Category Archives: Global development

‘Shot at by both sides’: Families flee as Taliban battles for territory in Kandahar

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Villages in southern Afghanistan have become frontline of conflict as peace talks stall and uncertainty surrounds US withdrawal

The people who lived in Spairwan village spent two days huddled in their homes, besieged by fighting, before the Taliban came and told them all to leave the area. Qayoom and his family were among 10,000 families pushed out of their homes as government and Taliban forces battled for territory in southern Afghanistan last month.

Qayoom found his new home was to be a couple of large sheets propped up over cold, bare earth, a shelter among many others in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP) on the outskirts of Kandahar city. But the shelter barely checks the icy blasts of bitter winter winds.

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Yazidis have been forgotten during Covid. They need justice, jobs and a return home | Nadia Murad

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Survivors of Islamic State brutality are pushed further into the margins as the pandemic causes the world to turn inward

Staring at the same four walls day after day, unable to find work, reunite with relatives, or send your children to school. The Covid pandemic has rendered this bleak picture a reality for many people across the globe. Yet for many who have survived or are living through conflict, these hardships are hardly novel.

For the Yazidi ethnic minority in Iraq, Islamic State’s 2014 genocide created adversity long before the pandemic ever did. For more than six years, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis have been in camps for internally displaced people (IDP) staring at the same four walls of their tents. They are unable to find work because Isis razed their farms and businesses. They cannot reunite with relatives still in Isis captivity or attend the burials of family members whose bodies remain in mass graves.

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Sri Lanka at ‘tipping point’ with risk of return to past atrocities, activists warn

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Civil rights groups say situation ‘getting worse on a daily basis’ as UN human rights chief expresses alarm over deepening impunity

Sri Lanka could descend swiftly back into violence and human rights abuses unless decisive international action is taken, the UN high commissioner for human rights and civil rights groups warned.

In a speech to the human rights council on Wednesday, Michelle Bachelet is expected to issue a stark warning that the Sri Lankan government has “closed the door” on ending impunity for past abuses and is facing a return to state repression of civil society and a militarisation of public institutions.

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Aung San Suu Kyi tattoos flourish among Myanmar’s resistance

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Studios report surge in requests for tattoos of the deposed civilian leader – and some are using their profits to support protesters

In the last three weeks, Ye, 37, has inked more images of Aung San Suu Kyi than throughout his 19 years of tattooing.

“We love and respect her because she has sacrificed so much for us,” he says, showing a photo of his latest artwork – a lifelike rendering of the deposed Myanmar leader, complete with jasmine flowers, on a woman’s back.

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Colombia’s ‘capital of horror’ despairs amid new wave of gang violence

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President urged to act as rival gangs use death and intimidation in their brutal turf war for control of Buenaventura

Clenching a fist, Tatiana Angulo talked about the killings of her neighbours’ two teenage sons.

“They got mixed up in it,” said Angulo, 34, who runs a peace theatre group, reenacting the stories of local victims. “We used to be able to hang out and have a laugh on the street corners, but now that’s where the killings happen.”

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Reporting on WTO’s first female head ‘sexist and racist’, say African UN leaders

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Coverage of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala criticised by group who say such attitudes ‘discourage women from taking on leadership positions’

Senior African leaders at the UN have criticised the “sexist and racist” language used in coverage of the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the new president of the World Trade Organization.

Okonjo-Iweala, a graduate of Harvard University, was confirmed as the new head of the WTO last week, making her the first woman and the first African to lead the organisation.

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Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup

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Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue

More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.

The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.

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Myanmar protesters hold general strike as crowds gather for ‘five twos revolution’

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Protesters compare date – 22.2.2021 – to 8 August 1988, when military cracked down on pro-democracy rallies

Protesters across Myanmar have held a general strike, taking to the streets across the country and shutting many businesses, in one of the largest nationwide shows of opposition to the military since it seized power three weeks ago.

Crowds assembled in Yangon, Naypyidaw, Mandalay and elsewhere on Monday, despite an apparent threat from the junta that it would again use deadly violence against demonstrators.

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‘He treated me as a slave’: Women face rising violence amid war in Yemen

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Civil war has drastically cut support services for women already at high risk of violence while displacing others who are now vulnerable to armed groups

Rima* was married the year civil war erupted in Yemen. She was 15 and for much of the time over the next five years, her husband kept her chained to a wall in their home in central Yemen. “He didn’t treat me as a wife, he treated me as a slave,” says the 21-year-old.

An aunt eventually took pity on Rima, taking her to a psychosocial support centre in the town of Turba, 90 miles (145km) north-west of Aden. According to a doctor there, Rima now suffers from a neurological disorder brought on by the constant beatings.

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‘Nobody wants this job now’: the gentle leaders of China’s Uighur exiles – in pictures

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Fleeing to Kyrgyzstan in the 1960s, communities established mosques and villages but the local leaders, or dzhigit-beshchis, are a dying breed

Dzhigit-beshchi is the name Uighur people in Kyrgyzstan give to the leader they elect for their mahallah – or community. Usually it’s a respected person, mostly an elderly man.

Pushed out of China during the repressions of the 1960s, tens of thousands of Uighurs went to the former Soviet Union when these ageing leaders were just young men. Sticking closely to relatives and acquaintances who had come to Soviet cities and villages in previous waves, they built mosques and mahallahs, each with its own dzhigit-beshchi.

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‘A pandemic of abuses’: human rights under attack during Covid, says UN head

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Exclusive: Freedoms have been crushed and free speech impeded by governments around the world, says António Guterres

The world is facing a “pandemic of human rights abuses”, the UN secretary general António Guterres has said.

Authoritarian regimes had imposed drastic curbs on rights and freedoms and had used the virus as a pretext to restrict free speech and stifle dissent.

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The world faces a pandemic of human rights abuses in the wake of Covid-19 | António Guterres

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The virus has been used as a pretext in many countries to crush dissent, criminalise freedoms and silence reporting

  • António Guterres is secretary general of the United Nations

From the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic almost one year ago, it was clear that our world faced far more than a public health emergency. The biggest international crisis in generations quickly morphed into an economic and social crisis. One year on, another stark fact is tragically evident: our world is facing a pandemic of human rights abuses.

Covid-19 has deepened preexisting divides, vulnerabilities and inequalities, and opened up new fractures, including faultlines in human rights. The pandemic has revealed the interconnectedness of our human family – and of the full spectrum of human rights: civil, cultural, economic, political and social. When any one of these rights is under attack, others are at risk.

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Myanmar coup: Facebook shuts down military’s main page as well-known actor arrested

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Lu Min taken from his home on Yangon as demonstrators take to streets in Mandalay after death of two protesters there on Saturday

Myanmar police have arrested a well-known actor wanted for opposing the military coup as Facebook deleted the military’s main page, saying it breached its standards prohibiting the incitement of violence.

Lu Min was one of six celebrities who the army said on Wednesday were wanted under an anti-incitement law for encouraging civil servants to join in the protest. The charges can carry a two-year prison sentence.

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Colombia tribunal reveals at least 6,402 people were killed by army to boost body count

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The killings, which took place between 2002 and 2008, were declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in war with rebel groups

A special peace tribunal in Colombia has found that at least 6,402 people were murdered by the country’s army and falsely declared combat kills in order to boost statistics in the civil war with leftist rebel groups. That number is nearly three times higher than the figure previously admitted by the attorney general’s office.

The killings, referred to in Colombia as the “false positives scandal”, took place between 2002 and 2008, when the government was waging war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc), a leftist guerrilla insurgency, which ultimately made peace with the government in 2016. Soldiers were rewarded for the manipulated kill statistics with perks, including time off and promotions.

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The number of people in need is frightening – we need a global response | Axel van Trotsenburg

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We can rise to the challenge of a green, resilient and inclusive recovery from Covid, but only if critical changes are made

The numbers are well-publicised but bear repeating. Around 120 million more people were pushed into extreme poverty in 2020, a number that could rise to 150 million in 2021. An estimated 250 million jobs have been lost around the world, and the number of people affected by acute food insecurity was estimated to have doubled to 272 million by the end of last year. A decade of progress in the most fragile countries wiped out.

Let’s put a human dimension on these numbers. More than a billion children have been out of school during the Covid-19 pandemic, and girls are much less likely to return to the classroom.

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Myanmar protester shot in head during police crackdown dies

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Grocery store worker Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, is the first protest fatality since military took control in coup two weeks ago

A woman who was shot in the head by police during protests in Myanmar last week has died – the first protest fatality since the military took control in a coup more than two weeks ago.

Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, 20, had been on life support since being taken to hospital on 9 February after she was hit by what doctors said was a live bullet at a protest in the capital, Naypyitaw.

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South Africa leads backlash against big pharma over Covid vaccine access

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Pressure mounts for patent waivers to allow poorer countries to develop their own manufacturing capacity to boost availability

The domination of global medicine by major pharmaceutical companies needs to be confronted to provide fairer access to vaccines, a leading South African official has said.

The scramble over Covid vaccines should alert rich countries to the power of profit-driven companies that control production of crucial medicines, said Mustaqeem De Gama, South Africa’s delegate at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on intellectual property rights.

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Yemen risks worst famine on planet in ‘decades’, say UN officials

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Thousands more civilians could be displaced due to attacks by Houthi rebels in Marib province

The conflict in Yemen has taken a “sharp escalatory turn” and the country is speeding towards the worst famine the world has seen in decades, UN officials have warned, as the US under Joe Biden takes a renewed interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the war.

In one of his more downbeat monthly assessments, the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths told the security council attacks by the Houthi rebels in Marib province are threatening to displace tens of thousands of civilians, many of whom had fled to Marib from fighting elsewhere in Yemen.

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Indigenous peoples face rise in rights abuses during pandemic, report finds

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Increasing land grabs endangering forest communities and wildlife as governments expand mining and agriculture to combat economic impact of Covid

Indigenous communities in some of the world’s most forested tropical countries have faced a wave of human rights abuses during the Covid-19 pandemic as governments prioritise extractive industries in economic recovery plans, according to a new report.

New mines, infrastructure projects and agricultural plantations in Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Indonesia and Peru are driving land grabs and violence against indigenous peoples as governments seek to revive economies hit by the pandemic, research by the NGO Forest Peoples Programme has found.

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Brazil health workers accused of giving Covid vaccinations with empty syringes

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Police are looking into allegations of so-called ‘wind vaccinations’ amid speculation about possible motives

Police in Brazil are investigating allegations that healthcare workers are giving fake Covid-19 inoculations, amid reports of nurses injecting people with empty syringes.

Cases of what local media are calling “wind vaccination” have been reported in four states, adding to the woes of the country’s halting and uncoordinated immunisation programme.

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