Largest study yet on Covid spread puts to rest doubts about effectiveness of masks in reining in transmission
A study involving more than 340,000 people in Bangladesh offers some of the strongest real-world evidence yet that mask use can help communities slow the spread of Covid-19. The research, conducted across 600 villages in rural Bangladesh, is the largest randomised trial to demonstrate the effectiveness of surgical masks, in...
Two journalists arrested and held in Myanmar’s infamous Yangon torture centre
Sithy Aung Myint, a political analyst for Voice of America and Frontier Myanmar, and BBC Media Action senior producer Htet Htet Khaing, were arrested by police and taken to a Yangon interrogation centre on August 15. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has called upon the State Administrative Council to...
Fall of Kabul: No reason to believe a new Taliban regime in Afghanistan won’t be another humanitarian eyesore
Afghanistan’s US-trained forces appeared to readily collapse in the face of a concerted push by Taliban forces. Names and places that became familiar to Americans during their country’s long involvement there – including Kunduz and Kandahar – fell like dominoes in recent days as the Taliban swept toward the capital....
Pakistan’s ‘No more refugees’ stance can only worsen dire humanitarian situation in Afghanistan
No more refugees – this is the dangerous rhetoric emerging in Pakistan as instability escalates across the border in Afghanistan. The Taliban have gained territory at a shocking pace since the US and Nato allies accelerated troop withdrawals earlier this year. As the violence builds, the rhetoric about Afghans and...
Myanmar: Side-lining local aid agencies represents continued colonisation of humanitarian practices
Myanmar’s people have clearly and universally rejected the coup and the military junta. Will international governments, donors and aid agencies do the same? Six months after the February 1 coup, my country is locked in a humanitarian and Covid-19 crises. The military junta has terrorised Myanmar, committing war crimes and...
How resistance to caste system drove over 60 upper-caste students in India to suicide
In the late 1990s, when Raosaheb Kale became a professor at for Jawaharlal Nehru University, or JNU, he sat on a committee to select junior researchers at the Nuclear Science Centre, about a mile away from the university in New Delhi. Among the candidates was a Dalit researcher named Rajendra...
India’s casteism: If I make a mistake, it’s not my mistake; it’s labelled the mistake of ‘Untouchables’ community
Raosaheb Kale was born in 1950, three years after India became free from British rule, and the same year India’s constitution came into force. That constitution abolished untouchability and declared caste discrimination illegal. The constitution also introduced reservation policies in public sector jobs, politics and education for marginalised communities, including...
Rohingya refugees dread ‘government of the night’ run by rival criminal gangs
Before she fled Myanmar as a refugee, Rozina had worked for an NGO for seven years. Now, fear has gradually taken hold of her every evening, when the sun sets and the last aid worker jeep has rumbled out of the vast refugee camps. The refugees’ security, especially, is considered...
Rohingya crisis: Outspoken women are abused, intimidated for being educated
A climate of fear has spread across Bangladesh’s sprawling Rohingya camps as militant groups and criminal gangs compete for control, refugees and humanitarians warn. Community leaders and female Rohingya in particular are threatened and intimidated for being educated or outspoken about women’s rights, stretching conservative norms to a level of...
Bangladeshi police arrest landgrabbers who assaulted journalist investigating the theft
Police have arrested three people in connection with an attack on Bahannor Alo correspondent Selim Shamrat, who was attacked while investigating an illegal land seizure on July 11. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) condemned the attack on the journalist and called on police to ensure the investigation is followed...
