Category Archives: Global development

‘The Taliban say they’ll kill me if they find me’: a female reporter still on the run speaks out

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We return to the story of a journalist forced to flee as Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August. Unable to return home without putting at risk everyone she loves and hounded by threatening calls, she remains in hiding in the country four months on

I am an Afghan female journalist and I have been on the run for more than four months. I have lived in numerous safe houses and the homes of people who’ve offered me refuge. I am constantly moving to avoid being caught, from province to province, city to city.

The Taliban insurgents have been threatening to kill me and my colleagues for two years, for our reports exposing their crimes in our province. But when they seized control of our provincial capital, they started to hunt for those who had spoken out against them. I decided to escape, for my own and my family’s safety.

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Outcry over ‘blatant misogyny’ in Indian English exam

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Nationwide test for teenagers included passage indicating female independence was undermining discipline in the home

An Indian exam board has withdrawn a passage from a nationwide English exam that appeared to promote the subservience of wives, after an outcry over “blatant misogyny”.

All students have been awarded full marks for the comprehension section of the exam covering the passage, which appeared to explicitly state that women’s independence was undermining discipline and parenting in the home. The passage appeared in an English language and literature exam taken by 14 and 15-year-olds on Saturday.

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Barbados can be a beacon for the region – if it avoids some of its neighbours’ mistakes | Kenneth Mohammed

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The Caribbean’s newest republic must avoid the corruption that has hampered Trinidad and Tobago and use its presidency to ensure good governance

The charismatic prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, elevated her country’s status in the world with her stinging speech at Cop26 in Glasgow last month. This speech resonated throughout the West Indies, a region that has largely been devoid of a strong leader to give these vulnerable small island developing states (SIDS) a voice in the climate crisis debate. The survival of SIDS such as Barbados depends on the finance to invest in measures to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5C, which was the Paris agreement’s main objective.

Mottley called on all leaders of developed countries to step up their efforts as she outlined a solution embodied in flexible development finance. First, create a loss and damage fund made up of 1% of revenues from fossil fuels (which she estimated would amount to about $70bn, or £50bn, a year), accessible only to countries that have suffered a climate disaster and loss of 5% of their economy.

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Afghan health system ‘close to collapse due to sanctions on Taliban’

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Health experts issue dire warning as staff go unpaid and medical facilities lack basic items to treat patients

Large parts of Afghanistan’s health system are on the brink of collapse because of western sanctions against the Taliban, international experts have warned, as the country faces outbreaks of disease and an escalating malnutrition crisis.

With the country experiencing a deepening humanitarian crisis since the Taliban’s seizure of power in August amid mounting levels of famine and economic collapse, many medical staff have not been paid for months and health facilities lack even the most basic items to treat patients.

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‘2.4C is a death sentence’: Vanessa Nakate’s fight for the forgotten countries of the climate crisis

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She started a youth strike in Uganda – then just kept going. She discusses climate justice, reparations, imperialism and why the global north must take responsibility

In February 2020, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Vanessa Nakate had her point made for her in the most vivid and “frustrating and heartbreaking” way. The Ugandan climate crisis activist, who turned 25 last month, had gone to Switzerland to introduce some perspective to its cosy consensus. “One of the things that I wanted to emphasise was the importance of listening to activists and people from the most affected areas,” she says. “How can we have climate justice if the people who are suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis are not being listened to, not being platformed, not being amplified and are left out of the conversation? It’s not possible.”

To this end, she appeared at a press conference with Greta Thunberg and three other white, European youth climate strikers. When the Associated Press published a photo of the meeting, it cropped out Nakate. It was, she said at the time, her first encounter with direct and blatant racism – and only reinforced her point and made her campaign more urgent. AP later expressed “regret” for its “error in judgment”.

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Arrival of 1bn vaccine doses won’t solve Africa’s Covid crisis, experts say

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Concerns over equipment shortages, bottlenecks and hesitancy on continent with 7.5% vaccine coverage

With 1bn doses of Covid vaccines expected to arrive in Africa in the coming months, concern has shifted to a global shortage of equipment required to deliver them, such as syringes, as well as insufficient planning in some countries that could create bottlenecks in the rollout.

After a troubled start to vaccination programmes on the continent, health officials are examining ways to encourage take-up as some countries have had to throw away doses.

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Burning issue: how enzymes could end India’s problem with stubble

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Bans failed to stop farmers torching fields each year but a new spray that turns stalks into fertiliser helps the soil and the air

Every autumn, Anil Kalyan, from Kutail village in India’s northern state of Haryana, would join tens of thousands of other paddy farmers to set fire to the leftover stalks after the rice harvest to clear the field for planting wheat.

But this year, Kalyan opted for change. He signed his land up for a trial being held in Haryana and neighbouring Punjab as an alternative to the environmentally hazardous stubble burning that is commonplace across India and a major cause of Delhi’s notorious smog.

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Top toddy: Sri Lanka’s tree tapping trade reaches new heights

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‘Toddy tappers’ who collect sap used in everything from palm wine to ice-cream are enjoying a boost to business that has revived the traditional skill and improved their quality of life

The palmyra palm tree with its wide fan leaves is a distinctive and common sight across Jaffna, northern Sri Lanka, thriving in the arid conditions.

Kutty, who goes by only one name, is a “toddy tapper”. Climbing the palms with his clay pot, he collects sap from the flower heads at the top of the great trees, which can grow to more than 30 metres (90ft). The sap is fermented to make toddy, an alcoholic drink also known as palm wine.

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‘We have to use a boat to commute’: coastal Ghana hit by climate crisis

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As the sea claims more of the west African shoreline, those left homeless by floods are losing hope that the government will act

Waves have taken the landscape John Afedzie knew so well. “The waters came closer in the last few months, but now they have destroyed parts of schools and homes. The waves have taken the whole of the village. One needs to use a boat to commute now because of the rising sea levels,” he says.

Afedzie lives in Keta, one of Ghana’s coastal towns, where a month ago high tide brought seawater flooding into 1,027 houses, according to the government, leaving him among about 3,000 people made homeless overnight.

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Women in prison ignored by feminist funders that find them less ‘marketable’, says NGO head

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Survey by Women Beyond Walls finds 70% of groups working with incarcerated women do not receive funds from women’s rights foundations

The global feminist movement is failing to support organisations working with women in prison, as donors shy away from funding projects aimed at people with “complicated” narratives, says lawyer and activist Sabrina Mahtani.

Mahtani, founder of Women Beyond Walls (WBW), said many NGOs around the world were doing vital work “supporting some of the most marginalised and overlooked women” in society, including providing essential legal services and reducing pretrial detention time.

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Win for Tunisian town facing landfill crisis as government backs down

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After demonstrations see police use teargas and the death of one man, work begins to clear waste in Sfax after decision to move site

Work has begun to clear 30,000 tonnes of household rubbish from the streets of Tunisia’s “second city” of Sfax after the government backed down in a long-running dispute over a landfill site.

Residents and activists in Agareb, where the current dump is located, said the site, opened in 2008 near the El Gonna national park, was a risk to human health. In recent weeks, unrest in the region has escalated, with access to the site blocked and police using teargas against demonstrators from the town. One man, Abderrazek Lacheb, has allegedly died after being caught up in the demonstrations, although the police have denied his death was due to teargas.

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Helping refugees starving in Poland’s icy border forests is illegal – but it’s not the real crime | Anna Alboth

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The asylum seekers on the Poland-Belarus border are not aggressors: they are desperate pawns in a disgusting political struggle

One thought is a constant in my head: “I have kids at home, I cannot go to jail, I cannot go to jail.” The politics are beyond my reach or that of the victims on the Poland-Belarus border. It involves outgoing German chancellor, Angela Merkel, getting through to Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus. It’s ironic that this border has more than 50 media crews gathered, yet Poland is the only place in the EU where journalists cannot freely report.

Meanwhile, the harsh north European winter is closing in and my fingers are freezing in the dark snowy nights.

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How Nairobi’s ‘road for the rich’ resulted in thousands of homes reduced to rubble

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40,000 people in one of the largest slums in the Kenyan capital have had their homes demolished to make way for works for a Chinese-backed toll road, with some asking: ‘this is development for who?’

About 40,000 people have been made homeless by demolition works for a major Chinese-backed toll road in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi.

Amnesty International Kenya says it believes the roadworks have created a humanitarian crisis, as schools, businesses and 13,000 homes spread across nearly 40 hectares (100 acres) of the Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum have been demolished since October, clearing land for a link to the Nairobi expressway.

A girl stands among the rubble of Mukuru Kwa Njenga slum, Nairobi, where 13,000 homes were razed to the ground

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‘More cautious’ China shifts Africa approach from debt to vaccine diplomacy

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Analysis: After two decades of major financial aid, Beijing is rethinking its strategy on continent amid Covid crisis and fierce competition for power, analysts say

As debt concerns rise and a new coronavirus variant emerges, China appears to be adjusting its approach to Africa: cutting finance pledges while doubling down on vaccine diplomacy.

On Monday last week, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, opened a China-Africa forum with a pledge to supply 1bn vaccine doses to Africa, amid global concern over the emergence of the Omicron variant of Covid-19. He also pledged $40bn to the continent, ranging from credit lines to investments – a significant cut from the $60bn promised at the previous two summits.

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I feel despair at Sudan’s coup. But my children’s mini protest gives me hope | Khalid Albaih

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After 30 years in exile, it’s easy to doubt that it will ever be safe to live and work in Sudan. But the action being taken by young people shows democracy will rise again

“All the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up,” John Steinbeck wrote to a friend in 1941, just before the US entered the second world war. “It isn’t that the evil thing wins – it never will – but that it doesn’t die.”

Growing up, I was always interested in politics, politics was the reason I had to leave Sudan at the age of 11. At school, we weren’t allowed to study or discuss it, and it was the same at home.For years, I lay in bed and listened to my father and his friends as they argued about politics and sang traditional songs during their weekend whisky rituals. They watched a new Arabic news channel, Al Jazeera, which aired from Qatar. All the journalism my father consumed about Sudan was from the London-based weekly opposition newspaper, Al Khartoum. The only time he turned on our dial-up internet was to visit Sudanese Online.

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Malaria kills 180,000 more people annually than previously thought, says WHO

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UN agency says world must support urgent rollout of new vaccine as it reveals new figures for malaria deaths

The World Health Organization has called for a “massive, urgent” effort to get the new malaria vaccine into the arms of African children, as it warned that about 180,000 more people were dying annually from the disease than had previously been thought.

Dr Pedro Alonso, director of the WHO’s global malaria programme, said the RTS,S vaccine, recommended for widespread rollout in October, represented a historic opportunity to save tens of thousands of lives, mostly those of under-fives in sub-Saharan Africa.

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Can artistic freedom survive in Sudan? The writing’s on the wall…

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The recent coup dashed hopes raised by the end of the military regime but newly liberated artists refuse to submit quietly

In the new dawn of a heady post-revolutionary era, Suzannah Mirghani returned in 2019 to the country of her birth for the first time in years. Her mission was to shoot a short film on Sudanese soil. It proved unexpectedly straightforward.

“When the revolution happened, there was this exuberance,” she says, from her Qatari home. “When we came to make our film, we were given the green light. We were told: ‘Anything you want’.

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Fortress Europe: the millions spent on military-grade tech to deter refugees

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We map out the rising number of high-tech surveillance and deterrent systems facing asylum seekers along EU borders

From military-grade drones to sensor systems and experimental technology, the EU and its members have spent hundreds of millions of euros over the past decade on technologies to track down and keep at bay the refugees on its borders.

Poland’s border with Belarus is becoming the latest frontline for this technology, with the country approving last month a €350m (£300m) wall with advanced cameras and motion sensors.

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Campaigners threaten UK legal action over porn sites’ lack of age verification

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Exclusive: failure to prevent children seeing online porn puts them at risk of abuse and lifelong trauma, say children’s safety group

The UK data watchdog must introduce age verification for commercial pornography sites or face a high court challenge over any failure to act, children’s safety groups have warned.

The demand in a letter to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) states that the government’s failure to stop children seeing porn is causing lifelong trauma and putting children at risk of abuse and exploitation. It urges the ICO to use the powers under the recently introduced age appropriate design code (AADC) to introduce rigorous age-checking procedures for publicly accessible porn sites.

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How can children in the UK be protected from seeing online pornography?

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As concern grows among experts about the impact on children of seeing pornographic images, how can access be restricted?

Why are children’s safety groups calling for age verification on porn sites?
They fear it is too easy for children to access publicly available pornography online. Experts who work with children say pornography gives children unhealthy views of sex and consent, putting them at risk from predators and possibly stopping them reporting abuse.

It can also lead to children behaving in risky or age-inappropriate ways, harming themselves and others. Charities say children tell them that pornography is difficult to avoid and can leave them feeling ashamed and distressed. One concern is the extreme nature of porn on mainstream sites, with one study showing that one in eight videos seen by first-time visitors showed violent or coercive content.

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