Skip to main contentSkip to navigation
Print subscriptions
Sign in
Search jobs
Search
The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Global development

Supported by

About this content
  • A cleaner in Jaipur, India, squats to sweep leaves from a lawn.

    Opinion
    The Hindujas made UK headlines for mistreating their servants. In India no one batted an eye – here’s why

    Amrit Dhillon in New Delhi
    Although some domestic staff in the subcontinent are treated well, for most it is a harsh and thankless existence, says freelance journalist Amrit Dhillon
  • Rows of small blue-capped glass bottles containing milk.

    Karachi
    Pakistani breast milk bank closes after Islamic clerics withdraw approval

    Doctors deplore decision and point to country’s high neonatal mortality rate as bank, which opened in June, forced to close without taking a single deposit
  • Women and children sit among washing drying on the line at a camp for displaced people in Burkina Faso

    Burkina Faso
    ‘They live with fear in their stomachs’: increasing violence deepens crisis in Burkina Faso

    About 10% of the population is displaced and 40 of the west African country’s cities are cut off from aid – but agencies say they have only 17% of the funding needed to help
  • Screenshot of women celebrating

    Female genital mutilation
    Sierra Leone has banned child marriage – to truly set women free it must end FGM

    Josephine Kamara
    Marrying young girls may now be illegal, but lawmakers seem reluctant to put a stop to genital cutting, and the two go hand in hand
    • Men in dark suts gather around Angelina Jolie, who is wearing a dark dress and speaking from behind a metal lectern.

      Sexual violence
      Ten years after a celebrity summit promised to end rape as a weapon of war, is there any change for the women of South Sudan?

    • Young people gather on a hilltop called the 'roof of Tehran' to watch the sunset. Photo: Stefanie Glinski

      Education
      ‘Nothing compensates for the stolen years’: the Afghan women rebuilding shattered dreams in Iran

    • A wall mural on a street in Kabul shows protesting women. The foremost woman has her arms raised, but her open mouth has been spraypainted black. Writing in Arabic reads: 'Afghan women will not be silent anymore'

      Afghanistan
      Video appears to show gang-rape of Afghan woman in a Taliban jail

    • Actor and model Stella Chuisse impersonates Angélique Kidjo, a singer, songwriter and composer from Benin

      Photography
      Women behind the lens: ‘I Want to Be Like Her is my way of paying tribute to 10 exceptional Africans’

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Explore

  • The floodlit football pitch of Las Madres Dragonas de Lavapiés in Madrid. The club plays under a mural that has the message: ‘Socially equally, totally free’.

    Levelling the playing field: the football clubs helping migrants make a new home in Spain

    Every year thousands arrive from South America and Africa, including many young asylum seekers who find hope and opportunity in the game
  • A beach surrounded by trees

    Kenya’s first nuclear plant: why plans face fierce opposition in country’s coastal paradise

  • A group of Nigerian women singing together with two playing the drums

    ‘This goes beyond the church’: the Nigerian women in a sisterhood of millions

  • A teenaged African girl poses for a photo clasping hands with a bald European man in a dark suit

    From Silicon Valley to Silicon Savannah: climate expert Patrick Verkooijen on why this is Africa’s century

  • An Indian woman squats down beside a big pile of clay and a mould, with stacks of finished bricks behind her

    Too ill to work, too poor to get better: how debt traps families working at India’s kilns

  • K-Zungu at Sisso Records, Dar es Salaam

    ‘I am their voice now’: the Tanzanian rapper with a mission to spread pride in his own colour

  • Under threat of jail, microfinance pioneer vows to keep lending to poorest Bangladeshis

  • Where was African joy at Cannes or African humour at Sundance? The big film festivals need to look beyond stereotypes

    Oris Aigbokhaevbolo

  • ‘Africa has zero PR in the west’: the Nigerian influencer using sarcasm on the clueless

  • A sense of optimism and the chance to chat: how Bogotá is giving respect to unpaid carers

  • My embarrassing condition needs a simple operation – but in Nigeria few can afford it

    Michael Adebisi

  • ‘There is nowhere to fish any more’: life in the shadow of Nigeria’s biggest industrial complex

  • ‘We want to forge ahead’: grief and defiance as Dom Phillips’ widow journeys to site of his death

  • ‘A small respite in the face of horror’: Sudanese artists fleeing war find a safe haven

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Rights and freedom

  • Afghan women in Islamabad hold up posters and placards in a protest demanding to boycott meeting with Taliban in Doha.

    Let Afghan women join the UN talks next week. It’s what the Taliban fear most

    Fawzia Koofi
  • A mural showing a woman in a blue headscarf looking away and holding up her hands defensively.,

    Afghan girls accuse Taliban of sexual assault after arrests for ‘bad hijab’

  • Two rows of bearded men sit at a conference table.

    Shutting Afghan women out of key UN conference to appease Taliban ‘a betrayal’

  • Marchers at Kyiv Pride 2024 in central Kyiv, Ukraine

    First Pride march since Russian invasion takes place in Kyiv

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

A common condition

  • Elizabeth Odondi standing by a bridge in a garden

    I told my high school friend we’d battle sickle cell together. But she didn’t make it past 18

  • Portrait of a black woman sitting in a chair next to a computer with a screensaver reading: 'Brain Health Initiative Nigeria'

    ‘They wanted her to confess to witchcraft’: ending the chilling effects of dementia stigma in Nigeria

    • The Food Security and Agriculture Cluster team team distributes dry food rations. April 2023

      ‘There was no other option’: the aid packages feeding diabetes and heart disease in the Pacific islands

    • Sayed Ahmed with his arm around his wife Amena Khatun by the Rupsha River in Khulna, Bangladesh

      ‘It’s in our rivers and in our cups. There’s no escape’
      The deadly spread of salt water in Bangladesh

    • A woman seen in silhouette with a cigarette in front of the Philip Morris International logo

      Experts condemn US tobacco firm’s sponsorship of doctor training as ‘grotesque’

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

In pictures

  • Gabriel Nzaji teaches internally displaced Congolese children the rules of chess rules as part of the Chess in the City initiative at Focus Congo site in Kibati

    Goma games: how chess offers DRC’s displaced children respite from conflict – in pictures

    Chess players from Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo are introducing children traumatised by violence to the joys of playing the board game
Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Southern frontlines

  • Illustration of composite images from Brazil

    Pristine forests and grinding poverty: why shouldn’t Brazil’s Amapá state embrace oil wealth?

  • A photographic collage showing the colours of Guyana's flag, a map of Guyana, oil pipelines, deforestation and some of the people featured in the article

    Guyana banks on future as a ‘Latin Qatar’ in high-stakes gamble over oil production

  • The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, wearing orange overalls and a white hard hat, holds up his oil-covered hands to the camera.

    ‘Will you stop exploring yours?’: Latin America forges ahead on new oil frontier

  • Antonio Calpanchay, now 45, has cut and sold blocks of salt from the Salinas Grandes, in northern Argentina, since he was 12.

    Battle lines redrawn as Argentina’s lithium mines ramp up to meet electric car demand

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Explainers

  • Families arrive on a beach in Mozambique carrying belongings wrapped in fabric bundles on their heads

    At risk: 10 ways the changing climate is creating a health emergency

  • A man in a balaclava holding a rifle looks back at the camera while walking along a dirt street

    What caused the civil war in Sudan and how has it become one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises?

  • Photo of the World Health Organization (WHO) logo displayed on screen with medical syringes and vaccine vials

    What is the pandemic accord and why have negotiations been so difficult?

  • A Rohingya family reaches the Bangladesh border after crossing a creek of the Naf river

    Who are the Rohingya and what is happening in Myanmar?

Loads more stories and moves focus to first new story.

Multimedia

Multimedia

  • Bruno Pereira and Dom Phillips on a boat
  • Shireen Abu Akleh
  • Still of a migrant labourer The Great Abandonment documentary
  • Still image from documentary, The 'Spider-Man' of Sudan
  • Chris is a reproductive health advocate in the Phillippines
  • Eyewitness: hell on high waters - video

Get involved

  • Her stage newsletter banner (global development team)

    Her Stage newsletter
    Hear directly from incredible women from around the world on the issues that matter most to them

  • Composite for the sign-up page for Global Dev’s new global dispatch email

    Global Dispatch newsletter
    Sign up for a different world view

  • Follow us on Twitter

  • Follow us on Facebook

Most viewed