Category Archives: Global development

Colombia urged to investigate botched army raid that left four civilians dead

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March raid in remote Putumayo village was intended to target former Farc dissidents now involved in cocaine trade

Colombian authorities are facing growing calls to investigate a botched army raid in which at least four civilians – including a 16-year old boy, a pregnant woman, and an Indigenous leader – were killed.

The raid took place early on 28 March in a remote village in the conflict-racked southern province of Putumayo. It was intended to target dissident guerrillas from the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who are now involved in the cocaine trade.

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Quarter of a billion people now face extreme poverty, warns Oxfam

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Charity calls for debt cancellations for poorest countries to counter ‘worst collapse into poverty and suffering in memory’

The rising price of food caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and increased energy costs could push a quarter of a billion more people into extreme poverty, Oxfam has warned.

The charity said these new challenges had piled on to the economic crises created by Covid, and called for urgent international action, including cancelling debt repayments for poorer countries.

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Women face chronic violence in Syria’s ‘widow camps’, report warns

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Conditions drastically worse than in general camps, with some women forced to engage in ‘survival sex’, says World Vision

Women and children living in some of the hardest-to-reach camps in north-west Syria face chronic and high levels of violence and depression, with some women forced to engage in “survival sex”, a new report has revealed.

Children in so-called “widow camps” have been found to be severely neglected, abused and forced to work while mothers are at “breaking point” psychologically. More than 80% of women say they do not have adequate healthcare and 95% expressed feelings of hopelessness.

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MEPs voice fury as Greek judges again postpone refugees’ smuggling appeal

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Second adjournment prolongs agony of Afghans Amir Zahiri and Akif Rasuli, serving 50-year sentences for piloting a migrant boat

MEPs appalled by “shocking” legal proceedings against two Afghans convicted of people smuggling in Greece have vowed to raise the issue with the European parliament.

Lawmakers who had flown into Lesbos for a scheduled appeals court hearing of the asylum seekers on Thursday – the second in three weeks – were outraged when judges again adjourned the case, prolonging the agony of the refugees, who are currently serving 50-year prison terms.

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Médecins Sans Frontières suspends operations in parts of Cameroon over detained staff

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Health charity in an ‘untenable position’ in anglophone parts of the country as it is accused of taking sides in internal strife

Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has suspended its work in Cameroon’s south-west region and demanded the release of four staff members who have been detained for months, accused of helping secessionists.

Two MSF staff were detained at a checkpoint in December when they were transferring a patient with gunshot wounds. Another two were held by Cameroonian gendarmerie in January.

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Tigray has been the scene of ‘ethnic cleansing’, say human rights groups

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Human Rights Watch-Amnesty report accuses Ethiopian paramilitaries of war crimes and crimes against humanity

Ethiopian paramilitaries have carried out a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, forcing hundreds of thousands of people from their homes using threats, killings and sexual violence, according to a joint report by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

The rights groups accuse officials and paramilitaries from the neighbouring Amhara region of war crimes and crimes against humanity in western Tigray, in northern Ethiopia.

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El Salvador reels as 6,000 people arrested in unprecedented crackdown

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Authoritarian populist president Nayib Bukele has suspended rights in state of emergency justified as attack on MS13 gang

Distraught families across El Salvador are searching for information on the fate of their loved ones after almost 6,000 people were arrested in an unprecedented security crackdown over the past week.

Men, women and children have been rounded up across the Central American country since the government declared a state of emergency on 27 March, suspending constitutional rights including the presumption of innocence.

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How war in Ukraine is affecting food supply in Africa and the Middle East

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Prices of basics such as oil and wheat are shooting up and shortages are showing on supermarket shelves in Lebanon, Somalia and Egypt

When Lebanon’s Muslims sat down to their first iftar of Ramadan tonight, the meal in front of them will have cost significantly more than it did six weeks ago.

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Pakistan’s transgender women protest against rising tide of violence

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Rally and vigil held in Islamabad to highlight discrimination and attacks on community, including murders of five trans women in March

Mano had gone to meet her boyfriend at a printing press in Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani bazaar to get back some money he had borrowed.

“But he refused to pay,” her friend Farzana Riaz said. “Mano insisted and refused to leave without money. When Mano kept resisting, her boyfriend Sanaullah shot her.”

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First food aid for 100 days enters Tigray under ‘humanitarian truce’

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Besieged region has an estimated 2 million people suffering from an extreme lack of food

A convoy of aid trucks has arrived in Tigray, the first emergency food supplies to reach the besieged region of northern Ethiopia by road for more than 100 days.

Two weeks after Abiy Ahmed’s government declared an immediate “humanitarian truce” with rebel Tigrayan forces to allow aid in, the World Food Programme said it had received the assurances it needed to dispatch 20 trucks containing vital supplies of food.

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H&M pledges to end shopfloor sexual violence in India after worker killed

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Landmark agreement to protect garment workers from violence follows last year’s murder of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a Dalit woman

H&M has signed a legally binding agreement with one of its largest Indian clothing suppliers that pledges to end sexual violence and harassment against women on the factory floor after the murder of a young garment worker by her supervisor last year.

In January 2021, Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 20-year-old Dalit woman, was found dead on farmland near her family home after finishing a shift at Natchi Apparel, a factory making clothes for H&M in Kaithian Kottai, Tamil Nadu.

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Palestinian baby dies after treatment delayed by Israeli blockade of Gaza

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Fatima al-Masri, a 19-month-old with a hole in her heart, waited five months for Israel to issue a permit allowing her to travel for treatment

A 19-month-old child has died in Gaza after waiting for five months for Israel to grant her permission to leave the blockaded enclave for treatment.

Human right groups said Israel’s blockade of Gaza was responsible for the death of Fatima al-Masri, who was diagnosed last year with a hole in the heart and who died on Friday.

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UN donor conference falls billions short of $4.4bn target to help Afghanistan

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Conference raises only $2.44bn as Russian foreign minister says west is responsible for country’s humanitarian crisis

The world’s donor drought, and growing global divisions over Afghanistan’s political direction, have been laid bare when a UN appeal for $4.4bn (£3.35bn) to help Afghanistan fell massively short, the second UN donor conference in a month to do so.

Donor countries pledged only $2.44bn towards the appeal, a senior UN official said on Thursday after a high-level pledging conference.

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UK Foreign Office rushed £4.2bn of aid cuts, official audit finds

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Support slashed despite warnings about impact, with offices told not to discuss plans with local partners, says National Audit Office report

The British government forced through £4.2bn in aid cuts so quickly it had little time to plan the impact they would have, or consult partners, according to an official audit.

The National Audit Office (NAO) said bilateral spending – aid given directly to another government – faced some of the harshest cuts by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – 53% compared with less than a third of the overall aid budget – because of political and legal commitments to multilateral spending.

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Revealed: migrant workers in Qatar forced to pay billions in recruitment fees

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Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts

Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.

Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.

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Britain hands billions to projects linked to labour abuse and climate damage

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UK Export Finance used £5.24bn of taxpayer money to fund overseas energy and infrastructure ventures – despite its own review raising concerns

The British government has provided more than £5bn in the past three years to overseas energy and infrastructure projects linked to labour abuses and environmental damage, according to documents and interviews with workers.

The funding – a combination of loans and guarantees – comes from the government’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), a government department to help UK companies access business contracts overseas.

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Low turnout for India’s national two-day strike as 50 million join protests

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Unions say strike over ‘anti-worker’ government policies a success despite limited impact, with far fewer than predicted taking part

An estimated 50 million people joined India’s two-day national strike this week, a fraction of the number expected to protest.

Bank, factory and public transport workers disrupted services in six states on Monday and Tuesday, but the strike had limited impact across the rest of the country.

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‘We took our children and ran’: thousands displaced as Senegal’s 40-year war crosses border

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More than 6,ooo people have left their homes as renewed violence in the Casamance region spills into the Gambia

It was late morning when the bullets burst through the corrugated roof of Maimouna Kujabee’s farmhouse. First, she hit the ground. Then she took off, running from her village in Ziguinchor, in Senegal’s Casamance region, as fast as her children could manage.

Through fields and forest, with only the clothes on her back, Kujabee did not stop until she reached Bajagar, in the Gambia, about a mile north of the border. “The sun was hot. I ran until my sandals were cut up,” says Kujabee.

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Polish woman is first to face trial for violating strict abortion law

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Justyna Wydrzyńska, who gave a woman experiencing domestic violence miscarriage-inducing pills, could be jailed for three years

The first person to be charged in Poland for breaking the country’s strict abortion law by providing miscarriage-inducing tablets to a pregnant woman is due to face trial next week.

Justyna Wydrzyńska, from the Polish group Aborcyjny Dream Team (ADT), is charged with illegally aiding an abortion and faces up to three years in prison if she is found guilty.

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‘Africa must be self-sufficient’: John Nkengasong on learning the deadly lessons of pandemics

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The outgoing director of Africa Centres for Disease Control has seen Ebola, Aids and now Covid – and warns complacency is dangerous

The past five years have been “like going from one fire to the next, with barely any time to catch your breath”, says John Nkengasong, the outgoing head of the body charged with responding to health emergencies in Africa.

A relentless term as the first director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) saw Nkengasong manage the response to Ebola and Lassa fever outbreaks. But nothing compared to the formidable test brought by Covid-19.

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