Doctors from the Netherlands and India, along with civil society representatives, joined forces to ensure access to a rare medicine for seven children in India. This process involves manufacturing the drug in The Hague and subsequently sending it to India.
The production of the medicine, known as Tiratricol, will be carried out by Transvaal Pharmacy. The cost of one capsule will be 1.8 euros. The compounding process is a method of creating medicines in small, individually tailored quantities.
Residents of Delhi's slum settlements will receive relief through the implementation of a new policy to revitalize 675 such settlements. According to this program, the goal is to provide permanent housing for approximately 400 thousand families, allowing people living in slums to obtain more decent accommodation.
Under the new policy, eligible families will be provided with permanent housing of at least 25 square meters, equipped with all necessary amenities, including a room, kitchen, bathroom, toilet, and balcony.
When implementing the project, attention will be paid to ensuring that the new houses are located in close proximity to the people's current place of residence. This is because the income and children's education of slum residents depend on their current area. Moving too far away could negatively affect the daily lives of these families, so priority is given to providing nearby housing during resettlement.
According to the new policy, the cost of housing for eligible families is set at 1.50 lakh rupees, plus an additional fee of 50 thousand rupees for maintenance (maintenance corpus). Thus, families receiving a house will have to pay a total of 2 lakh rupees, provided they meet the established program conditions.
Not all families living in slums will be able to benefit from this program, as there are specific conditions. The first condition states that the relevant slum must have been built before January 1, 2025. The second condition requires that the family does not own any permanent housing anywhere in the country. Furthermore, the family must meet other eligibility criteria of the program.
The first phase of the program includes the areas of Silampuri, Sultanpuri, and Lajpat Nagar. The revitalization of 17 slum settlements in these three areas is planned, which involves the construction of three high-rise residential complexes. In the future, other slum settlements in Delhi are planned to be included in this policy.
The impact of this program will not be limited to slum settlements only. The large-scale construction will require numerous resources from the construction sector, which may create opportunities for companies related to real estate, cement, steel, and infrastructure. The main goal of the program is to provide permanent housing to families living in slums and improve their living conditions.
Amnesty International (AI) released a new report detailing 28 more incidents of aggression, humiliation, and abuse perpetrated by military personnel against migrants residing in Ceuta, bringing the total documented cases to fifty since the arrival of a large number of people in July.
The NGO demands an immediate, impartial, and thorough investigation into these abuses, calling for the preventive removal of involved military personnel and the establishment of appropriate criminal and disciplinary responsibilities.
Inquiries made to the Public Prosecutor's Office of Ceuta and the Ministry of Defence revealed that the organization had no knowledge of any soldier being under investigation or having been removed from service, nor did it know if the victims or witnesses of these alleged 'human rights abuses' were receiving any protection against retaliation.
The new document reveals that 18 of these cases occurred after the Ministry of Defence announced the opening of an internal investigation, prompted by the NGO's first complaint; however, AI stated it had not received any official information from the Government regarding these investigations.
Additionally, following initial complaints from AI and information published by elDiario.es, several courts in Ceuta initiated investigative procedures.
Besides the aggressions by members of the armed forces, this publication, resulting from a new visit to the autonomous city between October 23 and 26, recorded seven cases of mistreatment committed by the National Police and the Civil Guard.
In the report, the organization documented ten more situations—four of which involved minors—of cruel, inhuman, or torture treatment prior to the Ministry of Defence announcing the investigation. Among these are four particularly serious cases that may constitute acts of torture.
All incidents follow a similar pattern: they begin with kidnapping and transport in military vehicles to isolated areas, using handcuffs to immobilize the victims' hands.
One cited example is that of M., a 20-year-old young man who used to mime in the streets of Ceuta. He was taken for fifteen minutes to an isolated area where he was surrounded by about sixteen or seventeen soldiers who ridiculed him and forced him to remove all his clothes. One of the military personnel filmed the event with a mobile phone and demanded that he dance. Unable to resist, he was beaten, and a soldier pointed a weapon, shouting: 'If you don't dance, I will bury you right here.'
AI also recorded assaults and beatings following the disclosure of the first investigation, involving punches, kicks, baton strikes, and the use of a 'taser' by military personnel, generally from the regular force, against vulnerable individuals sleeping on the street. These attacks resulted, according to the NGO's graphic documentation with medical reports and testimonies, in limb and orbital fractures, bruises, erosive wounds, lumbar hematomas, or lacerations on the head compatible with baton blows, among other injuries.
Testimonies such as that of R., who woke up on October 24 while sleeping on Sidi Embarek road feeling a taser applied to his chest, causing dizziness, vomiting, and fainting, and that of Tunisian M., aged 40, who was sleeping on Benítez beach with three other Moroccan youths when four soldiers assaulted him in the face, causing a contusion that left him blind in one eye for two weeks, were recorded.
Authorities were also accused of committing aggressions against minor migrants, some of whom reported military abuses such as baton strikes while sleeping, theft, and destruction of belongings, including documents, in addition to threats, aggressions, and humiliations.
In the report, AI questions the police conduct at the NGO's No Name Kitchen headquarters on October 22 and the 'false accusation' of providing pepper spray to migrants, which would be part of a strategy to 'silence those who help and provide humanitarian aid.' The organization also criticizes the 'extremely worrying' stance of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Ceuta in this case, which requested preventive detention for two activists, which drastically contrasts with the lack of initiative in investigating the torture and mistreatment by military personnel.
