Category Archives: Global development

Has Interpol become the long arm of oppressive regimes?

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Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents

Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.

“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.

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‘The heaven of film-making’: how a Dalit orphan got to tell her own story

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A gift of a camera inspired Belmaya Nepali to rise above poverty and abuse to make documentaries

• I Am Belmaya review

Belmaya Nepali’s life changed for ever when, at 14, she was given a camera.

The British film-maker Sue Carpenter had come to Pokhara, a tourist city in central Nepal, to run a photography project with disadvantaged girls living in an institution. One of those girls was Belmaya.

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UN quizzed over role in prison-like island camp for Rohingya refugees

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Rights groups raise concerns over deal to provide services on Bhasan Char, as Bangladesh plans to increase camp’s population by 80,000

The UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR) is facing questions over whether it is helping to detain Rohingya refugees in prison-like conditions by providing services on a controversial island camp.

Over the past year, Bangladesh has relocated almost 20,000 refugees to Bhasan Char, an island formed of silt deposits in the Bay of Bengal thought to be vulnerable to cyclones, which the refugees are unable to leave.

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‘He lives freely, I live in fear’: the plight of India’s abandoned wives

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Activists highlight the poverty, stigma and abuse faced by women deserted by spouses living abroad

Kamala Reddy*, 33, a software engineer from Andhra Pradesh, married Vijay Kumar* in a traditional Hindu wedding in 2012. Kumar, who was working in the UK, was chosen by Reddy’s family. “But he didn’t take me to the UK after our marriage. He made excuses such as problems with the visa and so on,” says Reddy.

In 2016, Reddy became pregnant. Under pressure from the family, Kumar brought her to England. On arrival, she was shocked to discover Kumar’s secret. He had a British partner, two children and a stepchild. Neither Kumar’s nor Reddy’s families knew about the other family. Kumar threatened to leave Reddy if she told anyone.

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Italy using anti-mafia laws to scapegoat migrant boat drivers, report finds

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A decades-long policy of criminalising asylum seekers is filling prisons with innocent men, according to analysis by rights groups

Italian police have arrested more than 2,500 migrants for smuggling or aiding illegal immigration since 2013, often using anti-mafia laws to bring charges, according to the first comprehensive analysis of official data on the criminalisation of refugees and asylum seekers in Italy.

The report by three migrant rights groups has collected police data and analysed more than 1,000 criminal cases brought by prosecutors against refugees accused of driving vessels carrying asylum seekers across the Mediterranean.

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Kenya rejects UN court judgment giving Somalia control of resource-rich waters

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ICJ ruling aggravates fractious relations between two countries and threatens to destabilise restive region

Kenya’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, has rejected a decision by the UN’s highest court to grant Somalia control of disputed waters in the Indian Ocean, saying it would “strain relations” between the neighbouring countries.

The president accused the international court of justice of imposing its authority on a dispute “it had neither jurisdiction nor competence” to oversee after it delineated a new boundary that gives Somalia territorial rights over a large portion of the ocean, which is thought to be rich in oil and gas reserves. According to the new maritime border, Somalia has gained several offshore oil exploration blocks previously claimed by Kenya.

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Giulio Regeni: trial of Egyptian security agents charged over death begins in Rome

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The accused, all members of the National Security Agency, are being tried in absentia after the researcher’s kidnap and killing in Cairo

A court in Rome has begun the trial of four Egyptian security service officers accused of killing an Italian researcher, Giulio Regeni, five and a half years after his mutilated body was found in a ditch by a road in Cairo.

Italian prosecutors accuse Gen Tariq Saber, Col Aser Ibrahim, Capt Hesham Helmi, and Maj Magdi Abd al-Sharif of the “aggravated kidnapping” of Regeni, while Sharif is also charged with “conspiracy to commit aggravated murder”. Kidnap carries a potential sentence of up to eight years in Italy, while Sharif could receive a life sentence.

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UN development goal of zero hunger ‘tragically distant’, global index shows

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Campaigners fear climate breakdown, Covid and violent conflict are threatening any progress made in food security in recent years

Global targets to eradicate hunger by 2030 will be missed as a “toxic cocktail” of the climate crisis, conflict and the Covid-19 pandemic reverses progress, new projections have revealed.

The fight to end hunger is “dangerously off track” and the UN sustainable development goal of zero hunger “tragically distant”, according to the 2021 Global Hunger Index (GHI), published on Thursday. Forty-seven countries will fail to achieve even low levels of hunger (ie countries that have adequate food and low numbers of child deaths) by 2030 and millions of people will experience severe hunger in the coming years.

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Afghan refugees accuse Turkey of violent illegal pushbacks

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Migrants, many fleeing the Taliban regime, claim they are being beaten, harassed and turned back by Turkish border forces

As the sun sets over a dusty ravine on the outskirts of Van city in eastern Turkey, Muhammdullah Sangeen and dozens of other Afghans are preparing for another night sleeping rough.

The 22-year-old, who has a bruised left eye and fresh cuts all over his arms, arrived from Iran a few days earlier with the help of smugglers. “I am not OK,” said Sangeen, his legs trembling. “I’m not feeling human.”

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Netflix and Unesco search for African film-makers to ‘reimagine’ folktales

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Competition opens to find six young creators in sub-Saharan Africa who will be funded to produce movies for 2022

For Nelson Mandela they were “morsels rich with the gritty essence of Africa but in many instances universal in their portrayal of humanity, beasts and the mystical.”

Passed down through the generations, whispered at bedtimes and raucously retold by elders, folktales have long been a mainstay of African cultural heritage.

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Killing of two boys for alleged shoplifting shocks Colombia

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Pair were taken away by armed men on motorbikes and later found shot dead on edge of town

The murder of two boys for allegedly shoplifting in Colombia has evoked memories of some of the country’s darkest days of armed conflict.

The pair, who were 12 and 18, were allegedly trying to rob a clothing store in Tibú, a small town near the Venezuelan border, last Friday when they were apprehended by bystanders who taped their hands together, according to witnesses quoted by local media.

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‘Who wouldn’t want out?’: migrants deported to Haiti face challenge of survival

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Many returned to a country they had not seen for years, and many are already plotting another escape as gang violence has left Haiti on the brink of civil war

When Reynold Joseph was deported from the US back to Haiti after five years in South America, he was unprepared for just how bad things had become in his homeland.

Outside a ramshackle guesthouse near downtown Port-au-Prince, where he and a dozen other deportees are staying, some goats were grazing on burning piles of rubbish, while drivers honked and cursed in a queue for petrol that snaked round the block. Each night, Joseph’s three-year-old son stirs in the sweltering heat, and bursts of gunfire ring out in the distance.

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Local Covid vaccines fill gap as UN Covax scheme misses target

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India, Egypt and Cuba among first states to develop and make their own vaccines as Covax falls behind

Developing countries are increasingly turning to homegrown Covid vaccinations as the UN-backed Covax programme falls behind.

While western countries roll out booster jabs to their own populations, Covax, which was set up by UN agencies, governments and donors to ensure fair access to Covid-19 vaccines for low- and middle-income countries, has said it will miss its target to distribute 2bn doses globally by the end of this year.

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Critically ill Afghans suffer as Taliban tighten Pakistan border

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Shortage of specialised doctors in Afghanistan means patients seek lifesaving care in Pakistan, but conventions have changed

Fareed Ullah has crossed Afghanistan’s border to Pakistan 10 times for treatment for his three-year-old son, Taha, who has thalassaemia major, an inherited blood disorder. Up until the Taliban takeover in August he had never experienced a problem, but when he tried to transit via the Torkham crossing late last month, he was stopped by the Taliban from entering.

Doctors and family members of patients say conventions at the border have changed since the Taliban takeover, which has made it more difficult for Afghan patients to seek lifesaving care in Pakistan. “There is no system, still,” said Ijaz Ali Khan, the founder and chairman of Hamza Foundation, a charity organisation in Peshawar that provides treatment for thalassaemia and other blood disorders.

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‘Evil customs’: why a Kashmiri village abandoned dowries

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Dowries, illegal since 1961, still cause 20 deaths a day in India. But Babawayil has had no divorces or violence against women since it banned them

Babawayil, in the foothills of the Zabarwan mountains by the Sind River, is a typical village in Indian-administered Kashmir. Groups of men and women sit on their lawns breaking open green husks of walnuts, freshly gathered from the giant trees shading the sleepy hamlet. Other villagers are busy in the paddy fields bringing in the harvest. Harud, the harvest season, is usually busy.

Most of the 150 households make their living from farming and weaving pashmina shawls.

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Day of the Girl is critical, but support is needed year-round, say campaigners

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From period poverty to blockchain, initiatives raising awareness of girls’ rights abound on 11 October, but long-term help is needed after Covid setbacks

International Day of the Girl is critical in highlighting girls’ rights globally, but action is urgently needed to reverse the damage of the pandemic, campaigners have said.

“Girls who were once hopeful about their futures say to us: ‘We’re not sure if we’re going to achieve our dreams now, if we’re ever going to go back to school’,” said Emily Wilson, chief executive of UK and Uganda-based organisation Irise International, which works to combat period poverty.

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Bolsonaro blocks free tampons and pads for disadvantaged women in Brazil

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Campaigners say president’s veto is ‘absurd and inhumane’ in country where period poverty keeps one in four girls out of school

President Jair Bolsonaro’s decision to block a plan to distribute free sanitary pads and tampons to disadvantaged girls and women has been met with outrage in Brazil, where period poverty is estimated to keep one in four girls out of school.

Bolsonaro vetoed part of a bill that would have given sanitary products at no charge to groups including homeless people, prisoners and teenage girls at state schools. It was expected to benefit 5.6 million women and was part of a bigger package of laws to promote menstrual health, which has been approved by legislators.

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Digital gender gap: men 50% more likely to be online in some countries – report

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Failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet hampering developing economies and fuelling gender inequality

A failure to ensure women have equal access to the internet has cost low-income countries $1tn (£730bn) over the past decade and could mean an additional loss of $500bn by 2025 if governments don’t take action, according to new research.

Last year, governments in 32 countries, including India, Egypt and Nigeria, lost an estimated $126bn in gross domestic product because women were unable to contribute to the digital economy.

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Rishi Sunak to save billions by counting IMF cash as aid for poor

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Exclusive: chancellor criticised by former Tory international development secretaries for planned use of $27.4bn windfall

Rishi Sunak is to save billions of pounds by counting as aid financial assistance to poor countries being provided as a result of a windfall Britain has received from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

In a move that has been condemned by former Conservative international development secretaries, the chancellor has chosen not to use the UK’s share of a new $650bn IMF global fighting fund to increase the share of national output spent on aid.

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For African nations, capital punishment is a grim colonial legacy that lingers on | Dior Konaté

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On the World Day Against the Death Penalty, the tide is turning in west Africa against this tool of colonial repression and racism

In July, Sierra Leone became the 23rd African country to abolish the death penalty. Although its use across the continent has dwindled – thanks to concerted efforts from human rights organisations and governments – the death penalty remains on many more countries’ statute books due to its strong colonial legacy.

During the colonial period, punishments that were being abandoned in Europe found fertile ground in Africa. Among them was the death penalty, which was deployed as a key element in the mechanism of colonial repression.

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