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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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).
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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”.
Continue reading...Devastation hampers relief efforts around city of Goma as people speak of losing everything after eruption on Mount Nyiragongo
Continue reading...Responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for must not pass to the country without reforms
If Rwanda had hosted the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, which has been cancelled for the second time due to Covid-19, the UK was due to hand the country the Commonwealth chair.
Rwanda would have held the responsibility for defending what the Commonwealth stands for – despite violating those same values for decades. When Rwanda was admitted as a member in 2009, I had hoped our government would apply Commonwealth values in its governance. But this did not happen.
Continue reading...Promises of better working conditions ring hollow for tens of thousands of security guards, who say they still work long hours for low pay
Every day at 5pm, Samuel boards the company bus that takes him to his night shift as a guard at a luxury high-rise tower near Qatar’s capital, Doha. When his shift ends 12 hours later, he says he will have earned £9, just 75p an hour.
Samuel, who is from Uganda, says he almost never has a day off. “You have to tell lies, like ‘you are sick, you’re not feeling good’, so that you get a day off,” he says.
Continue reading...Exclusive: group urges prime minister to tackle ‘desperate shortage’ in developing nations
Boris Johnson has a “moral duty” to immediately start matching each vaccine administered at home with a donated dose to poorer countries across the world, a cross-party group of MPs and peers has said.
Several Tory backbenchers joined the call, which puts further pressure on the prime minister to boost supplies given to developing nations facing a “desperate shortage” of jabs.
Continue reading...At least 34 candidates have been murdered since campaigning began in April, with the assassination clear-up rate close to zero
Tuesday started off like any other day on the campaign trail for José Alberto Alonso, a union leader running for mayor in the Mexican beach resort of Acapulco: he kissed his family goodbye, boarded his Nissan Extreme SUV and headed off to start knocking on doors.
But barely 200m from his home, a motorcycle closed in and the pillion passenger pulled a handgun, peppering the car with bullets. Alonso’s bodyguard returned fire, and the attackers fled. The candidate had escaped injury, but was later sent to hospital suffering from stress.
Continue reading...Using individual children to ‘sell’ schemes to rich donors is similar to ‘poverty porn’ images of past, say experts, as calls grow to decolonise aid
International child sponsorship schemes have come under attack for perpetuating racist thinking, as an apology by a charity to thousands of children in Sri Lanka has sparked a debate over the money-raising schemes.
Plan International last week admitted it had made “mistakes” over its exit from Sri Lanka in 2020, following criticism from donors and former employees that it had failed 20,000 vulnerable children in the country.
Continue reading...Trade unions say they have lost control of protests over pay as employers cite impact of Covid for restraint
A woman has died after being shot during violent clashes between factory workers and police in Lesotho as trade unions say they have lost control over angry protests over pay.
Demonstrations spilled over into violence in what is the second week of industrial action, with looting and damage to several businesses in the capital Maseru.
Continue reading...Move is part of groundbreaking effort to name 30,000 murdered by regime after 1976 coup
The Argentinian government has sent hundreds of DNA testing kits to its consulates around the world in a groundbreaking effort to put names to unidentified victims murdered in the “Dirty War” waged by the brutal military dictatorship four decades ago.
Last month, the Argentinian authorities, in collaboration with the National Commission for the Right to Identity, the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo movement and investigators from the Argentinian Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), launched its international Right to Identity campaign, committed to putting a name to every woman, man and child killed by the military junta in Argentina in the 1970s and early 80s.
Continue reading...World’s poorest nations saddled with ‘imprisoning’ debt, hampering responses to the pandemic, say activists protesting HSBC meeting
Activists at a demonstration outside the annual general meeting of HSBC in London have demanded the bank and other financial giants provide debt relief to African countries hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic.
In an attempt to highlight the role of private creditors in the debt crises of the world’s poorest countries, campaigners with “drop the debt” banners gathered outside HSBC’s AGM at the Southbank Centre.
Continue reading...Doctors’ pleas receive little sympathy from government as critics say President Amlo favoring teachers – for political reasons
Ana Sofía is radiologist at a state-run hospital in the Mexican city of Monterrey, not far from the Texas border. Her work often brings her into close contact with patients, but says she was denied a coronavirus vaccination as her superiors did not consider her to be a frontline worker.
In despair, she attended a rural vaccination event for the elderly and asked for a leftover dose of the Sinovac jab – but she was again rebuffed, this time by political operatives who told her: “Wait your turn.”
Continue reading...Activists were shot and beaten at demonstration to stop property giant Bahria Town building on indigenous land they say was taken with force
Muhammad Anwar was not aware of any danger when he took the day off work to join his friends at a demonstration on a construction site of a powerful real estate company.
When Anwar, 35, reached the west bank of Langeji river, near Karachi, earlier this month, he saw the bulldozers levelling land next to Bahria Town, a luxury gated development.
Continue reading...Warnings of brain drain from developing world as Covid adds to numbers of nurses leaving profession
Health ministers around the world are being urged to sign off on plans to create 6m more nursing jobs by 2030, amid warnings that Covid-19 has exacerbated a global shortage and could spark a “brain drain” from the developing world.
Delegates meeting virtually this week at the World Health Assembly, the key decision-making body of the World Health Organization, are expected to adopt a resolution calling on countries to transform the nursing profession through more investment, support and training.
Continue reading...Obaida Jawabra was weeks from turning 18 when he was shot by an Israeli soldier, after a life shaped by arrests and imprisonment
Route 60, the north-south artery that carves its way through the West Bank, is both the lifeblood of the region and a source of daily fear.
Flanked in parts by 2.5-metre-high (8ft) separation barriers, military checkpoints and watchtowers crewed by Israeli snipers, the 146-mile highway that starts and finishes in Israel but passes Hebron and Bethlehem in the West Bank, has been the scene of many fatal attacks and violent clashes.
Continue reading...At least 43 protesters have been killed by police and 46 people have suffered eye injuries
After a month of protests in which 46 people have suffered eye injuries from police teargas rounds and rubber bullets, a Colombian politician has prompted outrage by saying that supporters of the anti-poverty demonstrations should “stop crying over one eye”.
“Don’t fool Colombians and don’t fool the international community and stop crying over one eye,” said Paola Holguín, a senator from the ruling Centro Democrático party, to opposition politicians during a virtual floor speech on Wednesday afternoon.
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