from the disease.

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First slavery ‘super-complaint’ accuses police of fuelling victims’ trauma

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Report into police response in England and Wales found failure to handle cases sensitively hinders prosecution of traffickers

Categoric police failings are hindering the prosecution of human traffickers and barring victims of modern slavery from the support they are legally entitled to, according to a new super-complaint to the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services.

The super-complaint – the first on modern slavery – has been submitted by London-based charity Hestia. It outlines how some police officers are not reporting cases of modern slavery to the Home Office and that a failure to sensitively handle cases of modern slavery is discouraging victims across England and Wales from supporting criminal investigations against their exploiters. The super-complaint system allows organisations to raise concerns on behalf of the public and confront fundamental issues.

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‘The country could fall apart’: drought and despair in Afghanistan

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As a funding appeal languishes, conflict, poverty and the worst drought for a decade have left millions facing desperate hunger

Shafiqa watches closely over her six-month-old niece. Lying on a bundle of fabric, Maryam’s legs jut out, thin and pale. When they arrived at hospital two weeks ago, she could hardly breathe. Her body was swollen with malnutrition, her lips and fingers were blue.

There are 24 children being treated at Mofleh paediatric hospital’s malnutrition ward, on the outskirts of Herat city, western Afghanistan. Mothers and aunts lean next to hospital beds, some rocking tiny babies back and forth.

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