Category Archives: Global development

Ugandan president and son accused of sponsoring violence in ICC testimony

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Documents containing allegations of torture filed to court in support of complaint made by Bobi Wine

The Uganda president, Yoweri Museveni, and his son Muhoozi Kainerugaba have been accused of sponsoring violence and abusing critics in harrowing testimony filed before the international criminal court.

The submissions contain detailed allegations of the torture of opposition figures and activists who report being arrested arbitrarily and being held incommunicado in “torture centres”, where they were reportedly interrogated about their links with the opposition figure Bobi Wine and subjected to physical harm and indignifying treatment.

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Cross-border aid to Syria blocked in ‘act of utter cruelty’ by Russia at UN vote

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Use of veto threatens operations on route from Turkey that supports millions of people in north-west

Russia has been accused of “an act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto at the UN security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid designed to help 4 million people living in rebel-held north-west Syria.

The vote throws into doubt the continued existence of the key aid route into Syria from Turkey, and represents another hammer blow to a population still reeling from the devastating earthquake that struck the region in February.

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US aid policies undermined success of Afghanistan mission, says watchdog chief

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Poor oversight, lack of understanding and weak collaboration between allies contributed to ease of Taliban takeover, conclude US and UK aid bodies at London conference

America’s huge, badly-coordinated and politically-driven aid programme in Afghanistan engendered the corruption that undermined its entire mission and turned Afghans away from the western coalition, according to the head of a US aid watchdog.

“We did not really understand Afghanistan or how it worked as a country,” John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (Sigar), told a conference at the defence and security thinktank the Royal United Services Institute.

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Three arrested in Kenya as backlash grows over period strip-search

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Police take action as activists, politicians and the company involved all condemn tactics used by managers investigating who put sanitary towel in wrong bin

Three senior managers from a Kenyan dairy company have been arrested over allegations of indecent assault after they forced a group of female employees to undress in order to find out which of them was on their period.

The incident, which happened last week at Brown’s Food Company’s dairy factory in Limuru, in central Kenya, followed failed attempts by the managers – all three of whom are women – to find out who had put a sanitary towel in the wrong bin.

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Greek shipwreck: hi-tech investigation suggests coastguard responsible for sinking

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Research into loss of trawler with hundreds of deaths strongly contradicts official accounts – while finding a failure to mobilise help and evidence that survivor statements were tampered with

Attempts by the Greek coastguard to tow a fishing trawler carrying hundreds of migrants may have caused the vessel to sink, according to a new investigation by the Guardian and media partners that has raised further questions about the incident, which left an estimated 500 people missing

The trawler carrying migrants from Libya to Italy sank off the coast of Greece on 14 June. There were 104 survivors.

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Students barred from Iranian universities for refusing to wear a hijab

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Female students reportedly given sham disciplinary ‘hearings’, suspended from classes and threatened with ‘zero grades’ for defying head covering law

At least 60 female students in Iran have reportedly been barred from university for flouting the country’s mandatory hijab law.

Videos recently shared by citizen journalists show the harassment of women and girls in subways, streets and university campuses by disciplinary committees and pro-regime civilians. In defiance, female university students across the country have been recording themselves without headscarves.

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Intel executive ‘actively responsible’ for driving anti-LGBTQ+ agenda in Africa, say campaigners

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Greg Slater is co-founder with his wife Sharon of Family Watch International, a US group accused of financing propaganda about sexual and gender diversity

A group of human rights organisations in Africa renewed their calls this week for the American multinational Intel Corporation to dismiss a senior employee over his alleged involvement in fanning the growing anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment in several countries, including Kenya and Uganda.

In a change.org petition, supported by more than a dozen organisations, the rights groups claim that Greg Slater, Intel’s vice-president of global regulatory affairs, has been “actively responsible for exporting, financing, and spreading hate, homophobia” on the continent for decades, through the American conservative organisation, Family Watch International.

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‘Safe and effective’: first malaria vaccine to be rolled out in 12 African countries

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An initial 18m doses will be delivered over the next two years to combat a disease that kills nearly half a million children annually

A long-awaited vaccine for malaria has been announced for rollout across 12 African countries over the next two years, potentially saving tens of thousands of lives.

An initial 18m doses of the world’s first malaria vaccine have been assigned to the countries where the risk of children falling ill and dying from malaria is highest, according to a statement from the global vaccine alliance Gavi, the World Health Organization (WHO) and Unicef.

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Greek shipwreck does little to dissuade Pakistanis leaving for Europe

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Officials in Punjab say they can’t to stop the exodus, as families tell of loved ones lost on the perilous route via Africa and the Mediterranean

In one of the busiest hubs for trafficking in Pakistan, would-be migrants are continuing to leave for Europe despite hundreds of people drowning after a trawler sank off the Greek coast last month, the Guardian has found.

In the past week, at least two more people from the district of Mandi Bahauddin, in eastern Pakistan, have left with the help of traffickers. The continued migration comes as families mourn loved ones believed to be on the Greek shipwreck, most of whose passengers were from Pakistan, and those missing after previous forlorn attempts to reach Europe.

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War crimes surge in Burkina Faso, the world’s ‘most neglected crisis’

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Villagers increasingly caught up in army crackdown on Islamist militants, with both sides accused of mass killings of civilians

Civilians in Burkina Faso are being punished by the “total war” the government is waging against Islamist militant groups, with both sides accused of war crimes.

The military has been accused of targeting the Fulani ethnic group, while jihadists have sought retribution against villagers they believe support the government.

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Calls for sanctions against Sudan amid genocide warnings in Darfur

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British MPs have been warned of ‘systematic ethnic cleansing’ at the hands of paramilitary forces

British MPs have been warned of the possibility of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan and urged to put pressure on the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, which has been accused of murder and arson attacks on minority groups in the area.

While the RSF has been fighting the Sudanese army for control of the country in the capital, Khartoum, it has been accused of waging a separate war in Darfur where the Janjaweed militias, from which the RSF was formed, were accused of genocide almost 20 years ago.

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Bangladeshi labour leader beaten to death while trying to resolve dispute

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Shahidul Islam died in an assault on Sunday in Dhaka after meeting garment factory employees fighting for unpaid salaries

Police in Bangladesh are investigating the murder of a prominent trade union leader who was fatally beaten while trying to settle a dispute between a garment factory owner and workers over unpaid wages.

Shahidul Islam, 45, a top labour organiser for the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), was attacked on Sunday evening in Gazipur, a major garment industry hub on the outskirts of Dhaka, after intervening on behalf of workers who had gathered to demand back pay.

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Urgent action needed to protect ‘dying’ Kenyan domestic workers in Gulf, say rights groups

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Deaths and alleged abuse of Kenyan women in Saudi Arabia fuels demands for Nairobi to act on human rights

Rights groups have expressed concern that not enough has been done to address the alleged mistreatment of domestic workers in Gulf states, such as Saudi Arabia, after the Kenyan government moved to secure work opportunities abroad for its citizens.

“This is a matter of grave public interest,” said John Mwariri, a lawyer at Kituo cha Sheria, a legal aid organisation. “Many of our Kenyan citizens have been abused and are dying there. There is an urgent need for protections.”

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Destruction of world’s pristine rainforests soared in 2022 despite Cop26 pledge

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An area of primary rainforest the size of Switzerland was felled last year suggesting world leaders’ commitment to halt and reverse deforestation by 2030 is failing

An area the size of Switzerland was cleared from Earth’s most pristine rainforests in 2022, despite promises by world leaders to halt their destruction, new figures show.

From the Bolivian Amazon to Ghana, the equivalent of 11 football pitches of primary rainforest were destroyed every minute last year as the planet’s most carbon-dense and biodiverse ecosystems were cleared for cattle ranching, agriculture and mining, with Indigenous forest communities forced from their land by extractive industries in some countries.

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Philippine job agencies cheating women with illegal fees and crippling loans

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Migrants NGO finds recruiters making applicants pay for medical fees and training by taking out credit at exorbitant rates of interest

Employment agencies and money-lending companies in the Philippines are cheating women applying for jobs abroad out of thousands of pounds by charging illegal fees paid with high-interest loans, interviews and documents show.

Interviews with hundreds of women and thousands of pages of complaints compiled by a migrant rights organisation showed job agencies charged applicants training and medical fees that are above the legally allowed limit.

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UK aid should not fund private hospitals in developing countries, says Oxfam

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Development charity says patients denied treatment or held hostage until fees paid in private facilities in India and Kenya

Private hospitals in India and Kenya accused of refusing people on low incomes vital healthcare, or holding them hostage until bills have been paid, benefit from UK government investment funds, according to a report by Oxfam.

Investments worth hundreds of millions of pounds by government-backed agencies are used to facilitate the “impoverishment and even the imprisonment of the very people [the private hospitals] are supposed to be helping”, said the development charity.

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Kenya to launch biggest school meals programme in Africa

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Starting in Nairobi, the initiative aims to provide daily lunches for 4 million primary school children and to ‘eliminate the shame of hunger’

The largest school meals programme in Africa is to begin in Nairobi this August, in a drive to “eliminate the shame of hunger in [Kenya]”.

Ten new kitchens, now under construction, will provide 400,000 daily lunches for children in 225 primary schools and Early Childhood Development centres in the Kenyan capital. The programme will start on 28 August, the first day of the autumn term, and the kitchens will employ 3,500 people.

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Peru violated rights of 13-year-old girl repeatedly raped by father, UN rules

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Authorities denied pregnant Indigenous girl her legal right to an abortion and ‘re-victimised’ her, UN child rights committee says

Peru violated the rights of a 13-year-old girl who had been repeatedly raped by her father by denying her an abortion after she became pregnant, the UN has ruled.

The United Nations child rights committee found this week that the Peruvian authorities had violated the rights to health and life of the girl, known by the pseudonym Camila, by failing to provide her with information and access to legal and safe abortion.

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Massive strike pits African fishers against ‘superprofitable’ EU firms

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About 2,000 crew members withdrew labour over pay and conditions, as well as citing serious breaches of overfishing rules by Spanish and French companies

The waters of west Africa and the Indian Ocean boast some of the world’s largest, healthiest populations of tropical tuna, and that makes them havens for industrial tuna fishing fleets, owned by countries vastly richer than the nations whose borders form these coastlines.

In order to protect the fish populations of poorer African nations from rapacious overfishing by richer countries, EU tuna vessels are bound by agreements centred on the sustainability and “social empowerment” of third countries.

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Anguish as rape survivors in Sudan unable to access vital medication

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Emergency contraception, HIV-prevention and abortion drugs are locked in a warehouse in Khartoum – leaving women to turn to desperate measures

Rape survivors in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, are struggling to get hold of emergency contraception and abortion medication.

Access to a warehouse where 47,000 medical post-rape kits are stored has been cut off since the conflict began in April. Women are using social media to share information about where to find drugs to prevent pregnancies and infections – or are using herbal remedies.

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