Category Archives: Global development

Tanzania charges 20 Maasai with murder after police officer dies during protests

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Lawyers say government is attempting to intimidate pastoralists as thousands flee to Kenya amid escalating row over evictions

Twenty Maasai pastoralists from northern Tanzania have been charged with the murder of a police officer during protests over government plans to use their ancestral land for conservation and a luxury hunting reserve.

The officer was allegedly shot by an arrow on 10 June while attempting to demarcate land in Loliondo, which borders Serengeti national park.

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US woman left traumatised after Malta hospital refuses life-saving abortion

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‘Desperate’ tourist who fell foul of country’s total ban fears for her life if complications set in while she waits for transfer to UK

Doctors have denied an American woman on holiday in Malta a potentially life-saving abortion, despite saying her baby had a “zero chance” of survival after she was admitted to hospital with severe bleeding in her 16th week of pregnancy.

Despite an “extreme risk” of haemorrhage and infection, doctors at the Mater Dei hospital in Msida told Andrea Prudente that they would not perform a termination because of the country’s total ban on abortion.

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Somalia: ‘The worst humanitarian crisis we’ve ever seen’

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Children starving to death ‘before our eyes’ say aid workers as G7 leaders warned only ‘massive’ and urgent funding will avert famine

Only a “massive” and immediate scaling-up of funds and humanitarian relief can save Somalia from famine, a UN spokesperson has warned, as aid workers report children starving to death “before our eyes” amid rapidly escalating levels of malnutrition.

In a message to G7 leaders who are meeting from Sunday in Germany, Michael Dunford, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) regional director for east Africa, said governments had to donate urgently and generously if there was to be any hope of avoiding catastrophe in the Horn of Africa country.

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Visa delays leave UK families with adopted babies stranded in Pakistan

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Home Office accused of leaving mothers and traumatised children stranded for months while priority is given to Ukraine refugees

British couples who travelled to Pakistan to adopt children have been left stranded after the Home Office told them to expect months of delays in processing visas because of the Ukraine refugee crisis.

The delays are part of wider failings in visa processing that have left families around the world stuck waiting to return to the UK.

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Belgium returns Patrice Lumumba’s tooth to his family 61 years after his murder

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Congolese independence hero’s gold-capped tooth returned as ex-colonial power faces its bloody past

Belgian authorities have returned a tooth belonging to the murdered Congolese independence hero Patrice Lumumba, as the former colonial power continues to confront its bloody past and look toward reconciliation.

The restitution of the relic took place after Belgium’s King Philippe expressed his “deepest regrets” this month for his country’s abuses in its African former colony, Congo, 75 times the size of Belgium.

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‘Marching towards starvation’: UN warns of hell on earth if Ukraine war goes on

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Unprecedented food shortages could spark riots in dozens of countries as Black Sea blockade adds to pressures, says WFP chief

Dozens of countries risk protests, riots and political violence this year as food prices surge around the world, the head of the food-aid branch of the United Nations has warned.

Speaking in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday, David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), said the world faced “frightening” shortages that could destabilise countries that depend on wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia.

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‘Frankly quite stupid’: rights groups condemn Biden’s Saudi Arabia visit

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Critics question value of US president’s visit, raising fears it will endanger dissidents and legitimise regime’s human rights stance

Rights advocates fear Joe Biden’s decision to visit Saudi Arabia will endanger dissidents abroad and be seen by the authorities there as giving the green light to restrict civil liberties domestically.

Abdullah Alaoudh, of the thinktank Democracy for the Arab World Now and son of jailed cleric Salman al-Odah, said: “Right before inauguration, he [Biden] said he will be sure to protect Saudi dissidents – those were his words. We’re not protected by someone shaking hands with the same person who is threatening us every day and taking our families hostage due to our activism here in the US.”

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Closing Syria aid route would be ‘catastrophe’, UN warned

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Russia expected to use security council veto to block resolution to keep open Bab al-Hawa border crossing into Idlib from Turkey

The last remaining UN humanitarian aid route into Syria looks set to be shut down in a vote at the body’s security council next month, another casualty of the collapse in relations between the west and Russia.

On 10 July the council is due to vote on whether to keep open the Bab al-Hawa crossing from Turkey, which helps service rebel-held Idlib.

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Disabled Kenyan singer goes to court over rejected presidential candidacy

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Reuben Kigame’s campaign team claims the Electoral Commission discriminated against him because he is blind

A gospel singer who wants to be Kenya’s first disabled presidential candidate has brought a case in the country’s courts after being barred from the electoral race.

Reuben Kigame, who is blind, filed against Kenya’s Electoral Commission (IEBC) last Tuesday, claiming he had been blocked from entering the 9 August election.

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US announces plan to build silos on Ukraine border to export grain

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Joe Biden working with European governments to avert global crisis and help lower food prices

Temporary silos will be built along the Ukraine border, including in Poland, in an attempt to help export more grain from the country and avert a global food crisis, Joe Biden has announced.

The US president told a Philadelphia union convention on Tuesday that he was working with European governments on the plan “to help bring down food prices”.

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Maasai leaders ​arrested in protests over​ ​Tanzanian game reserve

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Dozens wounded in clashes with police over eviction from ancestral lands to make way for hunting and safaris

Ten Maasai leaders were detained and more than 30 people wounded during violent clashes with police in northern Tanzania on Friday, as they protested against eviction from their land to make way for a luxury game reserve.

One police officer was reportedly killed in the clashes and hundreds of people are in hiding after the protests in Loliondo, which borders Serengeti national park.

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Millions at risk in South Sudan as Ukraine war forces slashing of aid

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Drastic cuts to World Food Programme assistance will leave people ‘looking death in the face’ unless global donors offer support

The World Food Programme has said it is suspending food aid to 1.7 million people in South Sudan, as the war in Ukraine sucks funding from the world’s crisis-plagued youngest country and causes the price of staples to soar.

The UN’s emergency food assistance agency said it had planned to deliver aid to more than 6 million acutely food-insecure people in South Sudan this year, as it did in 2021, albeit with smaller rations.

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Prominent lawyer among dozens jailed for treason in Cambodia

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Theary Seng receives six-year sentence in ongoing mass trial of government critics in Phnom Penh

A prominent Cambodian-American lawyer has been sentenced to six years in jail for treason in an ongoing mass trial against critics of the ruling party.

Theary Seng and dozens of activists, many of whom are members of the dissolved opposition group the Cambodia National Rescue party (CNRP), were found guilty at Phnom Penh municipal court on Tuesday. The trial is one of four covering nearly 130 defendants, seen by many as prime minister Hun Sen’s attempt to stamp out growing dissent to his 37 years of rule.

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Africa must forgo gas exploration to avert climate disaster, warn experts

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Call comes after former UN climate envoy urged African countries to exploit their natural gas reserves

Africa must embrace renewable energy, and forgo exploration of its potentially lucrative gas deposits to stave off climate disaster and bring access to clean energy to the hundreds of millions who lack it, leading experts on the continent have said.

Their call came as the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned that exploring for gas and oil anywhere in the world would be “delusional”.

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Pakistani garment workers left destitute and starving after Missguided collapse

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Fashion retailer’s suppliers in Pakistan have sacked hundreds without pay, as invoices for completed orders remain unpaid

Hundreds of garment workers in Pakistan making clothing for collapsed fast fashion brand Missguided say they have been left destitute and starving after not receiving salaries for more than four months.

The workers, who typically earn between £100 and £160 a month, say that despite not being paid they have continued working even as the Manchester-based retailer went into administration, with suppliers claiming the company owes them millions of pounds for clothing already completed and shipped.

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Hong Kong NETs – foreign teachers of English – forced to take allegiance oath

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Authoritarian measures are widened to meet Chinese loyalty requirements, despite fears it will worsen teacher shortages

Foreign English-language teachers working in Hong Kong government schools will need to swear allegiance to the city, officials have ordered, as fears grow about the territory’s ability to retain educators in the face of increasing restrictions.

Hong Kong’s education bureau said on Saturday that native-speaking English teachers (NETs) and advisers working in government-run schools must sign a declaration by 21 June in order to continue working.

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Rape used ‘systematically’ during Lebanon’s civil war, report finds

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Levels of torture and sexual violence used by combatants against women and girls during the 15-year conflict shocked investigators

The full scale of the rape, torture and killing of women and girls during Lebanon’s civil war has been revealed after survivors were interviewed about their experiences for the first time in over 30 years.

Testimonies gathered by the human rights organisation Legal Action Worldwide (LAW), documented in a new report, provide evidence of systematic violence against Lebanese and Palestinian women and girls by government forces and militias during the 15-year war, which began in 1975. The conflict saw more than 100,000 people killed and 1 million displaced.

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Fast-fashion giant Shein pledges $15m for textile waste workers in Ghana

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Gesture announced at Copenhagen sustainability summit earns praise – and some cries of ‘greenwashing’

Chinese fashion behemoth Shein might be the organisation least expected to win applause at an international conference on fashion sustainability, but that’s what happened at this week’s global fashion summit in Copenhagen.

The industry’s largest forum for sustainable progress saw the ultra-fast fashion brand praised for making a donation of $15m (£12m) over three years to a charity working at Kantamanto in Accra, the world’s largest secondhand clothing market.

Liz Ricketts, director of the Or Foundation, a Ghana- and US-based not-for-profit working with Accra’s textile waste workers, announced the fund, tearfully telling the audience that the workers are doing “backbreaking” work.

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Polio outbreak in Pakistan worsens as eighth child reported paralysed

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Investigation launched as first cases in a year blamed on vaccine refusal fuelled by clerics and falsification of records by parents

Pakistan’s polio eradication campaign is in disarray after an alarming jump in cases last week. Eight polio cases have now been reported in children over the past month in North Waziristan district, bordering Afghanistan. They are the first cases in more than a year.

This new outbreak, officials believe, is due to parents falsely marking themselves and their children as vaccinated, and the government has launched an investigation into the outbreak.

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Nepali woman’s account of rape prompts wave of protest over laws

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Calls grow for repeal of statute of limitations and widening of definition of rape after former model makes allegations on TikTok

A young woman’s account on TikTok of being drugged, raped and then blackmailed by a beauty pageant organiser when she was 16 years old has provoked outrage in Nepal and prompted calls to reform the country’s “grossly inadequate” rape laws.

In one of a series of videos, which together have been viewed millions of times, the former model and child actor broke down in tears as she talked about Nepal’s statute of limitations that dictates survivors must report cases of rape within one year of the offence being committed.

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