Helen Morgan

Hyphen • 8th April 2026

What a mosque fire shows about Muslim life in Spain - Hyphen

Early one Saturday morning in July 2025 in the quiet commuter town of Piera, an hour from Barcelona, a mosque was set on fire days before it was due to open.

“We found everything destroyed, everything burned,” said Yahya Mokhtari, the mosque’s president. “The whole community was very angry and very sad.”

The process to build the mosque had been a long one. The industrial unit was bought at the beginning of 2021 and construction began in 2023.

“We had to start again from scratch,” said Mokhtar...

New Internationalist • 20th November 2025

Spain's water desalination dilemma

It is not unusual to see people filling huge bottles of water from the old cast iron fountains dotting Barcelona’s sunny plazas. Some people say it tastes better than the water from their own taps. But for a local resident named Jonathan, it’s necessity. ‘We have to do this now, because the water bills have gone up,’ he says.Jonathan is not alone: Barcelona residents have seen their water bills rise 10 to 15 per cent in the past two years, making the resource unaffordable for many. Though a comm...

euronews • 29th March 2024

‘A catastrophe’: Farmers and hotels are battling for water in Spain

Standing in a field of apple trees in Catalonia, fruit and cereal farmer Ramón Falguera looks worried.Last year, fruit harvests dropped by around a third and wheat by half due to a lack of rain and restrictions on water use in this area of northeast Spain.
The water canal used for irrigating the farmland, which stems from rivers born in the Pyrenees mountains, only opened for a month last spring for the first time since it was built 160 years ago.
The drought is thought to be the worst in 200 ye...

Devex • 19th December 2023

How escalating violence in the West Bank is affecting aid workers

While the world has been watching the war and devastating humanitarian crisis unfold in the Gaza Strip, escalating violence in the West Bank — around 70 miles away — is also taking a huge toll on communities. More than 475 Palestinians have been killed in the occupied Palestinian territory so far this year as of Dec. 14 — 276 since Oct. 7 alone, according to the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner, or UNOCHA. Two-thirds of fatalities have occurred during search-and-arrest...

Devex • 11th December 2023

‘Feminist climate justice’ calls for equal representation at COP 28

During the first week of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP 28, concerns were raised about the lack of gender diversity in the negotiations. The same concerns were also raised following COP 27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, in 2022. And about COP 26 in Glasgow. In fact, in the last 10 years, women’s representation in the COP negotiations has increased only marginally, from 30% to 35%, according to Jemimah Njuki, chief of economic empowerment at UN Women. “Women must be represe...

World Politics Review • 5th June 2023

Sanchez’s Snap Elections Gamble Could Benefit Spain’s Far Right

Over the past few years, many European countries have begun tilting further toward the far right. Spain, however, has been one of the few remaining left-leaning bastions, with its ruling socialist coalition making headway on several progressive domestic issues. But the results of regional elections on May 28 left Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Spanish Workers Socialist Party, or PSOE, reeling. The polls, which took place in 12 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions and thousands of municipalitie...

World Politics Review • 15th March 2023

For the U.K.’s Migration Policy, the Cruelty Is the Point

In an unusual twist in British politics, a national football hero and the BBC became the unlikely protagonists in an intense political debate on immigration last week. Gary Lineker, a former professional footballer and popular TV presenter, made international headlines for criticizing the government’s rhetoric on immigration. The BBC then got caught up in the issue too, when the state broadcaster suspended Lineker from his perch hosting its iconic Match of the Day weekend highlight show.


The...

Shorthand • 9th March 2018

Innovation for access in Indonesia

It’s raining outside the health center in Jayapura, in Papua, Indonesia, as women wait to be seen by a midwife. Noisy cars and mopeds pass by while lush, dense forests are visible in the distance. Lydia Simanjuntak, one of the patients in line, smiles as she describes what it was like to have her first ultrasound and how happy she was when she heard a heartbeat. At seven-months pregnant, this was only her second visit; she said she wasn’t aware that the health center had an ultrasound machine, s...

Devex • 18th December 2017

Video: NGO rescue missions in Mediterranean face physical, legal threats

Migration crisis: Two years onIn 2015, more than 1 million undocumented migrants and refugees arrived in Europe. A further 3,515 people died attempting to cross the Mediterranean. In November that year, as the “migration crisis” escalated, European leaders met to hash out a solution at the Valletta Summit, relying heavily on the idea that development cooperation could help.Two years on, Devex is taking a look at some of the policies, priorities, and trends that were put in action then, asking wh...

Devex • 8th October 2015

EU refugee crisis: Same old, same old?

There are many important stories emerging from the refugee crisis in Europe that help portray the complex landscape of the situation. And for every story there seem to be as many logistical challenges to be overcome. When I visited the Greek island of Lesbos back in August, this was glaringly obvious. The number of people arriving had reached 4,000 per day, and with few ferries available to take people on to Athens, around 20,000 refugees were stranded on an island ill-equipped to meet their nee...