Developmental Insights Edition 13
Welcome to the 13th edition of Developmental Insights!
It’s been a while! I hope everyone is doing okay wherever they are, and particularly in this heatwave (if you’re in the UK or across Europe). The last edition of Developmental Insights was published on the 13th of June - due to family and social commitments, I am back to present the next edition of the newsletter after a delay of a week. The next edition will be back to the usual format, with five news stories and a deep dive into an article (‘In Discussion’). If you have anything that you would like me to look into for In Discussion, let me know by leaving a comment or emailing developmentalinsights@gmail.com. In the meantime, here are past articles that I have written.
For now, let’s get into this edition:
Child Marriage in Bangladesh shows how the nation continues to fail women and girls
Despite laws in Bangladesh guaranteeing equal rights for men and women, women and girls are still victims of discrimination, both socially and politically. The country has the largest number of child brides in South Asia and the seventh highest in the world, even though the practice is illegal. With rising climate crises, an increasing number of families have also taken to child marriage to make ends meet.
Bangladesh ranks 59th in the world’s Gender Gap Index. Despite many women refusing to report physical, sexual and psychological abuse out of fear and concerns for family reputation, UN Women has found how the country has the highest rates of violence against women in South Asia. Unfortunately, more than half of Bangladesh’s women have experienced some form of gender based violence.
Human trafficking on the rise as online scam hubs go global
According to Interpol, human trafficking fueled scam centres have significantly expanded their operations worldwide. These hubs first emerged in Southeast Asian nations, but investigators are also uncovering fraud centres in other regions such as the Middle East, West Africa and Central America. Victims now come from 66 countries across all continents, highlighting a ‘global crisis’ involving hundreds of thousands of people.
Victims are often lured with fake job offers and then held captive in scam compounds. Many are then blackmailed over alleged debts, beaten and even sexually exploited. Inside the centres, they are forced to run online scams, mostly targeting people abroad to steal money. Unfortunately, emerging technologies such as AI are fuelling this trend further with it being used to generate fake job ads or deepfakes.
Kenya’s police violence is colonial, institutional and political
At least 16 people were killed and over 400 wounded (83 of them seriously) last Wednesday as demonstrations protesting police brutality surged through cities and towns in Kenya. An opinion piece published last week stated how police officers operate more as an ‘occupying force and extension of the elite than a public service.’ Combatting police violence has been a large part of President William Ruto’s 2022 campaign for office, but since taking power he has instead used the force as a tool for suppressing popular dissent.
The National Police Service (NPS) in the country is a direct descendent of the colonial police force which was created to not only serve and protest the population but to control and exploit it. A 2009 report found how the NPS was designed to dehumanise the officers and separate them from citizens through poor conditions where they were unpaid and isolated from their communities.
For Women in Pakistan, social media can be dangerous
Earlier this month, Pakistani Tiktok star Sana Yousaf was shot dead by a man who had reportedly contacted her online. She was only 17. This case has furthered concerns over the digital safety of online personalities in the country, especially young women. In Pakistan, self- expression and economic independence in digital spaces often comes with a surge of threats, privacy concerns and social backlash pressures which can translate into real world violence.
A 2023 study by the Digital Rights Foundation, an NGO which advocates for women’s rights in the digital space, found how 58.5% of online harassment complaints in Pakistan are filed by women. However, public conversation hardly addresses deeper systemic issues, particularly how patriarchal norms extend into private and public domains.
Extreme poverty is rising fast in economies hit by conflict and instability
Conflict and instability are taking a devastating toll on the 39 economies impacted by it, driving up extreme poverty faster than anywhere else and intensifying acute hunger. These economies are largely located in Sub Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, and the Middle East and North Africa. As conflicts are becoming more frequent and deadly in the 2020s, these economies are falling behind all other economies in key indicators of development. Since 2020, their per capita GDP has shrunk by an average of 1.8% per year, while it has expanded by 2.9% in other developing economies.
This year, 421 million people are struggling on less than £3 a day in economies afflicted by conflict or instability, a figure expected to rise to 435 million by 2030. Furthermore, the average life expectancy in these economies is 64, seven years lower than in other developing economies. Infant mortality rates are also more than twice as high and acute food insecurity afflicts 18% of their population. 90% of school age children do not meet minimum reading standards.
Poverty in the Aboriginal Australian Community
In 2022, it was found that 30% of Aboriginal Australians live below the poverty line, compared to 13.4% of the rest of the Australian population. This vulnerable population also has higher rates of unemployment, reliance on government welfare programmes and ill health than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Unfortunately, their poverty and inequalities are entrenched in a legacy of colonisation, dispossession, and systemic racism. Public services and policies, despite aiming to bridge gaps, often fail to address the structural and cultural dimensions of disadvantage.
Efforts to alleviate poverty include government-funded programmes which target housing, employment, education as well as community-led social enterprises. Initiatives such as the Community Housing and Infrastructure Program and Closing the Gap aim to improve living conditions, incomes, and school completion rates. Even though these improvements are gradual, employment disparities are wide with remote communities facing limited access to essential goods.
South Africa and the Welfare Algorithm
Due to a flawed application system, millions of South Africans are losing out on welfare grants. The Social Relief from Distress (SRD) grant unintentionally excludes eligible recipients due to administrative obstacles such as problems with an algorithm based income verification check. This is even if they genuinely qualify. The article shares an example of this - Brenda Mtshali, a street vendor and widow in Soweto had her application denied more than six times. In response she received a vague automated message ‘means income source identified’ message.
This exclusion highlights broader digital inequalities in South Africa, including an insufficient access to reliable data, digital literacy gaps and a lack of human oversight in digital welfare deployment. Furthermore, poverty, limited internet connectivity and low digital skills prevent many from navigating decisions made by algorithms. Activists and researchers are urging authorities to introduce greater flexibility in the system, such as allowing supporting documents, to avoid penalising the poorest who are most at risk.
Thanks for reading edition 13 of Developmental Insights - I hope you enjoyed it and found it informative! Please subscribe to the newsletter if you would like to continue receiving it straight to your inbox every other Friday!
I am always open to suggestions or feedback so please send anything to developmentalinsights@gmail.com or, simply add a comment below!
I look forward to connecting with you further in future editions!
Best,
Harkiran