Pro-choice supporters danced outside Colombia's constitutional court in downtown Bogotá, the capital, after it decriminalised abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
Judges ruled five against four to decriminalise the procedure in the South American country after rulings in Mexico and Argentina also lowered barriers to abortion.
Anti-abortion protesters demonstrated against the ruling
Continue reading...Successful trials found growing crops beneath panels – known as agrivoltaics – reduced water loss and resulted in larger plants
Solar panels are not a new way of providing cheap power across much of the African continent, where there is rarely a shortage of sunshine. But growing crops underneath the panels is, and the process has had such promising trials in Kenya that it will be deployed this week in open-field farms.
Known as agrivoltaics, the technique harvests solar energy twice: where panels have traditionally been used to harness the sun’s rays to generate energy, they are also utilised to provide shade for growing crops, helping to retain moisture in the soil and boosting growth.
Continue reading...Ahead of key Uttar Pradesh elections, state police accused of being ‘mercenaries’ of hardline Hindu nationalist government
According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.
The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day?
Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet.
Continue reading...Colombia has decriminalised abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, following rulings in Mexico and Argentina that improve access to abortion
Colombia has decriminalised abortion during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, adding to a recent string of legal victories for reproductive rights in Latin America.
The South American country’s constitutional court ruled five against four to decriminalise the procedure on Monday evening. The decision follows a series of rulings in Mexico and Argentina that lowered barriers to abortion.
Continue reading...Government sets deadline for 135,000 teachers to end pay strike, ignoring court order, after year of school closures due to Covid
The classrooms of Kambuzuma high school are deserted, with no staff to be seen and Tanaka Mupasiri*, 16, and his friends are milling around the school yard. It is 9am on a Thursday, normally a time when the school, in a high-density suburb or township on the outskirts of Harare, would be a hive of studious activity but Zimbabwe’s national teachers’ strike has thrown the education system into crisis.
Teachers in state schools have not been at work since 7 February and face a government deadline of Tuesday to return or lose their jobs.
Continue reading...Traditional defences may fail, and migration won’t be possible for everyone. But we may yet find more creative ways to live
We have passed the point of no return: rising seas will soon directly affect hundreds of millions of people around the planet. They will indirectly affect many millions more as transport connections, water supplies and factories in low-lying areas are lost or have to be relocated. What exactly are we facing? The latest research suggests we are likely to see a rise of a metre by the year 2100. Given how much carbon dioxide is already in the air and oceans, as much as three metres may be baked in over the 200 years or so that follow. And while that might seem like a long way off, coastal groundwater levels will rise much sooner, wrecking infrastructure and causing toxic pollution well before cities such as Miami, New York and San Francisco are permanently inundated.
Where will all those people, warehouses, water treatment plants and rail lines move to, given that the interior of large land masses will have become drier? The forced migration of hundreds of millions of people will undoubtedly lead to serious international conflict over space and basic resources like fresh water. Conflict is another word for war.
Continue reading...With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture
A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.
Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”
Continue reading...Friends of Doski Azad said the 23-year-old makeup artist had received repeated death threats from male family members
The Kurdish transgender woman Doski Azad shot dead by her brother last month, had been living in hiding from her family after repeated death threats, friends have said.
According to friends, Azad had had to move home regularly after several death threats by male members of her family.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading...Exclusive: Investigation uncovers evidence of contaminated air and water from one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines
A Guardian investigation into nickel mining and the electric vehicle industry has found evidence that a source of drinking water close to one of Indonesia’s largest nickel mines is contaminated with unsafe levels of hexavalent chromium (Cr6), the cancer-causing chemical more widely known for its role in the Erin Brockovich story and film.
The investigation also found evidence suggesting elevated levels of lung infections among people living close to the mine.
Continue reading...Celebrated blogger had suffered ill health after spending 17 months in prison for speaking out against president Ali Bongo
Hervé Mombo Kinga, the pro-democracy activist and celebrated blogger who spent 17 months in jail for insulting the Gabonese president, Ali Bongo Ondimba, was not impressed when he saw the pictures of the leader limping up the stairs of France’s presidential palace.
Kinga, who died last week at 47 after contracting Covid, was infuriated by the episode – widely shared in the west African country of Gabon, despite the embarrassment it caused the president, whose family has held power for more than five decades.
Continue reading...UN warns of looming catastrophe as hundreds of thousands more arrive at settlements that do not have enough food or water
Somalia’s displacement camps are coming under intense pressure with more than 300,000 people leaving their homes in search of food and water so far this year as the country experiences its worst drought in decades.
People have been walking miles to camps, already home to those escaping the country’s protracted violence, after three consecutive failed rainy seasons since October 2020 that have decimated crops and livestock. Somalia has more than 2,400 such settlements, which already lack resources.
Continue reading...An investigation alleges two men seeking international protection were pushed from a boat off the coast of Samos
On 15 September 2021, Sidy Keita from Ivory Coast and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana from Cameroon, boarded a dinghy from Turkey to Greece. Despite making it to the Greek island of Samos, their bodies were found days later, washed ashore in Aydin province, on the Aegean coast.
Interviews with more than a dozen witnesses, analysis of classified documents, satellite imagery, social media accounts and online material, and discussions with officials in Turkey and Greece, have helped piece together what happened over five September days during which the two men died, likely victims of a pushback by the Greek authorities.
Continue reading...New Amnesty report details ‘mounting evidence’ of repeated war crimes including gang-rape, summary killings and looting
Tigrayan soldiers killed civilians and gang-raped women and girls in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region, a human rights organisation has claimed, in the latest accusation of atrocities made against fighters engaged in the country’s civil war.
Troops with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) shot dead at least 24 people in the town of Kobo in one day last September, according to Amnesty International.
Continue reading...People with albinism across Africa face the harsh sun as well as social exclusion and suspicion. Photographer Maroussia Mbaye hopes to bring greater understanding through her work
An estimated 10,000 people are living with albinism in Senegal. Albinism is genetically inherited and, while prevalence varies from region to region, some of the highest rates are found in sub-Saharan Africa. The deficit in melanin is characterised by the absence of pigment in the skin, hair and eyes. Albinism can lead to skin cancer, visual impairment and sun sensitivity. About 90% of people with the condition across Africa die of skin cancer before they are 40.
Myths surrounding people affected by albinism have led to extreme practices involving the use of body parts. Hundreds of attacks including horrific mutilations, ritual killings, sexual violence, kidnappings and trafficking of people and body parts have happened in many countries across the continent. Many people with the condition are at risk every day because of superstition and witchcraft practices.
Franco-Senegalese photographer Maroussia Mbaye is a graduate from the London School of Economics and the London College of Communication. She was raised in a politically active family and her experiences fuelled an interest in social division and justice, leading her to pursue documentary photography, through which she aims to capture human life in new, perspective-shifting ways
Continue reading...Female genital mutilation cannot be considered solely a ‘women’s issue’ if it is to be stamped out by 2030, say male campaigners in Guinea, Somalia, Kenya and Nigeria
There is a case from Dr Morissanda Kouyaté’s career that stays with him.
In 1983, Kouyaté, then 32, was working at a village hospital in Guinea when 12-year-old twins, Hassantou and Housseynatou, were brought in. Through wails, their relatives told Kouyaté that earlier that day, the girls had been taken into the bush to be submitted to genital mutilation. Now, they were barely conscious and bleeding heavily.
Continue reading...Across the continent, young Africans are using their unique local knowledge and bargaining power to challenge beliefs about female genital mutilation
It took courage for Ayodeji Bella to raise the subject of female genital mutilation in her rural community in southern Nigeria. She knew local chiefs were key to challenging beliefs around the practice but when Bella, who was cut at five, broached the issue with an elder from her village, she was rebuked.
“I was young and unmarried and they wouldn’t take me seriously.”
Continue reading...As girls are paraded through Kuria’s streets in the school holiday cutting season, hundreds more are hidden by a network of neighbours working to change attitudes on FGM from the ground up
Half rising from the plastic white chair, he jabs a finger toward a girl and her school friends sitting across the circle from him. “She will have a future,” says Patrick Ikware, almost shouting. “This cult is diminishing, but to eliminate it, we need to substitute education, send our daughters to school and block our ears to the elders.”
The handful of others sitting on mismatched chairs on the grass outside the school in Masaba nod. A parents’ meeting held for those opposed to female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice almost universal among women in the Kuria districts of Migori county, western Kenya, is sparsely attended.
Continue reading...Female genital mutilation is about the subjugation of women. But I am optimistic about ending it in my lifetime
It is down to sheer ignorance that the misogynistic practice of female genital mutilation still exists in the world. In the UK, for example, FGM has been banned since 1985, but the country’s first court conviction occurred only in February 2019. The truth is, FGM will continue as long as there is inequality between men and women. It is about power and oppression, and its only purpose is to subjugate the woman and her sexuality to the man. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
The UN has a stated goal of eliminating FGM by 2030. Unfortunately, this is pure announcement policy. I worked as a UN special envoy from 1997 to 2003 and came to realise that the organisation is not doing what it should. That disappointed me and is why I started my own organisation, the Desert Flower Foundation. And, in my opinion, we are doing a better job than the UN.
Continue reading...Campaign by celebrities saw Noura Hussein’s death sentence quashed but, now free, promises of help have not materialised
Noura Hussein, the Sudanese woman whose conviction for killing her rapist husband four years ago caused an international outcry, said she is “disappointed” that promises of support have not materialised.
Speaking to the Guardian after her release from prison last year, Hussein, who was 19 when she was convicted, said she felt let down by the people and organisations that had campaigned for her release and who had offered her support.
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