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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...Largest ever migrant caravan, huddled together for protection, moves north as global leaders gather for Biden’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles
Liozanys Comeja credits her survival to her teacup chihuahua, Mia. Originally from Venezuela, Comeja moved to Colombia five years ago, but decided to leave her new life behind this month due to the rising cost of living. She crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama, with Mia tucked in her backpack, eventually making her way across eight countries. Now, Comeja is hoping the dog will help her make it through the grueling final leg of their journey.
Comeja has joined about 11,000 others who on Monday will leave Tapachula, a sweltering city on the Mexico-Guatemala border, and head north for the United States. It will depart as leaders from across the hemisphere gather in Los Angeles for the Summit of the Americas.
Continue reading...Separated in March, Hasina Begum’s family have now settled in Bangladesh as India continues to deport Rohingya despite UN refugee status
A Rohingya woman deported to Myanmar from Indian-administered Kashmir in March has been reunited with her family in Bangladesh.
Hasina Begum, 37, was deported from Jammu despite having UN refugee status, leaving her husband and three children behind in Kashmir. She was the first Rohingya refugee to be deported from among 170 who were detained by authorities in the region in March 2021.
Continue reading...Winner of the inaugural Amal Clooney Women’s Empowerment award says she saw mainstream culture did not represent her, so she created her own space
Tanzila Khan does not like people feeling too sorry for themselves – or for her.
“I don’t like sob stories or tragedies,” said Khan, who is a disability and women’s rights campaigner in Pakistan. “I’m not saying they don’t exist – we can all face adversity – but I think we need a more positive approach to solving problems. I wanted to present people with disabilities in a more positive way.
Continue reading...At least 19 journalists caught up in mass detentions after government moves against Fano, its former ally in Tigray conflict
Ethiopia has launched a sweeping crackdown against an influential armed militia in its Amhara region that has led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people, including journalists, activists and a former general.
The militia group, known as the Fano, played a key role alongside the federal military in beating back November’s southward advance through the Amhara region by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which is fighting an 18-month-long civil war against the government and its allies.
Continue reading...The sacked garment workers had fought for fair compensation since the factory closed in March 2021
More than 1,000 sacked Thai garment workers who made bras at a factory supplying lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret have received a landmark $8.3m settlement, labour rights activists have said.
Brilliant Alliance Thai closed down its Samut Prakan factory in March 2021 after going bankrupt.
Continue reading...As thousands flee the latest fighting in DRC to join 1.5m already in Uganda, the UN’s food aid agency is stretched as never before
The rain will determine what time Uwimana Nsengiyuava gets on the truck to Nyakabande transit centre, where Uganda is hosting 20,000 refugees who, like her, have fled fresh fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Since March, up to 500 refugees a day have been silently streaming into the east African country via Kisoro, a picturesque district in south-west Uganda dotted with endless hills, streams and a lake.
Continue reading...Medical charity’s president calls publication of controversial photographs ‘a mistake’ and says guidelines will be tightened
The international president of Médecins Sans Frontières has apologised for publishing photographs of a teenage rape survivor from the Democratic Republic of the Congo on its website, following criticism that the images were unethical and racist.
Dr Christos Christou also announced that the medical charity had tightened its guidelines on photographing vulnerable minors, such as survivors of sexual abuse, requiring that they should not be identified visually or by name.
Continue reading...Region has two-thirds of world’s most dangerous cities, with Bogotá, Rio, Mexico City and San Salvador also named in study
When police found the body of Marcela Graciano, a 31-year-old Colombian DJ, last Thursday, the brutality of the crime shocked even them. Her body, found in a house in a suburb of Medellín – Colombia’s second city – revealed signs of torture and her hands had been tied behind her back.
“The body was in an advanced state of decomposition,” the local police chief, Col Rolfy Mauricio Jiménez, said. The Valle de Aburrá municipality has had 11 murders this year, authorities said.
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