Death toll from the assault near northern town of Gorgadji leaves 59 civilians dead, along with six militiamen and 15 military police
Burkina Faso’s president has declared three days of national mourning after suspected jihadists killed 80 people, including 59 civilians, in an attack in the north of the country.
The attack was the latest bloodshed in an area with high levels of Islamist violence.
Continue reading...The woman, who was trying to make the trip from Africa, was found lying next to two bodies and ‘in a bad state’, officials say
About 40 migrants are feared dead after rescuers recovered a lone woman clinging to an overturned dinghy that had been carrying dozens of people trying to reach the Canary Islands.
A rescue helicopter carrying the survivor – a 30-year-old woman who appeared exhausted and shaken – landed at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria airport on Tuesday, after a cargo ship found her 135 miles off the coast.
Continue reading...Ayten Amin’s Souad is a razor-sharp portrayal of sisterhood and sexual awakening that is rarely represented on screen
When the Egyptian director Ayten Amin was 10 years old, a classmate’s sister killed herself. The news gripped the school. But, in a society where suicide is a sin, no one talked about it; instead, they mourned the girl as though she had died mysteriously, or in an accident. “When I was shooting my first film, it suddenly hit me,” Amin says over a video call from her home in Cairo. “How did my classmate feel back then? How did she grow up knowing what happened, but with no one talking about it?”
In her new film, Souad, Amin explores precisely this: the hidden lives of teenage girls in Egypt. It follows the title character (played by Bassant Ahmed) and Rabab (Basmala Elghaiesh), sisters of 19 and 13 living in Zagazig, a small city 40 miles north of Cairo in the Nile delta. To her family and friends, Souad is as religious as she is studious – but she lives a different life online. She has virtual relationships with men and becomes enthralled by the glamorous-seeming Ahmed (Hussein Ghanem), an influencer from the fashionable Mediterranean city of Alexandria. Their relationship begins to sour when Souad stands up Ahmed for a real-life date; it gets steadily worse as a cycle of sexts and arguments sets in. Then tragedy strikes.
Continue reading...From Bolivia’s Lake Titicaca to wildlife tourism in Nepal, we find out how the crisis has affected people in four travel hotspots – and whether or not they want the tourists to return
In March last year, it was predicted that the global travel shutdown would cause international arrivals to plummet by 20 to 30% by the end of 2020.
Six weeks later, the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) revised their warning: international arrivals could fall by up to 80% – equating to a billion fewer tourists and the worst crisis in the history of the industry.
Continue reading...As Covid continues to curb visits to see our iconic wildlife, now is the time to move away from western-led funding models
That African governments have failed to mobilise funds to conserve their vast protected areas is not in doubt. Countries were just about managing to pay basic salaries to rangers who barely had enough to put fuel in their patrol vehicles. Covid has exacerbated this already dire situation, with the loss of income from foreign tourism.
The continent has more than 8,500 protected areas, described by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as government-led national parks, areas jointly governed by state agencies, communities, privately owned wildlife reserves, and public-private partnerships between governments, companies and NGOs. Included too, are what the IUCN calls “indigenous peoples and communities conserved territories and areas”.
Continue reading...The oil firms have fled and an Isis-affiliated insurgency has engulfed the region. As foreign troops begin to arrive, hundreds of thousands face desperate journeys to try to find safety
Pencils scratch as students in year eight feverishly work through an exam paper. At the back of the classroom, Clara Edna Chevambo, 37, a minute figure in hand-me-down clothes, finishes first and hands her paper to the teacher. As she leaves, her 11-year-old daughter is arriving for afternoon class. A vegetable farmer who supported, clothed and fed five children, her mother and her grandmother, Chevambo is now living in a borrowed tent in a camp, one of the ones with something to do to fill a few hours.
“I’m in school every day, and I don’t want to miss class. I send my daughter to school every day.”
Continue reading...The man had handed himself in to authorities, but was dragged out of a police van and set on fire
Algerian police have announced another 25 arrests over the lynching of a man falsely accused of starting deadly forest fires last week, taking the total number of suspects to 61.
The latest arrests were made in several provinces across the country, police said in a statement on Tuesday, adding that the suspects were also accused of damaging public and police property.
Continue reading...The fate of a planned line from Uganda to Tanzania will be the first test of whether anyone was listening to António Guterres’ call to end fossil fuels
If there is one world leader trying to look out for the planet as a whole, not just their own nation, it’s the UN secretary general. Last week, António Guterres was resolute in the wake of the damning report from the IPCC on the perilious climate crisis. It should, he said, sound “a death knell for coal and fossil fuels, before they destroy our planet”.
He called for an end to “all new fossil fuel exploration and production”, and told countries to shift fossil fuel subsidies into renewable energy.
Continue reading...Five years after Willie Kimani’s death, his father is still waiting for a resolution. But as killings continue, cases like his pile up within a crippled justice system
Paul Kinuthia will never forget the moment he saw his son’s body lying on the bank of the river he played in as a child. He threw his hands up in despair and begged God to intervene.
It has been five years since Kinuthia’s son, Willie Kimani, a lawyer, was murdered along with his client, Josephat Mwenda and driver, Joseph Muiruri, in Nairobi in June 2016. At the time, Kimani was representing Mwenda in court, after Mwenda had been shot and injured by police.
Continue reading...While western governments get ready to administer booster shots, millions in Africa are still completely unprotected
In a shocking symbol of the west’s failure to honour its promise of equitable vaccine distribution, millions of Covid vaccines manufactured in Africa that should have saved the lives of Africans have been shipped to Europe in recent weeks. Indeed, this month and next, I have learned from African leaders that about 10m single-shot Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccines filled and finished at the Aspen factory in South Africa will be exported to Europe, at the very time that Africa is grappling with its deadliest wave of Covid-19 infections yet.
Compared with the swift development of the pathbreaking Covid vaccines, getting shots into all the world’s arms should be straightforward. But vaccine nationalism – and Europe’s neocolonial approach to global health – is dividing the world into rich and protected people, who live, and those who are poor, unprotected and at risk of dying.
Continue reading...Former UK prime minister calls on western leaders to convene summit to address Africa’s vaccine deficit
Gordon Brown has accused the EU of adopting a “neocolonial approach” to the supply of Covid-19 vaccines and demanded rich western nations relinquish their stranglehold on pandemic treatments.
The former UK prime minister has called on Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi to convene a special summit to coincide with next month’s UN general assembly in New York to address Africa’s vaccine deficit.
Continue reading...From Khartoum to Kansas, vaccine conspiracy theorists share one thing in common: they have lost their faith in government
It’s hard to explain what it feels like when someone you thought you knew intimately starts to repeat conspiracy theories about the pandemic and vaccines. You don’t really grasp what’s happening immediately: it’s too vast and jarring a realisation to gulp down in one go. So you go through phases. First you clutch at straws. Perhaps it’s a bad joke, or they didn’t really mean it, or they’re just misinformed. Then you enter a stage of hot, disorienting rage and frustrated remonstration. Once that is spent, finally you cool off. But inside you is a leaden realisation that not only is this person you love putting their life at risk: perhaps you never really knew them at all.
People with the wildest theories about the pandemic can be found in countries even where most people don’t have access to the internet, cable TV or the shock jocks of commercial radio. A common impulse is to write off those espousing conspiracies, consigning them to the casualties claimed by WhatsApp groups, disinformation or silent mental health issues. These things may be true – but vaccine hesitancy is a symptom of broader failures. What all people wary of vaccines have in common, from Khartoum to Kansas, is their trust in the state has been eroded. Without understanding this, we will be fated to keep channelling our frustrations towards individuals without grasping why they have lost trust in the first place.
Continue reading...Woman, 18, is in intensive care in Abidjan as emergency plan to identify her contacts begins
Ivory Coast has recorded a case of Ebola, its health minister has said, the first occurrence of the deadly disease in the country in nearly three decades.
Officials at the Institut Pasteur confirmed the case after testing samples taken from an 18-year-old Guinean woman, health minister Pierre N’Gou Demba said on RTI state television.
Continue reading...A round-up of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Thailand to Mexico
Continue reading...Hundreds of sexual assaults reported in south-east Tanganyika province as armed groups fight over goldmines
The UN has raised the alarm over widespread, systematic sexual violence in the south-eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), saying women were reporting armed groups carrying out mass rape.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN refugee agency, said its staff have heard horrific testimonies from forcibly displaced persons in Tanganyika province.
Continue reading...Tributes paid to doctor whose NGO set up world-class hospitals in war zones such as Iraq, Yemen and Sudan
Tributes have been paid to Gino Strada, the Italian surgeon and “maestro of humanity” known for setting up world-class hospitals for the victims of war, who has died aged 73.
The medic, who in 1994 co-founded the humanitarian organisation Emergency to provide free, quality healthcare for those injured in conflict, died on Friday in France, reports said.
Continue reading...The writer on a stressful commute in Nigeria’s largest city on a day of downpours in 2007
• Read other authors on their memorable urban summers
It had been raining all day the way an old goat pees, in fits and starts, with bleats of sunshine in between. This was a weekday in July 2007, the magical year I moved to Lagos, and only a few months into the nine-to-five that lured me over. The excitement of waking up every day at 5am and catching a jam-packed danfo bus for the two-hour commute had since curdled in my wannabe-writer’s heart. I was standing at Obalende bus stop that afternoon after work, with no bus in sight for the past 40 minutes and rumours of a citywide gridlock swirling around, when the rain started again, a sun shower, proof, they say, that a lion is being born.
Fare hikes were expected on days of heavy traffic, but this time the fare had tripled. Outraged howls rent the air
Continue reading...Damage from pandemic could quash ambitions, exacerbate tensions and deepen repression in parts of continent
Analysts and experts are warning of many years of instability across Africa, possibly leading to wars and political upheavals, as the economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic deepens across the continent.
Though many of the likely consequences are yet to become evident, recent unrest in southern Africa, increased extremist violence in the Sahel and growing instability in parts of west Africa can all be attributed in part to the outbreak, observers say.
Continue reading...Fears grow that military presence and alleged restrictions on opposition campaign could tarnish reputation for fair elections
As Zambia goes to the polls today, fears are growing that political meddling in the process could push its long-treasured democracy towards a “tipping point”.
Zambia has long been considered a model of democracy for its neighbours. But today’s vote has been accompanied by a military deployment, while the run-up to the election has been marred by political violence and restrictions on opposition campaigning, analysts and human rights monitors have said.
Continue reading...Medics fear government is failing to gather data as ‘social media conspiracies’ slow vaccination take-up
Lesotho’s prime minister, Moeketsi Majoro, has said he is isolating after testing positive for Covid-19, as doctors warned that the true tally of cases in the country was going unrecorded.
Majoro tweeted that he had taken a travel-related test that came back positive.
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