Nomcebo Zikode threatens legal action, claiming she was never paid for the song that became a global hit during the pandemic
While her haunting vocals on the global hit song Jerusalema continue to reverberate around the world, the South African singer Nomcebo Zikode claims she is yet to receive any money for her work.
The singer took to social media on Sunday threatening legal action against Open Mic Productions, the label that recorded Jerusalema in late 2019.
Continue reading...At 17, Priyanka Bairwa refused her arranged marriage. Instead, she started Rajasthan Rising to help thousands of others and call for free education
Priyanka Bairwa was 15 when her family began to look for a husband for her. The pandemic sped up the process, as schools shut and work dried up. By October 2020, her parents had settled on a suitable boy from their village of Ramathra in the district of Karauli, Rajasthan.
But Bairwa, now 18, wouldn’t hear of it. “During the pandemic, every family in the village was eager to marry off their girls. You’d have to invite less people, there were fewer expenses,” says Bairwa. “But I refused to be caught in a child marriage. There was a major backlash – constant fights. I finally threatened to run away and, fearing I would do something drastic, my family called it off. My mother convinced them to let me study and I joined a college.”
Continue reading...Opening of community space in Accra, which was quickly shut, has been the trigger for new anti-LGBT+ action
“All I wanted to do was help vulnerable people,” said Shaun Apong, tears streaking down his face, from behind the bars of a squalid police cell in Ho City in eastern Ghana.
Apong was one of 21 people arrested in early June, charged with unlawful assembly and accused of spreading an LGBT+ agenda, amid a marked and sudden increase in sensitivities around the rights and advocacy of gay and queer people in the west African country.
Continue reading...Big leap in malnutrition during Covid, with fifth of children now believed to be stunted, report warns
The number of people who did not have enough food to eat rose steeply during the Covid-19 pandemic to include almost a third of the world, according to a new UN report published on Monday.
Five UN agencies said the number of people without access to healthy diets grew by 320 million last year to nearly 2.37 billion people– more than the increases in the previous five years combined.
Continue reading...Amnesty is calling for action to help those with no papers who are denied access to education, employment and healthcare
At 45, Philimon Mashava has never had a bank account or a phone in his name.
He has never had a birth certificate and, without documents, Mashava’s stateless existence has meant him missing out on school and countless job opportunities, as employers want some form of identification.
Continue reading...Derogatory use of the “L-word” has increased during Covid and is said to be further marginalising people with the curable disease
Health campaigners are calling for an end to the use of the word leper, saying the language frequently used by politicians and others during the pandemic has made people with leprosy even more marginalised.
The metaphor of the socially outcast “leper” has been used often, whether in media reports on stigma against early Covid-19 patients or by politicians in Italy and Brazil complaining about being seen as “leper colonies”. Campaigners now want an end to the use of what they call the “L-word”.
Continue reading...Italy’s sluggish legal process under the spotlight as devastated relatives fight for cases to go to trial
Clinging to his son’s coffin, Vincenzo Agostino solemnly swore that he would not cut his hair or beard until justice was served. It was 10 August 1989, five days after two mafia hitmen on a motorbike had killed Antonino Agostino, a police officer, and his wife, Ida, who was five months pregnant.
The couple were shot dead in broad daylight on the seafront promenade in Villagrazia di Carini, a town about 20 miles from Palermo. Vincenzo witnessed his son’s agony as the killers fired a full magazine of bullets at him. He saw his daughter-in-law, who was shot in the heart, move closer to her husband in a vain attempt to console him.
Continue reading...Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation among organisations picking up some of bill for health projects
A group of global philanthropists, including Bill Gates, have pledged £93.5m to help cover the shortfall left by the UK government’s cuts to foreign aid.
After the government cut funding by about a third in the autumn spending review, many “critical” projects have stalled or been put at risk.
Continue reading...As the country marks a decade since independence, musicians talk of the songs and rhythms that help create a shared culture and community for people displaced by civil war
“What comes first is a culture and then a nation,” says David Otim, a musician from Bahr el Ghazal, who performs and teaches South Sudanese songs. “Our [civil] war, which was caused by a foreigner, led us to not understand ourselves, made us go and destroy our culture out there [in refugee camps].”
Continue reading...Pan-Asian labour rights group launches groundbreaking attempt to hold global labels accountable for alleged rights violations during pandemic
Legal complaints are being filed against some of the world’s largest fashion brands in major garment-producing countries across Asia in a groundbreaking attempt to hold the global fashion industry legally accountable for human rights violations in the countries where their clothing is made.
The Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), a pan-Asian labour rights group, says it is using legal challenges to argue that global clothing brands should be considered joint employers, along with their suppliers, under national laws and be held accountable for alleged wage violations during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...The country’s first decade has been marked by civil war, sexual violence and poverty. But women are working to gain justice for victims and hope for change
When Gloria Soma left university in Tanzania in 2013, she decided to head for the homeland she had never really known. Her parents had left southern Sudan in the early 1990s and she had grown up in refugee camps overseas, first in Uganda during the “hard times” of the Lord’s Resistance Army, and then in Kenya. While she was immersed in her studies, the Republic of South Sudan was born, the 193rd country to join the UN. And she wanted to go.
“It was quite exciting for me because I thought that … I would go back and there were going to be many opportunities and it would be a peaceful place for everyone to live in,” says Soma. “There was already some sense of belonging. Because, as much as I had stayed most of my life in the east African region, there’d always been [the question of] ‘where do you belong?’ There was that bit of me [that felt] ‘finally, we are going to belong somewhere’. But it didn’t happen.”
Continue reading...Possible veto of Bab al-Hawa UN aid crossing could halt the flow of vital food and health supplies to 3.4 million people
Just over half a mile away from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing connecting Syria and Turkey a 6th-century triumphal arch still stands, the remains of a Roman road stretching straight as an arrow on either side. For millennia this part of the world has been a crossroads of trade, culture and history. Today, it’s more important than ever.
Bab al-Hawa is Syria’s last lifeline, through which vital UN aid supplies for 3.4 million people living in the war-torn north-west of the country arrive. But before 10 July, the security council must vote in New York on whether to keep the aid flowing. What might seem like an obvious decision to outsiders is actually far from certain: Russia may use its veto power as a permanent member of the council to close the UN’s last access point, as it has managed to do with the other three aid crossings.
Continue reading...Families spread across rich and poor countries are acutely aware of relatives’ lack of access to vaccine
For months she had been dreaming of it and finally Susheela Moonsamy was able to do it: get together with her relatives and give them a big hug. Throughout the pandemic she had only seen her siblings, nieces and nephews fully “masked up” at socially distanced gatherings. But a few weeks ago, as their home state of California pressed on with its efficient vaccination rollout, they could have a proper reunion.
“It was such an emotional experience, we all hugged each other; and with tears in our eyes, we thanked God for being with us and giving us the opportunity to see each other close up again and actually touch each other,” she says. “We never valued a hug from our family members that much before.”
Continue reading...Reducing global heating could save millions of people from mosquito-borne diseases, study finds
More than 8 billion people could be at risk of malaria and dengue fever by 2080 if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise unabated, a new study says.
Malaria and dengue fever will spread to reach billions of people, according to new projections.
Continue reading...Seventy-seven people have vanished since the start of the unrest in late April – some protesters, others not linked to the demonstrations
Before 17-year-old Duvan Barros left his home in a downtrodden neighbourhood in Bogotá to attend an anti-poverty demonstration, he asked his mother, Dolores Barros, to make him a fruit juice. She said no, but there would be one waiting when he got back.
That was 5 June, and Barros hasn’t seen him since.
Continue reading...WHO reports measles outbreaks in eight African countries amid huge fall-off in jabs during Covid
Kenya has restarted its vaccination programme in an effort to tackle the re-emergence of measles, which has surged in the country during the Covid restrictions.
A 10-day campaign against highly contagious measles and rubella has begun to target 4 million children aged nine months to five years in 22 of Kenya’s 47 counties where outbreaks are highest.
Continue reading...Some women had coughs or a fever but were reportedly told ‘not to complain’
Organisers pushed ahead with a Mexican beauty pageant in spite of a Covid-19 outbreak that infected almost half the contestants, it has emerged.
At least 15 of the 32 contestants in the Miss Mexico 2021 pageant tested positive for coronavirus. A pageant staff member also tested positive, according to the Chihuahua state health secretariat.
Continue reading...Colombian health workers struggling to cope as malnutrition and dirty water ravage new arrivals in Maicao’s swelling shanty towns
A seemingly endless lake of cardboard and tin shacks surrounds the perimeter of a former airport runway in Colombia’s desert-like city of Maicao. Known locally as La Pista, the area is home to more than 2,000 families, and is one of 44 informal settlements to have emerged around the city in the past two years.
The old airport has become a landing strip for desperate migrants and bi-national indigenous Wayuu people fleeing the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the basic essentials of life are hard to come by.
Continue reading...If it becomes law, residing on land without permission would be a criminal offence, threatening a way of life for communities across the UK
“I am worried that not everyone knows what is coming,” says Amy, sitting in the truck she has turned into a cosy home for her and her two children. “If this bill is passed it will mean the end of our culture. The end of our way of life.”
Amy, who wanted to be known by her first name, lives with her two sons on a small Travellers’ site down a quiet country lane in the west of England, along the edges of an ancient forest.
Continue reading...Officials to be investigated after film appears to show patrol boat firing shots at a vessel carrying 64 people in the Mediterranean
Prosecutors in Sicily have launched an investigation against the Libyan coastguard after footage emerged appearing to show officials firing on a boat of migrant families in the Mediterranean Sea.
On 30 June, rescue workers from the German organisation Sea-Watch recorded the Libyan coastguard patrol vessel coming dangerously close to the small wooden boat and apparently firing shots in an attempt to force the 64 people onboard back to Libya.
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