Save the Children predicts worst rise in child marriage rates in 25 years as a result of pandemic
Up to 2.5 million more girls around the world are at risk of being forced into child marriage over the next five years as a result of the impact of Covid-19, according to a report by Save the Children.
The charity predicts the worst surge in rates of child marriage in 25 years, as the pandemic has shuttered schools and pushed poor families further into destitution.
Continue reading...Female musicians say abuse by gurus has been an open secret for years in a culture where ‘toxic and old-fashioned patriarchy’ holds sway
One of India’s most venerated cultural traditions – the centuries-old guru-shishya (disciple) method of learning classical music and dance – has been hit by allegations of sexual abuse.
A group of 90 female classical musicians issued a statement in September, alleging sexual abuse and exploitation of female disciples by their gurus. They described a “fear-driven culture of silence” that forced women to submit to the sexual demands of their gurus for fear of having to end their careers.
Continue reading...Authorities froze bank accounts after criticism of government’s human rights record
Amnesty International has been forced to shut down operations in India and lay off all staff after the Indian government froze its bank accounts.
The Indian enforcement directorate, an agency that investigates economic crimes, froze the accounts of Amnesty’s Indian arm this month after the group published two reports highly critical of the government’s human rights record.
Continue reading...With 17 children missing every day, the city’s police commissioner hopes a promise of fast-track promotion will inspire officers to reunite more families
New Delhi Police Commissioner SN Srivastava was particularly troubled over the 17 children who went missing in his city every day. So he decided to light a fire in the belly of his force and came up with a new approach.
If any officer could find 50 missing children in a year their promotion would be fast-tracked. It usually takes constables at least five years to be promoted to head constable, and meeting the target would dramatically speed that up.
Continue reading...Milestone is known toll of months of Covid pandemic that has changed everything, from power balances to everyday life
Though an inevitable milestone for months, its arrival is still breathtaking.
Deaths from Covid-19 exceeded 1 million people on Tuesday, according to a Johns Hopkins University database, the known toll of nine relentless months of a pandemic that has changed everything, from global balances of power to the mundane aspects of daily life.
Continue reading...Greta Thunberg leads protests as Covid rules restrict numbers compared with last year
School pupils, youth activists and communities around the world have turned out for a day of climate strikes, intended to underscore the urgency of the climate crisis even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Social distancing and other Covid-19 control measures dampened the protests, but thousands of activists posted on social media and took to the streets to protest against the lack of climate action from world leaders. Strikes were scheduled in at least 3,500 locations around the globe.
Continue reading...Extreme weather, locust invasions and violence have forced people to flee their homes
Millions of people were uprooted from their homes by conflict, violence and natural disasters in the first six months of this year, research has found.
Nearly 15m new internal displacements were recorded in more than 120 countries between January and June by the Swiss-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).
Continue reading...‘Leisure is a feminist issue’ says Surabhi Yadav, whose photography project captures carefree moments of women around her
When Surabhi Yadav’s mother, Basanti, died Yadav realised she had never really known her. “I knew her as my mother, but nothing else,” she says. “I asked one of her friend’s how she remembered her and she told me: ‘She was the funniest and goofiest in our group.’ Those were not words I associated with my mother. I thought of her as a very serious person.”
Her father was the “funny one”, she thought, although her mother never appreciated his humour. “Now, as an adult, I understand that part of it is that my father’s jokes were often sexist, often at her expense.”
Continue reading...Girls in Uttar Pradesh targeted in assaults aiming to reinforce caste and gender hierarchies, say activists
A spate of brutal rapes and murders of young girls in a single district of India over the past month has provoked outrage and exposed the ongoing use of sexual violence as a tool of oppression and revenge against lower caste communities.
Over the past month, the Lakhimpur Kheri district of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has witnessed four incidents of girls being raped and brutally murdered. At least two of the girls were Dalits, the lowest caste in the Hindu system of social hierarchy, who were previously referred to as “untouchables” and cast out from society.
Continue reading...Our South Asia correspondent on how coronavirus has affected a country’s livelihoods, faith and democracy
Pacing through the labyrinth of old Delhi, a place where life usually leaks out of every crack, I found myself straining my ears for the familiar sounds of chaos. But gone were the noises of the teeming vegetable markets and the horns of rickshaws piled so high with baskets they seem to defy the laws of physics; gone were the calls of the chai wallahs, the hiss of parathas on the griddle and the loud bleating of the goats who, in winter months, are dressed in bright jumpers to protect them from the cold. This was late March, days after a nationwide lockdown was imposed across India, and Delhi had never seemed so silent.
Reporting on south Asia during the pandemic has been a strange, and at times frustrating, experience. The strict lockdown meant state borders were shut, trains were stopped for the first time in history and all domestic and international flights grounded. I was stuck in Delhi, a city I love and call my home, but which is also a notorious bubble in which it can be hard to get a real sense of what is going on across the rest of India.
Continue reading...Cases hit daily record in Czech Republic; Austria ‘experiencing start of second wave’; 74 people at an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne
An Israeli cabinet minister, who heads an ultra-orthodox Jewish party in Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative coalition, has tendered his resignation in protest at a looming coronavirus lockdown. Housing minister Yaakov Litzman argued the restrictions would unfairly impede religious celebrations of Jewish holidays.
The rules - the most extensive Israel will have imposed since a lockdown that ran from late March to early May - are expected to go into effect on Friday, the Jewish new year Rosh Hashana, and span into the Yom Kippur fast day on 27 September.
This wrongs and scorns hundreds of thousands of citizens. Where were you until now? Why have the Jewish holidays become a convenient address for tackling the coronavirus...?
We have to move on, to make the decisions necessary for Israel in the coronavirus era, and that is what we will do in this session.
India has reported 94,372 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Sunday, taking total cases past 4.7 million.
The daily increase was down on the record global spike in the previous 24 hours of 97,570 new cases and came after three days of recording more than 95,000 new cases. Infections have been growing faster in India than anywhere in the world.
Continue reading...Educators in the disputed region are fighting to keep pupils on track amid repeated lockdowns, curfews and internet blackouts
Asmat Jan, 15, practises her singing in a meadow, against a backdrop of Kashmir’s towering mountains. In front of her, around 50 other children squat in perfect, straight lines. A couple of adults hover nearby.
Education has gone open-air across the valley in Indian-administered Kashmir and this is one of the many makeshift community classes that have sprung up in response to the repeated closure of schools under two separate lockdowns, alongside a communication blackout in this hotly disputed territory imposed in August last year. While political restrictions have eased a little in Kashmir since India revoked the region’s special status and degree of autonomy, a brief reopening of education in February lasted only until April’s Covid-19 lockdown brought classes to yet another grinding halt.
Continue reading...With 4.1m cases, south Asian nation is now second only to US in terms of number of infections
India has surpassed Brazil to become the country with the second highest number of coronavirus cases, as the virus continues to spread through the country of 1.3 billion at the fastest rate of anywhere in the world.
India recorded more than 90,000 cases overnight, bringing the number of infections in the country past 4.2 million and overtaking Brazil, which with 4.1 million cases had been the second worst-affected country for several months.
Continue reading...Seven French departments placed on high alert; UK sees 3,000 cases in one day, the highest figure since May
India has recorded a global one-day record of more than 90,000 positive coronavirus cases, taking the country past Brazil as the second most infected country in the world, with 4.2m confirmed cases.
On Sunday India recorded 90,802 new cases and 1,016 deaths. The worst affected state continues to be Maharashtra, home to the financial capital, Mumbai. It has had nearly a quarter of the country’s total infections, and on Sunday it reported a record 23,350 new cases.
Continue reading...Cases reach 3.85m as expert claims emphasis on recovery rates fuels public apathy
India reported a record daily rise of 83,883 coronavirus infections on Thursday, taking its total to 3.85 million cases, just as the country pushed ahead with attempting a return to normality and kickstarting its economy.
India now has the fastest growing Covid-19 infection rate in the world, and is only 100,000 cases behind Brazil, the second worst-affected country in the world. Experts are predicting that the south Asian nation will soon overtake Brazil (4 million) and then the US (6.1 million) to hold the dubious title of having the highest number of cases globally.
Continue reading...Military buildup increases fears of further confrontations between nuclear powers
India has moved troops to the eastern stretch of its border with China since clashes erupted between the nuclear-armed rivals on the western part of their border in the Himalayas in June, a government official said.
The clashes in the Ladakh region in June, in the western part of their border, was the worst violence between the countries in decades and there has been little sign of a reduction in tension, with further military action in the past week.
Continue reading...Hungary introduces measures stricter than at height of pandemic; Greek pupils’ return delayed for a week; Spain saw 75% drop in tourists
Spain recorded 8,115 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday evening, 2,731 of them diagnosed in the previous 24 hours, according to the latest figures from the national health ministry.
The latest statistics bring the country’s total to 470,973 cases, of which 99,889 have been logged over the past fortnight. Over the past seven days, 159 people have died from the virus, bringing the death toll to 29,152.
Cuban authorities launched a strict 15-day lockdown of Havana on Tuesday in order to stamp out the low level but persistent spread of coronavirus in the capital.
Aggressive anti-virus measures, including closing down air travel, have virtually eliminated Covid-19 in Cuba with the exception of the capital, where cases have increased from a handful a day to dozens daily over the last month.
Continue reading...US tops 6m cases; Scotland records 160 new cases overnight; Russia reports almost 5,000 new cases
Here’s a quick recap of the latest coronavirus developments from the last few hours.
Next year’s GCSE and A-level exams could be pushed back to give pupils more time to study the syllabus, the England’s education secretary has said.
Gavin Williamson said England’s exams regulator, Ofqual, was working with the education sector to decide whether there should be a “short delay” to the exam timetable in 2021.
I know there’s some concern about next year’s exams, and that’s why we’ve been working with Ofqual on changes we can make to help pupils when they take GCSEs and A-levels next year.
Ofqual will continue to work with the education sector and other stakeholders on whether there should be a short delay to the GCSE, A and AS-level exam timetable in 2021, with the aim of creating more teaching time.
Ministers had warning after warning about problems with this year’s exam results, but allowed it to descend into a fiasco.
This is too important for Boris Johnson to leave until the last minute. Pupils heading back to school need clarity and certainty about the year ahead.
Labour’s suggestion of a delay to help with ‘catch-up’ is worthy of serious consideration.
A delay is not without its problems, a consequential delay to the publication of results will put pressure on higher education providers such as universities and colleges as well as employers. All this will need to be dealt with.
Continue reading...Defence ministry claims it countered Chinese moves that ‘violated the consensus’ on the standoff in the Ladakh region
India has said its soldiers thwarted China’s “provocative” military movements near a disputed border in Ladakh region amid a months-long standoff.
A statement by India’s defence ministry said China’s Peoples Liberation Army “carried out provocative military movements to change the status quo” and “violated the previous consensus arrived at during military and diplomatic engagements” to settle the standoff in the cold-desert region.
Continue reading...Parisian pedestrians must wear face coverings from Friday; Spain says school children over six must wear masks; China goes 12 days without local case
India has set a new national record of daily coronavirus infections, reporting more than 77,000 cases in 24 hours, just shy of the global one-day record tally held by America.
India’s health ministry reported 77, 266 new cases on Friday. The largest ever one day rise is 78,427, reported by the US on 25 July. India also recorded more than 1,000 new deaths taking total fatalities, to 61,529, the fourth highest total in the world, behind the US, Brazil and Mexico.
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