Category Archives: Global development

Lebanon faces ‘depressing’ Christmas as internet crisis stops festive calls

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With telecoms barely working, a plunging currency and young people emigrating, it’s a bleak Christmas for weary Lebanese

In Lebanon’s year of loss and deprivation, simple pleasures have steadily drained away along with its fortunes. But amid a crisis renowned for breaking new ground, few Lebanese had thought their ability to stay in touch was at risk – until a pre-Christmas warning sent shudders through the country.

The telecommunications minister, Johnny Corm, warned this week that a lack of funds and fuel could soon see Lebanon’s already struggling internet grind to a halt, making festive calls and messages even trickier than usual – and a financial and social disintegration like no other even more acute.

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‘My grandmother hid Jewish children’: Poland’s underground refugee network

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As thousands attempt to cross the Belarus-Poland border seeking asylum in Europe, local activists are trying to help

In the attic of a cottage in the woods near the Polish village of Narewka, a young Iraqi Kurd crouches, trembling with cold and fear. Through the skylight, the blue lights of police vans flash on the walls of his hiding place. Outside, dozens of border guards are searching for people like him in the snowstorm. Downstairs, the owner of the house sits in silence with his terrified wife and children.

The young Kurd is one of thousands of asylum seekers who entered Poland across the border with Belarus, where countless others have become trapped on their way to Europe. The Polish family have offered him shelter. But if the Polish police find him, he risks being sent back across the frontier into the sub-zero forests of Belarus, while his protectors risk being charged for aiding illegal immigration.

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‘A breakthrough, not a breakdown’: one woman’s quest to transform mental health care in India

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Psychologist Ratnaboli Ray’s recovery from a mental health crisis inspired her to fight for women suffering in ‘abysmal’ conditions in West Bengal’s state institutions

  • Photography by Ranita Roy for the Guardian

Ratnaboli Ray regards one of the lowest points of her life as a breakthrough. After years in an arranged marriage in which she felt stifled and trapped, her mental health took a catastrophic turn in 1997, when she was in her mid-30s.

“I was feeling very caged, I was not able to express myself,” she says, from her home in West Bengal, India. She describes the psychological symptoms as like a pressure cooker bursting. “I used to get angry, have weeping spells. I was neglectful of my young son.”

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Mandatory Covid jabs in Malawi ‘violate human rights’, say civil society groups

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Measure aimed at frontline workers to reduce spread of Omicron variant may increase unrest in country with low vaccine take-up, critics warn

Civil rights groups in Malawi have cautioned the government on its decision to make the Covid-19 vaccination mandatory for frontline workers.

From January, it will be compulsory for public sector workers, including healthcare staff, police and teachers, as well as journalists, to be vaccinated, after an announcement by Malawi’s health minister, Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, last week.

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Asia’s factory workers at the sharp end of the west’s supply chain crisis

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Migrant workers ate and slept in factories swarming with Covid, sealed off from outside world

For weeks, Hoang Thi Quynh* worked and slept inside a garment factory in Tien Giang province, in southern Vietnam. She would start her shift at 7.15am and then, after a day spent sewing sportswear garments, enter an empty hall of the factory complex and settle down for the night.

Each worker had a tent, set one or two metres apart, containing a foil mat, pillow, blanket and a box to store their belongings. No workers were permitted to meet anyone from outside the factory; even speaking to a visitor over the gates was forbidden.

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Saving Roe v Wade is not just a US battle but one for women across the Americas | Mariana Prandini Assis

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US conservatives’ campaign to undermine the landmark ruling threatens progress in reproductive freedom in Latin America

As the US supreme court prepares to decide a case that could deny women the right to abortion in much of the US, Latin American activists like me are holding our collective breaths.

The continent has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the world, in spite of recent progressive reforms in the past decade in countries including Uruguay and Argentina.

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‘The need is still there’: last young refugees arrive in UK as family reunion route closes

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Activists lament that a safe, legal way into Britain has closed with Brexit, when stranded children need it as much as ever

‘When I was a child in Afghanistan I loved to watch my uncle play chess. Now I have joined the local club here.” Samir is grinning as he talks about settling into life on England’s south coast. “I’m very happy here, just being with my family, going for walks to look at the Christmas lights. It’s really beautiful.”

After arriving in Greece alone two years ago, when he was just 16, and spending many months homeless and terrified in the port city of Patras, Samir recently made a journey that most refugees can only dream about. He said goodbye to the friends he had made in a camp for unaccompanied minors – other teenagers from Somalia, Iraq and Palestine – and travelled safely and legally to join his father and sister in the UK.

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UK accused of abandoning world’s poor as aid turned into ‘colonial’ investment

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Rebrand of Foreign Office’s development arm, seen as effort to rival China’s loans, will shift aid to private sector, warn NGOs and unions

The British government has been accused by NGOs and trade unions of “chasing colonial post-Brexit fantasies” at the expense of the world’s poorest as they urge Liz Truss to keep aid focused on poverty reduction rather than geopolitical manoeuvring.

In a joint letter to the foreign secretary, the group criticises the rebranding of the UK’s development investment arm, which will see the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) become British International Investment (BII) next year.

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Hotel Rwanda hero to terrorist ‘show trial’: Paul Rusesabagina’s daughters on the fight for his freedom

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Tricked into boarding a plane back to Kigali and allegedly coerced into confessing, the high-profile exile faces 25 years in prison, but his family are determined to keep up the pressure

The children of Paul Rusesabagina, the imprisoned Rwandan opposition figure, are only able to speak to their father for five minutes once a week. Even then the Rwandan authorities listen into the phone call.

Tricked into boarding a private plane in Dubai and flown to Kigali, the 67-year-old Rusesabagina – who came to international attention after his life-saving acts were depicted in the Hollywood film Hotel Rwanda, set during the country’s genocide in 1994 – was given what his family says was a show trial and jailed over allegations that he had been a founder and leader of a terrorist group.

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Leading activist in Egypt’s 2011 uprising and two others jailed

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Alaa Abd El-Fattah gets five years for ‘spreading false news’ and lawyer and blogger get four-year terms

A leading figure in Egypt’s 2011 uprising, his lawyer and a blogger have been served lengthy prison sentences in a Cairo court, in a move that observers have branded a further blow to human rights.

An emergency court on Monday sentenced activist Alaa Abd El-Fattah to five years in prison on charges of “spreading false news”. Human rights lawyer Mohamed El-Baqer, formerly Abd El-Fattah’s counsel, and blogger Mohamed “Oxygen” Ibrahim were both sentenced to four years in detention on the same charges.

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New head of Unesco world heritage centre wants to put Africa on the map

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Lazare Eloundou Assomo wants to address imbalance that benefits rich nations and protect sites threatened by climate crisis and war

It covers 9 million sq miles (24m sq km) from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and from the Sahara in the north to Cape Point in the south. And in between lie some of the world’s most ancient cultural sites and precious natural wonders.

However, despite its vast size, sub-Saharan Africa has never been proportionately represented on Unesco’s world heritage list, its 98 sites dwarfed by Europe, North America and Asia.

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‘Nothing will help’: Tunisians trapped in poverty lose hope

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Eleven years after the start of the Arab spring, those trying to survive rising prices, unemployment and a pandemic feel little has changed

For a decade, Tunisia’s revolution has been remembered on 14 January, the day autocratic ruler Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia and the political elite declared the revolution complete.

From today, by President Kais Saied’s decree, the event will be marked on 17 December, the day street trader Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in protest at state corruption and the faltering economy. The self-immolation became a catalyst for Tunisia’s uprising and the wider Arab spring.

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‘All I can think about is the children’s future’: drought devastates Kenya

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Nomads’ herds are dying along with rare wildlife as the longest dry spell in memory edges pastoralists ever nearer starvation

Dahabley smells of rotting flesh. Bodies of starved cows lie in various stages of decomposition, after being dragged to the outskirts of the village in Wajir county, north-east Kenya. They are added to on a near-daily basis and fester in the heat amid multiplying flies.

North-east Kenya is well used to spells of drought, but it is experiencing the worst in living memory. As the region’s short rainy season, which starts in October, draws to an end, parts of Wajir have only seen small showers and other areas have had no rain at all for more than a year.

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Culture in a bowl: Haiti’s joumou soup awarded protected status by Unesco

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The dish, originally cooked by slaves for their owners, has come to symbolise hope and dignity in the troubled Caribbean country

Haiti’s joumou soup, a symbol of hope and dignity for the world’s first black-led republic, has been awarded protected status by Unesco.

The soup, made from turban squash and originally cooked by enslaved African people for their owners in Haiti, was on Thursday added to Unesco’s prestigious list of intangible cultural heritage. It is Haiti’s first inclusion on the list, and the country’s Unesco ambassador, Dominique Dupuy, cried as the announcement was made. The decision is expected to be officially endorsed by Unesco’s general assembly next year.

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‘Worst fashion wage theft’: workers go hungry as Indian suppliers to top UK brands refuse to pay minimum wage

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Shortfall of 16p a day leaves children living on just rice as suppliers to Nike, Zara and H&M in Karnataka underpay by estimated £41m

Garment workers making clothes for international brands in Karnataka, a major clothing production hub in India, say their children are going hungry as factories refuse to pay the legal minimum wage in what is claimed to be the biggest wage theft to ever hit the fashion industry.

More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labour rights organisation that monitors working conditions in factories.

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‘They punished me for having books’: schools in Cameroon terrorised by armed groups

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Human Rights Watch says armed separatists in anglophone regions have made schools a battleground, with hundreds of school pupils and teachers attacked, kidnapped or threatened

Armed separatists in Cameroon’s anglophone regions have attacked, kidnapped and threatened hundreds of school pupils in nearly five years of violence that has forced more than 230,000 children to flee their homes, a report has found.

In a detailed analysis of the conflict that has gripped the English-speaking regions since 2017, dozens of students and teachers speak of brutal attacks by armed groups who have made education a battleground in their fight to form their own state.

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UK charities launch appeal to help eight million Afghans at risk of starvation

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There is a ‘very small window of opportunity’ to intervene, say aid workers, as poverty, conflict, drought and a freeze in humanitarian funding bring Afghanistan to the brink

Leading UK charities have launched a joint winter appeal to save the lives of 8 million people at risk of starvation in Afghanistan, as aid workers in the country warn of a “small window of opportunity” to intervene.

A combination of conflict, economic collapse, drought and the Covid-19 pandemic has brought the country to a tipping point, according to the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the umbrella group of 15 aid agencies behind the appeal.

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Books that explain the world: Guardian writers share their best nonfiction reads of the year

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From a Jacobean traveller’s travails in Sindh to the tangled roots of Nigeria, our pick of new nonfiction books that shine a light on Asia, Africa and South America

• Share your top recommendations for books on the developing world in the comments below

You Have Not Yet Been Defeated: Selected Works 2011-2021
By Alaa Abd El-Fattah

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What burns beneath: the deadly threat of underground coal fires to children in Zimbabwe

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Alisha was eight when she died after being badly burned near a coal mine in Hwange. Families who live in fear of the ground opening up under their children’s feet say more must be done


Alisha Muzvite was out playing when she was caught short and went behind a bush to go to the toilet. But as the eight-year-old crouched down, the ground beneath her shifted, pulling her into one of the underground fires which burn all around her home in Hwange in north-west Zimbabwe.

An aunt pulled her to safety, but Alisha’s legs were so badly burned that they had to be amputated. More than a month after the accident, the little girl died of her injuries.

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