Category Archives: Global development

Johnson accused of hypocrisy over G7 girls’ education pledge

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Announcement of £430m funding for 90 countries came only weeks after ‘inexcusable’ foreign aid cuts

• G7 summit: latest news and reaction

Boris Johnson was accused of hypocrisy after announcing at the G7 leaders summit he would provide £430m of extra UK funding for girls’ education in 90 developing countries only weeks after his government made “inexcusable cuts” of more than £200m set aside for the same cause from its bilateral programme this year.

The foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, announced in April that he was providing only £400m from the main UK aid budget for girls’ education in 2021, down from £600m in 2019. Johnson has dismissed stories of aid cuts, and their consequences as “lefty propaganda”, but refused to hold a Commons vote on the issue.

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Government pledges to raise legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales

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Commitment from justice ministry seen as victory by rights campaigners, who say current law is exploited to coerce children

The government has committed to raising the minimum legal age of marriage to 18 in England and Wales in a victory for campaigners.

Currently, 16 and 17-year-olds can marry with parental consent, but a coalition of charities has warned that this legal loophole is being exploited to coerce young people into child marriage.

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Frontex turning ‘blind eye’ to human rights violations, says former deputy

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Gil Arias Fernández says EU border agency, which is under investigation for illegal migrant pushbacks, cannot stop far-right infiltrating its ranks

The former deputy head of Europe’s border and coastguard agency has said the state of the beleaguered force “pains” him and that it is vulnerable to the “alarming” rise of populism across the continent.

In his first interview since leaving office, Gil Arias Fernández, former deputy director at Frontex and once tipped for the top post, said he was deeply worried about the agency’s damaged reputation, its decision to arm officers, and its inability to stop the far-right infiltrating its ranks, amid anti-migrant movements across Europe.

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Student’s rape and murder puts India’s sexual violence under spotlight again

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Despite new laws to combat the problem, a rape is reported every 15 minutes, leaving victims and families crying out for justice

It was a historic day for women in India. Mamata Banerjee and her party won a spectacular election victory in West Bengal, defeating the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, defying many predictions. Securing a third term as chief minister, she was the only woman in such an important position in India.

The following day, 3 May, while TV anchors debated how Banerjee’s win represented not only a strong force against Modi but also made her a powerful woman in a patriarchal country, a 20-year-old student, known only as Jana (her identity cannot be revealed under Indian law), was cornered by two men in a village, about 70 miles west of Kolkata, West Bengal’s main city.

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‘Makes you sick’: fury in Rio as pregnant 24-year-old killed amid police raid

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Kathlen Romeu’s death marks latest fatality among Black favela residents as police clash with drug gangs

In early June, Kathlen Romeu posted a photo of herself and her boyfriend on a Instagram, with a caption announcing that she was pregnant. “I am discovering myself as a mother, and I am scared thinking about how it is going to be,” the 24-year old interior designer wrote on 2 June. “I laugh, I cry and I am afraid.”

Related: Police killing hundreds in Rio de Janeiro despite court ban on favela raids

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Voluntourism: new book explores how volunteer trips harm rather than help

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‘Don’t do as we did,’ says Pippa Biddle, who highlights colonial structure of industry where unqualified Western tourists pay to volunteer abroad

Seven years ago, Pippa Biddle wrote a blog post about volunteering abroad. She recounted her struggles speaking Spanish to children living with HIV in the Dominican Republic and how local people in Tanzania would spend all night redoing the construction work she and her classmates had done poorly.

“Taking part in international aid where you aren’t particularly helpful is not benign,” Biddle wrote. “It’s detrimental.”

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‘Epidemic of violence’: Brazil shocked by ‘barbaric’ gang-rape of gay man

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Activists fear that an increase in attacks on the country’s LBGT community is fuelled by a culture of homophobia at the very top

An act of “barbaric” violence where a 22-year-old gay man was gang-raped and tortured has prompted fierce reaction in Brazil and is evidence of a growing tide of hate crime in the country, according to human rights campaigners.

The man, who has not been named, was attacked last week in Florianópolis by three armed men who used sharp objects during the assault and forced him to carve homophobic slurs into his legs, said activists.

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‘This is a revolution’: the faces of Colombia’s protests

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Fifty-eight people have died in six weeks of unrest, but demonstrators say they are more determined than ever to fight for change

Protests in Colombia that began in late April over a proposed tax hike have morphed into a generational outcry over the country’s deep-rooted inequalities.

Related: ‘They can’t take it any more’: pandemic and poverty brew violent storm in Colombia

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Uganda’s ID scheme excludes nearly a third from healthcare, says report

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Vital services including grants financed by UK unavailable without identity cards, with women and the elderly worst affected

Up to a third of adults in Uganda have been excluded from vital healthcare and social services because they do not have national ID cards, according to a report.

Women and elderly people have been particularly affected by the introduction of the digital identity cards, which are required to access government and private sector healthcare, to claim social benefits, to vote and to open bank accounts or buy sim cards.

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Barcelona street sellers take on Nike with own-brand trainers

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Ethical streetwear co-operative Top Manta says profits will help migrant vendors ‘become legal and work for a decent wage’

After years of selling cheap copies of designer shoes and handbags, Barcelona’s street vendors have set up a co-operative and launched a line of trainers under the brand name Top Manta.

Unlike an earlier attempt to establish a brand in 2017 by sticking a logo on shoes imported from China, the trainers are made in Alicante in Spain and Porto in Portugal.

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End all legal barriers to abortion, say leading European politicians

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Belgium’s prime minister among signatories to open letter backing global right to safe abortions and reopening of clinics closed in pandemic

Government ministers from five European countries, including Belgium’s prime minister, Alexander de Croo, are among 29 politicians, healthcare and women’s rights activists who have signed an open letter calling for the removal of all legal barriers to abortion.

The letter, signed by gender and equality ministers from France, Canada and Norway, and international development ministers from Sweden and the Netherlands, states that women’s right to safe, legal abortion is being eroded by misinformation and attacks on services. It calls for the reopening of abortion clinics closed during the pandemic.

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Global economy set for fastest recovery for more than 80 years

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Slow Covid-19 vaccine progress in low-income countries will widen divisions between rich and poor nations

The global economy is set for the fastest recovery from recession for more than 80 years, but poor nations are at risk of falling further behind wealthy countries amid slow progress with the Covid-19 vaccine, the World Bank has said.

In its half-yearly outlook report, the Washington-based institution said the world economy was forecast to grow at 5.6% this year, in a sharp upgrade from previous estimates it made in January for growth of 4.1%.

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Biden accused of U-turn over Egypt’s human rights abuses

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Critics say US president’s realpolitik ignores Sisi regime’s ‘hostage-taking tactics’ against dissidents

“It’s a hostage negotiation and it has been all along,” said Sherif Mansour, describing the arrest of his cousin Reda Abdel-Rahman by Egyptian security forces last August as an attempt to intimidate Mansour into silence.

Abdel-Rahman has been imprisoned without trial for nine months. Mansour, an outspoken human rights advocate in Washington with the Committee to Protect Journalists, has since learned that he and his father are listed on the same charge sheet, all accused of joining a terrorist group and spreading “false news”.

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‘On a rampage’: the African women fighting to end FGM

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Female genital mutilation has revived under Covid but activists are pushing hard to save girls at risk

It was when the phone started ringing with calls from worried mothers in Somalia that Ifrah Ahmed knew she was making an impact. The women told her their daughters had been bleeding for hours after undergoing female genital mutilation and asked what to do. Ahmed told them to seek medical attention, and probably saved lives by doing so.

The mothers called because they had heard the story of a 10-year-old girl who had bled to death after being cut in central Galmudug state in July 2018. It was the first confirmed death in years in a country where any complications arising from FGM are generally denied and it gained worldwide attention. The death was first revealed by a local activist who had been trained by Ahmed’s foundation in how to use the media to publicise her work.

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Revert to type: how Goa’s last typewriter repair shop defied the digital age

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Luis Abreu once thrived on servicing India’s many typewriters but computers are eclipsing his trade

In Goa’s capital, Panaji, on Rua São Tomé, not far from the main post office, is a shop that offers packaging services. For a small fee, they will wrap your parcel in a sheet of muslin sewn with precise stitches to protect its contents from being damaged in the post.

It started as a sideline to the main business of the store, but now it is the main earner for Luis Francisco Miguel de Abreu as he struggles to maintain one of the last typewriter repair shops in this Indian state.

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Johnson likely to defy Tory rebels by ignoring order for vote on aid cuts

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At least 40 Conservative MPs are fighting on to get overseas funding restored after setback in Commons

Boris Johnson has set himself on a collision course with scores of his MPs as No 10 suggested it would defy an order by the House of Commons speaker to bring a vote on swingeing foreign aid cuts.

Between 40 and 50 Conservative MPs were said to be considering defying the government on Monday before an ambush in the Commons was thwarted, with rebels now exploring options including legal action.

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The Nobel committee should resign over the atrocities in Tigray

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Members of the body that awarded the 2019 peace prize to Ethiopia’s premier, Abiy Ahmed, should all depart in protest

The war on Tigray in Ethiopia has been going on for months. Thousands of people have been killed and wounded, women and girls have been raped by military forces, and more than 2 million citizens have been forced out of their homes. Prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed stated that a nation on its way to “prosperity” would experience a few “rough patches” that would create “blisters”. This is how he rationalised what is alleged to be a genocide.

Nobel committee members have individual responsibility for awarding the 2019 peace prize to Abiy Ahmed, accused of waging the war in Tigray. The members should thus collectively resign their honourable positions at the Nobel committee in protest and defiance.

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‘The darkest days are coming’: Myanmar’s journalists suffer at hands of junta

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Journalism has been outlawed in all but name since the coup, with reporters and editors fleeing the country or leading double lives to survive

As a cyclone rolled over the Bay of Bengal on 24 May, American journalist Danny Fenster, 37, contemplated the brooding skies near a terminal window at Yangon international airport.

For a while, the threat of foreigners being seized at the airport by Myanmar’s military was real, but after watching international reporters exit the country safely in April, the Michigan native was more worried about turbulence.

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UK foreign aid cuts ‘will leave 100,000 refugees without water’

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Aid agencies write to Foreign Office minister as pressure grows on Boris Johnson ahead of Commons vote

UK aid cuts of 42% will leave about 70,000 people without health services and 100,000 without water in Cox’s Bazar, the world’s largest refugee settlement, before the deadly cyclone season, the Foreign Office minister for Asia has been warned.

A private letter sent to him last week by a group of aid agencies working in the area comes before a vote on Monday designed to force ministers to guarantee they will restore UK aid to 0.7% of gross national income next year.

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