Category Archives: Global development

UK government under fire for investing overseas aid in fossil fuel firms

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Taxpayer’s money also going to companies found to be flouting human rights in Kenya and DRC, says Commons committee

The UK government is under attack for investing taxpayers’ money in fossil fuel companies, a hospital in Kenya accused of imprisoning patients who couldn’t pay for treatment, and a business in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that exposed workers to dangerous chemicals and dumped untreated industrial waste.

MPs questioned the investments at a two-hour session in parliament on Tuesday, and excoriated Andrew Mitchell, minister for development, for making overseas aid available to a company owned by Africa’s richest man that is suspected of causing serious environmental damage.

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What’s the Caribbean without its beaches? But the people are losing access to them

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Barring public access to beaches and other sites is not a model for development. Transparency and engagement are needed

Walk along a Caribbean beach, which may stretch for miles, and your stroll is guaranteed to be cut short by an angry hotel security guard. In recent years, the Caribbean has seen a worrying trend of governments readily selling off assets to foreign corporations and political financiers.

Prime real estate, protected land and valuable resources are being relinquished without consideration for long-term consequences. It raises questions about whether remnants of the colonial mindset still prevail in political ideologies and decision-making.

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The multinational companies that industrialised the Amazon rainforest

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Analysis shows handful of corporations extract tens of billions of dollars of raw materials a year – and their commitments to restoration vary greatly

A handful of global giants dominate the industrialisation of the Amazon rainforest, extracting tens of billions of dollars of raw materials every year, according to an analysis that highlights how much value is being sucked out of the region with relatively little going back in.

But even as the pace of deforestation hits record highs while standards of living in the Amazon are among the lowest in Brazil, the true scale of extraction remains unknown, with basic details about cattle ranching, logging and mining hard to establish despite efforts to ban commodities linked to its destruction.

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Burkina Faso is the world’s ‘most neglected crisis’ as focus remains on Ukraine

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Chronic emergencies in Africa are being ignored while Ukraine dominates headlines and receives more funding, says NGO

The displacement of 2 million people in Burkina Faso has been named the world’s most neglected crisis, while the world’s attention and aid has been focused on Ukraine, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC).

Burkina Faso has endured five years of conflict with militias – who have attacked water sources and forced school closures – now controlling up to 40% of the country’s territory.

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Stop dumping your cast-offs on us, Ghanaian clothes traders tell EU

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With 100 tonnes of clothing from the west discarded every day in Accra, ‘fast fashion’ brands must be forced to help pay for the choking textile waste they create, environmentalists say

A group of secondhand clothes dealers from Ghana have visited Brussels to lobby for Europe-wide legislation to compel the fashion industry to help address the “environmental catastrophe” of dumping vast amounts of textiles in the west African country.

The traders from Kantamanto in Accra, one of the world’s largest secondhand clothing markets, met Alice Bah Kuhnke, an MEP with Sweden’s Green party, environmental organisations and representatives from the European Commission and the European Environment Bureau to argue that proposed extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulation should ensure Ghana receives funds towards managing the 100 tonnes of clothing discarded at the market every day.

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Ethiopian Airlines faces legal case over claims it blocks Tigrayans from travel

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Passengers accuse airline of refusing to sell tickets to people from the ethnic minority to fly from northern region to Addis Ababa

A civil society organisation has launched a lawsuit against Ethiopian Airlines, accusing the state-owned carrier of discriminating against ethnic Tigrayans.

The suit brought by Human Rights First, a local NGO, claims the airline is preventing “Tigrayans aged 15 to 60” from buying tickets for flights from the northern Tigray region to Addis Ababa, the federal capital. It also claims the company has increased ticket prices for the route as a form of “collective sanction” against the people of Tigray.

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Stateless Rohingya could soon be the ‘new Palestinians’, top UN official warns

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Special rapporteur Olivier De Shutter calls for action on neglected crisis after finding ‘absolutely terrible’ conditions on visit to Cox’s Bazar camps in Bangladesh

Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are at risk of becoming “the new Palestinians”, according to a UN head, who said they are trapped in a protracted and increasingly neglected crisis.

Olivier De Schutter, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, said the almost 1 million people living in overcrowded camps in Cox’s Bazar should be given the right to work in their host country of Bangladesh, and that forcing them to rely on dwindling international support was not sustainable.

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Ugandan president signs anti-LGBTQ+ law with death penalty for same-sex acts

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Global outcry over Museveni’s assent to draconian new anti-gay law, condemned as a ‘permission slip for hate and dehumanisation’


Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts. The move immediately drew widespread international outrage as well as condemnation from many Ugandans.

Early on Monday, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Annet Among, released a statement on social media confirming Museveni had assented to the law first passed by MPs in March. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts, up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, and anyone convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” faces a 14-year sentence.

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World Health Assembly commits to boosting global access to rehabilitation

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‘Landmark’ resolution in Geneva seeks to boost neglected service in all healthcare sectors, from prosthetics to physical therapy

Rehabilitation needs are “largely unmet globally” and in many countries less than 50% of people receive the services they require, according to a “landmark” resolution adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on Friday.

At the 76th World Health Assembly, World Health Organization (WHO) member states made a non-binding commitment to expand rehabilitation services to all levels of healthcare and to strengthen their financing mechanisms. Demand for the services is expected to grow as the burden of non-communicable diseases rises globally, says the document.

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Indian official suspended after draining reservoir to retrieve phone

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More than 2m litres of water pumped from dam on orders of food inspector who said device held sensitive government data

A government official in central India has been suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained to retrieve his dropped phone.

Millions of litres of water were pumped over three days from the Kherkatta dam in the state of Chhattisgarh after Rajesh Vishwas, a food inspector, said his Samsung mobile held sensitive government data.

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World Cup security guards still jailed in Qatar after dispute over unpaid wages

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Workers at World Cup 2022 venues fired as tournament ended and allegedly jailed or deported after trying to claim unpaid wages

Three World Cup security guards who were detained while trying to resolve a dispute over unpaid wages are still being held in Qatar four months after their arrest.

Shakir Ullah and Zafar Iqbal from Pakistan, and an Indian national, have allegedly been sentenced to six months in prison and fined 10,000 riyals (£2,220) each.

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Sierra Leone’s symbolic Cotton Tree falls during storm in Freetown

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Centuries-old Ceiba pentandra marked where formerly enslaved people had prayed upon arrival in west Africa

A centuries-old tree that served as a historic symbol in Sierra Leone has been felled during a storm, the government has said.

The 70-metre (230ft) Ceiba pentandra – known by Sierra Leoneans as Cotton Tree – lost all of its branches on Wednesday during torrential rains and high winds, with only the base of its enormous trunk still standing. The tree, which was in the capital, Freetown, was about 400 years old.

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Kissinger at 100: the ‘bloody, dreadful, filthy’ Angolan civil war – in pictures

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The Guardian visited Angola in 2001 as the long civil war – aggravated by the interventions of Henry Kissinger – between Unita and the government neared its end. The images show how the conflict affected the people and landscape around the city of Kuito in Bie province

  • Photographs by Antonio Olmos

After largely ignoring the continent for years, Henry Kissinger, who shaped US foreign policy from 1969 to 1976 as secretary of state, became involved in successive crises in Ethiopia, Angola and Rhodesia in the 1970s.

The US intervention in Angola complicated the emerging conflict there that followed Portugal’s withdrawal from its African colonies after the fascist dictatorship was overthrown in a coup in Lisbon. Concerned that the communist MPLA forces would sweep to power and open the way for Soviet influence, Kissinger led the US into a lengthy involvement in Angola.

Top, a boy runs past a bullet-scarred government building in Kuito. A woman chops the stump of a tree. Refugees camped out near Cuemba deforested the area to provide shelter and fuel for cooking and heat. Bottom, mother and child at the Cuemba refugee camp. A family waits to be seen by doctors at a medical centre run by Médecins Sans Frontières in Camacupa

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WHO members vote to move Moscow office and urge Russia to stop attacks on hospitals

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Member states vote to relocate the office to Denmark by the end of the year, in response to health impacts of Ukraine conflict

Member states of the World Health Organization voted on Wednesday to move a Moscow-based office of the WHO to Copenhagen, and urged Russia to stop attacks on hospitals and healthcare facilities in Ukraine.

At the 76th World Health Assembly in Geneva, 80 member states voted to request the WHO secretariat to relocate the European Office for the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases to Denmark before the new year.

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Families ask human rights court to free jailed Tunisian opposition leaders

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Daughters of Rached Ghannouchi and Said Ferjani demand justice amid continuing crackdown on dissent by President Saied


Families of detained Tunisian opposition politicians filed a case at the African court on human and peoples’ rights in Arusha, Tanzania, on Wednesday, accusing Tunisia of unlawfully arresting and detaining the leaders.

“On the evidence we are seeing so far, there is no proper basis for the charges,” said Rodney Dixon, a British lawyer handling the case. “They weren’t arrested lawfully with proper warrants, and the allegations haven’t been substantiated.”

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‘A gamechanger’: new meningitis vaccine hailed as major step

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Successful trials in Africa of NmCV-5 vaccine open the door to affordable treatment for disease that kills 250,000 people a year

An effective, affordable meningitis vaccine has been successfully tested in Africa, raising hopes for the elimination of a disease that kills 250,000 people a year.

The NmCV-5 vaccine, developed by the Serum Institute of India and global health organisation Path, will protect against the five main meningococcal strains found in Africa, including the emerging X strain, for which there is currently no licensed injection.

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UK funding cuts to east Africa ‘insulting and shortsighted’, say aid organisations

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NGOs dismayed at reduction in Britain’s contribution as crisis-hit region faces challenges from drought, rising prices and conflict

The UK has been accused of taking the “insulting and shortsighted” decision to cut humanitarian aid to east Africa at a time of chronic drought, conflict and rising food prices.

At a United Nations pledging conference in New York on Wednesday, which the UK is co-chairing, Andrew Mitchell, the UK’s international development minister, announced a humanitarian aid package to the region of £143m.

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Plastic waste puts millions of world’s poorest at higher risk from floods

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More than 200 million face more intense and frequent floods due to plastic pollution blocking drainage systems, report finds

A devastating 2005 flood that killed 1,000 people in the Indian city of Mumbai was blamed on a tragically simple problem: plastic bags had blocked storm drains, stopping monsoon flood water from draining out of the city.

Now a new report, attempting to quantify this problem, estimates that 218 million of the world’s poorest people are at risk from more severe and frequent flooding caused by plastic waste.

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Race against time to stop ‘humanitarian disaster’ among Sudan refugees in Chad

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Coming rainy season threatens 80,000 living in ‘heartbreaking’ conditions in vulnerable border region after fleeing war at home

Tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees, many of them children, who have crossed the border into Chad risk a “major humanitarian disaster” when the rainy season begins within weeks, a Red Cross official has warned.

About 80,000 people have sought refuge in the country to the west of Sudan as weeks of fighting between two warring generals forces hundreds of thousands from their homes.

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Hundreds of refugees in Malawi rounded up and sent to camps

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Army brought in to forcibly relocate refugees from the capital, despite pleas from human rights organisations

Hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers in Malawi have been forcibly relocated from the capital, Lilongwe, to an overcrowded government camp.

Over the past week, more than 300 refugees, including 100 children, have been rounded up and sent to Dzaleka camp, about 30 miles away.

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