In less than a year, Rio de Janeiro will become the first South American city to host the Olympic Games. In a new series looking at life in Rio, we hear from two residents describing how their city is changing. Young citizen journalist Thaís Cavalcante describes how preparation for the games has made life worse in her favela, as families are forced from their homes and protests continue to mount. Another young journalist, Michel Silva, writes about the negative impact of tourism to his neighbourhood, as well as other developments he hopes will improve his community.
In India, women are fighting to end a seventh-century custom allowing Muslim men to divorce their wives by saying “talaq” three times. The triple talaq law yields instant divorce and can even be sent via social media. “During fights, I used to argue back but if it got too heated, I stopped because I was frightened my husband might say talaq,” one woman said. You can read more on women’s rights and gender equality around the world on our site.
Elsewhere on the site
- Sierra Leone celebrates lifting of ban on public gatherings due to Ebola
- Magoso school in Nairobi’s Kibera slum hits the right note with music that heals
- Ban Ki-moon: sustainable development goals “leave no one behind”
- Zambian villagers take mining giant Vedanta to court in UK over toxic leaks
- Mexico: the graphic tale of Lucha Castro’s struggle to defend women’s rights
Opinion
Kenyan anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo shared his views on the current state of graft in Kenya, with claims that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s regime had allowed corruption to flourish and pushed civil society to the margins. Meanwhile, Jonathan Glennie and Andy Sumner argued that aid should be seen as foreign public investment, not just charity. The pair said that aid and international development needed to be repositioned. And finally, Emma Troutman argued that donations to survivors of the Nepal earthquakes would be more effective if they went to local organisations instead of international aid agencies. She said large agencies often incur overheads by subcontracting relief work to groups with local knowledge.
Multimedia
Podcast: Counting the cost of the Boko Haram crisis
Video: How migrants were trafficked to work on Britain’s free-range egg farms
Pictures: Lesbos landings: Migrants risk all to reach Greek island by boat
What you said: top reader comment
On the piece Kenya’s rampant corruption is eating away at the very fabric of democracy , RichardTrillo wrote:
John Githongo is right, corruption in Kenya is on a barely imaginable scale. It gets into the day-to-day lives of every single Kenyan, all of whom are unavoidably involved in buying, selling and trading rights and responsibilities (for cash, land, jobs or contracts) that are already enshrined in Kenya’s brilliant new constitution – said to be the best in the world but largely ignored and rarely enforced.
Two points. First, generosity and willingness to share is part of the problem: nobody stopped by a traffic cop to pay a bribe to be allowed to continue ever questions the bribe, only how much these poorly paid police are demanding these days. And second, “police lines”: as far as I know, all police live in these ghettoes, separated from the rest of the community, and a breeding ground for corruption and resentment. Make the police part of the community, start at the bottom. When people with no power treat each other as if the law mattered, and the constitution mattered, then things will start to change.
Highlight from the blogosphere
Devex: 5 things needed to turn the SDGs into reality
And finally …
Poverty matters will return in two weeks with another roundup of the latest news and comment. In the meantime, keep up to date on the Global Development website. Follow @gdndevelopment and the team – @swajones, @LizFordGuardian, @MarkC_Anderson and @CarlaOkai – on Twitter, and joinGuardian Global Development on Facebook.
