Category Archives: Global development

At least 230 Sudanese villagers killed in tribal attacks over disputed land

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Minister says more than 30,000 people forced to flee in Blue Nile state as tensions between rival communities erupt into violence

At least 230 people have been killed and more than 200 injured in attacks on villages in Sudan’s Blue Nile state over the past few days, according to authorities.

Gamal Nasser al-Sayed, the health minister in the southern state, which borders Ethiopia and South Sudan, told the Guardian that more than 30,000 people in eight villages in the Wad al-Mahi area had had to flee as their homes were torched and villagers were attacked.

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More bodies, thought to be of Ethiopian migrants, found in mass grave in Malawi

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Bodies of four men, believed to be en route to South Africa, found less than a mile from where 25 bodies were exhumed in Mzimba

Authorities in Malawi have discovered four bodies in a forest close to where dozens more were found in a mass grave on Wednesday.

Police say the bodies were found yesterday morning, less than a mile from where 25 others were exhumed in Mtangatanga Forest Reserve in the northern district of Mzimba.

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Zimbabwe becomes first African nation to approve HIV prevention drug

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World Health Organization welcomes country’s ‘crucial step’ in backing use of long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA)

Zimbabwe has become the first country in Africa and the third in the world to approve an HIV prevention drug recently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Regulators in Australia and the US have already given their backing to use the long-acting injectable cabotegravir (CAB-LA), and the WHO welcomed the move by Zimbabwe.

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Iranian schoolgirl ‘beaten to death for refusing to sing’ pro-regime anthem

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Fresh protests ignited around Iran by 16-year-old Asra Panahi’s death after schoolgirls assaulted in raid on high school in Ardabil

Another schoolgirl has reportedly been killed by the Iranian security services after she was beaten in her classroom for refusing to sing a pro-regime song when her school was raided last week, sparking further protests across the country this weekend.

According to the Coordinating Council of Iranian Teachers’ Trade Associations, 16-year-old Asra Panahi died after security forces raided the Shahed girls high school in Ardabil on 13 October and demanded a group of girls sing an anthem that praises Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

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UN warns against alarmism as world’s population reaches 8bn milestone

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UNFPA head urges countries to focus on helping women, children and marginalised people most vulnerable to demographic change

The world must not engage in “population alarmism” as the number of people living on Earth nears 8 billion, a senior UN official has said.

The global population is projected to reach that milestone on 15 November, with some commentators expressing worries about the impact of the growing number on a world already struggling with huge inequality, the climate crisis, and conflict-fuelled displacement and migration.

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UN urges investigation after 92 naked migrants ‘sent’ from Turkey into Greece

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UNHCR says circumstances of ‘shocking’ discovery unclear amid rising tension between two countries

The UN refugee agency is demanding an urgent investigation into the discovery of 92 naked people on Greece’s land border with Turkey, calling the incident shocking and saying it had been “deeply distressed” by images of the group.

The men, mainly from Afghanistan and Syria, were found close to the frontier after crossing the Evros River in rubber dinghies, according to Greek police. Children were among the group, a UNHCR spokesperson told the Guardian.

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Dismay as key cholera vaccine is discontinued

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Exclusive: halt to production of Shanchol vaccine alarms WHO amid ‘unprecedented’ global outbreaks

The manufacturer of one of only two cholera vaccines for use in humanitarian emergencies is to halt production at the end of this year, just as the world faces an “unprecedented” series of deadly outbreaks, the Guardian has learned.

Shantha Biotechnics, a wholly owned Indian subsidiary of the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi, will stop production of its Shanchol vaccine within months and cease supply by the end of 2023, causing alarm among health officials.

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Record numbers of people risking lives to cross Darién Gap to US

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More than 150,000 fleeing poverty have reached Panama so far this year in pursuit of American dream

The humanitarian crisis in Darién Gap has reached new heights as medical NGOs are overwhelmed by the record numbers of people risking their lives to cross the lawless strip of jungle in Latin America en route to the US.

An exodus of Venezuelans fleeing socioeconomic collapse has led to more people embarking on the perilous journey across the only land bridge connecting South and North America so far this year than in the entirety of 2021, Panamanian authorities say.

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Billionaire MacKenzie Scott donates $15m to help provide glasses to farmers in developing countries

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Donation is believed to be the largest single donation towards helping solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and former wife of the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has donated $15m (£13.5m) to a social enterprise that helps provide glasses to farmers in developing countries.

Scott’s donation to VisionSpring is believed to be the largest single private donation towards helping solve the problem of uncorrected blurry vision which leaves hundreds of millions of people in poverty.

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Indonesian football fans set aside fierce rivalries after stadium disaster

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After 131 lives were lost at a match, supporters have come together to offer support and seek answers

In Indonesia, football fan culture is vibrant, and its rivalries intense. Animosity between opposing teams is so strong that away fans are generally banned from attending games, as was the case at the time of the Kanjuruhan stadium disaster, when only home Arema supporters were allowed tickets.

Rivalries have descended into violence in the past. Before the Kanjuruhan disaster, 78 people had died in football-related accidents over the last 28 years, according to government figures. It is common for away players to be escorted to and from matches by armoured vehicles.

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‘Overlapping shocks’ are undoing efforts to end hunger in Africa, UN warns

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Urgent aid response needed as climate crisis, Covid, local conflicts and soaring fuel prices push millions more into hunger

• ‘We need urgent help’: Somalis displaced by drought and famine fight to survive

Decades of work to reduce hunger in Africa are being reversed as the continent struggles to cope with conflict, climate crisis and the global economic downturn, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) has warned.

About 278 million people in Africa – approximately one-fifth of the total population – went hungry in 2021, an increase of 50 million people since 2019, according to UN figures. Based on current trends, this is projected to rise to 310 million by 2030.

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Gunshots and blasts heard at Mahsa Amini protests in Iran

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Government officials struggle to end demonstrations sparked by death in police custody of Kurdish woman

Gunshots and explosions were heard in the Iranian Kurdish city of Sanandaj on Monday as the protests over the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini continued to unfold across the country and for first time spread to Iran’s crucial oil industry.

Government officials are struggling to end the protests led by young Iranians, especially women, previously regarded as uninterested by politics.

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UK’s lost leadership role hurts Somalia’s fight against famine, says drought envoy

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Britain is no longer the key humanitarian player and ‘great ally’ it once was, says envoy trying to get support for Somalia’s drought

The UK has lost its leadership role in the world and is letting down its allies, a senior official in the Somali government has said.

Abdirahman Abdishakur Warsame, the presidential envoy for Somalia’s drought response, said Britain used to be second only to the US as a key player in international forums and advocacy, but has since slipped, saying that countries such as Somalia were being left without support to face “the new climate reality”.

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Tigray rebels tortured and killed civilians in renewed fighting, survivors claim

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Witnesses claim the attacks in Amhara region last month were carried out on those the TPLF suspected of supporting Ethiopian federal forces

Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.

The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.

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Indonesia stadium disaster: only four paramedics were on standby inside grounds

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Local health chief says match had been deemed ‘harmless’ because away fans had been banned to prevent violence

Only four paramedics were on standby inside the football stadium in Indonesia where 131 people were killed in a crowd crush, with a further 12 nearby, the head of the local public health office has said, promising a thorough evaluation of the response.

The match was not considered to be a high-risk event because only fans of Arema, the home side, were present, said Wiyanto Wijoyo, the head of Malang regency public health office. Supporters of the opposing team, Persebaya Surabaya, who won the match, had been banned as a precaution to prevent violence between rival fans.

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Another teenage girl dead at hands of Iran’s security forces, reports claim

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Allegations that 16-year-old Sarina Esmailzadeh was beaten to death at a protest follow news of the similar death of 17-year-old Nika Shakarami

Reports are emerging of the death of another teenage girl at the hands of security forces in Iran, as protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini looked set to enter their third week.

Sarina Esmailzadeh, a 16-year-old who posted popular vlogs on YouTube, was killed when the security forces beat her with batons at a protest in Gohardasht in Alborz province on 23 September, according to Amnesty International.

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Health workers among dead in Ugandan Ebola outbreak

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MSF calls situation ‘very serious’ as east African country grapples with outbreak of Sudan strain of virus, for which no vaccine exists

It seems like a normal day in Mubende, central Uganda. Shops remain open, children are at school and public gatherings are allowed, provided people remain socially distant.

The ambulances that whisk past every few hours and the health workers who wash themselves meticulously before they return home are the only indications that it is not business as usual in the densely populated mining district, which is struggling to contain an outbreak of Ebola.

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African countries urge rich nations to honour $100bn climate finance pledge

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Ministers rebuke ‘shameful’ failure to meet funding promises for poorer countries to cope with climate crisis ahead of Cop27 summit


Ministers and high-ranking officials of African nations have urged rich countries to do more to combat the climate crisis, and called the failure to meet a funding promise from 2009 “shameful”.

At a conference in Giza, Egypt, on Wednesday in the run-up to next month’s UN climate summit, Wael Aboulmagd, Egypt’s special representative for Cop27, attacked wealthier nations for not honouring an agreement to provide $100bn (£87.5bn) a year to developing countries by 2020.

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‘Shocking blow to Indigenous land rights’ as court dismisses Maasai herder claim

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Herders lodge appeal against ruling in their case against the Tanzanian government, which they say is violently evicting them from ancestral land

Lawyers for Maasai herders who say the Tanzanian government is trying to violently evict them from their ancestral land to make way for a luxury game reserve have lodged an appeal against a court ruling that dismissed their case.

Donald Deya, lead counsel for the herders and chief executive officer of the Pan-African Lawyers Union (Palu), said his team had, on Wednesday, appealed against the verdict of the east African court of justice, which campaigners branded “a shocking blow” to Indigenous land rights.

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Sudan faces ‘generational catastrophe’ as millions of children miss school

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Floods, militia raids and hunger mean a third of children are not in school at all, while the rest have too few teachers, aid groups warn

Nearly every school-age child in Sudan is missing out on education, either completely or facing serious disruption, aid organisations have warned.

Schools in some states reopened this week after delays due to severe flooding but millions of children are still unable to go, leaving the country facing a “generational catastrophe”.

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