Category Archives: Global development

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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Myanmar school strikes and a plane diverted to Minsk: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

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John Major joins push to overturn cut to UK overseas aid budget

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Intervention means all five living former prime ministers have voiced their opposition to the move

John Major has thrown his weight behind efforts to overturn government cuts to the UK’s overseas aid.

Ahead of a possible Commons vote on the issue next week, the former prime minister said the UK needed to remain “a nation that keeps its word”.

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‘Running dry’: Zimbabweans turned away for vaccinations after shortages

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As staff sit idle in treatment centres, anger focuses on government failures to secure supplies as fears of a third wave increase

Hundreds of people are being turned away from vaccination centres in Zimbabwe as the country’s supplies of China’s Sinovac vaccine appear to have run out, triggering panic that the government is failing to acquire new stocks.

While the government said that it had taken delivery of more medicines in recent weeks, centres in Harare have not had any stocks for nearly a week and there is growing anger at the failure to communicate acute vaccine shortages, which are being reported around the country.

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Trouble in paradise: Indian islands face ‘brazen’ new laws and Covid crisis

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‘Authoritarian’ rules upset sleepy Lakshadweep’s Muslim majority while Covid cases soar from zero to 10% of population

According to local people, the problems for Lakshadweep, an archipelago of paradise islands in southern India, began the day the new government-appointed administrator, Praful Khoda Patel, landed on a charter flight.

The Lakshadweep islands, an Indian union territory off the coast of Kerala, have a population of just 64,000 and are renowned for their crystal-blue waters, white sands and relatively untouched way of life. They had, up to that point, also remained completely unaffected by the pandemic, due to strict controls on movement and enforced quarantine.

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‘A hammer blow’: how UK overseas aid cuts affect the world’s most vulnerable

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Axe falls on projects for Yemen, Syria, Rohingya refugees and people affected by famine in Africa

The government claimed Britain would be a “force for good” in the world when it defended merging the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office last year, but it soon announced £4bn in cuts to aid.

Charities instead warned that the world’s most vulnerable people would be hit by the “deadly force” of Britain’s new policies.

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China’s ‘splinternet’ will create a state-controlled alternative cyberspace

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Beijing is using blockchain to build a new internet and many developing countries are likely to sign up – but at what cost?

Cyberspace is one huge, unregulated mess. A virtual wild west where sophisticated criminal gangs ply their trade alongside multinational companies, spy agencies, activists, celebrity influencers – and nation states. The question of who governs it is one of the biggest of our time.

Britain needs to be, if not quite ruling the waves, at least a global force for good in the expanding virtual world. The issue has never been so pressing. Six years ago, I acted for a coder in the biggest cyberfraud phishing case in the UK. The malware my client and others created was so sophisticated that the police could not decode it but were able to show it was used for fraud. The financial data harvested was stored on two servers, one in France and one in the US, and the lack of international cooperation meant law enforcement never got their hands on it.

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‘Sex for a fare’ motorcycle taxis threaten Uganda’s fight against Aids

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Study shows pattern of risky sexual behaviour by young men making a living in the booming boda boda industry

Uganda’s motorcycle taxis riders threaten to derail the country’s fight against HIV because of risky sexual behaviours, including sex with clients in lieu of payment, according to a new study.

At least 12% of a sample of 281 commercial riders, a common informal job known as boda boda and dominated by young men, admitted to engaging in transactional sex with customers who failed to pay their fares; 65.7% reported having had sex with more than one partner in the past 12 months; and 23% had had multiple partners in the same period, with 57.1% reporting that they did not use a condom at all in the six months prior to the survey, conducted by Makerere University College of Education and External Studies (CEES).

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‘A question of dignity’: the pathologist identifying migrants drowned in the Med

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Dr Cristina Catteneo made it her mission to put a name to each man, woman and child found in the overcrowded hulls of sunken boats bound for Europe

At a glance, Dr Cristina Cattaneo assessed the lifeless body on the floor of an abandoned Sicilian hospital – a thin, young Eritrean refugee about 180cm tall. While most of the corpse was intact, his face and hands were skeletonised, probably the work of sea animals.

It was the morning of 3 July 2015, and this was the first body to be recovered by a navy robot after a shipwreck on 18 April that year, which left more than 1,000 people dead.

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‘Worse day by day’: journalists speak out after Pakistani vlogger tortured

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As Imran Khan’s government moves to outlaw virtually any criticism, media figures fear ‘darkest era’ of press freedom

Gathered before a solemn crowd, Hamid Mir, one of Pakistan’s best-known journalists, spoke defiantly. “Do not ever enter the homes of journalists again,” he said. “We don’t have tanks or guns like you, but we can tell the people of Pakistan about the stories that emerge from inside your homes.”

Mir may have been addressing journalists in Islamabad on Friday, but his words were not directed at them; they were a clear message to Pakistan’s all-powerful military establishment.

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Ethiopia’s human rights chief as war rages in Tigray: ‘we get accused by all ethnic groups’

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Former political prisoner Daniel Bekele has made the commission more autonomous but critics claim he is biased on current conflict

There was a time when a report by Ethiopia’s human rights commission was a staid affair, its findings offering window-dressing for hand-wringing donors and legal cover to the government.

Between 2013 and 2017 the commission systematically “whitewashed human rights violations through compromised methodologies, dismissing credible allegations”, according to a 2019 Amnesty International study that accused it of “brazen bias against victims”.

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