On April 3, 2017, 14 people died and 64 were injured when an explosive device detonated in the St. Petersburg metro. The perpetrator, Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, who also died in the explosion, came to St. Petersburg in 2011 from Osh, Kyrgyzstan to work as a car mechanic. Upon reviewing Dzhalilov’s online record and talking with witnesses, Russia’s Federal Security Services found links to Islamist websites on his social media, as well as evidence that he had become withdrawn and quiet two months before his suicide bombing.
The St. Petersburg attack brought Russia’s approach to counter-extremism to the spotlight. More than 2,000 Russians have gone off to fight for ISIS, making Russia the largest contributor of ISIS fighters. While some of these fighters harbor resentments dating back to ethnic wars in the 1990s, others saw ISIS as an opportunity to escape from poor economic opportunities and blatant discrimination at home.
History of Chaos
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Chechnya, a majority Muslim, southern region of Russia, descended into chaos. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, pushed for a decentralization of government but would not go as far as to legitimize Chechen separatists’ independence movement. Interethnic conflict engulfed the Caucasus region, with hundreds of thousands of Ingush people and Chechens fleeing from the destruction of their communities. This legacy of insurgency and violence is one of the main causes of radicalization in Russia, especially in the Northern Caucasus, which remains Russia’s most radicalized region even today.
Radical Islamists tend to be concentrated in cities with high concentrations of migrant workers, particularly in the oil-producing cities of Tyumen and Khanty-Mansiysk. In fact, close to 200,000 Chechens, Ingush and Dagestanis live in West Siberia.
Disenfranchisement
Labor migrants from Central Asia face xenophobia after arriving in Russia. In August 2016, one poll administered by the Levada Center found that 52 percent of Russians believe in a “Russia for ethnic Russians.” The same poll found that 39 percent of Russians feel that immigrants destroy Russian culture. Feeling out-of-place as a minority, these migrants seek community and protection in local mosques, breeding grounds for recruitment into radical Islamic groups. In fact, mosques are the main sites of recruitment, according to the Search for Common Good Organization.
Law enforcement and security agencies alienate Muslims by promulgating propaganda that belittles their beliefs. A Wilson Center report details how law enforcement officials in Russia plant drugs while searching the homes of Muslims, only to arrest and jail them later. Intimidated by state pressure, these Muslims seek recluse in the ranks of ISIS.
Social Media
In order to target and entice potential recruits, terrorist groups use social media and online forums. VKontakte, a popular Russian social media site, was the go-to for ISIS supporters and recruiters until the company began shutting down content that promoted the terrorist group in September 2014. To work around these restrictions, ISIS now uses its own Furat Media to disseminate propaganda.
Russia has implemented stringent counter-extremism laws, to the point that some critics worry about an invasion of piracy. A 2014 Extremism Law gave authorities the power to ban websites and social media accounts without a court order. In the span of 11 months, between February and December 2015, Russia banned 512 websites. Moreover, the 2016 Yarovaya Law forces digital providers to store clients’ data for a minimum of six months and make these records available to the Federal Security Services.
Financial Woes
Extremist groups recruit financially vulnerable migrants with promises of stable jobs and a network of support. More than 28 percent of interviewees in a survey by the Search for Common Ground organization said that the prospect of stable jobs and salaries attracted them to ISIS recruiters. This issue is compounded for undocumented migrants in Russia, who are much more vulnerable financially.
While the Russian government’s counter-extremism laws are harsh, its official rhetoric against its Muslim population, 11.7 percent according to the Pew Research Center, has the unintended consequence of promoting radicalization.
The time is now for Russia to consider more than just its censorship of extremist content. The country must, first and foremost, eradicate the root causes of radicalization, addressing state-sponsored discrimination, financial insecurity and minority rights.
– Mark Blekherman
Photo: Flickr
The March for Science to End Poverty in Ghana
The population of Ghana has exploded over the past couple decades, which has dramatically reduced the poverty rate throughout this West African country. Between 1991 and 2013, the poverty rate plummeted from 37.6 percent to 9.6 percent. However, poverty is still considered a big issue, which has led to the March for Science to end poverty in Ghana.
What was the March for Science?
In order to combat the issue of poverty in their country, Ghanaian scientists and science-loving Ghanaians stepped out on Saturday, April 14th, 2018 to protest the lack of funding for science and technology research. The march was led by scientists from Alliance for Science Ghana, and the marchers participated in an 8k walk on the streets of their capital, Accra, and later they came together for a forum to talk about the role of science in national development.
What was the Main Objective for this March?
The theme for this march was “Building Ghana: Let’s end environmental destruction and poverty through science informed actions.” The reason for theme being that Ghanaians wanted to get the point across that poverty in Ghana will not be abolished without science and technology research funding becoming a priority to governmental leaders. This march was also needed in order to inform the greater public about the fact that there is a direct link between protecting the environment from ruin and eliminating poverty.
It is evident that the lack of precedence science and technology in Ghana holds in the government directly impacts poverty in this country. One of the aims of the Accra March for Science is to bring this issue to the attention of government officials.
What is Science and Technology Research Like in Ghana Today?
Currently, funding for scientific research in Ghana is at a scarce 0.2 percent per year. In order for this country to try and get out of its poverty cycle, this amount must increase to 3.5 percent every year, as is the United Nation’s goal. The United Nations has said that increased investment in science and technology is a crucial aspect of breaking the cycle of poverty, and Ghana needs to listen and use this advice to its advantage.
How Does This Lack of Research Funding Affect Farmers?
There are scientific improvements being made in Ghana with the limited amount of funding that is provided, but this technology often does not reach farmers because of the inadequate extension services and the lack of investments in agriculture and regulatory procedures. Such issues need to be fixed. With an increase in funding for science and technology research, there will be means to address the gap between the science and agriculture communities of Ghana.
The government needs to put in the effort of extending support to farmers in order to ensure food security to the Ghanaian people, as well as to help pull Ghana out of poverty. A recent research study at the University of Ghana revealed that more than 80 percent of smallholder farmers are not benefitting from the government’s support.
The hope of this march is that advocating for the increase in funding to science and technology research can also help end poverty in Ghana by way of reaching the Ghanian farmers. This impoverished West African country would benefit enormously if the government paid attention to the areas in need. Science and technology research funding needs to be increased dramatically to both reach farmers and help break the cycle of poverty in this country.
– Megan Maxwell
Photo: Flickr
Top 10 Facts about Child Soldiers in Syria
During the Syrian conflict, children, even younger than 10, have been recruited into armed groups. These children are inadequately protected by the government and many are recruited into government and terrorist organizations. The majority of them are untrained but are placed in combat situations. Years of violence and despair have plagued the lives of these children. In the text below, the top 10 facts about child soldiers in Syria are presented.
Top 10 Facts about Child Soldiers in Syria
These top 10 facts about child soldiers in Syria demonstrate the desperate crisis children in this country face every day. These are children who desperately need support in a fractured world, especially child soldiers that are affected most by the violence.
Investing in the future of this region and its children could have a large impact. Rehabilitation programs for child soldiers could help them reintegrate into society and into a normal life. These children could be placed into care centers or mandatory rehab programs to deal with the psychological and physical damage they have suffered.
Programs like these have worked in other conflicts and war situations and could help Syrian child soldiers find a way out of the violence they face every day and help them re-establish relationships with their families and communities as well.
– Olivia Halliburton
Photo: Flickr
Food Insecurity in Colombia
After a 50-year-long civil war, Colombia has entered a newly found period of peace. Decades of conflict and instability, however, severely impacted locals in many ways, one of them being food security. At this point, 43 percent of Colombians live with food insecurity and the majority of those affected reside in rural areas. Rural development is a priority in peacekeeping initiatives and will aid in reducing both poverty and food insecurity in Colombia.
Malnutrition in Colombia
An individual is considered food insecure when they experience hunger daily or are unable to afford consistent meals for themselves or their family. It can lead to a number of physical and mental health issues, with malnutrition as the main concern. In Colombia, more than 13 percent of children under the age of five suffer from malnutrition, which can inhibit proper development at a young age. Internally displaced persons or those from an ethnic minority are more likely to live with food insecurity and to be malnourished.
Government Initiatives
In November 2016, President Juan Manuel Santos signed the peace agreement with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). With this promise of peace and security came a commitment to developing the agriculture sector and investing in programs aimed at poverty reduction in rural areas. In a comment, President Santos highlighted rural poverty as a result of the war and its impact on the farming industry stating that the country fields were also victims of the armed conflict that stripped the rural sector of its productivity, increased the social gap with the urban areas and deepened inequities in the country.
Of those living in rural regions, 40 percent are impoverished, and this geographic group also makes up the majority of individuals affected by food insecurity in Colombia. By encouraging the development of new farms, the government could reduce poverty, food insecurity and reliance on food imports, while benefiting the economy and employment rates.
Agriculture makes up 6.9 percent of Colombia’s GDP while offering employment to 15.8 percent of the population. Less than 30 percent of its arable land, however, is currently being used. Government initiatives to solve this issues include building road, irrigation systems, seed distribution networks for previously underutilized regions and implementing nutrition security programs and agricultural subsidies.
International Efforts
Groups such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), a specialized United Nations agency, are also working towards alleviating food insecurity in Colombia. IFAD supports small-scale agriculture and entrepreneurs in rural areas, with the goal of increasing efficiency and productivity. They work with the government to secure loans and implement public policy. Currently, IFAD has four projects in Colombia with the total funding of $163 million. These programs impact 94,400 families.
Action Against Hunger, a global nonprofit organization, has been active in Colombia since 1998 and continues to shape their efforts according to the political climate. Their services include emergency food distribution, nutritional support for children and training in vulnerable communities. Since the Peace Accords in 2016, they have incorporated peace-building work into their programs. In 2017 alone, their Nutrition and Health programs reached 2,878 people and their Food Security and Livelihood programs reached 10,462 people.
These are just two examples of international efforts to support the government’s goal of rural development and reducing food insecurity in Colombia.
As the country transitions away from conflict, continued work towards poverty reduction and advancement in the agricultural sector is necessary for security and economic growth.
– Georgia Orenstein
Photo: Flickr
Top 10 Facts about Girls’ Education in Gabon
The top 10 facts about girls’ education in Gabon presented in the text below are interesting to consider because of the intersection they suggest between the country’s strengths and weaknesses. Women in Gabon suffer at the hands of domestic abuse and a deficiency of certain instrumental rights. At the same time, literacy rates in the country are relatively high compared to other countries in the region.
The 10 Facts about Girls’ Education in Gabon
These top 10 facts about girls’ education in Gabon indicate that though the system is providing decent literacy rates, education in Gabon is far from perfect. Women still face lower literacy rates than men and early marriages prevent them from having sufficient educational opportunities.
Efforts like those of UNICEF mentioned above will help to ameliorate such problems but the most promising prospects for the future will have to come from the country itself.
– Julia Bloechl
Photo: Flickr
The Causes of Radicalization in Russia
On April 3, 2017, 14 people died and 64 were injured when an explosive device detonated in the St. Petersburg metro. The perpetrator, Akbarzhon Dzhalilov, who also died in the explosion, came to St. Petersburg in 2011 from Osh, Kyrgyzstan to work as a car mechanic. Upon reviewing Dzhalilov’s online record and talking with witnesses, Russia’s Federal Security Services found links to Islamist websites on his social media, as well as evidence that he had become withdrawn and quiet two months before his suicide bombing.
The St. Petersburg attack brought Russia’s approach to counter-extremism to the spotlight. More than 2,000 Russians have gone off to fight for ISIS, making Russia the largest contributor of ISIS fighters. While some of these fighters harbor resentments dating back to ethnic wars in the 1990s, others saw ISIS as an opportunity to escape from poor economic opportunities and blatant discrimination at home.
History of Chaos
When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, Chechnya, a majority Muslim, southern region of Russia, descended into chaos. Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, pushed for a decentralization of government but would not go as far as to legitimize Chechen separatists’ independence movement. Interethnic conflict engulfed the Caucasus region, with hundreds of thousands of Ingush people and Chechens fleeing from the destruction of their communities. This legacy of insurgency and violence is one of the main causes of radicalization in Russia, especially in the Northern Caucasus, which remains Russia’s most radicalized region even today.
Radical Islamists tend to be concentrated in cities with high concentrations of migrant workers, particularly in the oil-producing cities of Tyumen and Khanty-Mansiysk. In fact, close to 200,000 Chechens, Ingush and Dagestanis live in West Siberia.
Disenfranchisement
Labor migrants from Central Asia face xenophobia after arriving in Russia. In August 2016, one poll administered by the Levada Center found that 52 percent of Russians believe in a “Russia for ethnic Russians.” The same poll found that 39 percent of Russians feel that immigrants destroy Russian culture. Feeling out-of-place as a minority, these migrants seek community and protection in local mosques, breeding grounds for recruitment into radical Islamic groups. In fact, mosques are the main sites of recruitment, according to the Search for Common Good Organization.
Law enforcement and security agencies alienate Muslims by promulgating propaganda that belittles their beliefs. A Wilson Center report details how law enforcement officials in Russia plant drugs while searching the homes of Muslims, only to arrest and jail them later. Intimidated by state pressure, these Muslims seek recluse in the ranks of ISIS.
Social Media
In order to target and entice potential recruits, terrorist groups use social media and online forums. VKontakte, a popular Russian social media site, was the go-to for ISIS supporters and recruiters until the company began shutting down content that promoted the terrorist group in September 2014. To work around these restrictions, ISIS now uses its own Furat Media to disseminate propaganda.
Russia has implemented stringent counter-extremism laws, to the point that some critics worry about an invasion of piracy. A 2014 Extremism Law gave authorities the power to ban websites and social media accounts without a court order. In the span of 11 months, between February and December 2015, Russia banned 512 websites. Moreover, the 2016 Yarovaya Law forces digital providers to store clients’ data for a minimum of six months and make these records available to the Federal Security Services.
Financial Woes
Extremist groups recruit financially vulnerable migrants with promises of stable jobs and a network of support. More than 28 percent of interviewees in a survey by the Search for Common Ground organization said that the prospect of stable jobs and salaries attracted them to ISIS recruiters. This issue is compounded for undocumented migrants in Russia, who are much more vulnerable financially.
While the Russian government’s counter-extremism laws are harsh, its official rhetoric against its Muslim population, 11.7 percent according to the Pew Research Center, has the unintended consequence of promoting radicalization.
The time is now for Russia to consider more than just its censorship of extremist content. The country must, first and foremost, eradicate the root causes of radicalization, addressing state-sponsored discrimination, financial insecurity and minority rights.
– Mark Blekherman
Photo: Flickr
The Role of the Private Sector in Poverty Reduction
Poverty and world hunger stand on the docket of extinction, for the first time in human history. Even just one generation ago, this acknowledgment would seem absurd. The United Nations advocates that the world can meet the unimaginable goal of eradicating world hunger by 2030.
To achieve this goal, it would take between $170 and $190 billion a year from the U.S. to take everyone out of extreme poverty in the next two or three decades. Just to put that number in perspective, as the largest bilateral donor, the U.S. allocates roughly $49 billion to foreign funds every year to 96 percent of the globe. This article will look at the role of the private sector in poverty reduction.
Advantages of Private Sector in Poverty Reduction
Directing focus on the magnitude of the nation’s role in poverty reduction must be noted, considering only 1 percent of the federal budget goes to foreign aid, the question arises if there is a cheaper, quicker way to fast-track the eradication of extreme poverty. What about the private sector?
The role of the private sector in poverty reduction is that it naturally brings to the table what governments and nongovernmental organizations do not. Federal funds can only cover so much with a $49 billion a year budget. Some of the most transformative investments in poor regions around the globe come from private lenders.
Most U.S. money goes to direct assistance, like world health programs, providing aid packages and doing the heavy lifting for broad-based long-term economic development. The private sector can help stimulate poor economies. Private business contributes a different model to aid and public resources. They can provide jobs, goods and services sometimes more effectively than agencies can do alone.
Developing Countries Opportunities
Developing countries offer business opportunities unheard of in the developed world. The potential for market growth in underdeveloped regions is monumental. Social entrepreneurs likewise are more flexible in carrying out the demands of poverty because they can develop new cross-sector models out of competition, without being tied to the orthodoxies of foreign aid.
Take for example infrastructure in the developing world. The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimates that it will take $2 trillion a year to fix the world’s infrastructure needs, especially in the developing world where billions of people lack access to safe water, electricity, roads and other basic services.
While often the domain of governments, poor countries cannot support the immense costs of upgrading infrastructure. Infrastructure is essential to eradicating poverty. To escape low-income agricultural dependency, countries need infrastructure projects to communicate, process and transport quality goods. The private sector can work at a much larger scale enabling investments in energy and transportation infrastructure that administer long-term benefits to the economy for local entrepreneurs to take advantage of.
In theory, by solving insurmountable problems in developing countries economies, the role of the private sector in poverty reduction is improving value chains. The private sector and entrepreneurship play a fundamental role in innovation, improving business standards and job creation without development goals as their primary agenda.
Things to Consider when Investing
Private companies can provide lending to update infrastructure projects as Chinese companies have done in Africa. However, there are negative aspects of foreign funding as well. While the inflow of investments does help locals and spark economic growth, these are debts to be repaid to commercial outsiders. For example, several Chinese infrastructure investments have helped support corrupt and undemocratic regimes and only compounded local problems. Not to mention this activity supports an extractive business model.
Infrastructure and jobs help immensely, but the private sector needs to share its wealth capacity with the developing world. Since 2000, the poorest half of the world has received just 1 percent of the increase in total wealth, while the wealthiest 1 percent of the world received over 50 percent of the total wealth. Wealth tends to stay in the hands of the wealthy people. Businesses need to keep in mind that the most valuable asset for then is their labor force. Better paid skilled jobs are keys to growth anywhere.
Foreign direct investment grew from under $50 billion in 1990 to almost $500 billion in 2011. For the first time in 2013, foreign direct investment in developing countries exceeded investment in developed countries. At the same time, commercial lending and remittances have grown significantly.
GDP growth has been high for the last decade in developing countries. But the growth in jobs has not been enough to transition from an agricultural economy to a high productivity economy. Stimulating these economies to help in that transition is key to transitioning. The role of the private sector is that it must be relevant to the poor. Their intervention can be life-changing in guiding the poor to the path to prosperity, remembering that their labor force may be the main assets they possess.
– Joseph Ventura
Photo: Unsplash
Fighting Food Waste in Denmark
One out of every eight people worldwide doesn’t have adequate access to food. This sobering statistic is even more upsetting when contrasted with the amount of food wasted each year that amounts to 1.3 billion tons. That is almost one-third of all food produced for humans. This amount is well beyond what would be necessary to feed every hungry person alive today.
Facts like these are why the U.N. is committed to fighting food waste. The 12th U.N. Sustainable Development Goal includes the target of cutting international food waste in half by 2030.
Of course, this goal can only be met through international cooperation. Thankfully, many countries around the world are taking this issue seriously. In recent years, Denmark has risen to become one of the world’s leaders in fighting food waste.
Small Movements, Big Impacts
Despite being one of the smaller nations in Europe and having a population smaller than London, Denmark has more projects aimed at reducing food waste than any other European nation. The country has achieved this by using a highly cooperative approach between the government, businesses and nonprofit organizations.
Several food banks and other nonprofits in Denmark get their supplies through donations from local supermarkets or restaurants. One supermarket in Copenhagen, Wefood, only sells food that would have otherwise been wasted. Typically, this is food that has reached its sell-by date or has not been used up at the end of restaurant business hours. Sometimes, this food consists of perfectly healthy fruits and vegetables that simply appear too misshapen and unattractive to reach market shelves.
Denmark’s government works to support these projects with a combination of funding and official awareness campaigns.
Stop Wasting Food
One of the largest and most impactful waste-fighting organizations in Denmark is Stop Spild Af Mad, known in English as Stop Wasting Food. This nonprofit organization was founded in 2008 and has been working toward achieving Sustainable Development Goal number 12 ever since.
Stop Wasting Food has worked directly with the Danish government and has ongoing partnerships with both E.U. and U.N. organizations. It also harnesses nationwide media attention to raise public awareness of food waste and lobbies supermarkets to implement waste-reducing policies in their stores.
As young as Stop Wasting Food is, it has been instrumental in helping Denmark achieve impressive results. Between the efforts of the government, businesses and willing Danish citizens, Denmark has been able to cut its food waste by a quarter since 2010 alone.
Global Applications
Abovementioned one-quarter mark is significant. If the entire world could achieve the same reduction of food waste, we could feed nearly 95 percent of all food-deprived people in the world without needing to produce any additional food.
The importance of fighting food waste will only become more obvious as we approach the 2030 date set by the Sustainable Development Goals. By 2050, the global population could spike up to nine billion and require significant additional resources for our food production to keep up. While reducing waste may not completely negate this need, it could give us the means to sustainably keep hundreds of millions fed.
Whatever the case, Denmark is a shining example for the rest of the world, and particularly for developed countries, to look up to. Denmark’s policies have both provided cheap sources of food for its own poorer citizens and a roadmap for how government and private cooperation can achieve significant change in only a few years.
Joshua Henreckson
Photo: Flickr
Top 10 Facts about Girls’ Education in Iraq
A history of conflict has negatively reflected on girls’ educational future in Iraq. Education levels have never returned to their pre-Gulf War levels. Furthermore, conflict with ISIS has erased much of the progress for girls’ education seen through higher enrollment rates in times of relative peace. Therefore, a rough chronology of conflicts is useful when reading the top 10 facts about girls’ education in Iraq, as these events drastically change the quality of education.
Top 10 Facts About Girls’ Education in Iraq
As it can be seen through these top 10 facts about girls’ education in Iraq, the education system continues to be plagued by conflicts in the country, and girls are disproportionately at higher risk of dropping out or repeating grades if remained in school.
While this is certainly a cause for concern, the risks for girls’ education in Iraq have not gone unnoticed and many strive to change this. The Iraqi education system was once hailed as the best in the Middle East and many nongovernmental organizations, domestic policymakers, politicians, celebrities, and the local populous desire to return it to this position of dominance.
Georgie Giannopoulos
Photo: Flickr
Five Major Changes Occurring in Ethiopia
Ethiopia has the second largest population in Africa that currently serves as the seat for the African Union. It has a vast history that stretches back to over 2000 years in which kingdoms, monarchies, communism and capitalism have left their footprints.
In recent years the push toward building a strong democratic state with free and fair elections has been a critical question, causing a lot of friction between the ruling party, who has a strong grip on the social, political and economic authority for the past 27 years. This has tarnished the reputation that the government has been trying to create through one of the fastest growing economies in the world with several human rights violations including torture and extrajudicial killing of political dissidents.
The following five major changes occurring in Ethiopia this summer, however, show a different direction that the new leadership is taking with the support of the public through several major reforms.
Five Major Changes Occurring in Ethiopia
Following his rise to power, the government has ended the state of emergency, released numerous political prisoners, held public forums with its citizens nationally and reached the diaspora community in The United States. Furthermore, the state of proxy war and hostility the country faced on its borders by Eritrea has been resolved through a peace deal.
This summer has been a time of monumental political change in Ethiopia both nationally and abroad. The five major changes occurring in Ethiopia this summer were launched with the inauguration of the new prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who has gained more public support than arguably any other leader in the country’s long history. Despite the several security issues, the new leadership is facing and carrying out these changes. The public support remains intact, and the country is making efforts towards building a peaceful and prosperous future.
– Bilen Kassie
Photo: Flickr
Top 10 Facts About Living Conditions in Niger
Following its independence from France in 1960, Niger has faced violent political instability, deadly droughts and difficult living conditions. The following are the top ten facts about living conditions in Niger.
Top Ten Facts About Living Conditions in Niger
In 2016, Save the Children declared Niger the “worst country for girls” based on two key criteria: child marriage rates and adolescent fertility.
A high rate of child marriage often holds girls back. Over three quarters of Nigerien girls marry before the age of 18. Early marriage only continues the cycle of poverty: girls who marry earlier are less likely to finish school than girls who marry later, which means that they earn less income on average.
High adolescent fertility puts women in danger. In Niger, one in five teenage girls gives birth every year. Nigerien women have the highest birthrate in the world, at over seven births per woman. And childbirth is particularly dangerous for younger girls: WHO estimates that pregnancy complications are the second leading cause of death for adolescent girls worldwide.
“Husband schools” help build stronger families. To ease the burden on Nigerien woman, men learn the importance of helping with what was traditionally considered “women’s work.” The nonprofit Mercy Corps invites men to “husband schools,” where they learn about family planning, cooking and sanitation. Mercy Corps runs 124 such schools in Niger.
High illiteracy remains a stubborn challenge. Only one in five adults in Niger are literate, and as a former French colony, the official language of schooling in Niger is French. Most Nigeriens, though, speak local tribal languages instead, making French literacy a particularly difficult goal.
Frequent droughts make food scarce. Since 2000, Niger has weathered four extreme climate-related food crises. In such seasons of poor rainfall, 30 percent of people cannot meet their food needs. In 2017, one and a half million Nigeriens were food insecure, and 42 percent of children under age 5 faced chronic malnutrition.
The World Food Program protects Nigerien children. To tackle the effects of food insecurity, the World Food Program treated 650,000 acutely malnourished children and nearly half a million malnourished pregnant and lactating mothers in 2015 alone.
Uranium mining depletes Nigerien resources. The French company Areva mines for uranium in the Nigerien town of Arlit. Areva uses millions of liters of water each day, while Arlit’s vegetation has entirely dried up. A 2010 Greenpeace study showed that over its decade of operation, Areva has used 270 billion liters of water, entirely depleting ancient aquifers.
Mining contaminates Nigerien water. A 2009 study by Greenpeace showed that five out of six examined water wells in Arlit contained excess radioactivity. And a 2004 study by the French Commission for Independent Research and Information on Radiation showed that uranium levels found in Arlit’s drinking water were up to 100 times the WHO safety standard.
Activists stand up against corporate exploitation. After her mother, father and husband died from cancer traced back to radon exposure from Areva’s uranium mines, Jacqueline Gaudet founded the organization Mounana. The organization works with Doctors of the World to collect testimonies from Areva’s former employees to build court cases.
Remedying Colonialism
These top ten facts about living conditions in Niger reflect the need for international assistance to help remedy the harmful effects of colonialism. While living conditions in Niger are difficult, dedicated activists and nonprofits are steadily changing the landscape.
– Ivana Bozic
Photo: Flickr