Pact covers security, land ownership, power sharing and return of displaced people
Sudan’s government has agreed to a peace deal with five rebel groups in a move seen by observers as a significant step towards resolving multiple deep-rooted civil conflicts that have caused immense suffering in the country for decades.
The agreement will provide a welcome boost to the transitional government that took power after the fall of the authoritarian ruler Omar al-Bashir last year.
Continue reading...Rusesabagina’s role saving refugees during 1994 genocide inspired award-winning film
A businessman whose role in saving more than a thousand lives inspired the film Hotel Rwanda has been arrested on terrorism-related charges in the small east African country.
Paul Rusesabagina, 66, was the general manager of a luxury hotel in Kigali, the capital, during the 1994 genocide, in which an estimated 800,000 people were killed with knives, clubs and other weapons.
Continue reading...Covid could be ‘the straw that breaks the camel’s back’ health workers warn. Photographers Fardosa Hussein and Ismail Taxta captured a country battling seemingly insurmountable odds
Considering the country was in the middle of a pandemic, the silence at the entrance to Mogadishu’s De Martini hospital felt almost numbing, the expected noise replaced by stillness in its deserted, sanitised halls.
It sent a chill through me as I arrived in May to capture the work being done at what was, until recently, the Somali capital’s only hospital taking coronavirus patients. It felt like a prison.
Continue reading...Photojournalist Zohra Bensemra met Sambe, who is inspiring girls to take to the waves in Dakar, and has documented her family and surfing life
Continue reading...PM suspends interior minister over claims he acted unlawfully by supporting street protests
A power struggle in Libya’s UN-backed government that erupted over street protests has raised fears about the future of fragile peace-building efforts after its prime minister, Fayez al-Sarraj, said the interior minister had acted unlawfully in giving his backing to the calls for improved living standards.
The surprise developments, unfolding over the past week, move Libya away from a carefully planned UN-backed move to build on a ceasefire and plans to resume oil production agreed a fortnight ago.
Continue reading...National park authorities rule out poaching and cyanide poisoning
Parks authorities in Zimbabwe are investigating the mysterious death of 11 elephants in a forest in the west of the country after ruling out cyanide poisoning and poaching.
The carcasses of the elephants were discovered on Friday in Pandamasue forest, located between Hwange national park and Victoria Falls.
Continue reading...UNHCR and IOM say 200 rescued people urgently need to get off Banksy-funded ship
The UN refugee agency urged European nations on Saturday to let in hundreds of migrants rescued from the Mediterranean by humanitarian boats, including one financed by the British street artist Banksy.
The UNHCR and the International Organization of Migration (IOM) said more than 200 rescued refugees and migrants needed immediately to get off the nonprofit search-and-rescue ship Louise Michel, saying it was far beyond its safe capacity.
Continue reading...Crew of Louise Michel, who rescued 89 migrants on Thursday, say European authorities ignoring them
A rescue boat financed by the British street artist Banksy is close to declaring a “state of emergency” after the crew helped 130 migrants and are now safeguarding over 200 people off Libya’s coast, while the European authorities ignore their request for help.
The vessel, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, set off in secrecy on 18 August from the Spanish seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, and is now in the central Mediterranean, where, on Thursday, it rescued 89 people including 14 women and four children.
Continue reading...As schools in England prepare to reopen, we examine the situation around the world
As schools in England and Wales get set to reopen amid continued controversy over safe conditions, attention has focused on potential evidence of coronavirus transmission in the classroom and on the experiences of other countries.
Research on the ability of children of different ages to catch and transmit the virus is contradictory, and differences in education systems and social conventions make comparisons difficult.
Continue reading...West Mathewson was attacked without warning by lions during one of their regular walks
A South African conservationist has been killed by lions he hand-reared. West Mathewson, 69, was walking two white lionesses on Wednesday when one of the animals attacked and killed him without warning, his family said on Thursday.
The incident took place on the premises of the family-owned Lion Tree Top Lodge, in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province.
Continue reading...Exclusive: UK artist finances bright pink motor yacht that set sail in secrecy to avoid being intercepted by authorities
The British street artist Banksy has financed a boat to rescue refugees attempting to reach Europe from north Africa, the Guardian can reveal.
The vessel, named Louise Michel after a French feminist anarchist, set off in secrecy on 18 August from the Spanish seaport of Burriana, near Valencia, and is now in the central Mediterranean where on Thursday it rescued 89 people in distress, including 14 women and four children.
Continue reading...An irresistibly charismatic farm boy, displaced by a housing development on the outskirts of Ethiopia’s capital, is the star of this affecting documentary
The American director Mo Scarpelli makes a miraculous discovery in her new documentary – a 10-year-old Ethiopian farm boy who has been displaced from his home by urbanisation. Scarpelli has said that when she spotted Asalif Tewold on the street in Addis Ababa, she knew instantly that she wanted to make a film about him. You can see why. A charismatic kid with energy and imagination, he’s at that perfect stage of boyhood with an appetite for adventure and make-believe. That said, Scarpelli’s observational film-making style, slow and lingering, is a challenge and likely to be off-putting to all but hardcore lovers of arthouse.
Continue reading...Largest US childrenswear retailer blames Covid for move, as employees say they are struggling to buy food after wage cuts
The largest childrenswear retailer in the US has cancelled millions of dollars worth of clothing orders from suppliers in Ethiopia because of the coronavirus pandemic, pushing companies into debt and leaving employees facing pay cuts.
The Children’s Place (TCP), which has more than 1,000 stores in the US and 90 around the world and had a turnover of $2bn (£1.5bn) last year, cancelled orders from Ethiopia in March and delayed payments by six months for orders completed in January and February, suppliers told the Guardian.
Continue reading...The legacy of a successful battle is now helping combat Covid, but we must stay vigilant, says WHO’s Africa regional director
Africa has declared victory over a virus that once paralysed 75,000 children on the continent every year.
Four years have now passed since wild polio was last detected in Africa. After a year of rigorously evaluating polio data from all 47 countries in the WHO’s African region, an independent body of experts announced during a virtual ceremony on Tuesdaythat the continent was free of wild polio.
Continue reading...The payment would go to victims of al-Qaida but has caused anger in the poverty-stricken country
A US proposal to remove Sudan from a list of states that sponsor terrorism – in exchange for a $330 million payment compensation to American victims of al-Qaida – has caused anger in the poverty-stricken east African country.
Mike Pompeo, the US secretary of state, visited Khartoum on Tuesday to underline US support for the new transitional government that took power following the fall of Omar al-Bashir last year, whose 30 year authoritarian rule saw Sudan become an international pariah.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Thomas Young used cut-up method to treat translation of Egyptian relic as mathematical problem, papers show
Nobody knew how to read hieroglyphs when two 19th-century scholars set out to decipher the inscribed texts on the ancient Egyptian Rosetta Stone, one of the British Museum’s most famous treasures.
Now notes have been discovered among one of the scholars’ papers in the British Library that reveal the extent to which the translation was treated as though it was a mathematical problem.
Continue reading...Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the top
Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.
The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.
Continue reading...Achievement comes following Nigeria vaccination drive, with last cases of wild virus recorded four years ago
Africa is expected to be declared free from wild polio, after decades of work by a coalition of international health bodies, national and local governments, community volunteers and survivors.
Four years after the last recorded cases of wild polio in northern Nigeria, the Africa Regional Certification Commission (ARCC) is expected to certify that the continent is free of the virus, which can cause irreversible paralysis and in some cases death.
Continue reading...Coronavirus restrictions mean repatriation of remains would have taken three months
A Sudanese migrant who drowned while attempting to cross the Channel from France to England has been buried in Calais after coronavirus restrictions meant it would have taken three months for his body to be repatriated to Sudan.
More than 150 fellow Sudanese attended Abdulfatah Hamdallah’s funeral in Calais on Monday morning, according to his cousin.
Continue reading...From panic buying to lack of freedom, the pandemic is an opportunity to understand the lives of those forced to flee
Covid-19 has transformed the world beyond imagination, affecting almost everyone in some way.
Yet for me the changes have felt familiar – from movement restrictions to quarantines, every measure taken to prevent the spread of the virus reminds me of what it means to live as a refugee in a camp.
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