Campaigners say sentence amounts to torture amid fears that country’s new regime is rolling back women’s rights
A woman in Sudan has been sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the first known case in the country for almost a decade.
Maryam Alsyed Tiyrab, 20, was arrested by police in Sudan’s White Nile state last month.
Continue reading...RePlanet calls on EU to ditch organic targets and for governments to lift bans on genetically modified crops
Governments should put a moratorium on the use of biofuels and lift bans on genetic modification of crops, a green campaigning group has urged, in the face of a growing global food crisis that threatens to engulf developing nations.
Ending the EU’s requirement for biofuels alone would free up about a fifth of the potential wheat exports from Ukraine, and even more of its maize exports, enough to make a noticeable difference to stretched food supplies, according to analysis by the campaign group RePlanet.
Continue reading...Banks and traders have been ‘let off the hook’ by G7 despite being more to blame for the looming crisis than China
Western governments should “compel” private lenders to ease loan repayments from low-income countries to tackle a debt crisis, according to campaigners.
Debt Justice, formerly the Jubilee Debt Campaign, said African governments owe three times more debt to western banks, asset managers and oil traders than they do to China, and are charged double the interest. China has been “mistakenly” blamed by western leaders for the failure to make progress on debt restructuring.
Continue reading...‘I went to help people,’ says Togolese boy, who was among 71 survivors rescued nine days after boat sank, killing at least 30
The actions of a teenager from Togo have been lauded after video footage was published of him supporting a baby he saved from a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea last week in which at least 30 people died.
The 17-year-old, whose identity has not been disclosed, swam to save the child, whom he was holding above water when a rescue team arrived, in footage published by the French media group Brut.
Continue reading...A toxic combination of climate emergency, conflict and Covid is pushing some of the poorest countries into an acute hunger crisis
Global hunger toll soars by 150m as Covid and war make their mark
The world is in the grip of an unprecedented hunger crisis. A toxic combination of climate crisis, conflict and Covid had already placed some of the poorest countries under enormous strain, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has sent grain and fuel prices soaring.
“We thought it couldn’t get any worse,” said David Beasley, director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), in June. “But this war has been devastating.”
Continue reading...Country hails ‘monumental step’ towards expanding reproductive rights at a time when the US has overturned them
Ministers in Sierra Leone have taken a major step towards decriminalising abortion and overturning the country’s colonial-era law, in a move hailed by campaigners and women’s rights activists.
President Julius Maada Bio said his cabinet had unanimously backed a bill on risk-free motherhood, which would expand access to abortion in a country where terminations are only permitted when a mother’s life is at risk.
Continue reading...People are buying less, costs are up, and profits are dwindling for traders at Kaneshi market in Accra
On a quiet stretch amid the sprawling buzz of Kaneshie market in Accra, a group of traders sheltering under canopies from the blazing sun sell yams stacked along the roadside.
Rita Oboh, 32, has worked the spot, or one nearby, since she was six, following in the footsteps of her mother who also traded yams. “My mother lived good, really good,” Oboh says with pride. “She built houses, she looked after everybody, her family, people who relied on her. She was successful.”
Continue reading...West’s response to effects of Covid and Ukraine war condemned as shortsighted ‘collective failure’ to invest in future human capital
The international community would be “playing with fire” if it failed to help Africa recover from Covid and the impact of the Ukraine war, the International Monetary Fund’s director for the continent has said.
Failure to invest and support the continent was shortsighted and detrimental to the global economy, as half of the new entrants into the global workforce over the next decade would come from sub-Saharan Africa, Abebe Aemro Selassie, director of the IMF’s Africa department, told the Guardian.
Continue reading...UK government accused of leaving former employees and their families ‘in limbo’ in Afghanistan, where they are targets for the Taliban
More than 170 people who worked for the British embassy in Kabul remain in hiding in Afghanistan in fear for their lives, almost a year after the Taliban retook the country.
A list of Afghans currently in hiding, seen by the Guardian, shows almost 200 former interpreters, security guards and local staff waiting for a response from the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office, the departments responsible for relocating people at risk. All of those on the list are eligible for transfer to the UK under the Afghan relocations and assistance policy (Arap), intended to bring those formerly employed by the UK government, and their family members, to safety in Britain.
Continue reading...Prisons agency boss says fire broke out after inmates lit mattresses during protest at jail in Tuluá
Fifty-one inmates have died during a riot in a prison in the Colombian city of Tuluá in one of the worst recent incidents of its kind in the country.
The director of the national prisons agency said a fire had started during a protest by prisoners overnight.
Continue reading...5.9-magnitude earthquake leaves children buried under rubble and villages destroyed in already impoverished country
Sitting on a hill overlooking the remote Gayan district, Abdullah Abed pointed towards several freshly dug graves. “They screamed for help,” he said of his son Farhadullah, 10, and daughter Basrina, 18. “We tried to save them but by the time we pulled them out of the rubble, their voices had gone quiet.”
Today they lie buried beside 10 other family members lost in the 5.9-magnitude earthquake that struck eastern Afghanistan in the early hours of Wednesday. An estimated 250 people have died in the hard-hit district, many of them now buried next to Abed’s children, among the more than 1,150 people feared dead and 1,500 injured across Afghanistan’s eastern Paktika and Khost provinces. It was Afghanistan’s deadliest quake in two decades.
Continue reading...Disaster has killed more than 1,000 people and officials say toll could rise
Organised rescue efforts were struggling to reach the site of an earthquake in Afghanistan that killed more than 1,000 people, as survivors dig through the rubble by hand to find those still missing.
In Paktika province’s Gayan district, villagers stood atop mud bricks that were once a home. Others carefully walked through dirt alleyways, gripping on to damaged walls with exposed timber beams to make their way.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...‘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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...