Category Archives: Global development

Bid to overturn Sierra Leone loitering laws that activists claim ‘criminalise poverty’

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Citing claims of violence and rape by police, lawyers and activists mount legal challenge to laws brought in under British rule

A case has been filed against the government of Sierra Leone to overturn the country’s loitering laws, which activists and lawyers claim are discriminatory, and used by police to extract bribes from people and sexually abuse women.

The laws are used to target poor and vulnerable people, say critics, and to subject them to criminal sanctions for potential conduct rather than actual harm caused.

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Erosion of abortion rights gathers pace around the world as US signals new era

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A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose. Elsewhere, the battle still rages

In 2022, abortion remains one of the most controversial and bitterly contested ethical and political battlegrounds. It is illegal for women to terminate their pregnancies in any circumstance in 24 countries, with a further 37 restricting access in any case except when the mother’s life is in danger.

As a leaked document signals that the US supreme court is poised to strike down the landmark 1973 ruling in Roe v Wade, millions of American women face losing their access to legal abortions, joining millions more living in those countries rejecting a woman’s right to choose.

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Ethiopian drought leading to ‘dramatic’ increase in child marriage, Unicef warns

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With hunger across Horn of Africa and 600,000 children out of school, ‘desperate’ parents push more girls into early marriage

Drought-afflicted areas of Ethiopia are seeing “dramatic” increases in child marriage as the worst climate-induced emergency for 40 years pushes people to the brink, the head of Unicef has said.

Three consecutive failed rainy seasons have brought hunger, malnutrition and mass displacement to millions of people in the Horn of Africa, including parts of Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti.

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‘Relentless’ destruction of rainforest continuing despite Cop26 pledge

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Tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover in 2021, including forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss, finds World Resources Institute

Pristine rainforests were once again destroyed at a relentless rate in 2021, according to new figures, prompting concerns governments will not meet a Cop26 deal to halt and reverse deforestation by the end of the decade.

From the Brazilian Amazon to the Congo basin, the tropics lost 11.1m hectares of tree cover last year, including 3.75m ha of primary forest critical to limiting global heating and biodiversity loss.

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Revealed: EU border agency involved in hundreds of refugee pushbacks

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Investigation suggests Frontex’s database recorded incidents of illegal pushbacks in Aegean Sea as ‘prevention of departure’

The EU’s border agency has been involved in the pushbacks of at least 957 asylum seekers in the Aegean Sea between March 2020 and September 2021, according to a new investigation.

Frontex, the EU’s best-funded agency with a budget of €758m, is being investigated over previous allegations of complicity with Greek authorities in illegal pushbacks of asylum seekers, something the organisation has denied.

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Janjaweed militia blamed for attacks that left at least 200 dead in Darfur

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Death toll likely to rise, say witnesses to indiscriminate attacks on Kreinik and El Geneina by Sudan’s notorious Rapid Support Forces

At least 200 people are now known to have died in West Darfur in the latest attack on civilians and local forces blamed on Janjaweed militia.

Darfur, the semi-arid western region of Sudan where a vicious civil war erupted in 2003, has seen a new outbreak of fighting over the past few months as rival groups clash over water and grazing land, shortages of which are being exacerbated by the climate crisis.

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Spectre of polio returns to haunt Pakistan as baby boy is left paralysed

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First case in a year sparks fears of new outbreak despite success of national programme to wipe out the disease

Pakistan has confirmed its first case of polio after more than a year, damaging the country’s hopes of eradicating the virus. Health officials have announced that a baby boy in North Waziristan, bordering Afghanistan, is paralysed after contracting polio.

Dr Shahzad Baig, a coordinator with the Pakistan Polio Eradication Programme, confirmed the “deeply saddening” case.

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Tanzania’s Maasai appeal to west to stop eviction for conservation plans

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Thousands of Indigenous people sign letter to UK, US and EU protesting at appropriation of land for tourist safaris and hunting

Thousands of Maasai pastoralists in northern Tanzania have written to the UK and US governments and the EU appealing for help to stop plans to evict them from their ancestral land.

More than 150,000 Maasai people face eviction by the Tanzanian government due to moves by the UN cultural agency Unesco and a safari company to use the land for conservation and commercial hunting.

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Raising cash for water: why Somalis are bypassing aid agencies in drought crisis

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Analysis: with more than 6 million people in need, there is anger at perceived lack of action from the government and the UN

The UN this week issued a stark warning on Somalia, projecting that 350,000 children could starve to death without urgent action.

The country is in the middle of a drought that is already killing people. Some regions in the Horn of Africa are the hottest they have been since satellites started recording data 40 years ago, according to an analysis by the World Food Programme.

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MPs call for British child and ill mother to be returned to UK from Syrian camp

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Mother is unlikely to survive without medical intervention, leaving her young son orphaned, say doctors

MPs and a human rights group have called on the UK government to repatriate a young British boy and his gravely ill mother from a detention camp in Syria, after doctors said she was at risk of dying and leaving the child orphaned.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said it was reviewing the case of Zaid* and his mother, Maryam* – who was injured in an explosion in Syria in 2019 and left with shrapnel in her head – “as a matter of priority”.

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Deportation of Rohingya woman from India sparks fear of renewed crackdown

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Hasina Begum was separated from her family and forced to return to Myanmar despite her refugee status. Hundreds of others now face expulsion

The deportation of a Rohingya woman back to Myanmar has sparked fears that India is preparing to expel many more refugees from the country.

Hasina Begum, 37, was deported from Indian-administered Kashmir two weeks ago, despite holding a UN verification of her refugee status, intended to protect holders from arbitrary detention. Begum was among 170 refugees arrested and detained in Jammu in March last year. Her husband and three children, who also have UN refugee status, remain in Kashmir.

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Joy as Indonesia passes bill outlawing sexual abuse and forced marriage

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The wide-ranging legislation, which comes amid a rise in such cases, is heralded as a victory ‘for all women’

Indonesia has passed a landmark bill that for the first time outlaws forced marriage and sexual harassment.

To tears and cheers from supporters in the gallery, on Tuesday the House of Representatives passed the long-awaited legislation that criminalises nine forms of sexual violence, including physical and verbal assault, harassment, forced sterilisation and exploitation.

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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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