After meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992 to discuss sustainable development during the World Summit, the United Nations published Agenda 21. The action plan Agenda 21 addresses social, economic, conservation and developmental issues across the globe. The United Nations used this meeting as a means to establish sustainable development as a global undertaking. […]
Financial instability is an ongoing issue for older generations in South Korea. Almost half of South Korea’s elderly are living in poverty. The life span of South Koreans has increased, and so has economic difficulty for younger people in South Korea. This makes it much more difficult for the children of the elderly to provide […]
Even the richest country in the world has diseases that do not seem to be going away. Qatar a Middle Eastern nation that borders Saudi Arabia. This prosperous country had a gross domestic product (GDP) per capita of $66,415.30 in 2016. For comparison, the United States had a GDP per capita of $52,194.90. Even so, there […]
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, upwards of five million children are left without traditional education due to poverty, unrest and civil turmoil. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest rate of primary school enrollment in the world, with 34 million primary age children living in the region not in school. Without access to education, these children mature without many […]
A new initiative by the World Health Organization (WHO) has allowed access to antibiotics for those impacted by world’s leading cause of infectious blindness. Almost eight million people are visually impaired due to trachoma in some of the world’s most marginalized countries. Five hundred million people are currently at risk of blindness in 57 endemic […]
Singapore’s poverty solution is KidStart, a pilot program now authorized as a permanent action to give children from low income families equal opportunities. KidStart will also develop early intervention programs for at-risk youth and adults. KidStart is a three-year pilot program that launched in 2016. The program encourages early childhood education and supports families earning […]
In recent years, India has made strides in bettering its education system. Between 2011 and 2015, the country increased its spending on education by 80 percent. Additionally, as of 2011, the country’s literacy rate was at 74 percent, a great improvement from the 52 percent recorded in 1991. While India’s education system has continued to […]
El Salvador, a tiny county in Central America, has struggled with corruption and poverty for centuries. The El Salvador poverty rate is one of the highest in the world. In fact, the most recent official statistics reported that the poverty rate in El Salvador is above a third of the entire population. In 2015, the […]
As fighting continues in cities like Mosul, which formerly served as a strong base for the so-called Islamic State (ISIS), there is a growing need to rebuild newly liberated areas and infrastructure for stability in Iraq. In an effort to address this, recent pledges were declared by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) […]
The Trump administration is dusting off Depression-era laws to advance its “America First” agenda. The aptly-named “Buy American” laws require firms to buy U.S. materials when manufacturing military equipment. In 2013, $20 billion went to foreign entities, roughly 6.4 percent of military spending. That money is spent largely on raw materials like lumber, fuel and […]
