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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Mark Townsend

Mark Townsend is a senior global development reporter at the Guardian. He is the author of No Return: The True Story of How Martyrs Are Made

August 2024

  • A woman in a burqa

    Rights and freedom
    Hundreds of cases of femicide recorded in Afghanistan since Taliban takeover are ‘tip of the iceberg’

  • A young child partly covered with a blanket gazes upwards in a displacement camp

    Sudanese factions using starvation as weapon is ‘cowardice’, US envoy says

  • Recurring Floods In South Sudan Displace Refugees And Host Communities<br>BENTIU, SOUTH SUDAN - NOVEMBER 28: A group of women walk along a dyke protecting Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), and their host community, from further flooding on November 28, 2023 in Bentiu, South Sudan. Climate change has divided South Sudan into land that is experiencing unprecedented flooding or drought, with record flooding creating widespread displacement, the destruction of livelihoods and the loss of arable land which all contribute to rising hunger and cases of malnutrition. The ongoing war in Sudan has caused displacement of over 3.3 million people, some redirected refugees travelling back to South Sudan. (Photo by Luke Dray/Getty Images)

    A drowning town: are Bentiu’s dykes high enough to save it from disaster?

  • An Afghan man in the doorway of a mud-walled building watches a British soldier walk past a poppy field holding a rifle

    Bloodlines
    Was the shooting of a nine-year-old girl in Hackney linked to a Europe-wide battle between rival drug gangs?

July 2024

  • Two black African soldiers in camouflage holding guns and surrounded by rocket-propelled grenades seen on top of a vehicle

    Girls as young as nine gang-raped by paramilitaries in Sudan – report

  • A destroyer tank lies in front of a mosque in a decimated area of Omdurman, Sudan.

    ‘Smoking gun’ evidence points to UAE involvement in Sudan civil war

  • A view of children's feet standing in a row, some with blankets around them

    Children missing from Home Office hotels likely to have been trafficked, report finds

  • Palestinians mourning at Al-Aqsa Martyr's Hospital in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

    Middle East crisis live
    Israel-Gaza war: US warns of ‘serious concern’ about recent civilian casualties in Gaza – as it happened

  • Rights and freedom
    Iranian TV presenter stabbed in London moves abroad for safety

  • 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?

June 2024

  • Huts burning with the sky filled with smoke

    UK ‘tried to suppress criticism’ of alleged UAE role in arming Sudan’s RSF militia

  • Two children walk along a dusty path carrying water containers

    Conflicts drive number of forcibly displaced people to record high

  • trail image 4

    Bloodlines
    Beaten and tortured: the north African children paying a bloody price for Europe’s insatiable appetite for cocaine

  • Four boys stand on a hill silhouetted against a dark sky

    Bloodlines
    Revealed: drug cartels force migrant children to work as foot soldiers in Europe’s booming cocaine trade

May 2024

  • Starlink<br>ANKARA, TURKIYE - OCTOBER 31: In this photo illustration, logo of Starlink is displayed on mobile phone screen and photo of Elon Musk is displayed on computer screen in Ankara, Turkiye on October 31, 2023. (Photo by Ismail Aslandag/Anadolu via Getty Images)

    Starlink internet shutdown in Sudan will punish millions, Elon Musk warned

    With a widespread telecoms blackout already in place, emergency help and humanitarian aid at risk if satellite service withdrawn, say NGOs
  • A large group of people in a refugee camp.

    Children ‘piled up and shot’: new details emerge of ethnic cleansing in Darfur

    As El Fasher stands on the ‘precipice of a massacre’, rights groups call for sanctions after new testimony describes atrocities carried out by RSF paramilitaries in Sudan
  • People standing next to dozens of candles with childish cutouts seen hanging from string

    Rights and freedom
    Hundreds of potentially trafficked children ‘abandoned by Home Office’

    Exclusive: 1,871 possible trafficking or modern slavery victims left open to exploitation after falling out of UK system, FoI data reveals

April 2024

  • A group of soldiers with weapons sit on the back of a pickup truck

    Burkina Faso soldiers massacred 223 civilians in one day, finds rights group

    Human Rights Watch demands investigation into killings in two villages just weeks after Russian troops fly in, amid intensifying conflict
  • Screenshots from a video shared by the Darfur Victim Support organisation showing the village of Al Takma burning.

    Rights and freedom
    Increasing number of villages torched across Sudan shows conflict is intensifying - report

    Satellite data indicates growing number of airstrikes on settlements, in a war that has already killed thousands
  • The arm size of a Sudanese child suffering from malnutrition is examined at a refugee camp in Chad.

    Europe live
    Europe: Sudan war ‘world’s worst child displacement crisis,’ Paris conference told – as it happened

    Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, says ‘every life counts equally, whether in Ukraine, in Gaza, or in Sudan’
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