News, features and comment about inequality in developing countries, including inequalities of gender, wealth and caste
May 2024
‘Unlock the door or we’ll kick it down’: why South Africa’s youngest politician is in a hurry for change
Fasiha Hassan is the same age as her country’s democracy and as election day approaches, the politician believes her party, the ANC, must evolve or die
March 2024
Southern frontlines: Latin America and the Caribbean
‘Children were dying. We didn’t even have aspirin’: the Indigenous Venezuelans forced far from home
Southern frontlines: Latin America and the Caribbean
‘My dream is to buy a piece of land’: the ‘outsiders’ farming at the Amazon’s last frontiers
December 2023
How did the world get like this? Eight books to help explain the way we live now
Inequality and poverty arose by design, not chance and stories of human rights abuses and failures in development have deep roots. Here, Prof Benjamin Selwyn recommends key non-fiction texts to help unravel some global complexities
We can be heroes: the inspiring people we met around the world in 2023
From a karaoke-singing paramedic on a boat in Bangladesh to a proud campaigner for a queer museum in Namibia, these are some of the figures who raised our hopes for humanity
Opinion
‘The four centuries of slave trade shaped the spectre of racism and are woven into the fabric of global development’
Kenneth Mohammed
A lasting legacy of racism, oppression and colonialism is laid bare at a powerful exhibition in Cambridge. Confronting it can help us build a more equitable world
November 2023
Poor tea pickers pay the price for a British cuppa
Letter: Sabita Banerji highlights the pitiful pay and conditions of tea plantation workers in response to an article about the high price of the brew
October 2023
‘I am afraid I will kill myself, like my husband’: spotlight on loan firms in Cambodia after Indigenous suicides
Opinion
Are women getting angrier? Maybe they’re just giving themselves permission to show it
Pragya Agarwal
September 2023
Women in Afghanistan are fighting an unequal war. We need your support
Zahra Joya
The Taliban have barred us from the workplace, cut our access to healthcare and closed schools to us. Must we struggle alone?
August 2023
Don’t listen to the critics: reparations for slavery will right historical wrongs
Kenneth Mohammed
Fair Access
A pandemic is not just a disease – it’s a political, social and economic crisis fuelled by inequality
Mia Malan
May 2023
‘We give our blood so they live comfortably’: Sri Lanka’s tea pickers say they go hungry and live in squalor
Top tea firms investigate as plantation workers say they have to pick 18kg a day but still skip meals and make their children work
Fair Access
Injectable HIV-prevention drug to be made in South Africa for the first time
Indian drug company to make cheaper generic version of CAB-LA, potentially protecting millions of people in Africa from the virus
The future of work
‘We have a right to live in dignity’: Biharis in Bangladesh fight for equality – and jobs
The Urdu-speaking ethnic group was stateless for many years after the partition of India – and even now remain marginalised, living in cramped settlement camps and struggling to find formal work
March 2023
World Bank chief calls for dramatic hike in funding to help developing world
Opinion
So fathers want to be ‘more present’ in the home? Put down your phone and I’ll tell you how
Nilanjana Bhowmick
October 2022
Make poverty discrimination illegal like racism or sexism, urges UN official
Exclusive: ‘Povertyism’ restricts access to education, housing, jobs and benefits and must be outlawed, says UN rapporteur
September 2022
Jam today: Nigerians turn a profit from the choked traffic of Lagos
The city’s 24 million people can sit in gridlocked streets for more than 30 hours a week. For some, that represents a good way to make a living
August 2022
Low Covid jab rates in poorer countries falsely blamed on ‘vaccine hesitancy’ – report
Global response to pandemic was flawed and racist, say campaigners, with local populations incorrectly blamed for low vaccination uptake