A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms from Thailand to Texas
Continue reading...Category Archives: Global development
Criticism of animal farming in the west risks health of world’s poorest | Emma Naluyima Mugerwa and Lora Iannotti
In the developing world most people are not factory farming and livestock is essential to preventing poverty and malnutrition
The pandemic has pushed poverty and malnutrition to rates not seen in more than a decade, wiping out years of progress. In 2020, the number of people in extreme poverty rose by 97 million and the number of malnourished people by between 118 million and 161 million.
Recent data from the World Bank and the UN shows how poverty is heavily concentrated in rural communities in Africa, Asia and Latin America where people are surviving by smallholder farming. This autumn there will be two key events that could rally support for them.
Continue reading...‘Tomorrow they will kill me’: Afghan female police officers live in fear of Taliban reprisals
With at least four women, including a pregnant mother, targeted and killed by Taliban fighters, female ex-officers feel abandoned by the world
Negar Masumi, a female police officer with 15 years of experience, was determined not to flee when the Taliban took control of her home province of Ghor in central Afghanistan.
On Saturday night, gunmen, who called themselves Taliban mujahideen, stormed Negar’s home. They took her husband and four of her sons into another room and tied them up. Then they beat Negar with their guns and shot her dead, according to a family member, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
Continue reading...‘£3k just to hold the bed’: Exorbitant Covid care costs push Indians into poverty
A struggling healthcare system and inflated prices mean hospital treatment can result in a lifetime of debt for many
Anil Goel remembers the night in May when he received a call from his desperate nephew asking for money for his Covid treatment. The nephew had been admitted to a private hospital with his wife and four other family members with Covid complications but had used up all of his savings.
“I was shocked by the request as this was a young man who was doing well in life otherwise. But the high hospital bills and the black marketing just exhausted all of his savings within days. After all, six family members were on life support,” said Goel.
Continue reading...Pfizer accused of holding Brazil ‘to ransom’ over vaccine contract demands
Leaked supply document reveals clauses to protect US pharma company from legal action in the event of serious side-effects
Pfizer has been accused of holding Brazil “to ransom” over demands to shield itself from possible vaccine side-effect lawsuits in its contract to supply the country with 100m Covid jabs.
In its $1bn (£700m) deal with Pfizer Export BV, signed in March, despite its prior complaints, the Brazilian government agreed that “a liability waiver be signed for any possible side-effects of the vaccine, exempting Pfizer from any civil liability for serious side-effects arising from the use of the vaccine, indefinitely”.
Continue reading...Afghans at risk of near-universal poverty, UN report warns
Study suggests a worst-case scenario where 97% of Afghans would sink below poverty line by 2022
Afghanistan’s population of 38 million people risks being plunged into near-universal poverty faced with a “catastrophic deterioration” of the country’s heavily aid-dependent economy, according to a warning issued by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The study, which examines a series of scenarios facing the already impoverished country under the Taliban’s new hardline rule, suggests a worst-case scenario where as many as 97% of Afghans would sink below the poverty line by next year – a staggering increase of 25%.
Continue reading...‘Chaotic’ UK response criticised as Afghan babies wait for milk and donations turned away
Volunteers ‘operating blind’ about refugees’ needs, while hotels left with no staff to distribute aid
The government’s response towards families evacuated from Afghanistan to Britain has been “chaotic and uncoordinated”, hampering volunteers’ efforts to help, charities have said.
One hotel where 50 babies were in quarantine with their families after fleeing the Taliban had no formula milk, they said. In other hotels, supplies of clothes, toiletries and nappies donated by the public were turned away by managers who had no staff to distribute them.
Continue reading...Mexico activists celebrate abortion ruling as a sign of culture change
Justices decision to decriminalise abortion was based on human rights arguments and will mean fewer criminal investigations
Activists in Mexico have hailed a supreme court decision to decriminalise abortion, saying it would stop the legal prosecution of women who terminate their pregnancies – and those reported to the authorities after suffering miscarriages.
The decision, handed down unanimously on Tuesday, declared that criminal sanctions for abortion in the northern state of Coahuila were unconstitutional. The decision sets precedent, according to lawyers involved in abortion cases, and will be applicable across the country.
Continue reading...‘I feel more secure’: how a holistic approach helps India’s beggars build a better life
In Rajasthan a project developing self-esteem and skills is getting people off the streets and into work
Pandit Tulsidas, 52, was resting under a tree by a road junction in Jaipur, Rajasthan, where he had begged for years.
When an official approached him about a government scheme that would teach him job skills, he rejected the offer. When the man said his meals would be looked after and he would have a room to share with only one other person, he refused again.
Continue reading...‘I don’t see my mum’: Haiti’s earthquake leaves new generation of orphans
The number of children without carers is still not known, leaving them prey to gangs and abuse
Lilian, six years old and alone, still asks when her mother will return from the market on the edge of Les Cayes in southern Haiti.
When last month’s earthquake struck, Lilian was at home, occasionally checked on by her neighbours as her mother, Genieve, was selling fruit a few blocks away. When the ground began to convulse, the market partly collapsed. Genieve was hit by falling concrete and buried under rubble. Her death has left Lilian without anyone to care for her.
Continue reading...Case of missing spy aggravates tensions among fractious Somali leadership
President and prime minister in row over disappearance of cybersecurity expert, reportedly killed by al-Shabaab
The Somali prime minister, Mohamed Hussein Roble, has fired the head of the country’s intelligence unit over the disappearance of a female spy.
Roble accused the spy chief, Fahad Yasin Haji Dahir, a former close ally of the president, of mixing politics and security and ordered him to hand over power within three days. He said the handling of the case of the missing 24-year-old was “inappropriate”.
Continue reading...‘Hunger was something we read about’: lockdown leaves Vietnam’s poor without food
Vietnam was a Covid success story but the latest lockdown, with people unable to leave the house even for food, is leaving tens of thousands hungry
When the strictest lockdown to date was imposed in Ho Chi Minh City, Tran Thi Hao*, a factory worker, was told that the government would keep her and her family well fed – but for two months they have eaten little more than rice and fish sauce.
She was put on unpaid leave from her job in July, while her husband, a construction worker, has not worked for months. They are behind on their rent, with another payment due soon.
Continue reading...‘They came for my daughter’: Afghan single mothers face losing children under Taliban
Life for single mothers in Afghanistan has always been marred by stigma and poverty. Now with the Taliban in control, what few protections they had have disappeared
The day after Mazar-i-Sharif, the provincial capital of Balkh province, fell to the Taliban on 14 August, gunmen came for Raihana’s* six-year-old daughter.
Widowed when her husband was murdered by Taliban forces in 2020, Raihana had been raising her child as a single mother. After her husband’s death she had fought her in-laws for custody of her daughter and won, thanks to the rights she had under Afghan civil law – which state that single women can keep their children if they can provide for them financially.
Continue reading...‘Deeply rooted tradition’: one man’s long fight to end illegal dowries in India
After 15 years campaigning, Satya Naresh believes it’s time for government action to stop the custom that causes a woman to die every hour through murder or suicide
For more than a decade, Satya Naresh has been trying to persuade India’s men to stop a wedding custom that he sees as one of the country’s worst social evils.
He wants men to declare: “I don’t want dowry”. The line is the name of the website he set up in 2006 as part of his campaign. Naresh wants Indian men not to expect the money, motorbike, sofa, TV, iPhone, gold jewellery or fridge that a future wife is expected to come with.
Continue reading...Cop26 will be ‘rich nations stitch-up’ if poorer countries kept away by Covid
Environmental activists demand delay to Glasgow climate talks if costs and travel restrictions block attendance of those worst-hit
The Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow should be postponed until the government can ensure that the talks won’t be a “rich nations stitch-up”, a diverse coalition of international organisations has said.
With less than two months to go before the talks, the Climate Action Network (CAN), a global alliance of more than 1,500 civil society organisations, is warning that many delegates from the global south will be unable to attend due to vaccine inequity and prohibitive quarantine costs.
Continue reading...Afghanistan services collapsing and aid about to run out, says UN
Unicef says hundreds of children have been separated from their families in chaos of Kabul evacuation
Access to food aid and other life-saving services in Afghanistan is close to running out, the United Nations has warned, as concern mounts that the country is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”.
The grim assessment from the UN’s Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs [OCHA] came amid an appeal for an extra $200m (£145m) in emergency funding in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new issues.
Continue reading...US airstrikes killed at least 22,000 civilians since 9/11, analysis finds
Figures based on reported number of US airstrikes highlight the human cost of the 20-year ‘war on terror’
US drone and airstrikes have killed at least 22,000 civilians – and perhaps as many as 48,000 – since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001, according to new analysis published by the civilian harm monitoring group Airwars.
The analysis, based on the US military’s own assertion that it has conducted almost 100,000 airstrikes since 2001, represents an attempt to estimate the number of civilian deaths across the multiple conflicts that have comprised aspects of the “war on terror”.
Continue reading...Egypt accused of widespread state-sanctioned killings of dissidents
Analysis of alleged anti-terrorist shootouts reveals security forces routinely suppressing opposition, claims Human Rights Watch
Egyptian security forces engaged in an extended campaign of extrajudicial killings of detainees, routinely masked as shootouts with alleged terrorists, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch.
The report details what it alleges are a pattern of extrajudicial assassinations between 2015 and last year, a period in which the Egyptian interior ministry said publicly that 755 people were killed in alleged exchanges of fire with security forces, while naming just 141.
Continue reading...The Taliban are showing us the dangers of personal data falling into the wrong hands
Digital ID systems are a powerful development tool, providing a legal identity to millions, but their misuse can be deadly
The Taliban have openly talked about using US-made digital identity technology to hunt down Afghans who have worked with the international coalition – posing a huge threat to everyone recorded in the system. In addition, the extremists now also have access to – and control over – the digital identification systems and technologies built through international aid support.
These include the e-Tazkira, a biometric identity card used by Afghanistan’s National Statistics and Information Authority, which includes fingerprints, iris scans and a photograph, as well as voter registration databases. It also includes the Afghan personnel and pay system, used by the interior and defence ministries to pay the army and police.
Continue reading...‘No one may be compelled’: Zimbabwe unions go to court over Covid jabs
Firms accused of ‘rounding up workers like animals’ for compulsory vaccination as country acts to stop spread of virus
Thousands of workers in Zimbabwe have been told they will face the sack if they refuse to be vaccinated with one of the Covid-19 jabs, according to the country’s biggest worker’s union.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU), an amalgamation of 35 labour unions representing 189,000 people, has accused employers of infringing workers’ rights, saying there is no law providing for compulsory vaccinations. It has taken the government and six companies to court for ordering employees to have the vaccine, arguing that the companies are “taking the law into their own hands” by forcing the issue.
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