Daniel Nelson If empathy and imagination are not enough, Adrift: People Of A Lesser God should do the job of giving an idea of what it’s like to risk your life by taking a boat from Africa to Europe. Journalist Dominique Mollard’s documentary (released on DVD on 20 July) is an extraordinary chronicle, showing the hazards on land as well as water: venal and unreliable contacts as he tries to find a boat, corrupt police in league with traffickers, and dealers who may or may not be rip-off merchants. Revealing flashes of life. On water, it’s even more dangerous: unseaworthy vessels, crazy overcrowding, adulterated fuel that’s often a death penalty, inadequate navigation, desperate men ready to draw a knife over a disagreement, clapped out engines. The engine does cut out on [...]

Pakistani-Brits are the flavour of the moment. First came a revival of Ayub Khan-Din's East Is East, the play which in many ways set the mould - unsurprisingly, because the author was the youngest of 10 children born to a Pakistani father and white British mother living in Salford. Cross-sultural marriage and relationships have been a recurring them since then.  My Name Is...  told the story of what happened when a girl leaves her Scottish mother to join her father in Lahore and subsequently reverses the journey from him to her.  In  Burq Off!, Nadia P Manzoor presented an autobiographical one-woman show with 21 different characters from her life as a rebellious Pakistani Muslim in north London. The film Catch Me Daddy was a grim, gritty tale of how Laila and her white boyfriend are hunted [...]

Only three think tanks got "significantly more opaque" during 2014, and one of them is Britain’s Overseas Development Institute, according to a global ranking published by the organisation Transparify. It dropped from 5 stars to 2 stars (the steepest decline registered worldwide), and was matched only by Tanzania’s Economic & Social Research Foundation (from 3 stars to 1 star) and  Ghana’s Centre for Democratic Development  (2 stars to none). I don’t how accurate the ranking is, or how seriously it is taken, but it certainly addresses an important issue because secrecy about funding sources undermines the credibility of many of these organisations, which are proliferating worldwide and in the US alone spend more than $1 billion a year. Britain emerges badly from the [...]

Two extraordinary betrayals are still on show in London. One, 'Mark Thomas: Cuckooed', finishes on 13 December (though will continue its national tour next year). The other, 'The Green Prince', opens at various cinemas on Friday. Both are fascinating.

The Ma3looma Team explain how they are taking part in the 16 days of Activism against Gender Violence and the hashtag campaign #orangeurhood.   [ow-video]23359:#16days against Gender Violence Ma3looma supports #orangeurhood campaign  :Video by OneWorld[/ow-video] Since April 2013, Ma3looma has been working to connect young people and at-risk populations to anonymous, accurate, and non-judgmental information about their health and rights using OneWorld's mobile phone and web-based question-and-answer servicem, and an Arabic-speaking sexual and reproductive health content website linked to dynamic social media pages. These services increase the availability of safe yet vibrant spaces where young and at-risk people can access comprehensive, rights-based information while also airing [...]

Our Project Advisor Srorn Srun for Learning about Living in Cambodia asks us to think about how to stop violence against one woman to find a solution about how we can stop violence against one billion women.   [ow-video]23332:16 Days against Gender Violence: Stop violence against ONE woman   :Video by OneWorld[/ow-video] Learning about Living Cambodia is a cross-media programme co-developed by OneWorld UK and Butterfly Works, which provides young people with accurate, non-judgmental and timely information about sexual and reproductive health and rights, including gender roles and gender-based violence. As part of Learning about Living Cambodia, an eLearning platform is being rolled out across 5 provinces and in Phnom Penh to support teachers in approaching SRHR [...]

Gertjan van Bruchem, Associate Country Director for Oxfam in Cambodia, says supporting Learning about Living is part of the solution to end violence against women.   [ow-video]23322:16 Days against Gender Violence: Learning about Living Cambodia   :Video by OneWorld[/ow-video] Learning about Living Cambodia is a cross-media programme co-developed by OneWorld UK and Butterfly Works, which provides young people with accurate, non-judgmental and timely information about sexual and reproductive health and rights, including gender roles and gender-based violence. As part of Learning about Living Cambodia, an eLearning platform is being rolled out across 5 provinces and in Phnom Penh to support teachers in approaching SRHR topics and discussing sensitive issues such as gender-based [...]

Inala Fathimath from UN Women in Cambodia asks what will you do to end violence against women and girls?

Daniel Nelson Usually I am complaining about the negative images of sub-Saharan Africa: for the Conflict, Time, Photography exhibition at Tate Modern my complaint is that there aren’t enough negative images of Africa. The wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo get a look-in, but with a guesstimated 5.4 million deaths and 2.9 million displaced – one of the deadliest conflicts since the Second World War – it seems underplayed. There are nods, too, in the direction of post-civil war Luanda (“the landscape appeared both medieval and post-apocalyptic simultaneously – as if Mad Max had collided head on with the Canterbury Tales”) and South Africa’s “Border Wars”. Of the latter, photographer Jo Ractliffe says, “The traces of war are being bulldozed off the [...]

By Chantal Foyer While the legacy of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution is still contested, one outcome is clear: it has made Facebook the most popular website in Egypt. And when they get to Facebook, Egyptians spend more time on it than on any other website. OneWorld saw the immense opportunity to use social media to talk about sexual and reproductive health with young people, so that early on OneWorld's Ma3looma project harnessed the popularity of social media there. What started as a project based on a dynamic website on sexual and reproductive health and rights as well as an SMS-based question-and-answer platform quickly took to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Ask.fm with overwhelming success. The Ma3looma Facebook page has reached half a million likes today and is attracting more by the day. The [...]