Category Archives: Global development

‘The heart of darkness’: neighbors shun Brazil over Covid response

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Latin American countries scramble to protect themselves from a country where nearly 60,000 people are expected to die in March alone

It has long been regarded as a soft power superpower, the sun-kissed, culturally blessed land of Bossa Nova, Capoeira and Pelé.

But Brazil’s shambolic response to coronavirus under far-right president Jair Bolsonaro has cast Latin America’s largest country in an unfamiliar and unpleasant role: that of a Covid-riddled, science-shunning, politically-unstable outcast on whom many regional neighbors are now shutting the door.

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Osinbajo defies expectations as Nigeria’s vice-president

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Analysis: Buhari’s deputy wants to create jobs, feed pupils and cut red tape. Is he too high-profile for his critics?

The role of vice-president is one that John Adams, the first person in the US to hold the position, called “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived”.

Nigeria’s Patience Jonathan captured the situation in her sarcastic response to a journalist who asked about her husband, Goodluck Jonathan, when he was vice-president. She said: “He is in his office reading newspapers.”

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Isis claims deadly attack in northern Mozambique

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Attack on port town of Palma has forced hundreds of people to flee amid fierce fighting

The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for an attack on a town in northern Mozambique last week that forced hundreds of foreign contractors to flee amid fierce fighting.

Local police and soldiers were reported to have secured control of most of Palma on Monday, after hundreds of Islamist insurgents who overran the small port last week withdrew to surrounding forests and fields leaving a trail of devastation.

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EU announces funding for five new refugee camps on Greek islands

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Ylva Johansson’s visit Lesbos and Samos met with demonstrations from locals, as charities warn camps are ‘recipe for catastrophe’

The EU is to give Greece funding to build five new refuge camps on the Aegean islands.

Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner, visited Lesbos and Samos on Monday to announce that the EU would provide €250m of funding (£213m) for five new structures on the islands of Lesbos, Samos, Chios, Kos and Leros.

A large crowd of demonstrators gathered outside the town hall on the waterfront in Mytilene, the capital of Lesbos, to protest against her visit. Some wrapped themselves in Greek flags and others held signs calling for European solidarity. One sign read: “No to European Guantánamos. Shame on you, Europe.” Another said: “No structures on the island, Europe take responsibility.”

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Myanmar airstrikes cause thousands to flee across Thailand border

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About 3,000 estimated to have crossed over after junta attacks areas mostly populated by Karen people

A series of airstrikes by Myanmar’s military has driven thousands of people across the country’s border with Thailand, adding a new dimension to an already volatile and deadly crisis.

The strikes in areas populated predominantly by ethnic Karen people began on Saturday. Since then an estimated 3,000 villagers have fled across the Salween River into Thailand and an unknown number have become internally displaced in the jungles on the Myanmar side of the river.

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British aid cuts to leave tens of thousands of Syrians ‘paperless’

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Norwegian Refugee Council says move to pull funding for its legal support programme will leave many in ‘destitution’

Tens of thousands of Syrians will no longer receive legal support, leaving many “in utter destitution” without documents they need to work, travel or return home, after the British government pulled £4m in funding from a charity programme, according to its director.

News of the cut to a Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) project supporting refugees and internally displaced Syrians, comes amid reports of a planned 67% aid reduction in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) budget for Syria, which would place hundreds of thousands of lives at risk.

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No play, no pay: Covid drives Zimbabwe’s pros to unofficial football matches

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Informal games are a lifeline while the Premier League is locked down, but at what risk to players?

Sweaty and tired, the players tussle before the winning goal is scored on a red-dust pitch at the No 1 ground in Mufakose, a township west of Harare. The football fans start up a chant on the touchline, triggering a frenzied response from opposing supporters, who break into rapturous song.

This parched pitch and others like it have become a source of livelihood for some Zimbabwean footballers, struggling to earn a living during the Covid-19 pandemic’s lockdown regulations.

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Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on ‘sportswashing’, report reveals

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Exclusive: analysis finds nation has spent big on high-profile global sporting events in a bid to bolster its reputation

Saudi Arabia has spent at least $1.5bn on high-profile international sporting events in a bid to bolster its reputation, a new report reveals.

The oil-rich nation has invested millions across the sporting world, the report by the human rights organisation Grant Liberty says, from chess championships to golf, tennis and $60m alone on the Saudi Cup, the world’s richest horse-racing event with prize money of $20m.

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Fear turns to fury in Myanmar as children shot by military

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Bloody crackdowns and massacres initiate anger and stronger desire for a future without the Tatmadaw

From soldiers randomly shooting passersby in the street to imminent economic collapse, anxieties have been plentiful in Myanmar since its military seized power on 1 February.

But unease was surging ahead of Armed Forces Day on Saturday when the military was expected to meet protesters with a brutal crackdown.

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Four-fifths of Sudan’s £861m debt to UK is interest

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Freedom of information data will increase calls for country to be granted debt amnesty

When Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, was in Sudan in January he offered £40m in aid to help its poorest people, who are facing unprecedented food scarcity in a debt-laden country where austerity is deepening.

Sudan, ruled by an unelected military-led transitional government after longtime ruler Omar al-Bashir was deposed in 2019, owes the UK almost £900m. But the Observer can reveal that almost 80% of that was accrued from interest, leading to calls for an unconditional debt amnesty.

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Chile imposes lockdowns to fight new Covid wave despite vaccination success

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Nearly half the population has received at least one vaccine dose but residents of the capital and other regions face strict new curbs

Despite mounting the world’s fastest per-capita Covid-19 vaccination campaign, Chile has been forced to announce strict new lockdowns as it plunges deeper into a severe second wave of cases which is stretching intensive care capacity.

Chile trails only Israel and the UAE in vaccine doses per 100 inhabitants worldwide, but new cases have risen quickly amid mixed health messaging, travel over the southern hemisphere summer holidays and the circulation of new variants.

Related: Chile emerges as global leader in Covid inoculations with 'pragmatic strategy'

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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Covid third wave may overrun Africa’s healthcare, warns WHO

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Leap of 50% in cases in three months and just 7m jabs across continent ‘infecting 11 health workers an hour’

Rising cases of coronavirus in Africa threaten to overrun fragile healthcare systems and test the continent’s much-touted resilience to the disease, according to the World Health Organization’s regional office for the continent.

The global health body stated that infections were on the rise in at least 12 countries in Africa including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Kenya and Guinea.

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‘Bangladesh has come a long way’: people of Dhaka on half a century of independence

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A rickshaw rider, a domestic worker, a student and a photographer on how their lives have changed

Habibur Rahman, 48, rickshaw rider

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The making of a megacity: how Dhaka transformed in 50 years of Bangladesh

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In the half century since independence, the capital has grown from peaceful town to economic hub. But does it live up to the dreams of those still flocking to work there?

On the banks of the Buriganga, Old Dhaka’s boatmen only ever rest a moment before making their return journey, endlessly ferrying passengers back and forth across the river.

They pick them up at the Sadarghat docks, the historical trading hub that helped build the city, and row them towards the sprawling suburbs that have crept across what used to be open farmland two decades ago.

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‘They can see us in the dark’: migrants grapple with hi-tech fortress EU

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A powerful battery of drones, thermal cameras and heartbeat detectors are being deployed to exclude asylum seekers

Khaled has been playing “the game” for a year now. A former law student, he left Afghanistan in 2018, driven by precarious economic circumstances and fear for his security, as the Taliban were increasingly targeting Kabul.

But when he reached Europe, he realised the chances at winning the game were stacked against him. Getting to Europe’s borders was easy compared with actually crossing into the EU, he says, and there were more than physical obstacles preventing him from getting to Germany, where his uncle and girlfriend live.

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‘Ugliest crime’: Outcry in Sudan over lack of justice for killing of teenage girl

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Death of Samah el-Hadi, allegedly shot by her father, has led to outpouring of women sharing own stories of domestic violence

Thousands of people have signed a petition urging the Sudanese government to take action against a man released without charge by police after his 13-year-old daughter was shot dead.

Samah el-Hadi was shot three times and run over by a car, reports said. Neighbours have taken to social media to blame her father, who was briefly questioned by the authorities but released after telling them Samah had taken her own life. No postmortem was carried out on the girl’s body.

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Diversify or risk unrest, oil producers warned in report

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As world shifts to green energy, Iraq and Nigeria among those vulnerable to ‘wave of instability’

Oil-dependent countries that are not preparing to adapt to the global shift away from fossil fuels risk their own stability, warns a new report.

Algeria, Iraq and Nigeria are the most vulnerable to “a slow-motion wave of political instability”, according to the risk analysts Verisk Maplecroft.

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‘The Yanomami could disappear’ – photographer Claudia Andujar on a people under threat in Brazil

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Andujar lived with the tribe and fights for them. A timely show of her images comes to London soon


It is more than 50 years since Claudia Andujar began photographing the Yanomami, the people of the Amazon rainforest near Brazil’s border with Venezuela. Now 89, she is using her archive to increase their visibility, at a time when their survival is under renewed threat.

“The question of indigenous people should be more respected, more widely known. This is very important as it’s the only way the present [Brazilian] government will come to recognise their rights as human beings to occupy their land,” says Andujar, speaking from São Paulo. “This government isn’t interested in their rights.”

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‘Just write STOP’: the teenager helping Polish women flee abuse

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Schoolgirl’s fake cosmetics site helps hundreds of women as domestic violence rises during Covid

In April 2020, weeks after Poland went into its first Covid-19 lockdown, Krysia Paszko, a 17-year-old high school pupil, watched a TV report about Europe’s surge in domestic violence cases, which had increased by up to 60% on 2019, according to the World Health Organization. Poland’s largest women’s rights centre, Centrum Praw Kobiet (CPK), had reported a 50% increase in calls to its domestic violence hotline in March.

Learning from the report that France had implemented a scheme in pharmacies that women could use to report domestic violence using the codewords “Mask 19”, Paszko had an idea. With help from a graphic designer friend, she created a Facebook page for a fictitious cosmetics company.

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