• South Sudan

    South Sudan0

    South Sudan became the world’s newest country in 2011 but within two years fighting had broken out between Dinka loyal to President Salva Kiir and members of the Nuer tribe, supporting former vice-president Riek Machar. A combination of violence and drought devastated last year’s harvests, creating food shortages that have left 100,000 people facing famine

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  • Building rights

    Building rights0

    Gethin Chamberlain, in Kolkata, for The National, 31 August 2009 THE pregnancy came all too easily. Monica was 13, and the man in question was her overseer at the brick kiln where she worked about 40km north of the booming Indian mega-city of Kolkata. More than twice her age and married with two children of his

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  • Where a baby girl is a mother’s awful shame

    Where a baby girl is a mother’s awful shame0

    Over the past 20 years in India, 10 million female babies have been aborted. The pressure to have sons is terrifying – mothers who bear daughters are beaten or cast aside by husbands and in-laws desperate to escape the financial burden of a girl’s dowry. Now mothers are being urged to ‘save the girl child’

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  • Two million slum children die every year as India booms

    Two million slum children die every year as India booms0

    India’s growing status as an economic superpower is masking a failure to stem a shocking rate of infant deaths among its poorest people. Gethin Chamberlain in Delhi, for The Observer, 4 October 2009 Nearly two million children under five die every year in India – one every 15 seconds – the highest number anywhere in the world.

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