Category Archives: Global development

There’s a brutal conflict in Ethiopia. My family there ask: why does no one hear us? | Magdalene Abraha

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People in Tigray are crying out for the world’s help, as war has left them starving and fearing for their lives

On 4 November 2020 the world was occupied with the results of the US election. For myself and many others with family and friends in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, however, that day marked the beginning of a year-long nightmare. And it’s one which the world has, for the most part, ignored.

When on that day the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel peace prizewinner, announced a military offensive in Tigray, it was hard to predict the scale of the human suffering that would ensue. But almost instantly Tigray, a region in the far north of the country that is home to more than 7 million people, was cut off from the world: phone lines were shut down, the internet was cut off, banks were closed and journalists were barred from the region.

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Dirty dollars: how tattered US notes became the latest street hustle in Zimbabwe

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In country hit by hyperinflation, a shortage of dollars means those struggling to survive can make a profit dealing torn notes

In time-honoured street hawker tradition, Kaitano Kasani is using charm and persuasion to get people to sell him their tattered US banknotes.

Kasani, 42, bellows through a megaphone as he walks through Glen Norah, a township in Harare, in the sweltering November heat.

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Mexican environmental campaigner missing after attack on villagers

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Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the Mixtec people, was defending indigenous lands from illegal logging

A Mexican environmental campaigner has been declared missing barely a week after a savage attack on indigenous villagers displaced from the lands she was defending against illegal logging.

Irma Galindo Barrios, a member of the indigenous Mixtec (ñuù savi) people who worked to protect forests in southern Oaxaca state, was last heard from on 27 October. She was scheduled to attend a virtual meeting so she could join a state mechanism for protecting journalists and defenders, but did not attend, according to Rosi Bustamante, a US-based activist who had been in close contact with Galindo.

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‘If I can get a plane into the sky, I can do anything’: female Afghan pilot refuses to be grounded

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Months after Mohadese Mirzaee became Afghanistan’s first female commercial airline pilot, the Taliban took Kabul. Now a refugee in Bulgaria, she is determined to fly again

Sitting alone in her small flat in Bulgaria, Mohadese Mirzaee contemplates the future. Three months ago, she left behind her family, and her dream job, in Afghanistan. At 23, Mirzaee was the country’s first female commercial airline pilot.

“Today, I don’t know where to go, but I’m not giving up. I’ve started applying for pilot jobs anywhere because I know I need to get back to flying,” she says by phone from the capital, Sofia.

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Rising humidity could be linked to increase in suicides, report finds

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Increasingly intense and frequent spells of humidity linked to global heating may exacerbate mental health conditions, with women and young people worst affected

More frequent spells of intense humidity caused by the climate crisis are more likely than heatwaves to be linked to increased rates of suicide, according to new research.

The study found that women and young people were particularly affected by levels of humidity, the intensity and frequency of which are increasing because of global heating.

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Stop talking, start acting, says Africa’s first extreme heat official

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Rising temperatures are already killing people in Sierra Leone’s Freetown, says Eugenia Kargbo, who is planning how best to protect the hundreds of thousands living in informal settlements

When she was growing up, Eugenia Kargbo could have a leisurely stroll, jog or cycle around the streets of Freetown. But that easy life no longer exists in Sierra Leone’s capital for her two children. The city is so swelteringly hot that children run the constant risk of sunburn or heat rashes if they are outdoors for very long.

“Over the past 10 years, there has been a dramatic change,” says Kargbo, 34, who has been appointed as Freetown’s chief heat officer – the first such post in Africa and only the third globally, after Athens and Miami.

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Palm oil land grabs ‘trashing’ environment and displacing people

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Growing rush for land is destroying ecosystems and disrupting lives to satisfy global demand for goods, study warns

Businesses and governments must stop the growing rush of commodities-driven land grabbing, which is “trashing” the environment and displacing people, says new research.

Palm oil and cobalt were extreme risks for land grabs according to an analysis of 170 commodities by research firm Verisk Maplecroft published last week. It also warned that, alongside cobalt, other minerals used for “clean” technology, including silicon, zinc, copper, were high risk and undermined the sector’s label.

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‘Living from flood to flood’: the crisis of Gambia’s sinking city

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As well as floods, sewage and crocodiles, those living in Banjul’s slums face the effects of a climate crisis they did little to cause

Yedel Bah would move home if she could, but she can’t. With no income of her own, four children to feed and a husband who just about manages, her family lives from day to day, and from flood to flood, on the banks of a litter-strewn, stagnant canal.

Every rainy season, the neighbourhood of Tobacco Road in the Gambian capital, Banjul, braces for downpours of such intensity that the canal overflows, spilling its murky, pungent depths into the slum-like homes that run alongside it.

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The elephant in the room: a Thai village’s unwelcome guests – photo essay

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Humans have encroached on the animals’ habitat – now villagers face daily raids as the elephants break into their homes in search of food

It was around midnight when Kittichai Boodchan heard two loud crashes coming from in front of his home. He knew immediately what was happening. An elephant was outside, and it wanted the family’s stash of bananas.

Boonchuay, a local bull from the nearby Kaeng Krachan national park notorious for his habit of raiding the village in search of snacks, had come to call. Kittichai had earlier bought 200kg of bananas to sell and, although stored inside, the sweet scent had undoubtedly piqued Boonchuay’s interest.

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Tourist visas and flights from Syria – the route to Europe via Belarus

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Travel agents in Middle East and migrants who have reached Poland describe how thousands are making the journey

On a dark forest road last month, Polish police were in pursuit of a speeding car that had skipped a checkpoint. The car’s driver was a people smuggler, and his passengers three Syrians who had paid thousands for him to take them to Germany, the final leg of their journey from the Middle East via Belarus. A truck coming in the opposite direction tried to dodge them but could not. Ferhad Nabo, 33, a married father of two from Kobane, was killed instantly in the crash.

“He left Syria, like many others, to reach Europe,” said his cousin Rashwan Nabo, a Syrian humanitarian worker. Ferhad had boarded a direct flight to Minsk from Erbil, in northern Iraq. “In Raqqa, Damascus and Aleppo, word has been spreading for months that the easiest and fastest way to reach Europe is a direct flight to Belarus,” his cousin said.

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How risk of kidnap became the cost of an education in Nigeria

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Abductions are rife in the north of the country, where armed gangs target schools and colleges with apparent impunity

When his two daughters were abducted from their university dormitories by armed men in April, Friday Sani volunteered to deliver the ransom. In two bags he carried banknotes to the value of more than 40m naira (£70,000), the price to free Victory and Rejoice, and 37 others taken from the Federal College of Forestry Mechanisation in Afaka, Kaduna.

In April and May more than 70 students were abducted from the federal college and the nearby Greenfield University. With little faith that police could help, a group of parents went to the kidnappers, through an intermediary, and paid to get their children back.

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Community-led upgrade to a Nairobi slum could be a model for Africa

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Mukuru, one of Kenya’s largest informal settlements, has cleaned up its act with improved water, roads and sanitation

The people who live in Mukuru, one of the vast, sprawling “informal settlements” in Nairobi, used to dread the rains, when the slum’s mud-packed lanes would dissolve into a soggy quagmire of sewage, stagnant water and slimy rubbish.

But a few years ago, things began to change. On a newly paved road Benedetta Kasendi is selling sugar cane from a cart. It gives her a clean platform, somewhere she can keep her wares tidy. Her biggest challenge now is what to do with the sugar-cane waste as she does not want to clog up Mukuru’s revamped sewers.

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‘It’s our lifeline’: the Taliban are back but Afghans say opium is here to stay

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Despite talk of a Taliban ban, in Helmand’s poppy fields farmers and traders say they are not the only ones who depend on the drug to survive

The Taliban’s announcement that it plans to ban the production of opium in Afghanistan does not faze seasoned dealer Ahmed Khan*.

“They could not fund their war if there were no opium,” says Khan, who operates out of Baramcha, close to the border with Pakistan.

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Joy, toys and bumper cars as Manila’s children reclaim the city

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Malls, restaurants and arcades in the Philippines capital are packed with children as Covid curbs ease

Ten-year-old Gabriel Estrella beams as he talks about T-shirts he bought on his first day out at a shopping mall after nearly two years of staying away due to coronavirus restrictions in the Philippines.

“Before the pandemic, buying T-shirts used to be boring,” he said, sweaty after playing with his eight-year-old sister. “Now, it’s exciting! I bought four shirts. They’re anime shirts.

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A woman murdered every month: is this Greece’s moment of reckoning on femicide?

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Lax punishments, police inaction and inadequate laws serve to embolden abusers, say campaigners – and stark figures bear them out

When a woman reported domestic violence in her building in the Athens suburb of Dafni in July, it took 25 minutes for the police to arrive. All the neighbours could hear Anisa’s husband abusing her but the police officers did not bother to get out of the patrol car. “They just rolled down their car windows and left,” Anisa’s neighbour angrily wrote on Facebook that evening. “No stress, guys. Television only cares about the bodies. So when he kills her, I’ll tell a television channel to call you.”

Less than three weeks later, Anisa was dead, murdered by her husband. Neither can be named in full as the case has yet to reach trial. In a statement to police, the perpetrator described how he was overcome with jealousy after Anisa allegedly cheated on him. “I took the knife with my right hand and entered her room. She was sleeping, and I rushed to her and lay on her, stabbing her with the knife in her neck,” he said. He later retracted his claim that Anisa was asleep when he killed her.

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World’s ‘calamitous’ water crisis being ignored in climate talks – WaterAid

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Cop26 summit focusing on slowing down global heating at expense of current impact on water-stressed regions, says head of WaterAid

A global water crisis is being ignored at Cop26 to the detriment of billions of people’s lives, according to the charity WaterAid.

Water had not had “nearly enough” attention at the climate conference in Glasgow, with urgent action needed, said Tim Wainwright, chief executive of WaterAid.

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‘Killing us slowly’: dams and drought choke Syria’s water supply – in pictures

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The dwindling flow of the Euphrates River combined with Turkey’s occupation of Alouk water station has disrupted access to water for 460,000 people

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The young taxi bikers killed in Freetown’s fuel blast died trying to scrape a living | Jonah Lipton and James B Palmer

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Riders trying to get fuel from a leaking tanker were among 100 killed when it exploded. It’s part of a bigger story of the struggle for survival in Sierra Leone, a country exploited by rich nations

More than 100 people were killed by an explosion in Freetown, Sierra Leone, last week, after a leaking fuel tanker collided with a lorry on a busy road in the capital city.

Many of those who died were young motorbike taxi drivers, after dozens of riders rushed to the leaking tanker to collect free petrol and were caught in the blast. The tanker and lorry drivers tried to keep people away but could not stop the crowd. Half an hour later, it was too late.

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‘Unacceptable’: migrants face ‘desperate situation’ at Poland-Belarus border

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Children and families among those being warned to ‘go back to Minsk’ as police hostility and humanitarian crisis worsens

For two days the same looped recording has been blaring out from speakers on the Polish border: “Attention! Attention! Crossing the Polish border is legal only at border crossings.”

The ominous warning is directed at the thousands of asylum seekers massed in Belarus on the opposite side of the barbed wire running between the two countries.

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‘She did not deserve to die like this’: family seeks justice for Kenyan woman allegedly killed by UK soldier

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Reports that British soldier confessed to Kenyan woman’s murder in 2012 have deeply affected relatives in Nanyuki

A vibrant sisal plant in a public cemetery on the outskirts of Nanyuki in Kenya marks the grave of Agnes Wanjiru, the woman allegedly murdered by a British soldier in March 2012.

It is easy to miss the grave due to heavy undergrowth in the unkempt cemetery.

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