Harriet Barber

A Global Health Security correspondent and video producer at The Telegraph, specialising in human rights' abuses, violence against women, access to abortion and the refugee crisis.

    Get in touch: harrietbarbereditorial@gmail.com

    The Telegraph •

    ‘Three soldiers took turns raping me in front of my children’

    Over nine days in late November, dozens of women were raped by rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Many of the victims were gang-raped, others were raped in front of their children.

    In the three months since, they have not received adequate medical treatment, nor psychological support. The authorities now stand accused of failing to investigate what Amnesty International describes as “war crimes”.

    The new findings by the human rights organisation are harrowing to read.
    The Telegraph •

    ‘Russian troops deprived diabetic patient of insulin to let him slowly die’

    Hospitals have been pillaged, doctors imprisoned, and patients denied vital medical care by Russian soldiers in Ukraine, according to a landmark investigation which uncovers hundreds of potential war crimes committed by Vladimir Putin’s forces. Doctors have spent up to 24 hours a day manually resuscitating premature babies after the destruction of medical equipment, while Russian troops have stopped civilians from taking life-saving insulin, leaving them to slowly die, the report adds.
    The Telegraph •

    The Ukrainian refugees invoking Britain’s Blitz spirit

    Anna Pisliariuk is reading law at the University of Westminster and is the model of a hard-working student. She has reason to be so well motivated: she dreams of bringing the Russian war criminals who have terrorised her homeland to justice.

    It’s been almost a year since the then 18-year-old awoke to a chorus of car sirens and bombs, and saw tanks lining the streets of Kyiv.

    “The neighbours were screaming,” said Ms Pisliariuk, recalling the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
    The Telegraph •

    South Sudan battles a four-year flood

    In South Sudan, the dry season won’t come. The country is battling its fourth year of historic flooding, impacting one million citizens and submerging entire villages in its wake.

    While flooding is not unusual in the east African country, the current scale and ferocity is.

    “We are technically entering the dry season now, but water levels have increased again. The water extent seems to have increased by 3,000 kilometres in the past week – it is out of the ordinary,” said Charlotte Hallqvist, a
    The Telegraph •

    ‘When I was three, my mouth started to smell bad. Then I lost part of my face’

    Tucked away in a remote part of north-west Nigeria lies a hospital with swings and a surgery.

    The children awaiting their operations play in its grounds freely after months or years of hiding from prying eyes and taunting neighbours.

    They’re the survivors of a vicious disease which has distorted, sometimes destroyed, their faces. A disease so fatal that 90 per cent of its victims die within two weeks, and so neglected that its biology remains largely unknown.
    The Telegraph •

    Quack health tips, toxic masculinity and soft porn: What social media is feeding our children

    Teenagers as young as 13 are being fed nonsense health advice, links to pornography and can access explicit self-harm content on social media, a Telegraph investigation has established.

    The findings come ahead of a crucial vote on the long delayed Online Safety Bill in Parliament this coming week, in which Tory rebel MPs are pushing for amendments that would enable social media bosses to be jailed if they fail to protect children from online harms.
    The Telegraph •

    Lies, love and deception: inside the cut-throat world of international adoption

    Anja Pedersen-Scholl, 47, has always known she was adopted. Her East Asian heritage stood out in Copenhagen where she arrived as a baby. What she didn't know is that she was smuggled out of South Korea on a dead child’s papers shortly after her birth.

    Her natural father would spend much of the rest of his life uncertain of her fate.

    “While we were looking into your file, we learned that your adoption paper was written quite differently from the true story”, admitted the Korean Social Service.
    The Telegraph •

    Castration, gang-rape, forced nudity: How Russia’s soldiers are using sexual violence to terrorise Ukraine

    Since Russia’s soldiers first stormed Ukraine, women have been gang-raped, men castrated, children sexually abused, and civilians forced to parade naked in the streets, according to the United Nations.

    The Kremlin stands accused of terrorising the Ukrainian population with sexual violence in a systematic and unsparing manner. It is thought that the full-extent of this barbarism will not come to light until years after the war.
    The Telegraph •

    The fight for survival inside the villages with no men

    In three months, north-eastern Kenya’s villages have witnessed a seismic shift: the men have all but left.

    “In August the men moved, taking their little [remaining] livestock,” says Yusuf Abdi, a local programme coordinator for Action Aid. “It is only the women now. They are struggling to feed their families and children.”

    North-eastern Kenya, like many of its neighbours in the Horn of Africa, is facing its worst drought in forty years. For the last four seasons the annual rains have failed.