Category Archives: Philippines

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

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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.

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Where’s Edelyn? The search for the Filipina maid who vanished in Saudi Arabia

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Mired in debt, the mother of three left to work as part of the Gulf’s kafala labour system. She was last heard from in 2015 and her family want answers

Edelyn Eborda Astudillo wanted a better life for her three children. The 36-year-old from Mariveles in the Philippines, and her husband, Crisanto, had been unemployed for six years and things were getting desperate. So, in early 2015, Edelyn made the decision to travel to the Middle East to get a job as a domestic worker.

After applying to a Philippine recruitment agency, Manumoti Manpower, Edelyn was soon on a flight abroad. She was placed in a house to work for a couple in Taif, in the west of Saudi Arabia.

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‘Monsters at the door’: migrant workers trapped in UN Afghan compound

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Security contractors among hundreds from the Philippines, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka stuck without clear plans for evacuation

When Taliban fighters started to kick at the door of a UN compound in a northern province 250 miles (400km) from the Afghan capital, Kabul, Rajesh* was certain he was going to be killed.

The Taliban had taken control of the area on that day. Rajesh, a UN security contractor from India, hurried with his colleagues into an emergency steel-doored room. Before they sealed themselves in, they saw a group of seven or eight heavily armed men.

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Philippines’ Duterte agrees to run as vice-president in 2022

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President’s ‘sacrifice’ paves way for leader to stay in power beyond June next year

The Philippine president, Rodrigo Duterte, has agreed to be the ruling political party’s vice-presidential candidate in next year’s elections, laying the groundwork for the leader to stay in power beyond his term.

The PDP-Laban party made the announcement before a national assembly on 8 September, where it is also expected to endorse Duterte’s aide and incumbent senator, Christopher “Bong” Go, to be its presidential candidate in the 2022 poll.

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Raging Delta variant takes its toll as Philippines runs out of nurses

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Bad pay and conditions at home and demand for Filipino nursing skills overseas have left the country with a soaring death rate

The Covid Delta variant has swept across south-east Asia over recent months, prompting lockdowns and overwhelming hospitals – from Malaysia to Thailand and Indonesia. Now the impact is being felt in the Philippines, just as the country’s chronic lack of health workers reaches a crisis point.

“The disease has become very aggressive,” said Michael Bilan, who works on a Covid ward in Manila. This time, patients tend to require a higher amount of oxygen, for longer, he said. The number of Covid patients is also at a record high: last week, 277 were receiving treatment. New wards have been opened to meet demand.

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Manila in lockdown as Delta cases soar in Philippines

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Covid death toll hits four-month high amid record case numbers in countries across south-east Asia

The more aggressive Delta variant of Covid-19, detected in the Philippines in mid-July, has spread across much of the country, reaching 13 of 17 regions, health officials have said.

On Sunday, the Philippines reported a sharp rise in daily Covid fatalities, with 287 deaths, the highest daily increase in four months. A further 9,671 new infections were also confirmed.

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Refugees hit hardest as deadly floods sweep across continents

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Death toll rises as storms continue to rip through communities, destroying homes and livelihoods

As heavy rains and floods dominate headlines around the world, displaced people and those living in conflict zones are among the worst affected.

Wind and heavy rain from monsoons and typhoons has bombarded much of Asia. There have also been downpours and flash floods in parts of Latin America and Africa.

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Health campaigners call for an end to the use of the word leper

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Derogatory use of the “L-word” has increased during Covid and is said to be further marginalising people with the curable disease

Health campaigners are calling for an end to the use of the word leper, saying the language frequently used by politicians and others during the pandemic has made people with leprosy even more marginalised.

The metaphor of the socially outcast “leper” has been used often, whether in media reports on stigma against early Covid-19 patients or by politicians in Italy and Brazil complaining about being seen as “leper colonies”. Campaigners now want an end to the use of what they call the “L-word”.

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Malawi Pride and press freedoms in Palestine: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Chile to Cambodia

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Philippines: at least 45 people die in military plane crash – video

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At least 45 people were killed and more than 50 injured when a Philippine military aircraft carrying troops crashed and burst into flames after missing the runway in the south of the country, officials have said. Ninety-two people, most of them recent army graduates, were onboard the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft when the crash happened as the plane tried to land on Jolo island in Sulu province at about midday on Sunday.

Photos taken by the local media outlet Pondohan TV and posted on Facebook showed the wrecked body of the plane engulfed in flames. A plume of thick black smoke rose above houses near the crash site

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At least 45 people die in military plane crash in Philippines

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At least 50 injured people pulled from burning wreckage of C-130 Hercules after it crashed when it missed runway

At least 45 people were killed and more than 50 injured when a Philippine military aircraft carrying troops crashed and burst into flames after missing the runway in the south of the country, officials said.

Three of those who died were on the ground.

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‘I want them to feel human again’: the woman who escaped slavery in the UK – and fights to free others

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Analiza Guevarra ended up in a living hell in London after fleeing poverty in the Philippines. Now, her organisation rescues scores of people in domestic servitude every year

The streets of west London were dark and empty as Analiza Guevarra walked towards a large, white mansion block in South Kensington in February 2019.

Just after 5am, she stood at a corner, well away from any street lights. “I’m here,” she tapped into her phone. Seconds later, her phone pinged back. “I’m coming, I’m carrying a green bag. Please wait for me.”

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‘You can’t cancel Pride’: the fight for LGBTQ+ rights amid the pandemic

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Lockdown hit LGBTQ+ communities hard but even as Pride events are called off there is hope and a promise that the parades will return

This month, for the second year in a row, there was no Pride parade in San Francisco, arguably the city most laden with history and symbolism for the LGBTQ+ community.

It is a decision Fred Lopez, who took over as executive director of San Francisco Pride at the beginning of last year describes as “heartbreaking”.

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‘Get vaccinated or I will have you jailed’: Duterte – video

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Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as the country battles one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with a cumulative total of more than 1.3 million cases and 23,000 deaths.

“You choose, get vaccinated or I will have you jailed,” Duterte said in a televised address on Monday following reports of low turnouts at vaccination sites in the capital, Manila

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Philippines president Duterte: ‘You choose, Covid vaccine or I will have you jailed’

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President says he is ‘exasperated’ by reports of vaccine hesitancy in the capital amid slow rollout

President Rodrigo Duterte has threatened to jail people who refuse to be vaccinated against the coronavirus as the Philippines battles one of Asia’s worst outbreaks, with a cumulative total of more than 1.3 million cases and 23,000 deaths.

“You choose, vaccine or I will have you jailed,” Duterte said in a televised address on Monday following reports of low turnouts at several vaccination sites in the capital Manila.

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Oxygen shortages threaten ‘total collapse’ of dozens of health systems

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Data reveals Nepal, Iran and South Africa among 19 countries most at risk of running out as surging Covid cases push supplies to limit

Dozens of countries are facing severe oxygen shortages because of surging Covid-19 cases, threatening the “total collapse” of health systems.

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism analysed data provided by the Every Breath Counts Coalition, the NGO Path and the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) to find the countries most at risk of running out of oxygen. It also studied data on global vaccination rates.

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Hong Kong plan to force Covid vaccines on foreign domestic workers sparks alarm

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Authorities accused of ‘blackmailing’ workers over plan to make vaccine a condition of getting a job

Hong Kong’s government has sparked discrimination concerns over plans to force hundreds of thousands of foreign domestic workers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or face losing their job.

Authorities have embarked on mass mandatory testing of the city’s 370,000 domestic workers after a more infectious strain was detected in the community, and flagged plans for compulsory vaccinations.

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Facebook and fear in Manila: Maria Ressa’s fight for facts

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Ex-CNN reporter and founder of the news site Rappler on life under the relentless social media assault of the Duterte regime

As terrible as the events were that played out on Capitol Hill on 6 January, Maria Ressa admits to feeling “a small amount of relief” about them. An ex-CNN bureau chief, and now the founder of her own news organisation, Rappler, she had spent the past two years sounding a warning about what she’d seen happen in her native country, the Philippines.

There, a Facebook-fuelled tsunami of lies had assisted an authoritarian into power. And she had seen where that had led: to opponents of the state being killed in their homes or turning up dead in ditches. As a Filipino American with a foot in both countries – she calls herself “the first of the CNN hybrids” – she was perfectly positioned to warn America about what happens when a populist president is allowed to spread out-of-control lies across a vast, unregulated tech platform. “A lie told a million times becomes a fact,” she repeated again and again.

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Hidden human rights crises threaten post-Covid global security – Amnesty

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‘Crises will multiply’ if escalating repression by governments under pretext of pandemic ignored, says secretary general

Neglected human rights crises around the world have the potential to undermine already precarious global security as governments continue to use Covid as a cover to push authoritarian agendas, Amnesty International has warned.

The organisation said ignoring escalating hotspots for human rights violations and allowing states to perpetrate abuses with impunity could jeopardise efforts to rebuild after the pandemic.

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