Category Archives: Aid

WHO ‘should pay reparations to victims of sexual abuse by staff’

Posted on by

Exclusive: UN agency must respond to the ‘real needs’ of the women and girls, says Julienne Lusenge, co-chair of the independent inquiry into the scandal

Survivors of sexual abuse by World Health Organization aid workers during the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Ebola outbreak in 2018 should receive “substantive” reparations, the co-chair of an independent inquiry into the scandal has said.

Julienne Lusenge, a prominent Congolese human rights activist, said it was “essential” that the UN’s global health body drew up a workable plan for reparations to respond to the “real needs” of women and girls who became victims of abuse.

Continue reading...

‘Living in a cave is no life’: Pakistani villagers trapped by Taliban and poverty

Posted on by

Seven years after fleeing army clashes with militants, 100 families eking out an existence on a hillside near the Afghan border are unable to return home

“Don’t talk to me about the government. They don’t help.”

Ninety-year-old Shah Mast is angry. He has been living in the cave he calls home for seven years, ever since an offensive by the Pakistan army against the Islamist militant group Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) destroyed his home.

Continue reading...

‘Humbled and heartbroken’: WHO finds its Ebola staff abused women and girls

Posted on by

Inquiry commissioned by WHO details sexual abuse, including rape allegations, during DRC outbreak

The World Health Organization has described itself as “heartbroken” after an independent inquiry it commissioned said scores of women and girls were sexually abused by aid workers during the devastating 2018-2020 Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The findings were described as “harrowing reading” by the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, while its regional director for Africa, Matshidiso Moeti, said she was “humbled, horrified and heartbroken”.

Continue reading...

16 million in Yemen ‘marching towards starvation’ as food rations run low – UN

Posted on by

Aid worker describes ‘horrific’ scenes in one hospital where starving and malnourished children ‘look like skeletons’

At least 5 million people in Yemen are on the brink of famine and a further 16 million are “marching toward starvation”, as the country’s humanitarian crisis spirals out of control.

The situation in Yemen, which has been torn apart by civil war, has been described as “rapidly deteriorating” by experts.

Continue reading...

‘A forgotten disaster’: earthquake-hit Haitians left to fend for themselves

Posted on by

With rural areas of the country left to suffer, aid workers fear funds are drying up as global compassion fatigue sets in

David Nazaire, a 45-year-old coffee farmer from Beaumont, a small village in rural southern Haiti, was getting ready to harvest when an earthquake struck his home and livelihood. Much of the farming infrastructure – as well as nearby homes, schools and churches – was damaged or completely destroyed. A month later, he and thousands of rural Haitians – those most severely affected by the tremor – are still waiting for relief, and are not expecting it to arrive soon.

“The earthquake didn’t destroy our crops, but it did take everything else,” Nazaire says, outside a neighbour’s house, now a pile of rubble beneath plastic roof tiles supported by the remnants of concrete walls. “We were just getting ready to harvest, but that’s lost now.”

Continue reading...

‘They left us to die’: UK’s Afghan aid staff in hiding from Taliban

Posted on by

Evacuation of employees, not contractors, ‘splitting hairs’, says HRW, warning of days left to save lives

Afghan employees who worked as contractors on UK aid projects fear for their lives after not being granted resettlement in Britain.

The Guardian has been in contact with four families who said they had been targeted by the Taliban because they worked for the UK government, and have now been forced into hiding.

Continue reading...

UK aid cuts make it vital to address anti-black bias in funding | Kennedy Odede

Posted on by

Covid-19 has shown the effectiveness of local partners. If the sector is to respond and rebuild, it must redistribute power

The UK’s cut to its aid budget comes to about £4bn a year. Such a dramatic reduction is a blow to many, but most of all to the local organisations who perpetually find themselves last in line for funding.

New research by the Vodafone Foundation reveals that, too often, only a small proportion of philanthropic funding earmarked for African development reaches local, African-led civil society organisations. Instead, most development funding favours intermediaries in the global north and international organisations.

Continue reading...

Yemen at war: conflict, chaos and rare joy – in pictures

Posted on by

Over the past four years, photographer Giles Clarke has reported from Yemen for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), documenting the tragedy of a country devastated by war but also the resilience of its people. The photojournalism festival Visa pour l’image is featuring his work at an exhibition in Perpignan, France

Continue reading...

‘A very cruel exit’: UK’s aid cuts risk rapid return of treatable diseases

Posted on by

£200m project to eliminate avoidable blindness and disfigurement in Africa ends after funding is prematurely axed

A chandelier sparkling in the background, the grandeur of Downing Street gleaming behind him, Boris Johnson looks into the camera and speaks with solemnity. He is marking World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day, he says, to raise awareness of these “terrible afflictions … which impose an immense burden of suffering in developing countries”.

Huge progress has been made, he says, in the fight against the diseases, not least as a result of British aid to some of the poorest parts of the world. But there is more – much more – to be done: more than a billion people are still at risk, he warns, and that is why the UK “fully supports” the World Health Organization’s big elimination push over the next decade.

Continue reading...

The Taliban are not the only threat to Afghanistan. Aid cuts could undo 20 years of progress

Posted on by

The most vulnerable people will bear the cost of sanctions, as services and the economy collapse

Watching Afghanistan’s unfolding trauma, I’ve thought a lot about Mumtaz Ahmed, a young teacher I met a few years ago. Her family fled Kabul during Taliban rule in the late 1990s.

Raised as a refugee in Pakistan, Ahmed had defied the odds and made it to university. Now, she was back in Afghanistan teaching maths in a rural girls’ school. “I came back because I believe in education and I love my country,” she told me. “These girls have a right to learn – without education, Afghanistan has no future.”

Continue reading...

‘I don’t see my mum’: Haiti’s earthquake leaves new generation of orphans

Posted on by

The number of children without carers is still not known, leaving them prey to gangs and abuse

Lilian, six years old and alone, still asks when her mother will return from the market on the edge of Les Cayes in southern Haiti.

When last month’s earthquake struck, Lilian was at home, occasionally checked on by her neighbours as her mother, Genieve, was selling fruit a few blocks away. When the ground began to convulse, the market partly collapsed. Genieve was hit by falling concrete and buried under rubble. Her death has left Lilian without anyone to care for her.

Continue reading...

Afghanistan services collapsing and aid about to run out, says UN

Posted on by

Unicef says hundreds of children have been separated from their families in chaos of Kabul evacuation

Access to food aid and other life-saving services in Afghanistan is close to running out, the United Nations has warned, as concern mounts that the country is facing a “looming humanitarian catastrophe”.

The grim assessment from the UN’s Office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs [OCHA] came amid an appeal for an extra $200m (£145m) in emergency funding in Afghanistan after the Taliban’s takeover sparked a host of new issues.

Continue reading...

‘Lost generation’: education in quarter of countries at risk of collapse, study warns

Posted on by

Covid, climate breakdown, poverty and war threaten return to school after pandemic kept 1.5bn children out of classes

The education of hundreds of millions of children is hanging by a thread as a result of an unprecedented intensity of threats including Covid 19 and the climate crisis, a report warned today.

As classrooms across much of the world prepare to reopen after the summer holidays, a quarter of countries – most of them in sub-Saharan Africa – have school systems that are at extreme or high risk of collapse, according to Save the Children.

Continue reading...

Racism doesn’t just exist within aid. It’s the structure the sector is built on | Themrise Khan

Posted on by

To disrupt colonial power inequalities, the global south needs to take more control

There have been many studies published recently on the prevalence of racism in the international aid sector.

They have ranged from definitions of racial equity within global development, to the experiences of black, indigenous and other people of colour working in the sector, to the British government’s delayed sub-inquiry into racism as part of a larger inquiry into the culture and philosophy of UK aid.

Continue reading...

‘They don’t come for us’: Haitians face agonising wait for help after quake

Posted on by

People in need of water, food and shelter are fending for themselves as aid response complicated by heavy rain, gangs and distrust of international agencies

On the morning a catastrophic earthquake struck southern Haiti, Jackson Mason, a barber, was picking up water and other shopping from Cavaillon’s bustling market.

“The earth below me started to shake – people were thrown into the air, others yelled, praying to Jesus to save them,” Mason, 35, says. “Everything flew in the air, even the wallets in people’s hands.”

Continue reading...

‘Use your £11bn climate fund to pay for family planning,’ UK told

Posted on by

More than 60 NGOs call for spending rule change, saying people on frontline of climate crisis want greater access to reproductive healthcare

The UK government has been urged to open up its £11bn pot of climate funding to contraception, as research from low-income countries shows a link between poor access to reproductive health services and environmental damage.

In a letter to Alok Sharma, president of the UN Cop26 climate conference, an alliance of more than 60 NGOs has called for the funding eligibility rules to be changed to allow projects concerned with removing barriers to reproductive healthcare and girls’ education to access climate funds.

Continue reading...

Haiti earthquake 10 days on: survivors still ‘hungry and thirsty’ – video report

Posted on by

The death toll is still rising 10 days after a catastrophic earthquake struck southern Haiti on the morning of 14 August. More than 2,200 deaths have been recorded so far, while at least 30,000 families have had to abandon their homes. Many were sleeping on the streets when Tropical Storm Grace struck two days later, bringing high winds and pelting rain. But despite the hardship, many Haitians are wary of the massive international aid response that is under way

Continue reading...

Haiti needs help, but ‘not from aid workers who never leave their SUVs’

Posted on by

Beset by earthquakes, poverty and gang violence, the country is desperate for aid. However it must be the right kind, say locals

The death toll is still rising 10 days after a catastrophic earthquake struck southern Haiti on the morning of 14 August, levelling much of Les Cayes and the surrounding region.

More than 2,200 deaths have been recorded so far, while at least 30,000 families have had to abandon their homes. Many were sleeping on the streets when Tropical Storm Grace struck two days later, bringing high winds and pelting rain.

Continue reading...

Afghanistan could start to run out of food by September, UN warns

Posted on by

World Food Programme calls for urgent aid as chaos of Taliban takeover and second drought in three years create dire humanitarian situation

UN agencies have warned of food shortages to Afghanistan as early as September without urgent aid funding, as it emerged first aid supplies, including surgical equipment and severe malnutrition kits, were stuck due to restrictions at Kabul airport.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday the closure of the airport to commercial flights has held up key deliveries.

Continue reading...

‘Devastating’: how UK’s foreign aid cuts could hurt the world’s poorest

Posted on by

Data analysis highlights the human cost if thousands of overseas projects lose funding

Experts have warned of “devastating” consequences of the UK’s foreign aid cuts after Guardian analysis revealed the UK is cutting funding at a time when major recipient countries are at risk of becoming more politically unstable.

Thousands of activities providing life-saving support are being cut due to the government’s decision to reduce aid spending to 0.5% of gross national income.

Continue reading...