Until August last year, 18-year-old Nazira Khairzad lived a carefree existence with her family in the foothills of the Bamyan mountains. She loves sport and was a champion skier, but when the Taliban took over she decided to flee, leaving her old life behind. Photojournalist Rick Findler documented her attempts to settle into a new life
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Female leadership is good for the world. Just look at Barbados
Mia Mottley is just one of a raft of strong women across the Caribbean and South America tackling society’s most pressing issues. The world could learn a lot from them
There is a common misconception that the developing world is full of archaic values and that women struggle to have their voices heard. The more countries I visit and the more female leaders I speak to, the more I am convinced the contrary is true.
In fact, those in positions of power worldwide could learn important lessons from these strong women when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing issues, including pandemics, the climate crisis, education and infrastructure.
Continue reading...Guatemala’s economy buoyed by record $15bn sent home from workers overseas
Critics accuse the country’s government of doing nothing to stop the ‘escape valve’ of migration as it covers up their lack of spending
The amount of money Guatemalans living abroad send home to their families reached record levels in 2021. Remittances rose to more than $15bn (£11bn) in 2021, an increase of 35% on the previous year.
The unprecedented rise prompted experts to question the political will to tackle the migration crisis when remittances from the US contribute so much to the Guatemalan economy.
Continue reading...Taliban launch raids on homes of Afghan women’s rights activists
Campaigners arrested by armed men days after anti-hijab protest in Kabul, with beatings reported
Taliban gunmen have raided the homes of women’s rights activists in Kabul, beating and arresting female campaigners in a string of actions apparently triggered by recent demonstrations.
Tamana Zaryabi Paryani and Parawana Ibrahimkhel, who participated in a series of protests held in Kabul over the last few months, were seized on Wednesday night by armed men claiming to be from the Taliban intelligence department.
Continue reading...By 2050, a quarter of the world’s people will be African – this will shape our future | Edward Paice
Africa’s unprecedented population growth will impact geopolitics, global trade, migration and almost every aspect of life. It’s time for a reimagining of the continent
In 2022 the world’s population will pass 8 billion. It has increased by a third in just two decades. By 2050, there will be about 9.5 billion of us on the planet, according to respected demographers. This makes recent comments by Elon Musk baffling. According to him, “the low birthrate and the rapidly declining birthrate” is “one of the biggest risks to civilisation”.
Fertility rates in Europe, North America and east Asia are generally below 2.1 births per woman, the level at which populations remain stable at constant mortality rates. The trajectory in some countries is particularly arresting. The birthrate in Italy is the lowest it has ever been in the country’s history. South Korea’s fertility rate has been stuck below one birth per woman for decades despite an estimated $120bn (£90bn) being spent on initiatives aimed at raising it. Japan started the century with 128 million citizens but is on course to have only 106 million by 2050. China’s population will peak at 1.45 billion in 2030, but if it proves unable to raise its fertility rate, the world’s most populous country could end the century with fewer than 600 million inhabitants. This is the “big risk” alluded to by Musk. The trouble is, his statement seems to imply that “civilisation” does not include Africa.
Continue reading...‘For the first time, I felt free’: Pakistan’s women-led livestock market
In rural provinces, women have always reared animals but are excluded from selling them. A new market is changing attitudes
On Saturday, Rozina Ghulam Mustafa arrived at the market in Tando Allahyar city, Pakistan’s Sindh province, to sell the goats she had raised, milked and fed.
Usually her brother sells the animals, but he sold them too cheaply because he didn’t know their true value. “He has always sold our goats at a much lower price,” she says, standing inside an enclosure with 15 of them.
Continue reading...Nepal hospital trials ‘life-changing’ treatment for leprosy wounds
Technique using artificial scabs made from a patient’s own blood could also help those with diabetes, say doctors
Doctors at a Nepal hospital trialling a new treatment for skin wounds say the technique, which mimics the scabbing process, has “enormous potential”.
Trials at the mountaintop Anandaban leprosy hospital, south of Kathmandu, have been promising, bringing hope to patients worldwide. It is hoped that the treatment will also help millions living with diabetes, who have an increased risk of amputation.
Continue reading...Zimbabweans put their country on the map in the world of wine
After rising to the top of a white-dominated industry, a new generation of Zimbabweans are bringing their talents home
Like many young Zimbabweans before and since, Tinashe Nyamudoka left the economic chaos of his country to find work and a better life for himself in neighbouring South Africa.
When he left in 2008, Nyamudoka had never tasted wine. Now, he ranks among southern Africa’s top sommeliers and has his own wine label with international sales.
Continue reading...Italian police arrest alleged Black Axe Nigerian mafia members over trafficking
Four arrests of cult-like criminal gang members made in southern Italy after Nigerian woman forced into prostitution comes forward
Four alleged members of the Nigerian mafia have been arrested in southern Italy after a young sex trafficking survivor spoke out against them.
The men, who were arrested in Palermo and Taranto in the early hours of Tuesday, allegedly belong to the feared Black Axe, a cult-like criminal gang that emerged in the 1970s at the University of Benin, according to police.
Continue reading...Shock in Colombia over murder of 14-year-old indigenous activist
Breiner David Cucuñame was shot dead while on patrol with the unarmed group Indigenous Guard
A 14-year old indigenous activist has been murdered in Colombia, prompting horror and shock at the latest in a spate of killings of environmentalists and social leaders in the South American country.
Breiner David Cucuñame was shot dead on Friday while on patrol with the Indigenous Guard, an unarmed group which seeks to protect indigenous lands from incursions by the country’s many armed groups.
Continue reading...‘We live and die by it’: climate crisis threatens Bangladesh’s Sundarbans
Villagers rely more on the forest’s resources, threatening its ecosystem – and leaving them more vulnerable to cyclones
As he steps out of the mosque on the banks of the Kholpetua River, Mohammed Sabud Ali looks out at a view he has seen several times a day for most of his life. But never before has the sprawling Sundarbans mangrove forest felt so important to him.
The vast Sundarbans has always protected Bangladeshi coastal communities from the violent cyclones that regularly crash in from the Bay of Bengal, and they have always harvested its resources. But now, as the climate crisis encroaches, people are becoming even more dependent on the forest.
Continue reading...How an ancient rainmaker inspired a quest to nurture female writers in Malawi
I was struck by how few authors I could name who are women. With Makewana, the ‘mother’ responsible for rain, as our namesake, my group set out to end the literary drought
I have often tried to imagine what Makewana, the original female rainmaker of ancient Malawi, must have looked like.
There is a statue of her with long hair at Mua Mission in Dedza, since to cut her hair would have signified drought.
Continue reading...‘She chopped her hair off’: Pakistani women’s struggle to play cricket
In such a conservative country, young women often have to fight their own families first just to play the sport they love
Bisma Amjad plays cricket. She aspires to play internationally and was picked for Pakistan’s under-19 World Cup squad.
But when the pandemic came, because she was a woman, there was nowhere for her to practise, so she dressed as a man to play alongside male cricketers at “gully cricket” – the street game.
Continue reading...Medics in Tigray plead with Ethiopia for insulin airlift as supplies run out
Thousands of diabetics in region face ‘agonising death’ amid blockage on food, fuel and medicines in 14-month conflict
Doctors at Tigray’s main hospital are urging the Ethiopian government to allow supplies of insulin to be airlifted into the region, warning that their stocks will run out within a week and that patients with type 1 diabetes are “at serious risk of death”.
At the Ayder referral hospital in Mekelle, the largest in the region of 7 million people, staff have been told they only have 150 vials of insulin left and no oral diabetes medicines, according to a statement late on Friday.
Continue reading...Ethiopia: Tigray on brink of humanitarian disaster, UN says
Supplies for more than 5 million people in need of food are running out, says World Food Programme
The Tigray region of northern Ethiopia stands on the edge of a humanitarian disaster, the UN has said, as fighting escalates and stocks of essential food for malnourished children run out.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Friday that it would be distributing its last supplies of cereals, pulses and oil next week to Tigray, where more than 5 million people are estimated to be in need of food assistance.
Continue reading...Term starts in Uganda – but world’s longest shutdown has left schools in crisis
Pre-Covid the country battled poor learning outcomes, now experts fear fee rises and school closures will see many more children miss out
The gate that once proudly displayed the name of Godwins primary school in Kampala has been removed. The compound, where pupils played at break time, is now a parking area for trucks ferrying goods to the nearby market, while the classrooms have been turned into a travellers’ lodge.
Uganda’s schools were ordered to reopen on Monday 10 January, after nearly two years of closure – the longest school shutdown in the world – but not all were able to welcome pupils back. Godwins, in Kalerwe in Kawempe division, is one of the many schools that will never reopen. It had been in existence for 20 years catering to children whose parents work in nearby Kalerwe market.
Continue reading...Covid created 20 new ‘pandemic billionaires’ in Asia, says Oxfam
While wealthiest got richer, 140m people fell into poverty as jobs were lost, wiping out years of gains for poorest, report finds
Twenty new “pandemic billionaires” have been created in Asia thanks to the international response to Covid-19, while 140 million people across the continent were plunged into poverty as jobs were lost during the pandemic, according to Oxfam.
A report by the aid organisation says that by March 2021, profits from the pharmaceuticals, medical equipment and services needed for the Covid response had made 20 people new billionaires as lockdowns and economic stagnation destroyed the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of others.
Continue reading...World’s poorest bear brunt of climate crisis: 10 underreported emergencies
Care International report highlights ‘deep injustice’ neglected by world’s media, as extreme weather along with Covid wipes out decades of progress
From Afghanistan to Ethiopia, about 235 million people worldwide needed assistance in 2021. But while some crises received global attention, others are lesser known.
Humanitarian organisation Care International has published its annual report of the 10 countries that had the least attention in online articles in five languages around the world in 2021, despite each having at least 1 million people affected by conflict or climate disasters.
Continue reading...Warning over fuel and food stocks as ‘hellish’ Tigray reels from airstrikes
Stocks run perilously low, with main supply route into region of northern Ethiopia unusable since December
Humanitarian organisations in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia are running perilously low on food and fuel stocks as an intensified wave of airstrikes further hampers a threadbare aid effort already stymied by lack of access.
In what it calls a de facto blockade, the UN says fighting between Tigrayan rebels and forces loyal to the Ethiopian government has rendered the main supply route into the war-torn region unusable since mid-December.
Continue reading...Jailing of Syrian intelligence officer ‘step towards justice’ say former detainees
Anwar Raslan’s conviction in Germany sends signal that Assad regime systematically uses torture, say detention system survivors
For survivors of Syria’s brutal detention system, the landmark conviction of a former Syrian intelligence official for crimes against humanity represents a vital step towards justice.
“We initially hoped for a trial at the international criminal court, but nevertheless this is an important step,” said Hussein Ghrer, one of 24 former detainees of Branch 251, a military intelligence unit with its own prison in Damascus, who testified against Anwar Raslan.
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