Pressure on undertakers leads to widespread delays after record number of coronavirus infections and deaths last month
A group of women sing hymns at the cemetery in Harare as undertakers, dressed in Covid-19 protective gear, gently lower a white casket into the grave.
“This world is not our home,” they sing, as relatives, standing a few metres away, mourn their loss.
Continue reading...One of the few neurosurgeons in the country, Mukasa declined lucrative opportunities to work overseas, dedicating himself to training a new generation and going the ‘extra mile’ for patients
Kennedy Owuor first fell over in his hotel room in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, before headaches followed. He initially brushed the symptoms off as a minor problem, but soon he started having difficulties speaking and moving.
A trip in August 2020 to northern Uganda, as part of his duties working for the UN’s food agency, had to be interrupted. He was instead driven for 12 hours to UMC Victoria hospital in Kampala.
Continue reading...Hindu boy faces possible death penalty after being accused of intentionally urinating in a madrassa library
An eight-year-old Hindu boy is being held in protective police custody in east Pakistan after becoming the youngest person ever to be charged with blasphemy in the country.
The boy’s family is in hiding and many of the Hindu community in the conservative district of Rahim Yar Khan, in Punjab, have fled their homes after a Muslim crowd attacked a Hindu temple after the boy’s release on bail last week. Troops were deployed to the area to quell any further unrest.
Continue reading...Necoclí, population 20,000, faces bottleneck as Covid rules lift and unrest, poverty and violence grow across region
When the loudspeaker announced that the day’s last boat across Colombia’s Gulf of Urabá would begin boarding, a desperate scrum of Haitians rushed forward, jostling for spaces on the rickety craft.
Most had been stuck in this remote Caribbean coastal town for days, trapped in a migration bottleneck caused by the loosening of Covid travel restrictions and growing unrest, poverty and violence across the region.
Continue reading...Every year thousands of refugees from conflict, climate and instability in Africa board vessels in search of a new life in Europe but hundreds never arrive
At 6.30am on Friday 28 May, three fishermen at work four miles off the southern coast of Tobago spotted a large white boat adrift on the dawn waters of the Caribbean.
As they drew closer, the trio saw the boat’s shape was far from local, and noticed a strong smell coming from inside it. The body the fishermen glimpsed at the bow was enough to confirm their suspicions. They called the coastguard who, unable to dispatch a vessel, asked them to tow the boat ashore at Belle Garden beach.
Continue reading...At least 21,000 refugees displaced after heavy rain devastates Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, the latest in a series of disasters to hit the area
The process of rebuilding has begun once again for Rohingya refugees living in camps in Bangladesh after a week of heavy rains made thousands homeless.
The chest-high waters that flowed through parts of Cox’s Bazar have exposed the vulnerability of the area’s unplanned settlements, which have to be repeatedly repaired and rebuilt after flooding, cyclones and fires.
Continue reading...Tabitha Chawinga, a Malawi international who plays in China, has called for greater safeguards against abuse in her home country
The international footballer Tabitha Chawinga is calling on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game.
Chawinga, who became the first woman from Malawi to sign for a European football team when she joined the Swedish club Krokom/Dvärsätts IF in 2014, said that she had been forced to strip in public during a match to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks.
Continue reading...Médecins Sans Frontières and Norwegian Refugee Council, active in war-torn Tigray, in talks over ban
The Ethiopian government has suspended the work of two international aid organisations for three months, including in the conflict-hit Tigray region, accusing them of spreading misinformation.
Ethiopia Current Issues Fact Check, a government-run website focused on Tigray, accused Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) of violating several rules.
Continue reading...Mutant strain may emerge amid vaccine hesitancy, experts say, as even medics reject jabs in DR Congo
Dr Christian Mayala and Dr Rodin Nzembuni Nduku sit together on a bench outside the Covid ward at Kinshasa’s Mama Yemo hospital.
They are discussing the health of their father, Noel Kalouda, who contracted coronavirus weeks before, and is now lying in a hospital bed, breathing through an oxygen mask.
Continue reading...As violence causes a fresh wave of desperate journeys, populist politicians claim their country has become a ‘dumping ground’
It was a journey that had taken weeks, and there were times when the 65-year-old Afghan widow, who walks with the aid of a stick, had to be carried by her son.
Their trek, across 15 canyons she says, left Durdana with badly scarred feet. “I have not had a day of peace in over 40 years. I had to come to Turkey, there was no choice.”
Continue reading...A year on from the devastating explosion, people are struggling to sleep and PTSD is widespread – amid economic chaos
Rayan Khatoun has been dreading 4 August. She has been constantly on edge as the anniversary of the port explosion in Beirut approached.
The blast threw Khatoun into a wall as she came home from work and left her with a head injury, a fractured cheekbone and torn tendons. Since then, she has suffered from recurring nightmares, insomnia and anxiety attacks.
Continue reading...Hundreds of mostly Roma women were threatened, tricked or bribed into being sterilised until 2012
Women sterilised without their consent are to be offered compensation in the Czech Republic after President Miloš Zeman signed a bill into law this week.
The women, most of whom were Roma, will be awarded 300,000 Czech crowns (£10,000) from the government as compensation.
Continue reading...Hundreds of thousands flock to cities as government allows manufacturers to reopen, with exporters citing fears Western brands would divert orders
Hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi garment workers have returned to major cities, besieging train and bus stations after the government said export factories could reopen despite the deadly coronavirus wave.
Authorities had ordered factories, offices, transport and shops to close from 23 July to 5 August and confined people to their homes for a week, as coronavirus infections and deaths hit record levels.
Continue reading...Two clans brutally evicted to make way for tea plantations owned by white settlers are seeking reparations for rights violations
The British government has been criticised by the UN for a lack of resolution over colonial-era crimes committed in Kenya.
Six UN special rapporteurs have written to the government expressing concern over its failure to provide “effective remedies and reparations” to the Kipsigis and Talai peoples.
Continue reading...As two women are rescued in Syria after being kidnapped by Isis years earlier, Yazidis renew calls for international help to find the thousands still unaccounted for
For seven years, their families waited and hoped for news. In July, they finally received it. Two young women, kidnapped by Islamic State as teenagers, had been found alive in Syria.
Salma*, now 25, was located in Deir el-Zour province, in the east of the country. She had “suffered all kinds of injustice”, said the Yazidi House in the Al-Jazira region, an organisation that assisted with the rescue of both women.
Continue reading...Kidnapped by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels as a girl, Victoria Nyanjura has pushed through major reforms for victims of abduction and rape
When Victoria Nyanjura was abducted from her Catholic boarding school in northern Uganda by members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, she prayed to God asking to die.
She was 14 when she was taken, along with 29 others, in the middle of the night. During the next eight years in captivity she was subjected to beatings, starvation, rape and other horrors that she cannot talk about even 18 years later. Five of the girls who were taken prisoner with her died, and Nyanjura gave birth to two children.
Continue reading...‘He died as he lived, resisting’, says mother of young artist killed in Cali, as report claims authorities used systematic ‘pattern of violence’ in city
Nicolás Guerrero, a 26-year-old artist from the Colombian city of Cali, took to the streets on 2 May to protest against the lack of opportunities he saw in his country. He had a family in Spain that he had hoped one day to bring to South America. But later that night, after riot police launched a brutal crackdown, he was found lying on the pavement, seriously wounded. He died hours later in hospital.
Continue reading...A resurgence in the traditional drink is offering rural communities independence and a sustainable alternative to industrial soy and cattle farming
Four men emerge from the intense heat and steam of the barbacuá into the cold winter’s night in the rural district of Edelira, southern Paraguay. They rest, leaning on pitchforks they have used to turn over the prized load of fragrant yerba mate leaves inside this traditional drying oven. The centuries-old design drives hot air from a fire on to the large wooden frame where the leaves sit.
“I control the leaf’s humidity through intuition,” says Lisandro Benítez, the group’s lead, or uru. “Too humid and it won’t have the right flavour, too hot and dry and it could catch fire.”
Continue reading...Victims’s family speak of their heartbreak as brutal killing sparks national debate on lack of progress to end violence against women
The family of a 27-year-old woman who was allegedly tortured and beheaded by the son of a business tycoon have spoken of their devastation in a case that has pushed Pakistan to examine what has been called a “gender terrorism epidemic”.
Zahir Zakir Jaffer was arrested on suspicion of the pre-meditated murder of Noor Mukadam, the youngest daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, after allegedly holding her captive for three days at his apartment in an upmarket area of Islamabad.
Continue reading...Cleaners no longer welcome in middle class homes, as wealthier Indians turn to machines for help
The job paid a pittance, with two days off a month, and sometimes the mistress of the house would call out as part-time cleaner Noor Jahan was almost out of the door “just massage my feet before you leave” – an extra service for which there was no pay.
Yet Jahan, 56, wants the job back, despite a monthly salary of only 3,000 rupees (£30) and the fact that “cleaning” served as a catch-all for cooking, ironing, watering the plants, and childcare.
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