Jon Snow
Sooner or later there was going to be a showdown somewhere in Africa over the continental-wide Christian backed attacks on homosexuality. It seems Malawi is it. The jailing with hard labour for fourteen years of Tiwonge Chimbalanga and Steven Monjeza – after they declared their intention of sealing a civil union, has finally concentrated action…
We’ve received the following posting from Dr Catherine Maternowska, who works in the Mombasa hospital featured in last month’s film on child sex abuse in Kenya. The hope among the hospital’s staff is that the film – and Catherine’s blog – will promote awareness, both at home and abroad, of the problems Kenyan children face.…
In response to viewers’ messages requesting further information on how to get involved with charities working with Kenya, following our report on child sex abuse in that country, we can post the following details: KENYAN ORGANISATIONS FIGHTING AGAINST CHILD SEX ABUSE Offers of help to the sexual violence clinic at Mombasa Coast General Hospital should…
Many thanks to all of you for your responses to our film. I can assure you, it was just as harrowing a film to make as it was to watch. Several of you have asked what you can do about the awful problems we highlighted in Kenya. We will post details of appropriate organisations on…
Kenya’s beaches are the stuff holiday brochures are made of – mile after mile of glistening white sand, kissed by equatorial sun. Tourism is a major money spinner for one of the world’s poorest countries, but Kenya’s tropical paradise hides a dark secret. We have been on a harrowing journey – from nightclubs where European…
I am told the Americans are in the midst of a major rethink of their policy towards Somalia, as fighting within the last few days threatens to topple the government in Mogadishu, such as it exists.
Somalia is off-limits to most western reporters and five Somali journalists have been killed there so far this year. Aid workers are frequently kidnapped – a million dollars is the going rate to have them released – and four WFP workers have been killed since last August. So, to put it mildly, this was…
To mark the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) has released photographs depicting the lives of survivors. These pictures come straight from DFID, and are not a product of Channel 4 News journalism, but they do tell an interesting tale of those who suffered, survived and have had…
Here’s another country on the global recession’s front line: Botswana, hailed as the longest continuous multi-party democracy in Africa. Botswana is classified by some economists as an “upper middle-income” country, but the wealth is very unevenly spread, so – according to DFID – 49 per cent of the population lives on less than $2 a…
Jon Snow
My seasoned and accomplished contact who operates in the highest echelons of the multinational world reports attending a number of gatherings of economists over the past few weeks. He says they are all, without exception, pessimistic. He’s not entirely convinced they are right. And nor am I.
Obscene would be putting it too strongly, but it did seem odd talking about dead African children amid the gilded Louis XIV interiors of Lancaster House last week. One of London’s finest townhouses, just across the road from Buckingham Palace, this is where Rhodesia’s independence from Britain was signed in 1979.
Jon Snow
I’m very struck by the response to the condom debate sparked by our interview following the Pope’s comments last week. More than 50 comments, and an interesting spread. I have I suppose what the Catholic church would call a “confession” to make. I did not handle it well. One must be honest about these things.
George Soros in today’s FT makes similar points to those raised in my posts on Africa (Zambia here and Tanzania coming later today), Latvia and Hungary about the need “to protect the periphery countries from a storm created in the developed world… the periphery countries will suffer even more than those at the centre”.
Jon Snow
Several readers of this blog have commented on my interview in last night’s programme on the back of Lindsey Hilsum’s report on the Pope’s trip to Africa. En route to Cameroon, Pope Benedict remarked that condoms were not a solution to the spread of Aids but part of the problem. After the piece, I spoke…