Category Archives: Global development

Climate crisis leaving ‘millions at risk of trafficking and slavery’

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Droughts and floods forcing workers from rural areas, leading to their exploitation in cities, report warns

Millions of people forced to leave their homes because of severe drought and powerful cyclones are at risk of modern slavery and human trafficking over the coming decades, a new report warns.

The climate crisis and the increasing frequency of extreme weather disasters including floods, droughts and megafires are having a devastating effect on the livelihoods of people already living in poverty and making them more vulnerable to slavery, according to the report, published today.

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How thousands of Haitian migrants ended up at the Texas border

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Gang violence, bloody protests, food and fuel shortages plus natural disasters have spurred many to leave the west’s poorest nation

Every night Guy would fall asleep to the sound of gunfire: warring gangs in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince, were fighting pitched battles in the city centre.

By day, the country was roiled by bloody protests against food and fuel shortages. Roadblocks with burning tyres were commonplace, and the police responded with tear gas and billy clubs.

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Texas anti-abortion law shows ‘terrifying’ fragility of women’s rights, say activists

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Campaigners fear ban emboldens anti-choice governments as more aggressive opposition, better organised and funded, spreads from US

The new anti-abortion law in Texas is a “terrifying” reminder of the fragility of hard-won rights, pro-choice activists have said, as they warn of a “more aggressive, much better organised [and] better funded” global opposition movement.

Pro-choice campaigners have seen several victories in recent years, including in Ireland, Argentina and, most recently, Mexico, where the supreme court ruled last week that criminalising abortion was unconstitutional. Another is hoped for later this month when the tiny enclave of San Marino, landlocked within Italy, holds a highly charged referendum.

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Taliban ban girls from secondary education in Afghanistan

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Government announces re-opening of high schools for boys but makes no mention of girls

The Taliban have effectively banned girls from secondary education in Afghanistan, by ordering high schools to re-open only for boys.

Girls were not mentioned in Friday’s announcement, which means boys will be back at their desks next week after a one-month hiatus, while their sisters will still be stuck at home.

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Child abuse: Apple urged to roll out image-scanning tool swiftly

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Exclusive: privacy concerns ‘must not delay use of neuralMatch algorithm to protect victims of abuse’

Child protection experts from across the world have called on Apple to implement new scanning technologies urgently to detect images of child abuse.

In August, Apple announced plans to use a tool called neuralMatch to scan photos being uploaded to iCloud online storage and compare them to a database of known images of child abuse.

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‘A forgotten disaster’: earthquake-hit Haitians left to fend for themselves

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With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets in

David Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure – as well as nearby homes, schools and churches – was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians – those most severely affected by the tremor – are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.

“The earthquake didn’t destroy our crops, but it did take everything else,” Nazaire says, outside a neighbour’s house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. “We were just getting ready to harvest, but that’s lost now.”

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‘It helped me get away from crime’: Cape Town’s College of Magic – a photo essay

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Photographer Tommy Trenchard documents students whose stories of transformation at the Hogwarts of South Africa are more than just fairytales

To fans of JK Rowling’s books, the story may sound somewhat familiar: a young boy living in difficult circumstances is enrolled in a mysterious school far from home, where his life is changed for ever by the transformative power of magic.

Anele Dyasi’s story is no fairytale, though, and the school in question is not Hogwarts, but the College of Magic in Cape Town, a unique institution that has been training some of the continent’s most skilled illusionists since the 1980s.

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‘They left us to die’: UK’s Afghan aid staff in hiding from Taliban

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Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save lives

Afghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.

The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding.

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The Activist: reality TV show to be ‘reimagined’ as documentary after backlash

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CBS says it will drop X-Factor-style competition from celebrity-fronted show after widespread criticism

A reality TV show that planned to pit activists against each other in an X-Factor style contest judged by celebrities is to be drastically “reimagined” after it sparked a backlash from campaigners.

The Activist, which had been due to air in the US in late October, prompted incredulity among many campaigners and elsewhere when its format was revealed last week, with many labelling it a “tone-deaf” distortion of true activists’ values.

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‘He saw the panic’: the Afghan men who fell from the US jet

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One was a young footballer, another a dentist. Their shocking deaths haunt the families who could not stop their desperate bids to escape

When Zaki Anwari scaled the fence of Kabul airport, he was determined to escape. The 17-year-old footballer with the Afghan national youth team had taken a break from studying maths for his exams to accompany his brother as he tried to catch a flight. Zaki had always told his family he was not interested in going abroad, unless he could return to Afghanistan.

But the Taliban takeover had changed things. Zaki did not have a passport but, as night fell on Kabul after the Taliban took control of the city, he told his brother Zakir that he wanted to leave. Zakir did his best to talk him out of it, but he would not let go of the idea.

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UK aid cuts make it vital to address anti-black bias in funding | Kennedy Odede

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Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power

The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.

New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.

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The Activist: ‘tone-deaf’ new TV show has activists compete to lobby G20 leaders

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CBS programme has caused a social media storm for its crass choice of format and ill-qualified judges

Producers have billed it as an exciting new twist on reality television: an X-Factor style competition between campaigners that will give them the chance to lobby world leaders at the G20.

But The Activist, a show announced last week by the American network CBS, has already learned to its cost that people power can be unpredictable, ruthless and highly effective.

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Drought puts 2.1 million Kenyans at risk of starvation

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National disaster declared as crops fail after poor rains and locusts, while ethnic conflicts add to crisis

An estimated 2.1 million Kenyans face starvation due to a drought in half the country, which is affecting harvests.

The National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) said people living in 23 counties across the arid north, northeastern and coastal parts of the country will be in “urgent need” of food aid over the next six months, after poor rains between March and May this year.

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#DoNotTouchMyClothes: Afghan women’s social media protest against Taliban

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Women around the world are sharing pictures of themselves in traditional colourful clothes in a campaign against the new strict dress code for female students

After street demonstrations across major cities in Afghanistan, women have now taken to social media to protest against the Taliban’s hardline policies towards them.

An online campaign has seen Afghan women around the world share photos of themselves wearing traditional colourful clothes, using the hashtag #DoNotTouchMyClothes.

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Yemen at war: conflict, chaos and rare joy – in pictures

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Over the past four years, photographer Giles Clarke has reported from Yemen for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), documenting the tragedy of a country devastated by war but also the resilience of its people. The photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image is featuring his work at an exhibition in Perpignan, France

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Taliban’s return ‘a catastrophe’ for journalism in Afghanistan

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Head of International Federation of Journalists says ‘future is black’ for 1,300 journalists still in country

Journalism in Afghanistan is in danger of disappearing, according to the head of the International Federation of Journalists, who said that reporters trying to continue working under the Taliban have been subjected to beatings and imprisonment.

“The Taliban don’t want to make too many waves right now, but they will want to take control of everything, including the foreign press in Afghanistan,” Anthony Bellanger, the IFJ secretary general, told the Guardian. “And as often happens in such situations, foreign journalists will be considered agents of foreign governments.

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‘Every man was drinking’: how much do bans on alcohol help women in India?

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Women’s protests led to prohibition in Bihar but can alcohol bans end domestic abuse and harassment?

Holding sticks and brooms, the women marched to the liquor shop in the centre of Konar village. It was a rare ambush in the staunchly patriarchal Bihar state in eastern India. But they were at breaking point.

“In every village women were troubled by alcohol. Men harassed them on the streets. Husbands beat them at home,” says Sunita Devi, 52, a former seamstress who led the crowd. “When they saw us they gained courage that we can come together and fight.”

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The battle for Mekelle: Ethiopia’s civil war over Tigray goes on – in pictures

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An estimated 2.2 million people have been forced from their homes and thousands have been killed in the civil war that broke out in Ethiopia last November when government troops entered Mekelle, capital of the Tigray region. Witnessed by photographer Sergio Ramazzotti, the city was retaken by the Tigray Defence Forces in June, but peace in the region seems a long way off

  • All photographs by Sergio Ramazzotti/Parallelozero

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‘A very cruel exit’: UK’s aid cuts risk rapid return of treatable diseases

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£200m project to eliminate avoidable blindness and disfigurement in Africa ends after funding is prematurely axed

A chandelier sparkling in the background, the grandeur of Downing Street gleaming behind him, Boris Johnson looks into the camera and speaks with solemnity. He is marking World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, he says, to raise awareness of these “terrible afflictions … which impose an immense burden of suffering in developing countries”.

Huge progress has been made, he says, in the fight against the diseases, not least as a result of British aid to some of the poorest parts of the world. But there is more – much more – to be done: more than a billion people are still at risk, he warns, and that is why the UK “fully supports” the World Health Organization’s big elimination push over the next decade.

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The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

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The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

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