Why it’s very difficult for victims of gender-based violence to get protection in US asylum set up
Tens of thousands of women from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, collectively known as the Northern Triangle of Central America, have left their homes to try to reach the United States in recent years. Many are fleeing rampant gender-based violence. But those who are able to enter the US, often...
Loss of indigenous language means loss of exclusive knowledge about medicinal plants – studies
A study at the University of Zurich in Switzerland shows that a large proportion of existing medicinal plant knowledge is linked to threatened Indigenous languages. In a regional study on the Amazon, New Guinea and North America, researchers concluded that 75 per cent of medicinal plant uses are known in...
DR Congo government slow response to agony of Mt Nyiragongo volcano IDPs frustrating Aid agencies
After DR Congo President Felix Tshisekedi’s visit to Goma, the government pledged to provide 1,000 temporary shelters, to be constructed by the military at a camp called Kanyarucinya. The International Federation of the Red Cross agreed to contribute 500 additional structures at another site, Kibati. Some aid workers who were...
Plight of Congo volcano IDPs: Banished by Mt Nyiragongo eruption, forsaken by government
Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories on the aftermath of the May volcanic eruption in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The New Humanitarian spent three weeks interviewing displaced people, aid workers, and employees at a local observatory tasked with monitoring the volatile Mount Nyiragongo. After one of...
Covid vaccine boosters: Scientists differ on whether a third shot will lock out new infections
Older Israelis who have received a third dose of a Covid-19 vaccine are much less likely to test positive for SARS-CoV-2 or to develop severe Covid-19 than are those who have had only two jabs, according to a highly anticipated study published on September 15. The standard regimen for messenger...
Wildlife-human conflicts: Man wrecked animal kingdoms, now wildlife reclaiming lost homes in urban streets
As humans encroach on the habitat of wild animals, is it any surprise that they advance upon ours? On September 8, 1488, the French fiefdom of Beaujeu issued an unusual order. Curates were charged with warning slugs three times “to cease from vexing the people by corroding and consuming the...
Mystery of Big Bang persists as scientists discover ‘early dark energy’ of the expanding Universe
There are hints of a previously unknown, primordial form of the substance could explain why the cosmos now seems to be expanding faster than theory predicts. Cosmologists have found signs that a second type of dark energy – the ubiquitous but enigmatic substance that is pushing the current Universe’s expansion...
Scientists warn the world should brace for more coronavirus-like infections as others emerge from bats
Only two new coronaviruses have spread globally the past two decades: SARS-CoV, which caused an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. But that may just be the tip of the iceberg of undetected infections with related viruses emerging from bats,...
Burundi genocide: A guard walked over to lift the security barrier; I was looking at the man who tried to stab me two decades earlier
In the northern province of Kirundo, I met the daughter of a Tutsi army corporal – Emmanuel Ndahigeze – killed for the crime of feeding Hutu prisoners. And in Makamba, Hutu residents told me about a Tutsi pastor who challenged soldiers carrying a list of Hutus to be killed in...
Burundi: Ethnic violence never used to be a problem, differences in class were less about Hutus and Tutsis
In September 2020, I met Jean Marie, a young man who was patiently exhuming a grave in southern Burundi’s Makamba province, where I was born. He told me the events of 1972 had trapped his family in decades of hardship. His grandfather – the main breadwinner – was killed during...
