UN study finds misgivings over impact of condom distribution in secondary schools are misplaced
Making condoms available to teenagers at school does not make them more promiscuous – but neither does it reduce teenage pregnancy rates.
According to a major review by the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), giving out condoms in secondary schools does not increase sexual activity, or encourage young people to have sex at an earlier age.
Continue reading...The race to head the World Bank opened with the US candidate already known. Other countries must stand up and be counted
With characteristic lack of restraint, the Trump administration last week jumped the gun on the World Bank presidential election process by naming David Malpass as its preferred candidate to succeed Jim Yong Kim.
The formal nomination process, which did not begin until the following day, is based on selection principles agreed in 2011 that put the emphasis on an “open, merit-based and transparent” appointment. It is high time those principles were put in practice.
Continue reading...Demonstrations over missing $4bn in development funds leave police overstretched, allowing 78 inmates to escape
The impoverished Caribbean nation of Haiti, hit by days of violent demonstrations that have claimed four lives, has suffered a mass prison breakout after 78 inmates escaped while police were dealing with protesters.
The demonstrations, the culmination of months of anti-corruption protests over the fate of almost $4bn (£3.1bn) in missing funds earmarked for social development – delivered via a controversial deal for Venezuelan petrol – have swelled in recent days under the slogan: “Kot kòb Petrocaribe a?” (“Where’s the Petrocaribe money?”).
Continue reading...The extremist group’s enduring influence in Mogadishu makes the Somali capital a dangerous place to live and work
Once every other month, journalist Hassan Dahir, 28, leaves his hostel in central Mogadishu under the cover of darkness to visit his mother in Yaqshid district, north-east of the capital.
He will spend the night with her and return to his rented room before dawn.
Continue reading...Home Office says ritual is child abuse and should be prosecuted under assault laws
The government has vowed to confront the practice of breast-ironing, calling it child abuse and saying the police should prosecute offenders under assault laws.
In a written parliamentary statement following Guardian revelations that the abusive practice was spreading in the UK, the Home Office said it was committed to challenging the cultural attitudes behind all “honour-based abuse”, but gave no indication it would legislate.
Continue reading...Guardian investigation reveals government allocated money for home improvements while appealing for support from international community
South Sudan’s cash-strapped government is spending almost half of the money ear-marked for the country’s fragile peace deal on funding renovations for politicians’ homes.
Two sets of internal government documents seen by the Guardian show that in December and January more than $135,000 (£105,000) was authorised by the National Pre-Transitional Committee (NPTC) – the group charged with overseeing the initial phases of the peace deal and managing money allocation – to renovate two politicians’ houses. They include the home of first vice president Taban Deng Gai, and that of the late Dr John Garang. His widow, Rebecca Nyandeng De Mabior, is expected to be one of the country’s five vice presidents under the new agreement.
Continue reading...Global study sets out how industry could make waste reduction pay, using data taken from across 12 countries
Restaurants can make a profit of £7 for every £1 they invest in cutting food waste, a global report reveals today, in findings that are hailed as proving the business case for stopping edible food from being binned.
The study is based on research for Champions 12.3, a group of political, business, NGO and farmers’ leaders from across the world who have united to tackle waste, using data taken from 114 restaurant sites across 12 countries.
Continue reading...Four Nigerian women bring landmark case over state executions of nine activists in a military court
Four Nigerian women at the centre of a long-running legal battle against oil giant Royal Dutch Shell saw their historic case reach the Hague on Tuesday.
The company is accused of complicity in the state execution of nine Ogoni protesters and human right abuses dating back to 1993. The allegations concern the 1990s violent government crackdown in Ogoniland, in the oil-rich Niger delta region, where oil spills inflicted environmental damage on a huge scale.
Continue reading...Report by Human Rights at Sea says revoking of Aquarius’s flag sets precedent for states to ignore international humanitarian law
The deflagging of the Aquarius, the last migrant rescue ship in the Mediterranean, represents a “dark moment” in European history, setting a dangerous precedent for states to flout international humanitarian laws.
A report by the charity Human Rights at Sea (HRAS) cited “inconsistencies in reasoning” given by Gibraltar and Panama for revoking the flag of Aquarius, which it said had acted transparently.
Continue reading...As experts urge global warning over outbreak, women and girls in Beni report alleged exploitation
An unparalleled Ebola vaccination programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has become engulfed in allegations of impropriety, amid claims that women are being asked for sexual favours in exchange for treatment.
Research by several NGOs has revealed that a deep mistrust of health workers is rife in DRC and gender-based violence is believed to have increased since the start of the Ebola outbreak in August.
Continue reading...A Commons committee is scrutinising UK arms export controls – yet the Yemen conflict isn’t even on the agenda
Seated in front of a tapestry embroidered with words from the lexicon of “British values” – freedom, equality, tolerance, liberty – ten MPs spent an hour last week taking evidence from NGOs on an issue that calls these values into question: UK arms export policy.
This is the Parliamentary committees on arms export controls (CAEC) in action: a body responsible for scrutinising government policy and holding it to account.
Continue reading...Eight women from rural Malawi travelled to India to train as solar engineers. Now they are lighting the way for their communities, in a country where just 10% of households are powered by electricity
Photographs by Peter Caton/VSO
Judges have moved to ensure that women driven by revenge and self-interest will no longer be able to make spurious allegations when relationships end
Their romance began at work. She asked him out for coffee with her friends. He took her out for lunch. Dinners and walks in New Delhi’s Lodhi Gardens followed. Then, for 18 months, they were in a sexual relationship.
But last year, when Pavan Gupta* turned 24, his parents began pressuring him to marry. When they introduced him to a girl he liked, Gupta ended his relationship with his girlfriend, Geeta Jain, telling her he could not disappoint his parents. “I liked her but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life with her. I always told her I was an only child and would have to go along with my parents’ choice,” says Gupta.
Continue reading...Wearing a baseball hat and smoking a shisha pipe in a cafe in Cairo, Dawitt tells me he is 19, but looks years younger. He explains that he escaped Eritrea aged 13 to avoid forced, indefinite conscription into military service.
His family helped him pay smugglers to travel via Sudan to Egypt. Struggling with debt and desperate to make the sea crossing to Europe, he looked in vain for regular work. Then he met a Sudanese man who suggested a “safe and easy way” to raise the cash – selling a kidney.
Continue reading...In accepting the controversial outcome of DRC’s presidential election, the global community has failed the country
The major players in the international community have accepted the outcome of January’s elections in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the name of stability. In doing so, they have failed the Congolese people.
Moreover, they have fallen short of the aspirations of the UN’s sustainable development goals, which call for “accountable and inclusive institutions”.
Continue reading...A checkpoint along the Nepal-India border has become has one of the world’s busiest human trafficking routes. Now it is being policed by survivors who try to spot other potential victims
It is midday in Bhairchawa, one of the 23 official border checkpoints between Nepal and India. Each day, up to 100,000 people cross under the stone arch separating the two countries. Some are on foot, others in trucks or on bikes, mopeds and rickshaws. Amid the chaos – the people, the dust, the noise of traffic and honking of horns – are the guardians: women who, having survived the horrors of human trafficking, now spend every day trying to spot potential victims and their exploiters among the crowds.
One of the women on duty today is Pema. While we talk, her eyes remain fixed on the crowds, scanning the throngs of people moving slowly across the checkpoint.
Continue reading...Pressure grows on two-time Costa Rica president as former Observer journalist speaks out over alleged assault in 1990
Oscar Árias, the Nobel peace laureate and two-time president of Costa Rica, is facing mounting accusations of sexual misconduct after a criminal complaint alleging assault was filed against him.
Four women have now said they were assaulted by Árias. The complaint, filed by an unnamed activist, was followed by public allegations by Eleonora Antillon, a Costa Rican journalist, who said she too had been assaulted by Árias in the mid-80s, when she was working for his campaign.
Continue reading...Campaign involving ‘naturally endowed, nice-looking women’ sparks backlash from ministers and activists
A plan to promote Uganda’s tourist industry with a “Miss Curvy” beauty contest has caused a government row in the east African nation.
The proposal to add “curvy and sexy women” to official literature listing Uganda’s attractions, devised by the country’s tourism minister, has drawn an angry rebuke from the minister of ethics and integrity and condemnation from women’s right activists.
Continue reading...Six years after his death, youth idol Mahmoud Abdelaziz remains an influential symbol of a very different Sudan
When Mahmoud Abdelaziz, one of Sudan’s most popular singers, died in Amman in January 2013, his fans mobbed the runway of Khartoum airport as his body was flown home, forcing the cancellation of flights.
Others poured out on to the city’s streets, forming one of the biggest crowds witnessed in Sudan’s recent history.
Continue reading...A Labour MP’s grotesque take on Yemen war casualties serves only to show the sordid and politicised nature of body counts
Counting the bodies in conflicts is a necessary, confusing and too often sordid business.
Body counts are necessary for obvious reasons. Numbers supply a moral reference point. They tell us about the scale of a conflict as well as if civilians were targeted and how. They provide evidence for different kinds of human rights advocacy in an international setting, and assist in setting policy for emergency assistance.
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