Children in overcrowded Cox’s Bazar settlement likely to suffer most from reduced humanitarian spending, say campaigners
The government has been accused of abandoning Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh after cutting aid to the humanitarian response by more than 40%.
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) pledged £27.6m to the humanitarian sector’s joint response plan launched this week, compared with £47.5m last year.
Continue reading...Pressure growing for UK and others to follow Biden’s lead at WTO to avoid ‘moral and public health failure’
The UK government is in talks about a plan to waive Covid-19 vaccine patents to boost the production of shots in low and middle-income countries, the Guardian can reveal.
The discussions come amid growing calls for Britain and other European countries to follow the US in supporting the proposal put before the World Trade Organization (WTO).
Continue reading...Cases have risen from a daily total of about 5,000 in early March to a record 35,000 this week amid relaxed restrictions and a low vaccination rate
It is 1am, and intensive care doctor Vanina Edul is trying vainly to remember the names of all the Covid patients who have died on her watch.
The 47-year-old physician still remembers the first patient she saw die of Covid last year. “He was 60, and we were surprised because that was young for that long-ago time. We thought only old people died. How wrong we were,” she says.
Continue reading...Bulgaria focused on protecting the economy over saving older people from Covid. Ultimately, it will achieve neither
April will forever be in my memory as a month of painful unfairness: it is when I had my first Covid-19 vaccine in the UK and my unvaccinated father died of the virus in Bulgaria. I’m a middle-aged, healthy woman. My father was a vulnerable 85-year-old with underlying health conditions.
I have a pile of letters from the NHS that arrived for my father since January, inviting him to get a vaccination in London, the city he left for his native Bulgaria six months before. With sadness and disquiet, I wonder why Bulgaria did not protect my father in his old age while the UK’s NHS has made every endeavour to do so. Why have I been protected in my middle age while about 90% of Bulgarians over 80 have not?
Continue reading...Refugee organisation says 30m new displacements last year were due to floods, storms or wildfires
Intense storms and flooding triggered three times more displacements than violent conflicts did last year, as the number of people internally displaced worldwide hit the highest level on record.
There were at least 55 million internally displaced people (IDPs) by the end of last year, according to figures published by the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Continue reading...Widely read Tut.by news site taken offline in latest attack on media freedom, say human rights groups
A leading news site in Belarus has been taken offline and its journalists interrogated by government officials in what human rights campaigners are calling a “full-scale assault” on the right to freedom of expression in the country.
Tut.by, a news site read by more than 40% of Belarusian internet users, has been blocked and its editors questioned after their offices and houses were raided by authorities.
Continue reading...Thuzar Wint Lwin, in dress of besieged Chin minority, highlights brutal repression since coup in Myanmar
In the months leading up to the Miss Universe pageant, most contestants were busy making promotional films and rehearsing for their moment in the limelight. Thuzar Wint Lwin of Myanmar was on the streets of Yangon, protesting against the country’s brutal army.
As the military used increasingly deadly force to crush rallies opposing its February coup, she visited the relatives of those who had been killed, donating her savings. Online, she raised awareness of military violence, despite the risk of retaliation.
Continue reading...Mystical realism conveys real-life stories of brutal cartel violence in Fernanda Valadez’s chilling directorial debut
Two teenage boys wave goodbye to their mothers across a field in rural Mexico, leaving home in search of the American dream. The opening moments of the Mexican film-maker Fernanda Valadez’s Identifying Features, available to stream from this week, reflects scenes played out every day across Mexico and Central America, as men, women and children journey north in search of safety and job opportunities.
Valadez, 39, starts her directorial debut film in her home state of Guanajuato – a picturesque, once tranquil state in the centre of the country. In recent years Guanajuato has fallen victim to the evolving geography and relentless nature of Mexico’s humanitarian crisis; it is now one of the most dangerous places in the country for those who live there and for people travelling through on the migrant trail.
Continue reading...Poor and indigenous protesters have been met with deadly force by armed civilians and police representing interests of the wealthy
A convoy of brightly painted buses descended from Colombia’s westernmost mountain range, heading for the city of Cali, where tens of thousands had taken to the streets demanding a shake-up of the country’s deeply unequal status quo.
Along the way, well-wishers cheered on the caravan and drivers honked in approval. But as the procession approached Cali’s prosperous southern reaches, it reached a roadblock set up by men in civilian clothing, believed to be from wealthy neighbourhoods nearby. Then the shooting started.
Continue reading...Pandemic fatigue and economic woes blamed for lack of action despite rapid rise in number of cases
Tunisia has ended its one-week lockdown, despite having the highest reported deaths per capita of any country in Africa.
Covid-19 cases in Tunisia were initially low last year, with a sweeping six-week lockdown involving the closure of borders and shutting down all but essential commercial activity appearing to halt the spread of the virus. However, since easing that original lockdown cases have increased, with daily reported infections and deaths now the highest in Africa, according to Our World in Data.
Continue reading...Rozina Islam’s family claim reporter was assaulted and subject to ‘mental torture’ by officials
One of Bangladesh’s most prominent investigative journalists, known for her anti-corruption reporting and criticism of the government’s response to Covid-19, has been arrested and charged under the country’s Official Secrets Act.
Rozina Islam, 42, a senior investigative journalist at the Bengali daily Prothom Alo appeared before a Dhaka court on Tuesday morning charged with stealing official health ministry documents . The court turned down the police’s appeal that she be remanded in their custody to be interrogated.
Continue reading...When Covid shut schools, fees still had to be paid even if rural pupils could not access online lessons
Iqbal Khan works as a chauffeur in Lahore. His children are in his home village in a rural area north of Peshawar. Both of these very different areas of Pakistan have the same problem for many of their young people: no means of getting access to an education.
Online learning was not an option for Khan’s children as the pandemic locked down schools across cities and countryside. Even as he worked to pay the school fees, his two sons, aged 16 and 13, were unable to access any lessons as their schools went digital.
Continue reading...Firm settles over allegations claimants were shot, stabbed and beaten by guards at mine that produced one of Queen’s favourite gems
The British mining company Petra Diamonds has agreed to pay £4.3m in compensation to dozens of Tanzanians who allegedly suffered serious human rights abuses at a mine famed for producing a flawless pink diamond for one of the Queen’s favourite brooches.
The 71 Tanzanian claimants, represented in the London high court by the British law firm Leigh Day, alleged grave violations by the company, among them being shot, beaten, stabbed, assaulted, detained in cramped and filthy holding cells, and handcuffed to hospital beds.
Continue reading...Amid political turmoil and an overwhelmed health system, young activists are stepping up in response to the pandemic
A ping and: “ICU bed needed. Please it’s urgent.” Another ping: “Where can I find Remdesivir. EMERGENCY.” Ping: “Very urgent oxygen cylinder needed, patient at last stage.” The messages never let up; a constant stream of posts pleading for hospital beds, oxygen, plasma and medicine.
It’s not Nepal’s government helpline, but an online group set up by a 24-year-old public health graduate.
Continue reading...As war forces more to flee, humanitarian organisations facing funding shortfalls and increasing demand are unable to keep pace
The number of people having to leave their homes in the Lake Chad region of central Africa has more than doubled over the past year with agencies warning they are struggling to feed people.
The fighting, which last month claimed the life of the president of Chad, Idriss Déby, has displaced more than 400,000 Chadians, according to the International Organization for Migration, a rise from 169,000 at the start of 2020. More than 65,000 people were displaced in the first quarter of this year.
Continue reading...Indigenous people in the grip of a humanitarian crisis as Bolsonaro gives encouragement to wildcat miners with designs on their rainforest territory
A photograph of an emaciated Yanomami girl, huddled listlessly in a hammock beside an empty cooking pot over an unlit fire. Shaky footage of indigenous people screaming as they flee in panic to a soundtrack of gunfire.
Shocking images shared on Brazilian social media this week have cast a spotlight on a spiral of violence, malnutrition and disease that threatens fresh devastation for the Yanomami people and their ancestral territory in the Amazon state of Roraima.
Continue reading...Former Australian PM wants Boris Johnson to make ‘ambitious pledge’ to support girls at Kenyan summit
The former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has called for Britain to return its aid budget to pre-cuts levels “as soon as possible”.
Gillard, who now campaigns for education in lower-income countries as chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), said she wanted the British government to step up with an “ambitious pledge” for global education when it co-hosts the G7 summit next month.
Continue reading...Man who took turn steering boat ‘because he didn’t want to die’ freed, with case opening way for others to appeal their sentences
An asylum seeker jailed on smuggling charges for helping to steer a boat filled with migrants from France to England has had his conviction overturned at a retrial after spending 17 months in jail.
Lawyers and campaigners say the verdict could lead to other migrants currently in jail on smuggling charges being freed, allowing the Home Office policy of prosecuting asylum seekers who play a role in piloting boats across the Channel to be challenged more widely.
Continue reading...Malcolm Bidali, a Kenyan who blogged about migrant workers’ plight, detained by Qatari security services
A Kenyan security guard in Qatar who has written about the plight of migrant workers has been “forcibly disappeared”, human rights group say.
Malcolm Bidali was detained by the Qatari security services over a week ago and is being held in an undisclosed location, according to a coalition of rights groups, which include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Continue reading...Chileans to elect 155-strong assembly made up of equivalent men and women to set out new framework and enshrine equal rights
Women’s rights activists in Chile say that the country’s new constitution will catalyze progress for women in the country – and could set a new global standard for gender equality in politics.
In a two-day vote this weekend, Chileans will elect a 155-strong citizens’ assembly to write a new constitution for the country – the first anywhere in the world to be written by an equal number of men and women.
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