Human rights groups demand Kenyan government halt forced evictions of Ogiek community from Mau forest
Human rights groups are calling for the Kenyan government to halt forced evictions of the Indigenous Ogiek community from their ancestral land in the Rift Valley.
“We are calling for an immediate cessation of ongoing demolitions and the evictions,” said Cyrus Maweu, deputy director of Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).
Continue reading...Pre-qualification seen as significant step towards self-sufficiency in healthcare in continent where more than 70% of drugs are imported
A Kenyan pharmaceutical company, Universal Corporation Limited, has become the first manufacturer in Africa to receive World Health Organization (WHO) approval to produce a lifesaving malaria drug.
The antimalarial drug, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine plus amodiaquine (Spaq), is frequently used to prevent seasonal malaria in children during months of peak transmission periods such as rainy seasons. Previously, demand for drugs such as Spaq in Africa has been met through the importation of generic versions of the medicine from India and China.
Continue reading...Garment workers in Bangladesh making clothes for UK brands say plans to increase their pay to £92 a month is not enough to survive
Garment workers making clothes in Bangladesh for UK high-street brands say they are facing starvation and are having to steal and scavenge food from fields and bins to feed their children, as protests continue over a new minimum wage for the garment workforce of 4 million people.
Over the past week, tens of thousands of workers have taken to the streets in increasingly violent protests that, according to unions and news reports, have left one young garment worker, Rasel Hawlader, dead.
Continue reading...Country, estimated to be owed up to $1.5trn, is increasing penalties for late payments and cutting back on infrastructure projects
China has become the world’s biggest debt collector, as the money it is owed from developing countries has surged to between $1.1tn (£889bn) and $1.5tn, according to a new report. An estimated 80% of China’s overseas lending portfolio in the global south is now supporting countries in financial distress.
Since 2017, China has been the world’s biggest bilateral lender; its main development banks issued nearly $500bn between 2008 and 2021. While some of this predates the belt and road initiative (BRI), Beijing’s flagship development programme has mobilised much of the investment in developing countries.
Continue reading...António Guterres calls for more aid trucks to enter besieged territory and calls for end to ‘dead end of destruction’
The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, has warned that the Gaza Strip is becoming “a graveyard for children” as he called again for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to allow aid into the embattled territory.
The UN chief’s comments came on Monday after Gaza health authorities said the death toll had now exceeded 10,000 people and the heads of all the major UN humanitarian organisations made an unprecedented joint statement calling for a ceasefire.
Continue reading...Healthcare workers say clinics are being overwhelmed by women seeking help, amid lack of staff and facilities to back programme
Pregnant women across the Democratic Republic of the Congo are to be offered free healthcare in an effort to cut the country’s high rates of maternal and neonatal deaths.
Women in 13 out of 26 regions in the country will, by the end of the year, be entitled to free services during pregnancy and for one month after childbirth. Babies will receive free healthcare for their first 28 days under the scheme, which the government plans to extend to the rest of DRC – although there is no timetable for that yet.
Continue reading...Mexico’s Pacific coast was battered by 165mph winds and torrential rain on 25 October. Thousands lost their homes and many now have too little food or water to survive
In the small hours of Wednesday 25 October, Josefina Maldonado, a grandmother of two in her 60s who lives in the Renacimiento district of Acapulco, watched as the corrugated metal roof of her home flew into the sky, ripped off by 165mph (270km/h) winds. The family home and everything and everyone in it, including two terrified small children, were prey to the torrential rain and the horrors of the hurricane. Most of the furniture, including the beds, was swept away.
“It wasn’t that the wind or the water was stronger. Both were working together,” Maldonado says. “We were up all night trying to save what we could, and the children screamed and cried for hours.”
Continue reading...Polluted water supplies and salty groundwater are making people ill, with UN warning of threat of child deaths from dehydration
Palestinians who fled to southern Gaza, after warnings from Israel to leave their homes, are standing in line for hours to get contaminated water they believe is making them ill.
Long queues of people waiting to fill jerry cans are now ubiquitous across the territory as water becomes increasingly scarce, a result of restrictions on water and power imposed by Israel.
Continue reading...Rights groups repeat calls for apology while President William Ruto says ‘much remains to be done to achieve full reparations’
King Charles’s expression of “greatest sorrow and deepest regret” over colonial atrocities committed by British forces in Kenya has been criticised as a “miss” in the east African country.
Reactions to the king’s statement were mixed, with the president, William Ruto, diplomatically welcoming Charles’s “courage and readiness to shed light on uncomfortable truths that reside in the darker regions of our shared experience”, but calling Britain’s colonial suppression of Kenya’s freedom movement “monstrous in its cruelty”.
Continue reading...Mahsa Yazdani convicted of blasphemy and ‘insulting supreme leader’ as Iran regime targets families of those killed in protests
A mother in Iran, whose son was reportedly killed after being shot repeatedly at close range by security forces, has been sentenced to 13 years in prison by an Iranian court after she demanded justice for her child on social media.
Mahsa Yazdani, whose 20-year-old son Mohammad Javad Zahedi was killed at an anti-regime protest in September 2022, was convicted on charges of blasphemy, incitement, insulting the supreme leader, and spreading anti-regime propaganda, according to human rights groups and family members. They say she will serve the first five years with no chance of parole.
Continue reading...Authorities go ‘door to door’ to round up and return thousands – many who fled from the Taliban – on first day of nationwide crackdown
Pakistan has begun arresting and deporting Afghan refugees who missed Wednesday morning’s deadline for them to leave, a government minister has announced. At least 200,000 people have already returned to Afghanistan voluntarily, said Pakistan’s acting interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti.
The crackdown on unregistered foreigners, part of Pakistan’s new anti-immigrant policy, affects some 2 million Afghans thought to be in Pakistan without documentation.
Continue reading...Huq, ‘a visionary and climate champion’, who was named one of the top 10 scientists in the world by Nature last year, has died at 71
Tributes have poured in from around for world for the renowned Bangladeshi scientist Prof Saleemul Huq, who died on 28 October.
Huq, 71, was an acclaimed academic, a relentless climate activist and the director of the International Centre for Climate Change & Development (ICCCAD), a research and capacity-building organisation in Bangladesh.
Continue reading...King urged to offer apology while in Kenya for UK’s ‘brutal and inhuman treatment’ during the Mau Mau uprising in the 1950s
The Kenya Human Rights Commission has called on King Charles to offer an “unequivocal public apology” for colonial abuses, during his visit to the country this week.
“We call upon the king, on behalf of the British government, to issue an unconditional and unequivocal public apology (as opposed to the very cautious, self-preserving and protective statements of regrets) for the brutal and inhuman treatment inflicted on Kenyan citizens,” the KHRC said.
Continue reading...President William Ruto says change aims to boost trade and allow goods, services, people and ideas to move freely across continent
Visas to visit Kenya are to be scrapped for other African nationals from next year as part of a movement towards opening up trade and travel within the continent.
“By the end of this year, no African will be required to have a visa to come to Kenya,” Kenya’s president, William Ruto, said at a climate change conference in Congo-Brazzaville.
Costly and time-consuming visa requirements, as well as high air fares, have long created barriers to inter-African travel for African passport holders; 32 out of 54 African countries still require the nationals of half or more countries on the continent to obtain a visa.
UN refugee agency says 10 of 50 bakeries it helps have been hit and fuel is running out to transport flour to those that remain
A fifth of bakeries supported by the UN’s agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza have been bombed so far, as warnings have been issued of “catastrophic” food shortages due to a lack of fuel.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said 10 of the 50 bakeries it supplies with flour, helping to lower the soaring cost of bread, have been hit in airstrikes and fuel is running out for vehicles to transport flour to those that remain.
Continue reading...Camfed calls for six-year plan to get 6 million girls into school, warning that drop-out rate is limiting children’s chances
Governments and donors need to redouble efforts to encourage girls back to school across Africa after the cost of living crisis pushed many to spurn education for low-paid work or early marriage, a charity has warned.
Camfed, which operates in five African countries, said its partnership model proved this could be achieved and called for a six-year plan to get 6 million girls into school.
Continue reading...A 17-year-old with a passion for robotics has produced a cheaper utensil that uses sensors to cancel out hand tremors
The motivation for his invention came to Aarrav Anil last year when he saw his uncle Arjun, who has Parkinson’s disease, struggle to eat. Some food spilled out of his mouth, the rest splattered on his clothes. Arjun attempted to keep his dignity but the frustration forced the retired civil servant, who is in his 70s, to give up and call his helper to feed him.
The sight of his uncle’s tremors shaking the spoon so violently inspired Aarrav, 17, from Bengaluru, south India, to turn to robotics. He locked himself in his room with microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and a 3D printer. What emerged was a prototype of a smart spoon that is now undergoing trials at the RV College of Physiotherapy in Bengaluru.
Continue reading...Some of the people evacuated by British after civil war broke out say they have received no information from Home Office about their future
People who were evacuated to the UK from war-torn Sudan fear they will be left in limbo when their six-month visas begin to expire this week. Evacuees, who have been living in hotels or with family members since April, say they have received no information from the Home Office about their future status.
“I’m worried that on 26 October I finish the six months and if nothing happens with my visa and there’s no extension I’ll become an illegal immigrant,” said Azza Ahmed, who was a university lecturer in the capital, Khartoum, and is now living in a hotel in London with her son.
Continue reading...Inquiry follows Guardian report on Vergie Tamfungan, whose death in the Gulf country has shone a spotlight on ‘cross-country’ employment practices
The UAE government has repatriated the body of a Filipina domestic worker who died last month, and launched an investigation into the findings of a Guardian report on the recruiters that brought her into the country.
When Vergie Tamfungan, 39, died on 25 September, she was being held in her recruiter’s accommodation in the emirate of Sharjah and had not yet been placed in a household to work. Her family said she had gone to the UAE that month after being promised a good salary and bonuses by the agency.
Continue reading...Foreign workers in Israel often have to pay exorbitant ‘placement fees’ to secure work in the country, which has left many of them with too much debt to leave
Migrant workers in Israel have said that they are unable to return home to their families after the 7 October attacks as they are trapped in debt from the high recruitment fees they had to pay for their jobs.
It is understood that at least 50 migrant workers died in Israel during the attacks by the Hamas militant group; 30 Thai nationals, four Filipinos and 10 Nepalis are so far known to have been killed, according to government and media reports. There are reportedly more than 100,000 foreign workers in Israel, with the majority working as caregivers, as well as in agriculture and construction.
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