Category Archives: Global development

UK cuts grants for small aid charities to save ‘less than cost of No 10 press room’

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Hospital in Zanzibar and support for child workers in Bangladesh among approved projects to miss out as £2.1m of funding cancelled

The UK has scrapped three rounds of grants to small international development charities, prompting fury that it has wiped out funding for 42 projects around the world to save “less than the [£2.6m] cost of the Downing Street press room”.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told charities last week that rounds six, seven and eight of the Small Charities Challenge Fund (SCCF) would not go ahead because of aid cuts, cancelling in total about £2.1m of funds earmarked for new and future programmes, including many that had been approved.

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Global shortfall of nearly 1m midwives due to failure to value role, study finds

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Investing in midwifery could prevent two-thirds of maternal and newborn deaths, but investment and training are urgently needed

The world is facing a shortage of 900,000 midwives, with more than half the shortfall in Africa, where nearly two-thirds of maternal deaths occur, according to a new survey.

Insufficient resources and a failure to recognise the importance of the role mean there has been little progress since the last study in 2014, according to the State of the World’s Midwifery report, which looked at 194 countries.

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‘No food and no fuel’: Colombia torn by protests and violent crackdown

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23 protesters and one police officer killed after general strike over unpopular tax reform met with heavy-handed response

Mass protests were held across Colombia on Wednesday after a night of unrest in the capital city, as street violence continued after more than a week of angry anti-government demonstrations.

Twenty-three protesters and one police officer have been killed in the unrest that began with with a general strike over an unpopular tax reform but has grown into an outburst of rage over poverty exacerbated by the pandemic, human rights abuses and the authorities’ heavy-handed response to protests.

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Nepal reports 19 positive Covid tests at Dhaulagiri base camp

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Decision to allow expeditions to go ahead dealt blow after outbreak on world’s seventh highest mountain

Nepal’s decision to allow people to continue to climb its Himalayan peaks as a vicious Covid-19 wave sweeps the country was dealt a further blow after 19 more climbers tested positive for the virus.

Last month it was reported that the pandemic had reached Everest base camp and though officials later denied it, climbers have reported a wave of infections that were being covered up.

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Uganda passes bill criminalising same-sex relationships and sex work

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The conservative African country insists it is ‘not yet ready’ for gay rights as campaigners say the flawed legislation sanctions rape

The Ugandan parliament has passed a controversial sexual offences bill which further criminalises same-sex relationships and sex work.

The laws were passed by MPs this week, reiterating sections of legislation first enforced in the country by British colonial rule. They condemn same-sex couples who perform acts deemed against the “order of nature” to 10 years’ imprisonment.

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Son of the soil Pedro Castillo promises a presidency for Peru

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Next month’s runoff election pits the 51-year-old teacher against the far-right daughter of the country’s 90s autocrat

By law, any president of Peru must be born on Peruvian soil. But few of the country’s past leaders know that soil like the frontrunning candidate in the current electoral race – the son of Andean peasant farmers, who grew up in poverty.

On a recent morning, Pedro Castillo wore a woollen poncho, sandals made from old car tyres and a traditional wide-brimmed straw hat as he tended to his cows on his farm in Chugur, a tiny hamlet seven hours’ drive from the city of Cajamarca.

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More trafficking victims facing forcible removal from UK under rule change

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Rights groups warn many more survivors face being locked up after MPs back Home Office change

More victims of trafficking will be locked up in detention and forcibly removed from the UK after MPs approved a change in Home Office rules relating to this vulnerable group, campaigners have warned.

MPs recently confirmed what is known as a statutory instrument. This change in rules relating to the detention of trafficking victims comes into force on 25 May and will require them to provide a higher standard of proof that they should not be detained.

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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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