Sihem Bensedrine’s explosive report into human rights abuses is written. Now those in power must be persuaded to read it
When Sihem Bensedrine, the head of Tunisia’s truth and dignity commission, tried to give a speech in parliament last year, she was drowned out.
Politicians banged on the wooden desks and yelled, some standing up to hurl accusations and gesture in her direction. As the drumbeats got louder, Bensedrine left the chamber. The MPs applauded.
Continue reading...The Welsh government has given Sophie Howe statutory powers to represent people who haven’t yet been born
Sophie Howe is a public servant with a particularly tricky constituency. The people she represents are remote and unresponsive and they never show up to voice an opinion or tell her if she’s doing a good job.
They don’t even vote. That’s because they haven’t yet been born. Howe is the world’s first – and only – future generations commissioner with statutory powers. She’s there to represent the unborn citizens of Wales.
Continue reading...Sweden and France among states found by the World Bank to enshrine gender equality in laws, but implementation haphazard
If you’re a woman and want to be on an equal footing with men, it’s best to live and work in Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia, Luxembourg or Sweden. The World Bank, which has tracked legal changes for the past decade, found these were the only countries in the world to enshrine gender equality in laws affecting work.
The bank’s women, business and the law 2019 report, published this week, measured gender discrimination in 187 countries. It found that, a decade ago, no country gave women and men equal legal rights.
Continue reading...Iran reforms drive 90% fall in death penalty worldwide, but report warns hardline approach to minor cases violates human rights
Global efforts to abolish the death penalty are in danger of being undermined by anti-drug governments that use capital punishment to enforce a zero-tolerance approach, experts have warned.
The caution comes even though the number of people sentenced to death for drug offences around the world has actually fallen by nearly 90% over the past four years, according to a study by Harm Reduction International, with 91 known deaths last year compared with 755 in 2015.
Continue reading...Unicef calls for improved vaccination as study shows Ukraine, Brazil and the Philippines among 10 worst affected countries
Cases of childhood measles are surging to shocking levels around the globe, led by 10 countries that account for three-quarters of the rise.
Amid warnings of “disastrous consequences” for children if the disease continues to spread unchecked, a worldwide survey by the UN children’s agency, Unicef, said 98 countries around the globe reported a rise in measles cases in 2018 compared with 2017.
Continue reading...Campaigners condemn authorities who ignored girl’s plea ‘to remove what the old man put inside me’
An 11-year old girl who became pregnant after being raped was forced to give birth after Argentine authorities refused to allow her the abortion to which she was entitled.
The authorities ignored repeated requests for an abortion from the child, called “Lucía” to protect her identity, as well as her mother and a number of Argentine women’s right activists. After 23 weeks of pregnancy, she had to undergo a caesarean section on Tuesday. The baby is unlikely to survive.
Continue reading...Poland the worst offender as global justice index identifies decline in checks on government power for second successive year
Autocratic rule is on the rise throughout the world, with a growing number of authoritarian leaders “hijacking” laws to consolidate their own power, a study of global justice has found.
Poland demonstrated the most significant turn towards authoritarianism over the past four years, followed by Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. In all, 64% of 126 countries surveyed made similar moves towards autocratic rule in the past year alone, according to an annual rule of law index published by the World Justice Project.
Continue reading...Health agencies re-evaluate approach after attacks on treatment centres in North Kivu
A second clinic serving patients affected by the escalating Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has been set alight, as concerns mount over widespread distrust of health agencies.
Seven months since the start of the outbreak, which has claimed 548 lives, experts warned that the virus is still not under control and said suspicion of agencies is severely undermining Ebola services.
Continue reading...UN security council officials clash over ‘politicised’ aid to troubled country as peace-building chief warns of ‘grim realities’
Infant mortality in Venezuela has soared by roughly 50% during the prolonged political crisis in the country.
Briefing the UN security council, the UN’s political and peace building chief, Rosemary DiCarlo, depicted a devastating collapse in Venezuela’s health system. She warned that 40% of medical staff had left the country and said hospital stocks of medicine had dwindled to 20% of the required level.
Continue reading...Economic fears raised as online subscriptions plummet in months following launch of levy created to curb ‘gossip’
Millions of people in Uganda have abandoned the internet after punishing taxes were imposed on social media use and money transactions using mobile phones.
A daily levy, introduced in July to tame “idle talk” online and raise revenue, affects more than 60 online platforms including Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. To use such sites, Ugandans are expected to pay a tax of 200 Ugandan shillings (4p) a day.
Continue reading...About half of the 20m tonnes of rubbish produced by Pakistan each year is burned or thrown into rivers, causing pollution, disease and flooding. A recycling hub in Islamabad is trying to tackle the problem
Photographs by Hazel Thompson/Tearfund
Continue reading...Saudi Arabia, US and UAE among top donors at summit to ease crisis in country where they are fighting or selling arms
More than half of $2.6bn (£1.9bn) in donations at a special one-day conference to ease humanitarian crisis in Yemen was pledged by countries that are either fighting in the civil war or selling arms to those undertaking the fighting.
The UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres nevertheless hailed the money raised and the news that talks had led to the UN finally gaining access to a grains facility near Hodeidah port that contains enough supplies to feed more than 3m people for a month.
Continue reading...Dominant donors to record appeal to alleviate suffering of civil war will include countries leading aerial bombing campaign
The international community will gather on Tuesday to try to raise more than $4bn to help alleviate the suffering and famine caused by Yemen’s civil war, but will find itself heavily dependent on three combatants in the conflict – Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the US – to reach its fundraising target for 2019.
The $4.2bn (£3.2bn) target for 2019 – the largest sum sought for any single year since the start of the civil war in 2015 and an increase of 33 % on last year – will be the focus of an all-day pledging conference in Geneva.
Continue reading...When the 2004 tsunami struck, the Moken were saved by their knowledge of the sea. But a catastrophic blaze has exposed authorities’ errors in the rebuilding of their homes
Where stilted huts once stood on the white sand, now there are just charred remains. “This is worse than after the tsunami,” says Hook, a Moken sea nomad surveying the damage fire has wreaked on his former village home in Au Bon Yai bay, Surin island.
After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami destroyed the previous Moken settlement here on Thailand’s Andaman sea, Hook says people were able to recover some belongings. This time, when fire broke out on 3 February this year, nothing was left. Now the community fears for the future as the authorities begin to reconstruct the village in its original design, an unsafe housing model consisting of highly flammable structures, densely packed together. And it has reignited a row about the Moken’s rights to their ancestral lands.
Continue reading...A report laying bare the abominations associated with conflict in the world’s youngest state will shock the most hardened observer
There are wars that seem to slip under the wire almost unnoticed – where human rights abuses are rife and you would expect them to command far greater global attention.
Last week’s UN report into South Sudan is a case in point. An almost endless litany of human rights abuses, its 200-plus pages make for the most dismal reading, a portrait of the world’s youngest state as one of the latest additions to the category of failed state.
Continue reading...Thousands of Nigerian women could be expelled or left homeless as Salvini decree abolishes protective measures
Princess stares out of the window of a welcome centre an hour outside Rome, watching the sky turn red. She clutches her three-month-old child tightly. The baby is all she has left after Nigeria stole her freedom, and Italy her hope.
Princess, 31, born among the muddy streets and shacks of Benin City, left everything to come to Italy in 2008. Now she is one of the thousands of women trafficked into the country who could soon find themselves on the streets, or deported back to Nigeria, under a decree that cements the populist government’s hardline immigration stance.
Continue reading...A controversial new gemstone law fails to address the hazards of an industry in which scores of workers die each year
At one of the jade mining pits that scar the mountains of northern Myanmar’s Kachin state, a miner recalls how five of his friends died during a landslide two years ago. “I was so scared,” he says. While working in areas where there have been previous landslides, he says he has discovered dead bodies and buried them.
Testimonies heard by the Guardian reveal a deadly environment where lethal landslides and equipment failures strike regularly, in an industry with a history of human rights abuses, corruption and environmental destruction. “At first it was so scary for me,” says another worker. “But it’s becoming natural … We started accepting that we could die in any situation.”
Continue reading...After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on the planet. But its benefits mask enormous dangers to the planet, to human health – and to culture itself
In the time it takes you to read this sentence, the global building industry will have poured more than 19,000 bathtubs of concrete. By the time you are halfway through this article, the volume would fill the Albert Hall and spill out into Hyde Park. In a day it would be almost the size of China’s Three Gorges Dam. In a single year, there is enough to patio over every hill, dale, nook and cranny in England.
After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US.
Continue reading...Asking about the importance of cocoa in Ivory Coast feels a little like making enquiries about the value of grapes in Burgundy. When I put the question to N’Zi Kanga Rémi, who has for the last 18 years beengovernor of the rural department of Adzopé, north-east of the sprawling port city of Abidjan, he leaned forward in his chair and fixed me with an amused stare.
His booming voice went up a decibel to fill the administrative offices on whose walls his own portrait alternated with that of his nation’s president. “It doesn’t make sense to ask an Ivorian what cocoa means to him!” he said. “It means everything! It’s his first source of income! My education was funded by cocoa! Our houses are built with cocoa! The foundations of our roads, our schools, our hospitals is cocoa! Our government runs on cocoa! All our policy focuses on sustaining cocoa!”
Continue reading...Entrepreneurs aiming to set up Nepal’s first ski resort are undeterred by difficult terrain and lack of state support
Along the single icy road leading through the village of Kuri, high in the hills of eastern Nepal, tourists stop to stare at a pair of skis. “Is it a skateboard?” asks one. “Maybe they are ice skates,” suggests another. “No idea,” they agree, before walking off gingerly along the slippery track.
Nepal may have the highest mountains in the world, but you are about as likely to see a skier here as you are a yeti. Nepal sent no athletes to the Winter Olympics last year, and there is not a single ski resort in the country.
Continue reading...