Category Archives: Global development

Revealed: 2,000 refugee deaths linked to illegal EU pushbacks

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A Guardian analysis finds EU countries used brutal tactics to stop nearly 40,000 asylum seekers crossing borders

EU member states have used illegal operations to push back at least 40,000 asylum seekers from Europe’s borders during the pandemic, methods being linked to the death of more than 2,000 people, the Guardian can reveal.

In one of the biggest mass expulsions in decades, European countries, supported by EU’s border agency Frontex, has systematically pushed back refugees, including children fleeing from wars, in their thousands, using illegal tactics ranging from assault to brutality during detention or transportation.

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UN condemns violent repression of Colombia protests after at least 18 die

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Riot police rampage across streets, shoot protesters and charge at crowds with motorcycles in week of unrest across the country

The United Nations has condemned the violent repression of protests in Colombia, after clashes between police and demonstrators left at least 18 dead and 87 people missing.

In a week of unrest across the country, riot police have rampaged across the smoke-filled streets, shooting protesters at point-blank range and charging at crowds with their motorcycles.

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Threats to safety force dozens of Afghan journalists to go into hiding

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Network of safe houses set up amid fears of rising violence as Nato forces prepare to pull out in September

Dozens of journalists have moved to safe houses across Afghanistan, and others have been sent abroad, as threats against media workers continue to rise.

New safe houses have been set up in several Afghan cities as evacuations increase, offering some security for targeted journalists.

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Child marriage ‘thriving in UK’ due to legal loophole, warn rights groups

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In a letter to the PM campaigners say forced marriage law fails to protect young people

A legal loophole that allows 16- and 17-year-olds in England and Wales to marry with parental consent is being exploited and used to coerce young people into child marriage, campaigners have warned.

More than 20 organisations have signed a letter to the prime minister insisting current forced marriage law does not go far enough in protecting young people.

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‘Gamechanger’: Uganda launches drone delivering HIV drugs to remote islands

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Technology could ensure critical medicines reach Lake Victoria communities with country’s highest prevalence of HIV/Aids

As the bottles of medication are carefully loaded into the body of the drone, a small crowd gathers to watch on the other side of the yellow tape marking out the grassy landing strip.

With a gentle buzz the drone rises, a little uncertainly, into the sky, on its 1.5-metre wings. The precious cargo leaving Bufumira health centre III, in Uganda’s Kalangala district, is critical drugs for people living in some of the most far-flung communities in the region. Kalangala is made up of 84 islands in Lake Victoria, the world’s largest tropical lake, which Uganda shares with Tanzania and Kenya.

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Colombia braces for further unrest after police react violently to mass protests

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At least 16 demonstrators and one officer dead after police fired at protesters and rammed crowds with motorcycles

Colombia is bracing for further unrest after a weekend in which largely peaceful nationwide demonstrations were met with a violent police reaction which left at least 16 demonstrators and one police officer dead and hundreds injured.

Videos shared on social media over the weekend showed police firing at protesters sometimes from close range, ramming crowds with motorcycles, and bashing demonstrators with their shields.

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Zimdancehall dreams: the back yard studios helping Harare get heard

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Infectious hits produced on a shoestring allow Zimbabwe’s aspiring musicians to express their struggles and dream big

Inside a grimy flat in Mbare, Zimbabwe’s oldest township in the capital Harare, about 10 young musicians nervously rehearse their lyrical chants as they wait to be called into the recording booth.

Many celebrated musicians in Zimbabwe have been born out of this old flat. For those here now, this is their one shot at stardom, or at least a future in music.

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‘Calamity of maternal deaths’: Covid concern grows for Brazil’s pregnant

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Following 803 pregnant and postpartum deaths, authorities have warned women to delay pregnancy as alarm rises

This month should have been one of the happiest in Letícia Aparecida Gomes’s life. The pregnant 23-year-old Brazilian had been due to marry before delivering her baby, Elloah, in August.

Instead, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept Gomes’s country claiming thousands of lives each day, she was taken to hospital having been infected herself.

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It’s a hard sell but Africa must invest in art and imagination

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Building an arts centre in Uganda, in a pandemic, was never going to be easy but it’s crucial to our post-Covid future

I’ve been raising funds for a building project: not a hospital, not a school, but an arts centre.

It’s not an easy sell at the best of times but add in a pandemic and the fact that I’m in Africa and, according to the current rules of financial engagement, art is the verylowest of priorities.

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‘They knew we weren’t giving oxygen’: a Delhi doctor’s week of horror

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Dr Chahat Verma saw five patients die in a day as India’s Covid crisis overwhelms hospitals

During the past week, when oxygen was periodically running out at Ganga Ram hospital, one thing Dr Chahat Verma found unbearable was the look on the faces of patients when the oxygen saturation levels of another patient in the ward plunged.

“They’d lie there, watching the patient gasping, unable to breathe, and they knew we weren’t giving oxygen because there wasn’t any. The look in their eyes was one of pure terror. They knew it could be their turn next,” she said.

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More than 100 lone children rescued trying to cross Mediterranean

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Unicef warns many child refugees and migrants picked up off the coast of Libya will be sent to ‘appalling’ detention centres

Fears are rising over the numbers of lone children risking their lives to reach Europe after 114 were pulled from the Mediterranean Sea in one day this week.

The unaccompanied minors were among 125 children rescued off the Libyan coast on Tuesday by the authorities, aid agencies said.

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Britain’s aid cuts: what’s been announced so far

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Some programmes will have their funding cut by 85% or more as the UK reduces its spending

Britain announced last year that it would cut aid spending from 0.7% of national income to 0.5% – a reduction of more than £4bn. The cuts are not split evenly, with some programmes having funding reduced by 85% or more.

The Foreign Office said it would still spend more than £10bn this year to fight poverty, tackle the climate crisis and improve global health and would return to its 0.7% target when economic circumstances allowed – but it did not give a date or criteria for this. Among the cuts so far are:

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Biden urged to end US aid ‘abortion ban’

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More than 140 rights groups call for repeal of 1973 Helms amendment widely misinterpreted as total ban on funding abortion services overseas

Joe Biden is being urged to clarify a longstanding US law restricting overseas aid that has been misinterpreted by successive administrations as an outright ban on funding abortion for any reason.

As the US president marked his first 100 days in office on Friday, more than 140 human rights and global health organisations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International US and the Global Justice Center, signed a letter asking him to confirm that US aid can be used for abortion care in cases of rape, incest and when the woman’s life is in danger.

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Nepal facing deadly Covid wave similar to India, doctors warn

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‘Situation is out of control’ as cases spike and hospitals run short of beds and oxygen

Doctors in Nepal have warned that the country is facing a similar devastating wave of Covid-19 as neighbouring India, with border districts already reporting an alarming spike in cases and shortage of hospital beds and oxygen.

In the Banke district of Nepal, bordering India, doctors at Bheri hospital said it was turning into a “mini India”, with coronavirus spreading out of control.

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Female political prisoners in Iran facing ‘psychological torture’, say campaigners

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Reports of deteriorating treatment of human rights activists, with an increase in moves to ‘dangerous’ jails often far from families

Female human rights activists imprisoned in Iran face increased jail terms and transfers to prisons with “dangerous and alarming” conditions, hundreds of miles away from their families, according to campaigners.

Warnings of the deteriorating treatment of female prisoners in Iran come days after Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian national who has served a five-year prison sentence in Iran, was sentenced to a further year in jail and a year-long travel ban by the Iranian courts.

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‘Devastating for women and girls’: UK cuts 85% in aid to UN family planning

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UNFPA says £130m being withheld would have helped prevent 250,000 child and maternal deaths in poorest countries

The British government is slashing its funding to the UN population fund (UNFPA) in a move described as “devastating” for women and girls.

The agency confirmed on Wednesday that the UK, its largest donor, is cutting funding for contraceptives and reproductive health supplies by 85% this year – from £154m to £23m – and cutting core funding from £20m to £8m.

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‘I am not my trauma’: survivors of sexual abuse at a Ugandan girls’ shelter – photo essay

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German national Bernhard ‘Bery’ Glaser took advantage of his ‘rich white foreigner’ status to systematically abuse girls in his care. Photographer DeLovie Kwagala captured the stories of 15 women

Eve was just eight years old and recently orphaned when she was taken to live at a girls’ shelter on Bugala island, in the Ugandan sector of Lake Victoria.

Bery’s Place had been set up in 2006 by Bernhard “Bery” Glaser, a German national living in Uganda, as a refuge for traumatised children and victims of sexual violence. Yet Eve and other girls living there at the time say that Glaser was hiding a dark secret. Taking advantage of his “rich white foreigner” status to entice parents to leave their daughters at the home, Glaser was using Bery’s Place as a cover for routine and systematic sexual and emotional abuse of the children in his care, the girls allege.

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‘It’s about self-love’: the black women busting beauty myths in west Africa

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From Senegal to Nigeria, a growing wave of salons and small cosmetic companies are challenging colonial notions about how to wear and care for hair

Women kick the sand from their slippers, and ease into the cool comfort of a natural hair and skincare store in central Dakar. On the shelves are jars filled with handmade supplements of organic shea butter, coconut, castor and olive oils, sourced from across west Africa.

In floral silk hijabs and abaya dresses, the women sit on sofas near the back of the store, discussing their hair beneath a mural of poised black women and men, wearing a mixture of classic natural black hairstyles.

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Almost 30 million will need aid in Sahel this year as crisis worsens, UN warns

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Armed conflicts, the climate crisis and Covid-19 are contributing to chronic risk of food insecurity in the region, says Unocha report

A record 29 million people will need humanitarian assistance in the Sahel and the Lake Chad basin in 2021 amid a deepening crisis, a report by the UN office for humanitarian affairs (Unocha) has estimated.

Almost one in four people in the border areas of Burkina Faso, northern Cameroon, Chad, Mali, Niger and north-east Nigeria are expected to need aid in 2021, 5 million more than a year ago, and a 52% rise on 2019.

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UK to slash funding for overseas water and sanitation projects by 80%

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Scale of aid cut emerges in leaked FCDO memo, prompting experts to describe it as ‘a national shame’

The UK is to slash funding for lifesaving water, sanitation and hygiene projects in developing nations by more than 80%, according to a leaked memo.

The cuts have been described as “savage”, “incredible” and “a national shame” by experts highlighting that sanitation and handwashing is a key line of defence during the coronavirus pandemic. The reduction to the bilateral aid budget was revealed as details emerged of cuts in the foreign aid budget.

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