Accused had a gynaecological condition and was unaware she was pregnant, court told, as verdict hailed a victory by women’s rights activists
A woman in Argentina accused of killing her baby after suffering an obstetric emergency has had her case dismissed.
A court in Buenos Aires, cleared La China*, 43, after the prosecution withdrew its charge of aggravated homicide.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Men and women coming in with shotgun wounds to different parts of bodies, doctors say
Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country.
Doctors and nurses – treating demonstrators in secret to avoid arrest – said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs.
Continue reading...A lack of essential drugs and equipment is causing health centres to close, while critics accuse the government of complacency
Health workers in Malawi claim the government is “ignoring” acute shortages of drugs and equipment that are crippling the country’s hospitals.
Patients have been asked to bring in their own syringes while the theatre and labour ward at the main Bwaila maternity hospital in the capital, Lilongwe – has faced temporary closures because “we don’t have equipment/supplies to work with”, according to a notice pasted to a wall. Regular power cuts are also impacting.
Continue reading...Climate crisis increases risks for subsistence farmers in Africa who usually work throughout pregnancy
Rising temperatures driven by climate breakdown are causing distress to the foetuses of pregnant farmers, who are among the worst affected by global heating.
A study revealed that the foetuses of women working in fields in the Gambia showed concerning rises in heart rates and reductions in the blood flow to the placenta as conditions became hotter. The women, who do much of the agricultural labour and work throughout pregnancy, told the scientists that temperatures had noticeably increased in the past decade.
Continue reading...‘Famine in all but name’ ravaging Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, yet British aid is one-fifth of 2017 amount
The UK urgently needs to do more to help more than 28 million people in drought-stricken Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya, two former secretaries of state for international development and the heads of 14 of the UK’s leading aid agencies have warned in a joint letter to the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
They say one person is dying every 36 seconds, yet British aid to the region is only one-fifth of what Britain provided when the region was struck by famine in 2017. More than 7 million children are acutely malnourished across the three countries.
Continue reading...Rights groups say amended criminal code underscores shift towards fundamentalism
Indonesia’s parliament has overhauled the country’s criminal code to outlaw sex outside marriage and curtail free speech, in a dramatic setback to freedoms in the world’s third-largest democracy.
Passed with support from all political parties, the draconian legislation has shocked not only rights activists but also the country’s booming tourism sector, which relies on a stream of visitors to its tropical islands.
Continue reading...Police accused of gender-based rights violations against women and LGBTQ+ people as they cracked down on protests in 2021
Colombian police used sexual harassment, torture and forced nudity to target women and LGBTIQ+ people as they cracked down on a nationwide wave of protests in 2021, a report by Amnesty International has found.
National and anti-riot police units committed hundreds of acts of gender-based human rights violations in its response to protests, the Amnesty investigation revealed.
Continue reading...This year’s tournament has been dominated by off-field matters. We look at the issues around the labor used to build the tournament’s infrastructure
The deaths of migrant workers in Qatar in the build-up to this year’s World Cup have drawn criticism across the world. While the tournament’s organizers put the official count at 40, estimates by the Guardian put the figure in the thousands. Here we explore the key questions around an issue that has tarnished the World Cup for many fans.
Continue reading...Programme to subsidise exports of grain to poor and hungry countries launched on anniversary of Ukraine’s Holodomor famine
Up to 60 Ukrainian grain ships can be sent by the middle of next year to some of the world’s poorest countries in Africa, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, said in a statement released to the Guardian.
In a move that challenges the Russian narrative that the west’s response to its war on Ukraine has aggravated pre-existing food shortages in Africa, Zelenskiy said ships moving out of the Ukrainian port of Odesa can reach humanitarian hotspots such as Sudan, Yemen and Somalia, but only so long as international funding comes forward to subsidise the grain.
Continue reading...The pastoralists had been detained over the death of a police officer during protests against government plans to evict them from ancestral land
Prosecutors in Tanzania have dropped murder charges against 24 Maasai pastoralists who were detained over the death of a police officer earlier this year.
The officer died in June during protests against government plans to evict them from their ancestral land in Loliondo, in Ngorongoro District, to make way for a conservation and a luxury hunting reserve.
Continue reading...The world’s biggest single-building pig farm has opened in Hubei province, but critics say it will increase the risk of larger animal disease outbreaks
On the southern outskirts of Ezhou, a city in central China’s Hubei province, a giant apartment-style building overlooks the main road. But it is not for office workers or families. At 26 storeys it is by far the biggest single-building pig farm in the world, with a capacity to slaughter 1.2 million pigs a year.
This is China’s answer to its insatiable demand for pork, the most popular animal protein in the country.
Continue reading...International community urged to intervene as hundreds of thousands forced into refugee camps as homes and crops destroyed and aid workers attacked
Starvation is being used as a weapon of war by South Sudan government forces against their own citizens, an investigation has found.
Deliberate starvation tactics used by government forces and allied militia, and by opposition forces, are driving civilians out of their homes, exacerbating Africa’s largest refugee crisis, according to the report published on Thursday.
Continue reading...President orders Ministry of Environment and Forestry to launch investigation over contractor’s licence for removing trees
The Kenyan government has halted the transportation and export of Kilifi baobabs to Georgia and ordered an investigation into how a foreign contractor received permission to transport the ancient trees out of the country.
Kenya’s president, William Ruto, ordered the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to investigate whether Georgy Gvasaliya had the proper licence to take the trees out of Kenya under the Nagoya protocol, an international agreement that governs the conditions for the export of genetic resources, which has been incorporated into Kenyan law.
Continue reading...Government watchdog says £3.5bn aid in 20 years to 2020 failed to achieve aim of stabilising Afghan government
The UK’s £3.5bn aid to Afghanistan between 2000 and 2020 was implicated in corruption and human rights abuses and failed to achieve its primary objective of stabilising the country’s government, an assessment by the UK government’s aid watchdog has found.
Describing the two-decade aid project as the UK’s single most ambitious programme of state building, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) says decisions to spend aid on counterinsurgency operations were flawed, adding that efforts to reduce gender inequality are likely to be wiped out by the Taliban.
Continue reading...Julius Maada Bio says 22% allocation of total government funding is needed to ensure all children can go to school
Sierra Leone’s president has defended his decision to spend almost a quarter of the national budget on education, saying the country cannot develop unless all children go to school.
Speaking to the Guardian, Julius Maada Bio admitted that allocating 1.7tn leones (£80m) this year for its ambitious educational reform programme was a risk, but said: “We are throwing all our resources, all our energy into education. We cannot develop without improving education. I see it as an existential issue.
Continue reading...Floods caused by warming temperatures and a lack of preventive care are driving the spread of the disease in a country racked with political and economic upheaval
More than 1,400 people in Sudan have been diagnosed with dengue fever this year in the worst outbreak in the country for more than a decade.
Half of the country’s 18 states have registered cases and nine deaths recorded, including one child, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) who suspect the true number to be far higher.
Continue reading...Despite breakthrough on fund for developing nations, Ursula von der Leyen says Cop27 has not delivered on commitment to phase down fossil fuels
This liveblog is now closed
The main sticking point of Cop27 has been over the creation of a loss and damage fund – finance provided by rich nations to poorer ones to help them prepare for and recover from the worst impacts of climate breakdown.
Some, especially in the rightwing press, have framed this as “reparations”, a highly loaded term. It’s also misleading, as under article 8 of the Paris climate agreement it is explicitly made clear that loss and damage “does not involve or provide a basis for any liability or compensation”.
Continue reading...EU agrees to loss and damage fund to help poor countries and activists interrupting proceedings lose their passes
The biggest news of the day broke on Friday morning, with the announcement that the EU would agree to a loss and damage fund to help poor countries with climate disasters.
The climate summit will run until Saturday, according to Agence France-Presse. This is not really a surprise to anyone.
Youth activists staged a Friday climate strike to mark the last formal day of negotiations. Meanwhile during the talks, Nakeeyat Dramani, a 10-year-old Ghanaian climate activist, asked delegates to “have a heart”.
Elsewhere the activists who interrupted the US president, Joe Biden, lost their summit passes, as did the Ukrainian protester who spoke out at a Russian press conference.
A surprisingly large number of gas deals were struck at the summit, with more than a dozen set up.
And Desmog crunched the numbers and found that representatives from big agriculture more than doubled at Cop27.
Continue reading...Migrant workers in Qatar working as guards at Al-Bidda Park appear to get one day off a month and are housed in dirty camps on the edge of the desert
Migrant workers employed as security guards in a huge park that will be at the heart of Qatar’s World Cup festivities appear to be being paid as little as 35 pence an hour.
The men are stationed across Al Bidda Park, a pristine green space adjoining the Fifa Fan Festival. Throughout the tournament Al Bidda Park will be packed with football fans enjoying the sweeping lawns, shaded picnic spots and views over Doha. The guards interviewed are not contracted to Fifa or deployed in the Festival.
Continue reading...The European Union has backed a loss and damage fund, one of the key demands of developing countries at the climate talks
This liveblog is now closed
The low-lying Pacific island of Tuvalu has been reacting to the EU’s proposal on “loss and damage”. Its finance minister, Seve Paeniu, called for support for phasing out all fossil fuels, language so far missing from the draft Sharm el-Sheikh agreement.
He described the EU position on loss and damage as a “breakthrough”.
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