San Pedro Sula, Honduras is one of the most dangerous cities in the world. Thus, organizations and local leaders are combating gang violence in Honduras by helping young people find and make their own families.One teenager skateboards with friends he considers brothers. Another works on diagramming a family tree. Others join in soccer
One teenager skateboards with friends he considers brothers. Another works on diagramming a family tree. Others join in soccer games, or hang out at recreation centers. These activities have the same goal: to prevent gang violence from becoming a way of life for the next generation.
In a country where the maras, or gangs, recruit kids as young as 12, it becomes of vital importance that teens and youth find love and support elsewhere. They want these kids to find support in their friends, families, and neighborhoods.
In the interest of halting gang violence in Honduras, USAID has partnered with local citizens to open nearly 50 outreach centers. Teens can go there to learn computer skills, play musical instruments, and participate in sports. Some outreach centers, like Casa de la Esperanza (House of Hope), organize movie nights and other events. The U.S. has also supported the clearing and revitalizing of 10 abandoned soccer fields to prevent gang violence in Honduras.
Fun activities, when combined with a confident leader, can form stable, even familial, bonds. The best example of this may be Jesse Recinos, who founded the club Skate Brothers. Recinos was nearly killed at the age of 16 after being wrongly accused of stealing from a member of a rival gang. In the aftermath of the experience, he decided to change his own life, and the lives of others, by bringing at-risk youth together to do skateboarding, BMX, rollerblading and breakdancing.
The club is about more than just busting tricks, and Recinos is more than just an instructor. He invites the kids to his house for meals and meets with their school teachers. Recinos is intent on keeping “his guys” away from gang violence and crime. He is at once a teacher, parent, and big brother.
Some programs focus on strengthening trust and communication inside the home, such as Proponte Mas, which offers counseling sessions to teens and young adults who are at risk for joining gangs.
Over the course of a year, the counselors work to reconnect the youth with separated family members. The separations typically occur either because violence has ruptured lines of communication or because relatives have migrated elsewhere. Extended families draw closer together, offering the youth a strong support system to fall back on.
Being part of a family, the teens learn, also means being accountable. They are encouraged to do their schoolwork and to ask permission before leaving the house. Activities like the family tree diagram help spark an interest in family history. They learn to identify themselves as part of their family before any other group.
Sometimes, accountability to a family goes hand-in-hand with being able to provide for a spouse and children. Proyecto METAS, a program sponsored by the Education Development Center, was founded to provide unemployed young people, particularly at-risk youth or those who had left gangs, with skills they can use in the workforce. By March of 2017, the program had reached 56,000 youth and created 4,000 jobs and internships.
Tragedy still strikes frequently. Children die. Families flee. Moreover, the killers continue to walk away with impunity. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world: 60 out of 100,000 residents become homicide victims. Rampant corruption among the police and the government means that only 4 percent of these crimes result in convictions.
The American Justice Society (AJS), a Christian nonprofit association, is committed to halting gang violence in Honduras by putting these murderers behind bars. Its teams consist of a lawyer, an investigator and a psychologist, and they assist the government in building homicide and sexual abuse cases. AJS connects victims and witnesses to officials who are trustworthy.
One of the biggest challenges in prosecuting homicides is getting witnesses to appear in court. Witnesses who speak out, particularly against gang members, risk becoming murder victims themselves. The organization says that it can take anywhere from four to 15 visits to convince a witness to testify.
Psychologists provide emotional support for the victims and witnesses and their families. They go over testimony with the witnesses and give them exercises to calm their fears. In cases of sexual abuse, the psychologists continue to work with victims and their families even after the trial is over.
As criminals are put behind bars, halting gang violence in Honduras is, even more, dependent on the country’s youth. For things to truly improve, programs must expand their scope and work with youth who are already gang members.
Those who fight for the protection of human rights must also be kept safe. The U.N. has recently opened a new human rights office in Honduras, and is working to improve relations between human rights workers and the government.
Journalist Sonia Nazario, in a Sunday opinion column for the New York Times, urged the U.S. to put pressure on Honduras to spend more of its budget on violence prevention. She also brought up the problem that much of the aid that the U.S. sets aside for Honduras becomes caught up in U.S. bureaucracy and does not reach the nonprofits and local citizens who need it. There is still work to do. However, at least for now, progress has been made.
– Emilia Otte
Photo: Flickr
Pros & Cons of Alleviating Poverty Through Tourism
There are multiple factors that make the tourism industry well-suited for poverty alleviation. The first is the substantial “size and growth of the sector,” which has the potential to sustain development in many developing countries. Through foreign exchange earnings and job creation generated by the tourism industry, alleviating poverty through tourism is made possible. Currently, “tourism contributes to 5 percent of the world’s GDP” and has generated 253 million jobs.
Tourism also has the potential for sustainable growth in developing countries as tourist destinations diversify. In fact, tourism is already the “first or second source of export earnings” among 20 out of 48 of the world’s least-developed countries. For some of these nations, tourism accounts for more than 25 percent of GDP. Alleviating poverty through tourism in these areas would be highly effective as long as tourism is focused on development.
Developing countries have a “comparative advantage” in tourism because tourists look for many features that these nations share. These features include “warm climate, rich cultural heritage, inspiring landscapes and abundant biodiversity.” With these features being most apparent in rural areas, poverty may be alleviated by making destinations out of poorer places.
The tourism industry is also relatively labor-intensive and generates jobs that require little investment. This opens up job opportunities for many people in developing countries including women, young people and minorities. Tourism provides connectivity between sectors and links consumers to producers. Multiple economic sectors benefit from tourism as touring consumers buy a variety of goods. With this connection, both the consumers and producers benefit from increased local investment.
Although there are many pros to alleviating poverty through tourism, developing countries are not seeing the impact from tourism that most may expect. The Global Tourism Dashboard measured the impacts of tourism in 2016 and determined that only 5.6 percent of tourism expenditure went to developing countries. Instead of benefiting these nations, global tourism benefits the economic exchange of rich countries.
For the $79 billion that was spent in 2016 by tourists in developing nations, much of this money did not make a significant impact. The little impact tourism is making is exemplified by Thailand, which is the world’s fourth-most popular destination yet is still classified as a developing country. This shows that cash injection does not necessarily lead to development.
Before tourism can make a profound impact on developing countries, the problem of “leakage” needs to be addressed. Leakage is when a country is spending a “considerable proportion of tourist dollars before they can multiply in the local economy.” This is a significant problem as leakage ranges from 40 to 80 percent in developing countries. Alleviating poverty through tourism will take more than simply expanding the tourism industry.
Although tourism is not currently the most effective way to alleviate poverty, there is still potential for the industry. Countries such as Samoa, Ecuador, Fiji and South Africa are all examples of how tourism can factor into development. For Samoa specifically, tourism is “one of the economy’s main pillars” as the industry contributed to 20 percent of its GDP. This was done through leakage reduction, concentration on local development and investment in training for tourism jobs by the government.
Aside from governmental regulations in developing countries, alleviating poverty through tourism can be made possible through international and individual assistance. International organizations can assist tourism industries in developing countries through financing “transport connectivity” to reduce leakage. Also, training locals for tourism jobs so that the industry can be run by domestic stakeholders is critical for potential development. On an individual level, tourists can support development by making “ethical travel choices.” This means “going local” to benefit the local community rather than deciding to visit and invest in typical tourist destinations.
There is potential for alleviating poverty through tourism as long as developing nations are given the assistance needed to make it work.
– Haley Hurtt
Photo: Flickr
Progress in the Fight Against HIV in Swaziland
With more than 27 percent of the adult population infected in 2016, Swaziland is the country with the highest HIV prevalence in the world. UNICEF reports that the epidemic’s effects are felt across all aspects of society: the high prevalence of the virus draws financial resources from other priority areas and burdens the country’s health system. It also affects capital accumulation and productivity negatively. Families and communities are disrupted by the virus and the number of orphans and vulnerable children has increased.
In the past years, prevention and treatment to fight the HIV epidemic were scaled up significantly in the small monarchy. The Swazi government received support for these efforts from the U.S. government President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Swaziland’s strategy to contain the further spread of HIV is to dose patients with antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) immediately after they have tested positive, regardless of their health status.
ARVs drive down the HIV level in the blood, therefore reducing the risk of transmission of the virus. The concept of treatment-as-prevention aims to contain the further spread of the HI virus, and is “a major part of the solution to ending the HIV epidemic”, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). The number of adults with HIV in Swaziland who have their viral load suppressed has doubled in the past five years and is now at more than 73 percent, according to the second Swaziland HIV Incidence Measurement Survey.
PEPFAR director Deborah Birx emphasizes that this method does not eliminate HIV in the country, but it can “contract the epidemic on our way to vaccine and a cure.”
The Swazi Ministry of Health has also developed a plan to encourage boys and men to get circumcised voluntarily. In the past years, an increased number of males opted for circumcision. According to the WHO, there is “compelling evidence” that circumcision lower the risk of female-to-male transmissions by 60 percent.
These up-scaled efforts to fight HIV in Swaziland have come to fruition: compared to 2011, the rate of new infections was cut by 44 percent.
In addition to these successes, the incidence survey also brings light to “key gaps that remain in reaching younger men and women with HIV services,” Birx said. People aged 15 to 24 are lagging behind older age groups; they were found to be less likely to know their status, and of those receiving treatment, a quarter did not suppress their infections.
Not only does the information from the survey offer an opportunity for the Swazi government to improve its efforts further and increase focus on the population groups with the greatest need, but it also adds important scientific evidence to the research about the treatment-as-prevention method.
Sibongile Ndlela-Simelane from the Ministry of Health said, in reaction to the study’s outcomes: “We are very encouraged by this progress. We understand that the battle is not over, and therefore we must maintain the momentum.”
– Lena Riebl
New Apps That Are Helping Refugees
Tarjimly is a new translator app that connects volunteer translators to people, such as refugees or immigrants, who need translations in real-time for medical or legal purposes. Tarjimly acts as a Facebook messenger bot connecting an immigrant or refugee to a translator in an anonymous conversation. This app just recently launched in February of this year and already has more than 2,000 translators signed up.
Arrived is another app that is helping refugees gain quick access to information. Called “the hub of immigrant information,” this app is free and is available on Apple and Android phones. One of the things the app provides is the latest news about immigration. This news section also provides analysis of legislative proposals and actions in Washington. Arrived also provides information about deportation processes, English lessons and a study guide for citizenship tests. There is a section of answered questions that are most common that have been researched and a map to show law clinics and sanctuary cities in the U.S.
RedadAlertas is a web app that has not been released yet but will be arriving soon. Created by Celso Mireles who was previously an undocumented immigrant, this app delivers alerts about what is happening in different areas. Notifications about areas that have ICE raids, checkpoints or any type of confrontation will be sent out to its users. The app will work through crowdsourcing, which relies on people at scenes of an area to verify and provide details about what is happening. RedadAlertas hopes to help vulnerable immigrants in risk areas while also allowing legal aid groups, community organizations or activists to help immigrants.
These apps are helping refugees and immigrants around the world. These apps are versatile and all free so that they can be accessible to all users. By providing access to information, translators and up to date notifications these apps are allowing refugees and immigrants to get the help they may need.
– Deanna Wetmore
Photo: Flickr
Uganda’s Refugee Policy a “Shining Example”
Although Uganda and the U.N. appealed for $2 billion at a fundraising summit in Entebbe, donor governments only pledged $352 million. Although Uganda is becoming the key to the CRRF, after further pledges made weeks after, the total remains just $637 million.
As a response to the influx of South Sudanese refugees in Uganda, the government desires enough aid to fund the response to these refugees and a long-term sustainable response to this issue.
“Uganda is a shining example when it comes to hosting refugees,” says Norwegian Refugee Council regional director for the Horn of Africa. With the 2006 Refugees Act and the 2010 Refugees Regulations, Uganda is granting refugees the right to work and freedom of movement, as well as giving them ownership of land. These are all highlighted as key components of the CRRF.
Despite this, the massive influx of South Sudanese refugees is bringing Uganda to its breaking point. With Uganda’s pivotal role in fostering new developmental refugee response strategies, donors have finally begun to fund its cause at the required level. The World Bank has allocated $2 billion in grants and loans over the next three years to fund future socioeconomic development.
Uganda’s refugee policy is amongst the most progressive in the world. Its developmental focus is in two key areas: inclusive and effective governance and sustainable and inclusive economic development.
Its goal is to ensure that the government’s development operations align with the government’s refugee response. With Uganda’s refugee policy, it presents a strategy that all developing nations should follow.
– Tucker Hallowell
Photo: Flickr
Strengthening Communities to Curb Gang Violence in Honduras
One teenager skateboards with friends he considers brothers. Another works on diagramming a family tree. Others join in soccer games, or hang out at recreation centers. These activities have the same goal: to prevent gang violence from becoming a way of life for the next generation.
In a country where the maras, or gangs, recruit kids as young as 12, it becomes of vital importance that teens and youth find love and support elsewhere. They want these kids to find support in their friends, families, and neighborhoods.
In the interest of halting gang violence in Honduras, USAID has partnered with local citizens to open nearly 50 outreach centers. Teens can go there to learn computer skills, play musical instruments, and participate in sports. Some outreach centers, like Casa de la Esperanza (House of Hope), organize movie nights and other events. The U.S. has also supported the clearing and revitalizing of 10 abandoned soccer fields to prevent gang violence in Honduras.
Fun activities, when combined with a confident leader, can form stable, even familial, bonds. The best example of this may be Jesse Recinos, who founded the club Skate Brothers. Recinos was nearly killed at the age of 16 after being wrongly accused of stealing from a member of a rival gang. In the aftermath of the experience, he decided to change his own life, and the lives of others, by bringing at-risk youth together to do skateboarding, BMX, rollerblading and breakdancing.
The club is about more than just busting tricks, and Recinos is more than just an instructor. He invites the kids to his house for meals and meets with their school teachers. Recinos is intent on keeping “his guys” away from gang violence and crime. He is at once a teacher, parent, and big brother.
Some programs focus on strengthening trust and communication inside the home, such as Proponte Mas, which offers counseling sessions to teens and young adults who are at risk for joining gangs.
Over the course of a year, the counselors work to reconnect the youth with separated family members. The separations typically occur either because violence has ruptured lines of communication or because relatives have migrated elsewhere. Extended families draw closer together, offering the youth a strong support system to fall back on.
Being part of a family, the teens learn, also means being accountable. They are encouraged to do their schoolwork and to ask permission before leaving the house. Activities like the family tree diagram help spark an interest in family history. They learn to identify themselves as part of their family before any other group.
Sometimes, accountability to a family goes hand-in-hand with being able to provide for a spouse and children. Proyecto METAS, a program sponsored by the Education Development Center, was founded to provide unemployed young people, particularly at-risk youth or those who had left gangs, with skills they can use in the workforce. By March of 2017, the program had reached 56,000 youth and created 4,000 jobs and internships.
Tragedy still strikes frequently. Children die. Families flee. Moreover, the killers continue to walk away with impunity. Honduras has one of the highest murder rates in the world: 60 out of 100,000 residents become homicide victims. Rampant corruption among the police and the government means that only 4 percent of these crimes result in convictions.
The American Justice Society (AJS), a Christian nonprofit association, is committed to halting gang violence in Honduras by putting these murderers behind bars. Its teams consist of a lawyer, an investigator and a psychologist, and they assist the government in building homicide and sexual abuse cases. AJS connects victims and witnesses to officials who are trustworthy.
One of the biggest challenges in prosecuting homicides is getting witnesses to appear in court. Witnesses who speak out, particularly against gang members, risk becoming murder victims themselves. The organization says that it can take anywhere from four to 15 visits to convince a witness to testify.
Psychologists provide emotional support for the victims and witnesses and their families. They go over testimony with the witnesses and give them exercises to calm their fears. In cases of sexual abuse, the psychologists continue to work with victims and their families even after the trial is over.
As criminals are put behind bars, halting gang violence in Honduras is, even more, dependent on the country’s youth. For things to truly improve, programs must expand their scope and work with youth who are already gang members.
Those who fight for the protection of human rights must also be kept safe. The U.N. has recently opened a new human rights office in Honduras, and is working to improve relations between human rights workers and the government.
Journalist Sonia Nazario, in a Sunday opinion column for the New York Times, urged the U.S. to put pressure on Honduras to spend more of its budget on violence prevention. She also brought up the problem that much of the aid that the U.S. sets aside for Honduras becomes caught up in U.S. bureaucracy and does not reach the nonprofits and local citizens who need it. There is still work to do. However, at least for now, progress has been made.
– Emilia Otte
Photo: Flickr
Why Is Thailand Poor?
Why is Thailand poor? The reason that Thailand remains poor is imbalanced development. Due to the critical poverty rate of Thailand in the 1960s, emphasis was put on industrialization to boost the economy. This industrialization caused rapid economic growth and poverty reduction, but development was not widespread. To support industrial production, resources were centralized to the capital and surrounding urban areas, thus depriving rural areas. Because of this, 80 percent of poor people living in rural areas as of 2014.
Concentration of development in urban areas means a lack of investment in rural Thailand. For example, Bangkok houses only 10 percent of the population, but it contributes more than 50 percent of Thailand’s GDP. Highlighting the inequality, rural areas have a poverty rate of 13.9 percent compared to 7.7 percent in urban areas.
In answering the question “Why is Thailand poor?” one must look at the disparity between development in urban and rural areas. Poor people living in rural areas have very limited access to public services that could help them out of poverty. To gain access, rural poor persons must be able to afford both the service and transport to urban areas.
Education is an example. Many rural poor people cannot afford education more than the six years of compulsory schooling. The enrollment rate for “tertiary education” was reported as 18 percent in rural areas compared to 39.5 percent in urban. Due to lack of education, many rural poor people are under-qualified for higher paying positions, perpetuating a vicious cycle.
In recognition of the disparity, Thailand has created a 20-year economic plan to bring the nation to developed country status. The reforms aim to bring economic stability, equal economic opportunities, competitiveness and effective government bureaucracies. To reach its goal, Thailand needs to overcome what is constraining growth in rural areas and maintain widespread growth.
Poverty in Thailand, despite its success in development, reveals the need for further research into poverty alleviation. Approaches to ending global poverty should keep in mind the complexity of the problem.
– Haley Hurtt
Photo: Flickr
How to Stop the Brain Drain in Venezuela
The citizens leaving Venezuela have been looking for a better quality of life and greater personal security. The International Monetary Fund is predicting inflation in Venezuela to increase by 720 percent this year and then, in 2018, by 2068 percent. Along with hyperinflation, this year the unemployment rate is expected to surpass 28 percent in 2018.
As unemployment was 7.4 percent in 2015, the significant stresses on the Venezuelan economy have led to great political unrest. Since April 1, thousands of citizens have been arrested in protests, hundreds have been injured and more than 60 people have died. In 2016, 2732 political arrests were made, suggesting high levels of state repression.
Maria Alesia Sosa, a freelance journalist in Miami who was a part of the significant brain drain in Venezuela, explains that while working 14 hour days she would earn less than $50 a month in her home country. Along with low pay, the high crime rates led to her decision to leave the country. Every 25 minutes a person is murdered in Venezuela. In 2016, three locations in Venezuela were listed in the top 10 most dangerous cities in the world, with Caracas taking the number one spot, according to a Mexican thinktank.
On top of job insecurity, weak purchasing power and significant criminal activity, one of the country’s main sources of revenue has been reduced in recent years. Crude oil output supplies Venezuela with 95 percent of its GDP. However, in 2002 and 2003, the oil strikes to overthrow President Chavez had the country facing large layoffs within the state controlled oil company, PDVSA.
This was the beginning of the large brain drain in Venezuela when many highly skilled industry workers left their home country to work for multinational corporations like ExxonMobil and Chevron. In 2013, when President Nicolás Maduro was announced as Chavez’s successor, oil production fell by 16 percent and still has not recovered. This outcome was a result of further government intervention in PDVSA which led to a drain on the expertise needed to boost production.
With these significant decreases in the nation’s skill set, emigration is harming key industries from health and medicine to banking and finance. The human capital necessary to rebuild the nation after the political turmoil ends is depleting.
With 44 percent of Venezuelans stating that they left due to personal or professional development needs, job creation becomes an important consideration. The country should consider providing more scientific research funding to create an attraction for emigrants to return to their country. Additionally, it would provide incentives for citizens within the country to pursue further education as the nation currently has stalled recruitment for new talent. With success, the investment in research would benefit the medical industry as well as many others.
In addition, the government should focus on providing better job opportunities while promoting inclusion. This would improve the opportunities for citizens to gain economic returns while also reducing the unemployment rate in the country. Additionally, by improving job prospects, Venezuela can improve the security of its nation. By increasing employment, crime and underground economic activity are reduced as can be seen in many places from Chicago to Liberia.
Providing job opportunities will not fix all the issues of poor economic conditions alone. These strides must be coupled with reductions in corruption as this negatively influences the quality and returns to education. Therefore, governments should implement anti-corruption measures by increasing transparency and enhancing bureaucratic quality.
The prospective changes in Venezuela may not bring back those citizens who have already left yet they could make the country more attractive for those remaining. While political strife has created a brain drain in Venezuela there is still hope to improve the quality of life and security within the country to bring the people back.
– Tess Hinteregger
Photo: Google
The Long Road to Ending Extreme Poverty
The World Bank defines “extreme poverty” as living on less than $1.90 per person per day. The multidimensional aspects of poverty are captured to measure extreme poverty through data collection encompassing climate variations, caloric intake, clothing, shelter, health and other variables.
For the past two decades, East Asia has held the largest population of impoverished individuals. According to the Economist, in 1981, roughly 88 percent of China’s citizens lived below the poverty line. Since that time, China has eradicated a large amount of poverty in cities and reduced the number of rural people living below its poverty line of 2,300 yuan or a little over $340 per year. In 2013, due to continual infrastructural and economic growth, and the cultivation of private businesses and corporations, only 2 percent of Chinese citizens fell under the World Bank’s definition of extreme poverty.
Due to the changing landscape in East Asia, much of the world’s remaining poverty is in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Weeding poverty out of these areas will prove to be more difficult due to the lack of available welfare programs and support systems.
Although free markets, trade and economic growth will remain vital to meeting the U.N. SDG, continued progress will depend heavily on infrastructural and health investments by the government, including in water, electricity and healthcare. According to the New York Times and the Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, decreases in mortality rate as well as public funds to finance scientific and technological breakthroughs such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria have made massive contributions to fighting global poverty to date.
As organizations and nations worldwide move towards eliminating extreme poverty, new challenges will undoubtedly arise. The Brookings Institute reminds global citizens that “as global poverty approaches zero, it becomes increasingly concentrated in countries where the record of and prospects for poverty reduction are weakest.” Despite the fact, the possibility still exists to improve quality of life worldwide, and the opportunity still remains to progress the elimination of poverty through further investment and advocacy efforts across all national barriers.
– Katherine Wang
Photo: Pixabay
10 Facts that Prove Voting is Important
The ability to vote allows citizens to say their opinion and choice on a variety of issues. In the American political system, voting allows registered citizens to cast their choice for the political leader that they believe can accurately make the choices that will better the country. However, there are thousands upon thousands of individuals who have the ability to vote, and yet do not. Discussed below are the key reasons why voting is important.
Top 10 Reasons Why Voting is Important:
1. The Millennial generation accounts for one-third of the electorate.
2. Less than 50 percent of eligible young voters ages 18 to 29 cast a vote in 2012.
3. 19 percent of all votes cast in 2012 came from young voters.
4. In 2012, 4 percent more young women voted than young men.
5. Young voters are more likely to support issues such as legalizing same-sex marriage, supporting a pathway to citizenship for immigrants and legalizing abortion than other age demographics.
6. 40 percent of millennials identify as non-white, making them the most diverse voting generation in history.
7. In most communities, the turnout for voting is less than 50 percent.
8. Every vote matters. There have been several cases in U.S. history where this has been seen. A New Hampshire Senate race was decided by two votes out of 223,363 in 1974. A Massachusetts gubernatorial election was decided by two votes out of 102,066 in 1839. And the Alaskan congressional race was decided by a single vote out of 10,035 cast in 2008.
9. Through voting you have the opportunity to influence the government.
10. In most state and national elections, you need to be registered to vote anywhere from 10-27 days before the actual election. That is why it’s important to regularly check if you are eligible to vote in your district.
In all, voting is a constitutional right and privilege that Americans have. It’s best to make use of that right instead of squandering it and disregarding what our Founders stood for.
–Alysha Biemolt
Sources: Do Something, Post Star, Huffington Post, Independent
Photo: The Wannabe Luxembourger
10 Important Facts About Human Rights in Nigeria
Thousands of civilians have been forcibly evicted from their homes by the Nigerian government. There have been many occasions where these evictions occurred without proper compensation, resettlement and prior notification to homeowners.
Nigeria has quite a way to go before it can be considered a free country, but there is a clear path to improving the record of human rights in Nigeria. The nation as well as NGOs and the international community will have to continue to push anti-corruption reforms. An ethical government can better serve the needs of its citizens and can be better trusted to handle foreign aid responsibly.
Nigeria also needs to institute reforms that will hold members of the police and the military accountable for unlawful actions. Economic development is also crucial to improving human rights in Nigeria. A Nigeria that has prospered through trade and has greater ties to the international community may be more willing to institute social reforms that will create greater opportunities for women and decriminalize homosexuality.
– Carson Hughes
Photo: Flickr