The 100mph tropical cyclone has affected 1.5 million people across Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe
Continue reading...Category Archives: Global development
Foreign nationals suspected of Isis links ‘not wanted’ in Syrian camps
Aid agencies struggle to cope with rise in new arrivals, with scores dying on the way to the settlements
An estimated 7,000 women and children from more than 40 nations, including the US, UK, Australia and Europe, are living in tense and chaotic conditions in camps in north-eastern Syria, where they are “not wanted” due to their supposed affiliation with Islamic State.
Among them are hundreds of unaccompanied or separated children, some just babies as young as five months, according to aid groups and other sources.
Continue reading...Three people dying in Yemen every day despite ceasefire agreement
Since the Stockholm deal in December, airstrikes on Hodeidah have decreased but casualties have doubled elsewhere
Yemen is continuing to experience a steady stream of violence, claiming at least one life every eight hours – despite the agreements reached between the internationally recognised government and the Houthis at talks in Sweden just over three months ago.
According to figures compiled by two international aid agencies, in some areas of the country the number of casualties, far from falling, had doubled where the conflict was flaring up.
Continue reading...Priti Patel’s brazen anti-aid agenda is ultimately all about Brexit | Peter Beaumont
Backing calls from the TaxPayers’ Alliance to face down ‘NGO cartels’ shows a profound misunderstanding of how the aid system works
Priti Patel is not known for her transparency or her subtlety.
The former international development secretary was forced to resign over misleading prime minister Theresa May over an undeclared “family holiday” to Israel that – among other things – saw her fail to tell the British embassy that she would be meeting with Israeli politicians and visiting the occupied Golan Heights, against all British government conventions for a serving minister.
Continue reading...US accused of trying to dilute global agreements on women’s rights
Draft documents suggest US will refuse to reaffirm commitment to international declaration on women’s rights at New York forum
US officials in New York are attempting to water down language and remove the word “gender” from documents being negotiated at the UN, in what is being seen as a threat to international agreements on women’s rights.
In negotiations at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which resume at UN headquarters this week, the US wants to replace “gender” in the forum’s outcome document with references only to women and girls.
Continue reading...UK charity knew of alleged abuse in Congo parks but did not act
Wildlife trust that funded ‘eco-guards’ at the centre of rights abuse claims comes under scrutiny over failure to alert charities’ watchdog
A British charity set up to fund conservation parks in the Congo basin knew about allegations that tribal people were being abused by park guards but failed to alert the charities’ watchdog, the Guardian can reveal.
Last week, WWF launched an inquiry into claims that it has funded paramilitary guards accused of torturing, sexually assaulting and murdering people in Africa and Asia. In response to the claims, published by BuzzFeed News, the organisation said it has “stringent policies” to ensure the safeguarding of indigenous peoples’ rights and would take “swift action” should the review uncover any breaches.
Continue reading...‘There is no tomorrow for me’: Rwanda’s teen mothers – in pictures
Young unmarried mothers are often forced to live in poverty, unable to find work and shunned by their families and communities
Photographs: Carol Allen-Storey/Hope for Rwanda
Doctors in Zimbabwe ‘sending patients away to die’ as drug shortages bite
Senior doctors go on strike as president is warned that lack of medicine could lead to collapse of emergency services
A doctors’ strike in Zimbabwe entered its second day on Wednesday with health workers claiming patients in the biggest state hospital are dying due to a lack of drugs and medical supplies.
Dozens of doctors picketed outside Parirenyatwa hospital demanding improvements and claiming government promises to improve the health service had come to nothing.
Continue reading...Shadow falls over Ethiopia reforms as warnings of crisis go unheeded
Having fled violence, a million Ethiopians now face hunger and disease. Yet Abiy Ahmed seems intent only on their return
In southern Ethiopia, tens of thousands of people are enduring what aid workers say is a full-blown humanitarian crisis. But the government of the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, appears not to be listening.
It is a stain on the record of an administration that, since Abiy’s appointment last April, has been lauded for opening up Ethiopia’s political space and making peace with neighbouring Eritrea. Last month, Abiy was nominated for a Nobel peace prize. His government has also been praised for passing a new refugee policy hailed as a model of compassion and forward-thinking. Yet the dire situation facing millions of people forced from their homes by conflict, and the new regime’s approach to their plight, has invited a more sceptical response from some observers.
Continue reading...China is ‘in a league of its own’ on human rights violations, Pompeo says
Pompeo singled out Beijing for detaining members of Muslim minority groups as he unveiled annual human rights report
China is “in a league of its own” when it comes to human rights violations, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, said on Wednesday as he unveiled the state department’s annual report on human rights around the world.
Related: 'If you enter a camp, you never come out': inside China's war on Islam
Continue reading...Egypt executed 15 people in February. Why is the UK staying silent? | Rhys Davies
Britain is Egypt’s largest foreign investor. Yet at the recent Arab-EU summit, Theresa May was oddly quiet on rights abuses
While there may be “a special place in hell” for those who backed Brexit without a plan, regimes that execute people after fundamentally flawed trials get their own summit. Just a fortnight ago, Donald Tusk and the leaders of the EU met with the Egyptian president, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, at the Arab-EU summit in Sharm el-Sheikh – days after his regime executed nine people.
The summit was co-chaired by Tusk and Sisi. Tusk and other European leaders, including Theresa May, were curiously silent at the summit about the fate of Egypt’s political prisoners. The execution of the nine – convicted after unfair trials in which human rights campaigners say confessions were elicited by torture – was the third consecutive week of executions. In total 15 people were put to death in February in Egypt.
Continue reading...‘There are few gay people in India’: stigma lingers despite legal victory | Michael Safi and Aarti Singh
A landmark ruling legalised gay sex in the country in 2018, yet the LGBT community still face stigma and violence
When India’s supreme court announced it was legalising gay sex, people hugged in twos and threes on the lawns outside the Delhi courthouse. They draped themselves in rainbow flags in Bangalore and released balloons into the sky. In Mumbai’s nightclubs, they danced all night.
In Patna, the dusty capital of the east Indian state of Bihar, Roshni did nothing. “We felt good when people were marching in Delhi and Mumbai,” she says. “Everyone wanted to follow [them], but then we feared what other people would think – how they would react.”
Continue reading...Fighting a ‘double curse’: Afghanistan’s hopefuls for Paralympic gold | Stefanie Glinski
Prejudice faced by Afghan women with a disability has proved no barrier to its national wheelchair basketball team
Nilofar Bayat played her first game of wheelchair basketball in an open court in the middle of Kabul, surrounded by mainly male onlookers who shouted insults and called her names.
She decided to keep playing anyway.
Continue reading...Fires of Jharia spell death and disease for villagers
The inhabitants of a remote village at the heart of India’s coal industry brave deadly sinkholes and toxic gases simply to survive
In the village of Liloripathra, in a remote corner of India’s eastern Jharkhand state, mother-of-three Sushila Devi grips the hands of two women sitting on either side of her. Coal fires spew clouds of smoke into the already heavy, polluted air.
At about 8pm, a policeman cradling a small body wrapped in black plastic bags emerges through the smoke and the crowds that have gathered around her home. He has come to deliver the body of her 13-year-old daughter Chanda, killed along with two others from the village when a coal mine caved in on top of them. They had been scavenging in a colliery operated by Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), a subsidiary of state-owned Coal India.
Continue reading...Africa’s film awards still glitter, but few of its big screens are left
‘Video clubs’ and watching on mobile is taking over from the joyful experience of going to the cinema
Three riders on horseback canter up a dusty road in Ouagadougou to deliver the top prize, a golden horse, to the awards ceremony of Africa’s most important film festival. Dressed head to toe in glitter, film-themed wax fabric and flowing silks, celebrities of African cinema settle down, Rwanda’s national ballet performs and the presidents of Burkina Faso, Rwanda and Mali look on from golden chairs as gongs, cheques and conical Fulani grass hats are handed out for more than three hours.
The pan-African film and television festival of Ouagadougou (Fespaco) is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the ceremony was the culmination of two weeks of screenings, parties and debates over the future of African cinema.
Continue reading...Child marriage in Niger is a cultural issue, not an Islamic one
A visit to the world’s fifth poorest country has shown me that battling early and forced marriage begins with communities
Islam, for me, is a way of life and the core of my world. As a Muslim woman I have always been encouraged to be who I want to be.
I get frustrated when people say: “Why do you wear a hijab? Isn’t that a sign of women’s oppression?” I choose to wear a hijab; I choose to be an educated and liberated woman and I choose to follow Islam.
Continue reading...Emma Watson, Keira Knightley among stars urging better protection of women
Scores of high-profile signatories mark International Women’s Day by signing letter calling for stronger global political support
• Letter: Women worldwide must be heard and respected
Emma Watson, Keira Knightley, and Dame Emma Thompson are among 76 actors, writers, business leaders and campaigners calling on governments to increase support and protection of women fighting for their rights around the world.
The letter, published in the Guardian to mark International Women’s Day on Friday, says women risk “backlash, censorship and violence” whenever they defend their rights or speak out over injustice.
Continue reading...Women take to the streets of Pakistan to rewrite their place in society
Campaigners will march on International Women’s Day to protest against harassment, child marriage and ‘honour killings’
During Jalwat Ali’s school days in Lahore, there were limited spaces to gather with other women, never mind flood the streets with punchy placards.
Public spaces often feel constricted in Pakistan, as though under critical male scrutiny. But over the past few days, Ali has been recruiting dozens of women, from garment workers to domestic helpers who barely get a day off. “To solve any problem, we need to make a collective effort,” she says.
Continue reading...Has WWF’s mission to combat nature’s enemy gone too far?
Claims that the World Wide Fund for Nature is in bed with paramilitaries point to a wider need for root and branch reform
World Wide Fund for Nature, put down your weapons. You are not a mercenary. You are not a government. You are not a terrorist. Your mission: to save the planet. Saving the planet does not happen by shooting people, or even by threatening them.
One might be forgiven for thinking that headlines this week revealing allegations that WWF was in bed with paramilitaries in different parts of the world must have been referring to the erstwhile World Wrestling Federation, not the fluffy panda charity that saves tigers. How could this possibly be?
Continue reading...‘Police didn’t help me’: Europe ignoring abuse of trafficked Vietnamese children
Young people taken to UK are exploited in transit through Europe as governments ‘pass the buck’ on protection
Thousands of children trafficked from Vietnam to the UK are being abused and exploited in transit through Europe because governments are “passing the buck” on their protection, research has found.
Victims are typically trafficked through eight countries before arriving in the UK, and at each point are vulnerable to labour and sexual exploitation. Yet governments routinely view Vietnamese children as the responsibility of other states, according to a report published on Thursday by Anti-Slavery International, the Pacific Links Foundation and Every Child Protected Against Trafficking UK (Ecpat UK).
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