Witness Change, a project for the Open Society Foundation, photographed 1,000 people who left their homes for a new life, and found a common thread of humanity in the dreams that sustain them
Continue reading...Category Archives: Global development
‘We have more in common than what separates us’: refugee stories, told by refugees
In One Thousand Dreams, award-winning photographer Robin Hammond hands the camera to refugees. Often reduced by the media’s toxic or well-meaning narratives, the portraits and interviews capture a different and more complex tale
Robin Hammond has spent two decades crisscrossing the developing world and telling other people’s stories. From photographing the Rohingya forced out of Myanmar and rape survivors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to documenting the lives of people in countries where their sexuality is illegal, his work has earned him award after award.
But for his latest project the photographer has embarked on a paradigm shift: to remove himself – and others like him – from the process entirely. Instead, as part of an in-depth exploration of the refugee experience in Europe, the stories of those featured are told by those who, arguably, know them best: other refugees.
Continue reading...Pride month in Guatemala marred by killings of three LGBTQ+ people
Celebrations become ‘month of mourning’ after three murders in a week, with calls for urgent state reform
Guatemala’s LGBTQ+ community is in mourning after two transgender women and a gay man were murdered in less than a week during pride month.
Andrea González, a prominent activist and leader in the transgender women’s organisation Otrans Reinas de la Noche (Queens of the Night) was shot dead on 11 June in the street near her home in Guatemala City. Her murder followed the killing of another Otrans member, Cecy Ixpatá, who was assaulted and died from her injuries on 9 June in a hospital in Salamá, about 50 miles north of Guatemala City. José Manuel Vargas Villeda, a 22-year-old gay man was also shot and killed on 14 June in Morales, 150 miles north-east of the capital.
Continue reading...A silent decimation: South America’s losing battle against Covid
Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths
The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.
As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.
Continue reading...EU ‘has blood on its hands’, say activists calling for border agency’s abolition
Coalition of rights groups demanding Frontex be defunded claim EU policies have ‘killed over 40,555 people since 1993’
Activists, captains of rescue ships and about 80 human rights organisations across the world have launched an international campaign calling for the European border agency to be defunded and dismantled.
In an open letter sent last week to the European Commission, the Council of the EU and the European parliament, the campaign coalition highlighted the “illegal and inhumane practices” of the EU border agency, Frontex, which is accused of having promoted and enforced violent policies against migrants.
Continue reading...Budapest Pride goes ahead in solidarity against Hungary’s anti-LBGTQ+ laws
As oppressive legislation passed by Viktor Orbán’s government, activists plan procession to ‘show LGBT people they are not alone’
For the second year in a row, Covid has succeeded in doing what many had once thought impossible: toning down Pride celebrations. From Berlin to Brighton, Toronto to San Francisco, parades have been cancelled or put online, floats forgotten and parties swapped for quieter, often more reflective events.
But in Budapest, where LGBTQ+ activists are engaged in a near-existential fight against the rightwing government of Viktor Orbán, the stakes were too high for Pride to take a back seat.
Continue reading...‘Disability is possibility’: a mission to bust myths in India – photo essay
The photographer Vicky Roy has been travelling around the country documenting people with disabilities. The project, Everyone is Good at Something, hopes to tell their stories and challenge the stigma they face
- Photographs by Vicky Roy
When he isn’t working on the farm or making things out of jute, Gobinda Majumdar likes to walk to a tea stall near his home in Assam to buy sweets for his nieces. All this he explains with tactile signing, the only means of communication for the 37-year-old, who cannot speak and has no hearing or sight.
Born deaf, Majumdar then went blind at the age of two after contracting rubella. Life has its challenges but he hopes to find a wife. “My younger brother is married so why not me?” he told the photographer Vicky Roy, who visited him in Kamrup district as part of a project to share stories of people with disabilities in rural India.
Continue reading...‘Where should we go?’: thousands left homeless as Karachi clears waterways
As Pakistan’s supreme court backs bulldozing of homes blamed for floods, critics say government has no proper plans for residents
Maqsooda Bibi, 62, did not know the house she had lived in all her life would be demolished, forcing her whole family to become homeless. But on Monday, Pakistan’s supreme court backed the Sindh government in bulldozing her home and hundreds of others, legalising the eviction of thousands who live along narrow waterways – nullahs – that crisscross Karachi.
The verdict came as Bibi and hundreds of others held a protest outside the court. “We hoped that the court would ask the government not to make us homeless, but it did the opposite. Our children also protested on Sunday and urged the supreme court to stop demolition. It seems no one here cares for the future of the poor.”
Continue reading...‘It’s not easy’: seven working parents around the world – photo essay
Photographers Linda Bournane Engelberth and Valentina Sinis document the lives of working parents from Botswana to the UK for Unicef
If investing in family-friendly policies is good for business, then many companies are missing a trick. Giving parents and families adequate time, resources and services to care for children, while staying in their jobs and improving their skills and productivity, pays off according to employers. But for many, in all parts of the world, paid parental leave and childcare are not a reality. And that can compromise the first critical years of life – a time when the combination of the right nourishment, environment and love can strengthen a developing brain and give a baby the best start.
Evidence suggests family-friendly policies pay off in healthier, better-educated children and greater gender equality, and are linked to better productivity and the ability to attract and retain workers. Momentum for change is growing with an increasing number of businesses beginning to see the value.
Continue reading...High in the Himalayas, villagers hit by Covid are left to fend for themselves
In India’s remote peaks, the pandemic’s toll is worsened by lack of medical facilities, roads and information
Phalguni Devi has spent a fortnight living in a cattle shed. Looking out on a rainy afternoon in early June, she worries that if the rain does not let up, her fever will worsen.
Devi, 51, shares the shed with a cow and two cats, and this has taken its toll. Herbal concoctions have not worked and the visit to a pharmacist in the nearest town, in the Nijmola valley in the Himalayas, which took an entire day, did not help.
Continue reading...South Korea says consensual sex act between male soldiers ‘bordered on rape’
Activists decry discrimination as court finds men guilty of indecency and hands down a six-month suspended sentence
A South Korean military court has been accused of discriminating against sexual minorities after it found two male soldiers guilty of indecency for engaging in consensual oral sex.
The ruling, which took place in March but emerged last week, found the soldiers’ actions “bordered on rape” and handed them a six-month suspended prison sentence by applying the controversial article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Act. This punishes “anal sex and other indecent acts” between military personnel with up to two years in prison.
Continue reading...Nicaragua rounds up president’s critics in sweeping pre-election crackdown
Arrests of opposition figures, including revered former guerrillas, represent ‘last gamble of a dictator’s family’
Nicaragua’s Sandinista rulers have launched an unprecedented crackdown on the country’s opposition, arresting a string of prominent critics of President Daniel Ortega and his wife, Vice-President Rosario Murillo, in an apparent attempt to crush any serious challenge in November’s elections.
Six opposition figures were arrested at the weekend, including revered former guerrillas who fought alongside Ortega during the campaign to topple the dictator Anastasio Somoza and went on to serve in the first Sandinista government.
Continue reading...Eradicating polio is finally within reach. Why is the UK taking its foot off the pedal? | Anne Wafula Strike
Instead of cutting the aid budget – including 95% from the plan to stamp out the disease – Britain should take a global lead
Despite the Covid pandemic, there have been just two recorded cases of wild polio in 2021 – in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the two remaining hiding places for the disease. But eradication is not guaranteed. Polio is virulent and spreads quickly. Even one case poses a threat to unvaccinated children everywhere, which is why a new strategy launched last week by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) outlines a plan to utilise this small window of opportunity for the world to end polio for good.
A 99.9% fall in polio cases globally in recent decades is thanks in large part to the GPEI and its supporters. The British government’s recent announcement that it will slash its contributions to the GPEI by more than 95% has been a body blow. The funding cut amounts to almost a quarter of the annual World Health Organization polio eradication budget.
Continue reading...Blood brother: the Kashmiri man who is India’s biggest donor
The ‘blood man’ of conflict-racked Kashmir has donated 174 pints of blood since 1980 but feels ‘crushed’ by his poverty
Shabir Hussain Khan was taking an afternoon nap when he heard a commotion outside his house. A friend had been injured in a football match and had lost a lot of blood. Khan, who did not have any transport, rushed to the hospital by foot to donate some. It was 4 July 1980. Yesterday the man known locally as the “blood man of Kashmir” donated his 174th pint of his blood to strangers at the public hospital close to his Srinagar home.
“Blood is not something you can buy in the market,” says Khan, who has an O-negative blood group. “In those days blood donation was not common, nor were blood banks. The way blood is available readily now, it was not like that before. Also there was no connectivity at that time. We only had radios and two or three landline phones in the entire locality.”
Continue reading...Vaccines and oxygen run out as third wave of Covid hits Uganda
Vaccine thefts reported and hospitals unable to admit patients as cases leap 2,800% in a month
Uganda has all but run out of Covid-19 vaccines and oxygen as the country grapples with another wave of the pandemic.
Both private and public medical facilities in the capital, Kampala and in towns across the country – including regional hubs in Entebbe, Jinja, Soroti, Gulu and Masaka – have reported running out or having acute shortages of AstraZeneca vaccines and oxygen. Hospitals report they are no longer able to admit patients to intensive care.
Continue reading...Giulio Regeni’s last messages before his death in Egypt counter spy claims
Facebook messages from the Italian student killed in Cairo in 2016 show his concerns about studying in the country
The Facebook messages written by the Cambridge student Giulio Regeni in the weeks leading up to his murder give the lie to any notion he was a spy or political agitator.
Even before he left England, Regeni was concerned about the risks he might face doing his thesis on trade unions in Egypt, a sensitive subject in the country.
Continue reading...Home Office condemned for forcing migrants on bail to wear GPS tags
Round-the-clock tracking condemned as ‘Trojan horse’ giving government vast surveillance powers that violate human rights
More than 40 human rights organisations have condemned the Home Office’s introduction of 24-hour GPS monitoring of people on immigration bail in an expansion of surveillance powers that has involved no consultation process.
The new policy marks a shift from using radio frequency monitors (which alert authorities if the wearer leaves an assigned area) to round-the-clock GPS trackers (which can track a person’s every move), while also giving the Home Office new powers to collect, store and access this data indefinitely via a private contractor.
Continue reading...UK aid cuts to Bangladesh NGO a ‘gut punch’, says charity head
Withdrawal from long-term partnership catastrophic, says Brac, affecting women and girls’ education and those in extreme poverty
The UK government’s funding cuts to the world’s largest international non-governmental organisation are a “gut punch” after a successful 10-year £450m partnership, according to a director.
Asif Saleh, executive director of Brac Bangladesh, said the cuts will leave hundreds of thousands of girls without an education, millions of women and girls without access to family planning and hundreds of thousands of people in extreme poverty without support.
Continue reading...‘I’m sacrificing myself’: agony of Kabul’s secret sex workers
Decades of war and grinding poverty have forced more Afghans into risky double lives to survive
When Zainab met her first client almost two years ago, she was drunk, drugged-up, and had passed out by the time he started raping her. She had never touched alcohol before, but was told she’d be better off unconscious. Terrified, she reluctantly agreed.
The man was gone when the then 18-year-old woke up; her body in pain, her thoughts filled with regret.
Continue reading...Obstacles mount in Central America as Biden seeks cooperation over corruption
The post-Trump landscape, geopolitical concerns and an economic paradox pose threat to White House hopes
Standing behind a podium next to the president of Guatemala during her first trip abroad this week, Vice-President Kamala Harris emphasized the renewed commitment of the United States to fighting corruption as part of efforts to confront the root causes driving migration from Central America.
But for many, the man standing beside her, Alejandro Giammattei, embodies the challenge in a region where past and current presidents have been accused of misdeeds ranging from embezzlement and bribery to authoritarianism and drug trafficking.
Continue reading...