Category Archives: Global development

‘Renting the Taj Mahal’: the fight to save Darjeeling’s toy train

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India’s tiny train has puffed up the Himalayas since 1881 but now the world heritage site is under threat

“Darjeeling ko sano rail, hirna lai abo tyari cha / Guard le shuna bhai siti bajayo” (Darjeeling’s dainty train is all set to chug off / Oh, listen to the guard blowing the whistle): generations of children in Darjeeling have grown up hearing these lines from a Nepali nursery rhyme. Serenading the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (DHR), it depicts the close relationship between the “Queen of the Hills” and local people.

However, that relationship has become strained after the Indian government decided to hand over the running of the railway – listed by Unesco as a world heritage site – and oversight of the land adjoining the stations to a private company, threatening jobs and livelihoods.

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Ethiopia expels ‘meddling’ UN staff as famine deepens in Tigray without aid

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Seven senior officials responsible for ‘delivering lifesaving aid’ told to leave amid de facto blockade of food, medicine and fuel

The Ethiopian government has told seven senior UN officials to leave the country, accusing them of “meddling in internal affairs”.

A statement from the foreign ministry said the officials – who include staff from the UN humanitarian agency, the UN human rights office and the children’s agency, Unicef – must leave Ethiopia within 72 hours.

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Concerns grow over Poland’s treatment of migrants stuck at Belarus border

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Warsaw defies critics to extend state of emergency as it seeks to portray migrants as dangerous

Concerns over Poland’s treatment of migrants stranded on its border with Belarus are mounting after Warsaw this week ignored domestic and international criticism to extend a state of emergency and sought to portray them as dangerous deviants.

The European commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, met the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński, in Warsaw on Thursday night but won no concessions on the bloc’s request for monitors from the EU’s Frontex border force to be allowed into the zone, despite growing fears for the migrants’ safety after the deaths of at least five people.

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Embracing vitiligo: Ugandan artist dispels skin stigma with portraits

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People with the condition can face being seen as ‘cursed’ in the east African country, says Martin Senkubuge, whose art aims to make them proud of their skin

It was a confrontation with a female Michael Jackson fan that first drew Martin Senkubuge’s attention to the skin condition vitiligo.

Senkubuge, a Ugandan artist, was describing his tattoo of the musician to the woman at an art exhibition in Kampala in 2019, when he accused the pop star of bleaching his skin.

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‘I don’t know where to go’: uncertain fate of the women in Kabul’s shelters

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Women in refuges have been sent home to their abusers or to prison since the Taliban takeover. Those in the few shelters still open fear what lies ahead

Zari was seven years old when her parents died, forcing her to move in with her uncle. But when he died four years later, his two widows beat Zari and forced her to work long hours weaving carpets. During her teenage years, Zari tried to kill herself.

After her suicide attempt, Zari, now 28, moved into a shelter for abused women. For the past eight years she has held on to the belief that things would get better. She made friends and learned to sew clothes, eventually teaching others to do the same.

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WHO ‘should pay reparations to victims of sexual abuse by staff’

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Exclusive: UN agency must respond to the ‘real needs’ of the women and girls, says Julienne Lusenge, co-chair of the independent inquiry into the scandal

Survivors of sexual abuse by World Health Organization aid workers during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak in 2018 should receive “substantive” reparations, the co-chair of an independent inquiry into the scandal has said.

Julienne Lusenge, a prominent Congolese human rights activist, said it was “essential” that the UN’s global health body drew up a workable plan for reparations to respond to the “real needs” of women and girls who became victims of abuse.

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The climate crisis is destroying the human rights of those least responsible for it | Patrick Verkooijen and AK Abdul Momen

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The UN must urgently appoint a special rapporteur on climate change and human rights to galvanise action on the biggest threat to fundamental freedoms

Climate breakdown is making a mockery of human rights.

Start with the most fundamental right of all: the right to life, liberty and security. Two million people have died as a result of a five-fold increase in weather-related disasters in our lifetimes. And given that 90% of these deaths have occurred in developing countries, which have contributed the least to global heating, the climate crisis is also making a mockery of the notion that we are all born equal – as the UN Declaration of Human Rights and numerous national constitutions assert.

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‘I’ll never go back’: Uganda’s schools at risk as teachers find new work during Covid

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Many private schools may not reopen after staff laid off during lockdown say they will not return to the profession

The last message Mary Namitala received from the private school in which she taught was in March last year, the day all schools in Uganda were ordered close due to Covid-19. The message read: “No more payments until when schools open.”

“My husband and I decided to leave our rented house in town and shifted to the village, to our unfinished house. We could not afford to continue paying rent,” says Namitala, from her home in Bombo in central Uganda, about 20 miles north of the capital Kampala.

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Indigenous children set to receive billions after judge rejects Trudeau challenges

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  • First Nations children entitled to government compensation
  • Canada ‘wilfully and recklessly’ discriminated against them

A federal court in Canada has paved they way for billions in compensation to First Nations children who suffered discrimination in the welfare system, after a judge dismissed a pair of legal challenges by the government.

Two years ago, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruled that the federal government had “wilfully and recklessly” discriminated against Indigenous children living on reserves by failing to properly fund child and family services.

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Brazil hospital chain accused of hiding Covid deaths and giving unproven drugs

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Group of whistleblowing doctors gave 10,000-page dossier to investigators last month with allegations against Prevent Senior

One of Brazil’s biggest healthcare providers has been accused of covering up coronavirus deaths, pressuring doctors to prescribe ineffective treatments, and testing unproven drugs on elderly patients as part of ideologically charged efforts to help the Brazilian government resist a Covid lockdown.

Related: Trump may be gone, but Covid has not seen off populism

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Kenya bans LGBTQ+ documentary for ‘promoting same-sex marriage’

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‘Discriminatory’ banning of I Am Samuel, about a gay man’s struggles with his sexuality, criticised by activists and producers

Activists and film producers have criticised a decision by the Kenya Film Classification Board to ban a documentary that tells the story of a Kenyan man struggling with his sexuality.

They said banning the 52-minute film, I Am Samuel, amounted to “discrimination and persecution” of LGBTQ+ people.

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Gail Omvedt: US sociologist who ‘lived by her principles’ among India’s poor

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The respected academic, who has died aged 80, was a leading anti-caste campaigner and fought tirelessly for women’s rights

At the village of Kasegaon, in India’s rural western region of Maharashtra, huge crowds turned up for the funeral in August of a US-born, white sociologist whom many local people saw as one of their own.

Most of the mourners were Dalits, who belong to the lowest caste in Indian society, previously deemed “untouchables”.

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‘Living in a cave is no life’: Pakistani villagers trapped by Taliban and poverty

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Seven years after fleeing army clashes with militants, 100 families eking out an existence on a hillside near the Afghan border are unable to return home

“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”

Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home.

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‘Humbled and heartbroken’: WHO finds its Ebola staff abused women and girls

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Inquiry commissioned by WHO details sexual abuse, including rape allegations, during DRC outbreak

The World Health Organization has described itself as “heartbroken” after an independent inquiry it commissioned said scores of women and girls were sexually abused by aid workers during the devastating 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The findings were described as “harrowing reading” by the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while its regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said she was “humbled, horrified and heartbroken”.

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‘My future is overseas’: Tunisians look to Europe as Covid hits tourism

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As the pandemic deals a death blow to an already struggling sector, former workers see little hope for recovery

The seafront along the town of Hammamet in Tunisia is deserted. Looking out at the bright empty coast from his souvenir shop, Kais Azzabi, 42, describes the crowds that would stroll along the broad boulevards. Today, there is nobody.

“It was very busy here,” he says, gesturing to the street and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. “Since the corona started, everything stopped.”

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Revealed: exploitation of meat plant workers rife across UK and Europe

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Thousands of outsourced workers on inferior pay and conditions to fulfil demand for cheap meat, Guardian investigation shows

Read more: ‘The whole system is rotten’: life inside Europe’s meat industry

Meat companies across Europe have been hiring thousands of workers through subcontractors, agencies and bogus co-operatives on inferior pay and conditions, a Guardian investigation has found.

Workers, officials and labour experts have described how Europe’s £190bn meat industry has become a global hotspot for outsourced labour, with a floating cohort of workers, many of whom are migrants, with some earning 40% to 50% less than directly employed staff in the same factories.

The Guardian has uncovered evidence of a two-tier employment system with workers subjected to sub-standard pay and conditions to fulfil the meat industry’s need for a replenishable source of low-paid, hyper-flexible workers.

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Fears for Afghan psychiatrist abducted by armed men

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Dr Nader Alemi, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital, had received death threats before being taken on his way home from work last week

One of Afghanistan’s most prominent psychiatrists has been abducted on his way home from work by a group of armed men.

Dr Nader Alemi, 66, who opened the country’s first private psychiatric hospital in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, was stopped by seven men in a white car last week, said his family.

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Paraguay on the brink as historic drought depletes river, its life-giving artery

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Severe drought that began in late 2019 continues to punish the region while experts say climate change and deforestation may be intensifying the phenomenon

In the shadow of towering grain silos that line the bank of the River Paraná, South America’s second-longest waterway, Lucas Krivenchuk stands watching workers rush to load a barge with soybeans.

“Twelve barges had to leave today, but only six will make it out: there’s no time, the water’s dropping too fast,” said Krivenchuk, general manager of the Trociuk private port in southern Paraguay. “It’s the first time that any have left in two months.”

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‘It’ll kill me’: Zimbabwe counts cost of rise in illicit alcohol use

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Lack of jobs and Covid lockdowns fuel boom in cheap but lethal hooch made in backyard stills

It is 7pm and inside the shebeen, or unlicensed bar, in Harare, men and women clutch small bottles of “whisky” and talk animatedly as they dance to loud music.

One man staggers and falls over, to the amusement of other drinkers. He mumbles inaudible words as he drifts into sleep. Nearby, two other men doze after spending hours in the bar on a sweltering September day.

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‘They treated us like animals’: Haitians angry and in despair at being deported from US

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Haitian deportees arriving from Texas say they were ‘rounded up like cattle and shackled like criminals’

When Evens Delva waded across the Rio Grande with his wife and two daughters, he had dreams of starting a new life in Florida. But less than a week later, he and his family stepped on to the tarmac in Port-au-Prince, the sweltering and chaotic capital of Haiti, with nothing except traumatic memories and a feeling of bubbling anger.

Delva, along with nearly 2,000 other Haitians, was deported from southern Texas this week to Haiti, despite having lived in Chile for the past six years and having few remaining connections to his home country. His younger daughter, who is four, does not hold Haitian citizenship, having been born in Chile, and speaks more Spanish than Haitian Creole.

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