Category Archives: Global development

Myanmar’s lost generation: young people sacrifice futures for freedom

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Dreams of careers and family life have been replaced with death and injury in the wake of the 1 February coup

For Myanmar’s young people, 2021 was supposed to be a year for optimism. After seeing through the Covid-19 pandemic, the rollout of the vaccine had begun and general elections in November had marked a step towards the country realising its potential.

But in the wake of the 1 February coup, their dreams have turned into nightmares, as many of Myanmar’s young people have found themselves forced to sacrifice their futures to take a stand against the military.

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‘Terrible days ahead’: Afghan women fear the return of the Taliban

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After 20 years of liberty, female education is once again threatened by hardline Islamists

Outside a college from which their mothers were banned, the women waited for friends finishing exams they fear will be some of the last they can take. “The Americans are leaving,” said Basireh Heydari, a Herat University student. “We have terrible days ahead with the Taliban. I’m worried they won’t let me leave the house, let alone what I’m doing now.”

The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan by 11 September will bring an end to the US’s longest war. With Nato allies such as Germany already announcing on Wednesday that they will follow Washington’s lead and exit the country, Afghans fear an intensification of fighting between the national government and the Taliban, who were ousted by the US-led intervention two decades ago.

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‘We cannot drink oil’: campaigners condemn east African pipeline

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Activists say the ‘heart of Africa’ line shipping crude from Uganda to Tanzania is unnecessary and poses a huge environmental risk

Activists have accused French and Chinese oil firms of ignoring huge environmental risks after the signing of accords on the controversial construction of a £2.5bn oil pipeline.

Uganda, Tanzania and the oil companies Total and CNOOC signed three key agreements on Sunday that pave the way for construction to start on the planned east African crude oil pipeline (EACOP). But on Tuesday a letter signed by 38 civil society organisations across both east African countries said the parties had failed to address environmental concerns over the pipeline and had steamrollered over court and parliamentary processes.

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Mexico’s vow to tighten border fails to deter US-bound migrants

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As the Biden administration enlists its neighbours in attempts to slow the flow of people, families seeking a future free from hunger and violence journey on

Groups of men, women and children stepped off small boats and on to Mexican soil without showing their documents to anyone.

Drivers quickly bundled them into taxis which sped past an immigration office to a nearby crossroad, where the travelers climbed into a vans for the next leg of their journey toward the US border.

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‘Marry your rapist’ laws in 20 countries still allow perpetrators to escape justice

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Critical UN report says the legislation is ‘deeply wrong’, subjugates women and shifts the burden of guilt on to the victim

Twenty countries still allow rapists to marry their victims to escape criminal prosecution, according to the UN’s annual state of world population report.

Russia, Thailand and Venezuela are among the countries that allow men to have rape convictions overturned if they marry the women or girls they have assaulted.

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Neglected tropical diseases are the landmines of global health | Albert Picado and John H Amuasi

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They are 20 disparate diseases that, like mines, unduly affect the world’s poorest people. Now there’s a plan to eradicate them by 2030

In January the World Health Organization launched a new strategy for eradicating neglected tropical diseases, boldly setting targets to eliminate 20 of them by 2030.

But what are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)? There is no easy answer. The concept was first proposed in the early 2000s to bring to light a group of diseases that disproportionately affect poor people yet, despite their collective impact, do not attract as much attention as diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis.

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‘We will lose more doctors’: Sudan’s health workers plead for Covid jabs

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Country has struggled to get vaccines to frontline medical staff, while Covid toll remains under-reported

More than 200 Sudanese doctors, nurses and medical workers have died from Covid-19, according to sources close to the health ministry – more than three times the official figure.

Like other countries across sub-Saharan Africa, Sudan has struggled to obtain vaccines and distribute them to frontline medical staff. Many of the doctors who have died were senior consultants in their 50s and 60s or older, and so were in high-risk categories.

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‘I felt humiliated’: parents respond to NHS maternity care racial bias inquiry

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Black, Asian and ethnic minority women report being denied pain relief or feeling unheard to panel investigating mortality disparity

Feeling manipulated into having medical procedures, dismissed by professionals and labelled with racial stereotypes are among the complaints of parents who responded to a national inquiry into racial injustice in UK maternity care.

A panel established by the charity Birthrights is investigating discrimination ranging from explicit racism to racial bias and microaggressions that amount to poorer care.

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Purple revolution: India’s farmers turn to lavender to beat drought

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Faced with climate change, farmers in Jammu and Kashmir are switching from maize to essential oils

It’s late June and the field is glowing with fragrant purple as the women in their flowing shalwar kameez arrive with scythes to harvest the lavender. In the 30-odd villages on the hilly slopes of Jammu’s Doda district, more than 200 farmers have shifted from maize to lavender production, starting a “purple revolution” in the region.

The village of Lehrote had a moment of agricultural fame this year when a 43-year-old farmer, Bharat Bhushan, won a prestigious award for innovative farming from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, one of several institutions across the country looking to find ways of coping with the climate crisis and its devastating impact on farming. Lavender, a drought-resistant crop, can be grown on poor soil and likes lots of sun but needs little water.

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‘My son could die’: the disabled Syrian refugees on the sharp end of UK aid cuts – photo essay

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Two centres in Lebanon are among the casualties of cuts to British aid, with devastating consequences for thousands of patients and families

In January, the British government told its diplomats to start finding 50–70% cuts in aid funding. In March, it was revealed it was slashing aid funding to Syrian refugee projects by a third. Among the many casualties of those cuts is a project in Lebanon.

Two centres – in Zahlé and in Beirut – offer specialised services, such as speech and physiotherapy, for disabled Syrian refugees who can’t afford to pay for them.

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‘Out of Trump playbook’: UK accused of ‘abandoning’ women with cuts to aid

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Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends

The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.

The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

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Gordon Brown calls for G7 to act on Covid vaccine ‘apartheid’

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Former prime minister says group should commit to global vaccine drive and slams UK’s foreign aid cut

Preventing poor countries suffering from vaccine “apartheid” will require the G7 group of rich nations to commit $30bn (£22bn) a year to a global immunisation drive, Gordon Brown has said.

The former Labour prime minister said the UK should use June’s G7 summit in Cornwall to rekindle the moral purpose of the Make Poverty History campaign of 2005, paying for its share of the new fund by reversing the government’s “misguided” cut to the foreign aid budget.

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‘People don’t want any of them’: Peru election sees unpredictable contest

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About 28% of Peruvians wouldn’t choose any of the candidates, poll shows ahead of Sunday’s vote

An ultra-conservative millionaire who admits to scourging himself daily to repress sexual desire is just one of an assortment of low-polling candidates who all have a shot at becoming Peru’s next president.

Rafael López Aliaga is technically tied with five other contenders in an unpredictable contest to make a runoff vote in June, including a former goalkeeper, a Sorbonne-educated socialist and the daughter of the country’s jailed former leader Alberto Fujimori.

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Sassou rules like an emperor while Congolese die from extreme poverty | Vava Tampa

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The world has turned a blind eye to Denis Sassou Nguesso’s controversial re-election, which will extend his iron-fisted reign to more than 40 years

The result of last month’s presidential election in Congo-Brazzaville brought no surprises. After 36 years in power, Denis Sassou Nguesso, 77, clinched 88% of the vote with a turnout of more than 67%. Accusations of vote irregularities, including ballot box stuffing, were widespread. His closest rival, who had urged for a “vote for change” died of Covid on the day of the vote.

Television showed a triumphant Sassou at home with his smiling henchmen, as the interior minister, Raymond Zéphirin Mboulou – instead of the head of the electoral commission – announced the win. The question now is whether or not the African Union, the US, the EU, the UK and former colonial power France will simply turn a blind eye to another disputed election result while Congolese are dying from extreme poverty?

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‘Kill the bill’ and trans visibility: human rights this fortnight in pictures

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A round-up of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to China

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The ‘forgotten’ people picking your Brazil nuts – for a fraction of the price

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Rich profits from the prized nut have failed to benefit those finding them. Now cooperatives hope to shake up the system

On a steamy March morning, Edivan Kaxarari walks with a few other villagers in single file down a trail in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil’s Rondônia state, near the border with Bolivia.

His sister-in-law Cleiciana carries her 11-month-old son in one arm and a rifle in the other, and his brother Edson clears the path ahead with a machete. It is hunting season for the seeds of the Amazonian Brazil nut tree.

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Aid agencies can be harmful, says Somaliland tycoon

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Ismail Ahmed, a refugee turned multimillionaire, says his country has had to battle ‘negative PR’

Aid agencies are hindering development and undermining efforts to attract investment in Somaliland, according to a former World Bank and UN official turned entrepreneur.

Ismail Ahmed, founder of the money-transfer company WorldRemit, claims Somaliland, his birthplace, has had to battle “negative PR” from aid agencies exaggerating their role to protect their interests. Somaliland declared itself a sovereign state independent of Somalia in 1991, but it is not recognised internationally.

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Inside Somalia’s impasse: election talks collapse amid mistrust and blame

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Leaders holed up inside Mogadishu’s high-security international airport have failed to agree a plan, risking further unrest

For nearly a month, men from the militias of at least two of Somalia’s five federal member states have been stationed inside Mogadishu’s high-security international airport compound as their leaders attend a circuit of meetings to end the electoral impasse.

The huge complex bristles with barbed wire and armed men in and out of uniforms. In the car park of one of the compound’s hotels, a four-wheel pickup truck mounted with a large gun idles. A handful of young men have built a makeshift camp around the car.

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Women and young people could determine Ecuador’s election outcome

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Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso are seeking to expand support by broadening agendas to include LGBTQ+ rights, race and gender

Women and young people could play a decisive role in determining the outcome of Ecuador’s elections this weekend – and the two male candidates are doing all they can to attract the oft-sidelined sectors of the country’s electorate.

Andrés Arauz, the protegé of former president Rafael Correa won 32.7% of the vote in the first-round vote in February and faces three-time presidential candidate, conservative banker Guillermo Lasso, who won 19.7%, in a runoff vote on this Sunday, 11 April.

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‘Think of others’: elderly people in Zimbabwe dispel scepticism on Covid vaccine

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While younger generations remain suspicious, growing numbers of senior citizens are taking up the jab

They may be old, frail, and vulnerable but they are the foot soldiers at the front of Zimbabwe’s Covid vaccination drive. Amid widespread scepticism among the younger population, it is elderly people who are coming out to lead by example.

The queues at the vaccination centres in the capital, Harare, are dominated by older people. At Wilkins Hospital, Felda Mupemhi, 85, grasps her walking stick as she trudges toward a white tent, where nurses are administering the Sinopharm vaccine.

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