Proposed register would come into effect in January, a year after near-total ban on abortion
Poland is planning to introduce a centralised register of pregnancies that would oblige doctors to report all pregnancies and miscarriages to the government.
The proposed register would come into effect in January 2022, a year after Poland introduced a near-total ban on abortion.
Continue reading...Ukhoo village in Kashmir supplies 90% of wood used in the country’s pencils, but the industry, a major employer in the area, has seen a dramatic drop in demand
School closures in India during the pandemic have left their mark on more than the children who have seen delays to their learning. In one Kashmiri village the impact has been catastrophic on employment.
Pick up a pencil anywhere across India and it is likely to come from the poplar trees of Ukhoo.
Continue reading...For the first time in a decade deaths from TB are rising, with the curable disease killing 20,000 Kenyans last year. Now testing ‘ATMs’ and other innovations are helping to find ‘missing cases’
One day in May last year, Violet Chemesunte, a community health volunteer in Kibera, the largest slum in Nairobi, got a call from a colleague worried about a woman she had visited who kept coughing.
She asked if Chemesunte could go round and convince the 37-year-old woman, a single mother to three young children, to seek medical help. She suspected tuberculosis (TB), and feared it might already be too late.
Continue reading...Javiera Rojas remembered as ‘an emblematic activist who was dedicated to the process of resistance’
Environmental activists in Chile have called for justice after a 42-year-old land defender was found dead with her hands and feet bound.
The body of Javiera Rojas was found buried under a pile of clothes in an abandoned house on Sunday in Calama in the northern region of Antofagasta.
Continue reading...Scientists warn of higher rate of repeat infections but say vaccines appear to protect against serious illness
The Omicron variant of Covid-19 appears to be reinfecting people at three times the rate of previous strains, experts in South Africa have said, as public health officials and scientists from around the world closely monitor developments in the country where it was first identified.
As the EU’s public health agency warned that Omicron could cause more than half of all new Covid infections in Europe within the next few months, evidence was emerging, however, that vaccines still appear to offer protection against serious illness.
Continue reading...Legal team faces daily threats as it works to protect displaced families from landowners, ecosystems from mining and indigenous groups from oil companies
Julia Figueroa never leaves her house without security. She travels with two bodyguards and an armoured vehicle. Her home and office are watched around the clock. She carefully monitors any devices that might contain compromising information about her clients.
As the director of the Luis Carlos Pérez Lawyers Collective Corporation (CCALCP), threats to her life are a daily occurrence. The all-female group of lawyers provides legal representation to small-scale farmers and indigenous communities affected by the armed conflict in Colombia. Their work includes defending displaced peoples and victims of state crime, but also defending environmental rights, including fighting mining companies that seek to extract resources, often at the expense of the local water supply and the surrounding environment.
Continue reading...Inter-American court of human rights orders Central American country to reform harsh policies on reproductive health
The Inter-American court of human rights has ruled that El Salvador was responsible for the death of Manuela, a woman who was jailed in 2008 for killing her baby when she suffered a miscarriage.
The court has ordered the Central American country to reform its draconian policies on reproductive health.
Continue reading...IOM report finds 9m more people displaced globally but mobility restricted due to pandemic, with vaccination proving a key factor
The coronavirus pandemic had a radical effect on migration, limiting movement despite increasing levels of internal displacement from conflict and climate disasters, the UN’s International Organization for Migration said in a report on Wednesday.
Though the number of people who migrated internationally increased to 281 million in 2020 – 9 million more than before Covid-19 – the number was 2 million lower than expected without a pandemic, according to the report.
Continue reading...Aid agencies fear plans to scrap applications via Skype are an attempt to control and contain rather than help asylum seekers
When Hadi Karam*, a soft-spoken Syrian, decided to leave the war-stricken city of Raqqa, he knew the journey to Europe would be risky. What he had not factored in was how technology would be a stumbling block once he reached Greece.
“I never thought Skype would be the problem,” says the young professional, recounting his family’s ordeal trying to contact asylum officers in the country. “You ring and ring and ring. Weeks and weeks go by, and there is never any answer.”
Continue reading...Aspen Institute’s New Voices want donors to exercise humility and trust those receiving grants to know what their communities need
Aid donors are being urged to revolutionise the way money is spent to move away from colonial ideas and create meaningful change.
Ahead of a two-day conference this week, activists from Africa, Asia and Latin America have called on public and private global health donors – including governments, the United Nations, private philanthropists and international organisations – to prioritise funding for programmes driven by the needs of the community involved, rather than dictated by preconceived objectives.
Continue reading...It is hard to protect yourself from HIV when having sterile syringes or condoms can lead to arrest: discrimination is restricting progress in eliminating HIV
Forty years after the first cases of Aids were discovered, goals for its global elimination have yet to be achieved. In 2020, nearly 700,000 people died of Aids-related illnesses and 1.5 million people were newly infected with HIV.
This is despite scientific and medical advances in the testing, treatment and care of people living with HIV.
Continue reading...Lawyers and campaigners fear decision not to grant appeal against conviction risks silencing other victims of domestic abuse
A mother jailed for harming her baby has accused the courts of “injustice” after judges accepted she was a victim of abuse but ruled against an application for an appeal against her conviction made on the grounds that her violent ex-partner coerced her to lie at her trial.
The woman, known as “Jenny”, was convicted in 2017 of causing or allowing serious harm after her child sustained skull fractures and bleeding on the brain. The baby’s father was her co-defendant but was acquitted on a lesser charge.
Continue reading...Longstanding plague of child abuse and extreme abortion laws fuel crisis, report says
An average of two girls between 10 and 14 give birth every day in Paraguay, thanks to a toxic combination of widespread child abuse and draconian abortion laws, according to a new Amnesty International report.
Paraguay has one of the highest rates of child and teen pregnancy in Latin America, a region that, as a whole, has the second-highest rates in the world.
Continue reading...Families facing severe hunger are wading through crocodile-infested waters in search of water lilies to eat. Susan Martinez and photographer Peter Caton return with Action Against Hunger to find that the dire situation they reported on in March has only worsened
Desperate families in flood-ravaged villages in South Sudan are spending hours searching for water lilies to eat after another summer of intense rainfall worsened an already dire situation.
People have no food and no land to cultivate after three years of floods. Fields are submerged in last year’s flood water and higher ground is overcrowded with hungry people, in what is quickly becoming a humanitarian crisis.
Nyanyang Tong, 39, on her way to the Action Against Hunger centre with her one-year-old son, Mamuch Gatkuoth, in Paguir
Continue reading...Court of appeal decision hailed as victory for LGBTQ+ community that could encourage other African countries to follow suit
Gay rights campaigners expressed joy at the Botswana court of appeal’s decision to uphold a ruling that decriminalised same-sex relationships, saying the country’s judiciary had set an example for other African countries.
The government had appealed a 2019 ruling that criminalising homosexuality was unconstitutional. The ruling had been hailed as a major victory for gay rights campaigners on the continent, following an unsuccessful attempt in Kenya to repeal colonial-era laws criminalising gay sex.
Continue reading...In a developing country reliant on its tourist industry, the rapidly eroding ‘smiling coast’ shows the urgent need for action on climate change
When Saikou Demba was a young man starting out in the hospitality business, he opened a little hotel on the Gambian coast called the Leybato and ran a beach bar on the wide expanse of golden sand. The hotel is still there, a relaxed spot where guests can lie in hammocks beneath swaying palm trees and stroll along shell-studded pathways. But the beach bar is not. At high tide, Demba reckons it would be about five or six metres into the sea.
“The first year the tide came in high but it was OK,” he says. “The second year, the tide came in high but it was OK. The third year, I came down one day and it [the bar] wasn’t there: half of it went into the sea.”
Continue reading...Most of the people who reach the UK after risking their lives in small boats have their claims for asylum approved
Last week’s tragedy in the Channel has reopened the debate on how to stop people making dangerous crossings, with the solutions presented by the government focused on how to police the waters.
Less has been said about where those people come from, with most fleeing conflicts and persecution. About two-thirds of people arriving on small boats between January 2020 and May 2021 were from Iran, Iraq, Sudan and Syria. Many also came from Eritrea, from where 80% of asylum applications were approved.
Continue reading...From Greece the women are advocating for fellow refugees – and those left behind under Taliban rule
It is a Saturday morning in November, and Afghan MP Nazifa Yousufi Bek gathers up her notes and prepares to head for the office. But instead of jumping in an armoured car bound for the mahogany-lined parliament in Kabul, her journey is by bus from a Greek hotel to a migrants’ organisation in the centre of Athens. There, taking her place on a folding chair, she inaugurates the Afghan women’s parliament in – exile.
“Our people have nothing. Mothers are selling their children,” she tells a room packed with her peers. “We must raise our voices, we must put a stop to this,” says Yousufi Bek, 35, who fled Afghanistan with her husband and three young children after the Taliban swept to power in August. Some around her nod in agreement; others quietly weep.
Continue reading...The farmers, mostly women, once grew enough but must now buy imported rice as the climate crisis edges them into poverty
In the sweltering heat of the late-morning west African sun, Aminata Jamba slashes at golden rice stalks with a sickle. “The rice is lovely,” she says, music playing in the background as her son, Sampa, silently harvests the grain. But even if the quality is high, the quantity is not.
While once Jamba could have expected to harvest enough rice to last the whole year, this year she reckons it will last three to four months. After that, she will have to look elsewhere for a way to feed her family and make enough money to live.
Continue reading...Advisory group say military has destroyed supplies, killed livestock and cut off roads used to transport food since February coup
Myanmar’s military junta has been accused of forcing people to the brink of starvation with repeated offensives since it seized power in a coup earlier this year.
The Special Advisory Council for Myanmar said the junta had destroyed food supplies and killed livestock while cutting off roads used to bring in food and medicine.
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