Category Archives: Global development

Africa’s biggest photography library opens in Ghana

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Ghanaian photographer’s crowdfunded project won support of Humans of New York author and boasts more than 30,000 books

The largest photography library in Africa has opened in Ghana’s capital, Accra, showcasing the work of the continent and diaspora’s forgotten, established and emerging talent.

Founded by Ghanaian photographer and film-maker Paul Ninson, the Dikan Center houses more than 30,000 books he has collected. The first of its kind in Ghana, a photo studio and classrooms provide space for workshops while a fellowship programme is aimed at African documentarians and visual artists. An exhibition space will host regular shows, the first of which is Ahennie, a series by the late Ghanaian documentary photographer Emmanuel Bobbie (also known as Bob Pixel), who died in 2021.

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Tunisia election set to deliver male-dominated parliament and erosion of women’s rights

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As the country goes to the polls, reforms introduced by hardline president Kais Saied have led to the exclusion of female candidates

Tunisians will vote on Saturday in an election that will lead to a weakened parliament “almost exclusively dominated by men”, as activists warn of a stark deterioration of women’s rights under an increasingly authoritarian president.

The controversial elections, boycotted by all the main parties, mark the final piece of the constitutional jigsaw President Kais Saied began assembling in July 2021, when he suspended the legislature in what critics called a power grab.

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Nobel prize winner criticises western ‘neglect’ and urges action over DRC violence

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Denis Mukwege has demanded sanctions be imposed on Rwanda to ease the crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo

The west must ditch its “double standards” and act decisively against the violence worsening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel prize-winning surgeon, has said.

In a stinging criticism of the international community’s “negligence”, Mukwege urged Britain and its allies to impose sanctions on neighbouring Rwanda to help ease the growing crisis in the east of the country.

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Iran ousted from UN body tasked with empowering women

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Twenty-nine of 54 members vote to expel country over regime’s bloody crackdown on protests calling for gender equality

Iran has been ousted from a UN body tasked with empowering women after​​​ world powers voted​ in favour of a motion submitted by the US, which said the Islamic Republic’s membership was an “ugly stain” on the group’s credibility.

Activists and rights groups have said Tehran’s role in the 45-member commission on the status of women was a farce, considering the regime’s forces have beaten and killed women peacefully calling for gender equality.

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UN to investigate use of ‘parental alienation’ tactic in custody cases

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Fears an increase in allegations, particularly against mothers, of deliberately alienating a child against the other parent in domestic abuse cases may put victims at further risk

The UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls is to investigate how family courts around the world approach “parental alienation” (PA) and how this may lead to the double victimisation of those who have suffered domestic abuse.

There is no single agreed definition of parental alienation but a generally accepted description is a child’s rejection of one parent as a result of psychological manipulation by their preferred parent.

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Argentinian court clears woman of killing her baby after obstetric emergency

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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.

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Iranian forces shooting at faces and genitals of female protesters, medics say

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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.

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‘Bring your own syringe’: Malawi’s medical supplies shortage at crisis point

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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.

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Rising temperatures causing distress to foetuses, study reveals

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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.

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Former development secretaries urge Sunak to increase east Africa aid amid drought

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‘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.

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Indonesia passes legislation banning sex outside marriage

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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.

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Colombia police used torture and sexual harassment to quell protests – Amnesty

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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.

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How many migrant workers have died in Qatar? What we know about the human cost of the 2022 World Cup

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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.

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Kyiv opens Grain from Ukraine scheme to get food to Africa’s poorest countries

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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.

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Tanzania drops murder charges against 24 Maasai leaders

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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.

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China’s 26-storey pig skyscraper ready to slaughter 1 million pigs a year

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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.

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Starvation being used as a weapon of war in South Sudan, report reveals

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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.

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Kenyan government halts baobab exports to Georgia after outcry

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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.

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UK aid to Afghanistan entrenched corruption and injustice, report finds

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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.

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Sierra Leone’s president defends large education budget as ‘necessary risk’

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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.

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