The Marshall Islands are an island country in the Pacific Ocean consisting of 29 atolls and five islands. The atolls and islands form two approximately parallel chains: the Ratak (sunrise) and the Ralik (sunset). Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands lies in the Ratak Chain in the East. The population of the Marshall Islands was 52,993 in 2015.
Before its independence in 1986, the Marshall Islands had been under the governance by Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States. The agreement that granted the Republic of the Marshall Islands its sovereignty — the Compact of Free Association (COFA) — allows Marshallese individuals to easily relocate to the United States and obtain work there. About one-third of the population has relocated to the United States, and more than 120,000 Marshallese live in northwest Arkansas and nearby places.
Poverty in the Marshall Islands
Poverty in the Marshall Islands is an urgent concern because of scarce natural resources, high unemployment rates and wealth inequality.
In the Marshall Islands, only 39.3% of the population aged 15 years and above is employed. For every one thousand babies born, 30 die before their birthday — the fourth highest in the Pacific region.
Wealth inequality and poverty in the Marshall Islands are also significant. The Ebeye city, the second-largest city in the Marshall Islands, is also known as the “Slum of the Pacific.” With a land area of 0.14 square miles, it has a population of about 12,000. This city is extremely overpopulated, outranking New York in the number of people living per square mile.
The Marshall Islands comprise about 750,000 square miles of ocean but only about 70 square miles of landmass. Even though people in Ebeye are surrounded by nothing but water, one of their major daily tasks is to search for clean water. Ebeye is badly polluted, and family members take turns sleeping because of the lack of land and money for housing. Constant floods threaten people’s homes and their possessions. However, a mere 30-minute boat ride away lies the Kwajalein atoll, which the U.S. army rents for the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. In this American middle-class neighborhood, scenes usually include people drinking cocktails and dancing in the warm Pacific breeze, while many of the neighboring islanders live on less than $1 a day.
Massive Nuclear Testing
The Marshall Islands were the testing site for the U.S. of their nuclear bombs during the Cold War. From 1946 to 1958, a series of 23 nuclear devices were tested in these islands. One of the bombs, Castle Bravo, which was a newly designed dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, was denoted on an early morning in March 1954. It was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Two atolls were destroyed because of the series of nuclear testing. In 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission regarded the Marshall Islands as “by far the most contaminated place in the world.” Before the United States conducted its first test in the Marshall Islands in 1946, there were 167 people living on Bikini Atoll, and thousands living on nearby atolls. The Marshallese living on Bikini Atoll were displaced twice because of the testing, but the ongoing nuclear radiation has been causing long-lasting health problems for both the people and the environment — 40 years after the testing, studies still showed that “eating locally grown produce, such as fruit, could add significant radioactivity to the body.”
Climate Change
Floods and droughts are destroying the “islander lives” of the Marshallese. States of Emergency were declared when waves as high as three feet hit the cities and for droughts leaving six thousand people surviving on less than one liter of water per day in 2008 and 2013. If global temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Marshall Islands may disappear. The Marshall Islands are some of the most vulnerable islands to the effects of climate change.
US Foreign Aid & Military Agreement
Direct U.S. aid accounts for 61.3% of the Marshall Islands’ $137.4 million budget for the fiscal year 2010. Under terms of the Amended Compact of Free Association, the U.S. is committed to providing approximately $70 million through 2023, including contributions to a jointly managed trust fund by the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands are renting the Kwajalein Atoll to the US Army, and their national defense is largely dependent on the U.S. On the flip side, the U.S. is benefiting from its unique and strategically important position in the Pacific Ocean.
Reducing Poverty
Forty percent of the total population in the Marshall Islands were under 15 years old in 2011 census, and 14% were under 5 years old. These young people can be great assets if provided good education and development, and they are the primary focus when fighting to reduce poverty in the Marshall Islands.
– Helen Yu Tang
Photo: Flickr
Seven Ways #GivingTuesday 2016 Succeeded
The Borgen Project participates yearly in #GivingTuesday and encourages readers to help give back to the world’s poor. Given the consistent growth seen over the past five years, Nov. 28, 2017, projects to be another prosperous year for giving back.
– Amy Williams
Photo: Flickr
Malnutrition in Yemen
The organization reports that an estimated 462,000 children in the country suffer from severe malnutrition, an increase of around 200 percent since 2014. Another 2.2 million children are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance to stop any further decline in their health. UNICEF warns that even after the conflict ends, fatal malnutrition may linger and children will continue to suffer from the effects of starvation. Furthermore, at least one child dies in the country every ten minutes from malnutrition, diarrhea or respiratory tract infections.
Malnutrition in Yemen has become a major cause of death for children under the age of 5. The region has seen many children suffer from stunting, a condition where the child is short for their age and that is a symptom of chronic malnutrition. The region that has suffered the heaviest bombing, Saada Governorate, has the world’s highest stunting rates for children, reaching eight out of ten children in certain areas. The condition is indicative of severe mental and physical decline and is irreversible.
More than 900 children were killed in the first year of the war in Yemen alone, making up a third of all civilian deaths. UNICEF reports that thousands more suffer as a result of the conflict. The number of children out of school in Yemen was high even before the conflict, and that number has expanded to two million as schools have closed due to the war. “The state of health of children in the Middle East’s poorest country has never been as catastrophic as it is today,” says Meritxell Relano, UNICEF’s acting representative in Yemen, reporting to Al Jazeera.
Yemen ranks 154th in the world for human development. The displacement of 3.2 million people and limited fuel and food imports have created a severe humanitarian crisis. According to UNICEF, four out of five Yemenis are in need of humanitarian aid.
In addition to malnutrition in Yemen, lack of infrastructure has furthered the country’s health crisis. Water and sewage systems have been damaged during the conflict, and a lack of fuel imports have made it impossible to deliver water to civilians in desperate need. The same lack of fuel has made hospitals unable to power generators in the midst of this severe health crisis.
In October, health officials in Yemen confirmed a cholera outbreak, a severe threat to children already suffering from the lack of healthcare in the country. According to Relano, the conflict has curtailed advances in healthcare in the country and led to the spread of diseases like cholera and measles that disproportionately affect children.
The conflict in Yemen began in 2014 when troops loyal to the country’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, combined forces with a group known as the Houthi movement and attempted to take back the country from the internationally recognized president, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi. Since the Houthi and their allies have taken much of the country, a coalition of countries that are supported by western powers (including the United States) has undertaken an air campaign against the rebels. Since the air campaign began in March 2015, over 10,000 people have been killed and millions have been forced out of their homes.
While the Houthi and their allies have committed serious human rights abuses, the majority of the deaths in this conflict have been attributed to air strikes. The two deadliest incidences in the war so far were an attack on a market that killed 97 civilians in March and an attack on a funeral hall in October that resulted in over 100 deaths. According to Human Rights Watch, the United States is complicit in both of these attacks by providing the deadly weapons that were used to bomb civilians.
Human Rights Watch further urges the United States to permanently ban the sale of munitions to Saudi Arabia, as the bombs sold by the U.S. to this country have been found at the sites of 23 illegal airstrikes. In addition, the international community must do more to address the severe crisis of malnutrition in Yemen.
– Eva Kennedy
Photo: Flickr
U.S. Must Reverse President Trump’s Refugee Ban
President Trump’s refugee ban came as a surprise to diplomatic and airport staff in the U.S. and overseas, and many scrambled to respond with various interpretations. The executive order has caused protests and lawsuits and has drawn condemnation from dozens of diplomats and former President Barack Obama.
The current refugee crisis is unprecedented. The number of people displaced by conflict in 2016 was the highest since the end of the Second World War, at almost 60 million. Only joint solutions will credibly and effectively lessen the increasing suffering and social and political turmoil.
Therefore, labeling refugees fleeing conflict zones like Syria and other countries as terrorists has only made matters worse for these vulnerable individuals. A refugee is a person seeking shelter, a life of dignity, freedom and safety for themselves and their families. There is no excuse for treating other human beings who have come to the U.S. seeking these things with hostility, suspicion and intolerance.
About 30,000 Syrians have been evacuated from Aleppo, and 100,000 more are still fleeing violence in the area. Children continue to be massacred every day while the U.S., under this executive ban, is slamming its doors.
For all of the world’s refugees, do not look away. You can help change lives, not just for people in Syria, but for those in more than 90 countries who are fighting to overcome hunger, poverty and violence.
It is un-American to turn away those seeking safety and to discriminate against groups of people because of nationality and religion. Let us stand with refugees and not against them, in their hour of need. Remember that every refugee is someone’s mother, father, son, daughter, sister, brother or newborn baby.
You can call Congress and take action on this serious issue. Please stand with leaders from both parties to reverse President Trump’s refugee ban and welcome those in need of our help.
Photo: Geoff Livingston via photopin (license).
10 Disturbing Facts About the Somali Civil War
Somalia continues to work through its tumultuous past toward a brighter future, but scars of the Somali civil war remain. However, programs such as the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) continue to push forward and are dedicated to the idea of a peaceful and stable country.
– Emily Marshall
Photo: Flickr
School Meals Keep Brazilian Farmers in Business
As many as 45 million students are being fed by what is the world’s largest universal school feeding program. The program was originally developed in the 1950s, in response to Brazil’s “zero hunger” initiative. A quarter of the country is currently receiving free meals through this program, and the Brazilian farmers are benefiting directly from the government, as well.
For the past three years, farmers have been able to cut out the middlemen and form an agreement directly with the government. Before, farmers had to make unfulfilling deals with the middlemen on whom they depended to sell their produce.
Brazilian farmers who have a school feeding contract with the government have seen their fortunes increase thanks to a dependable local market and formalized land rights nationwide. The contracts outline the required amount of food that the farmers need to produce and how much money the farmers will get in return. This gives farmers the certainty to plan for investment in new essentials and technology. Overall, incomes have increased significantly due to the resourceful and thoughtfully formulated plans made by the government.
The other small farmers with no formal land title deeds still benefit from the program because of their direct relationship with the state through the school feeding program. These small farmers, with the income they receive from the government, are able to take steps towards gaining title deeds.
In 2009, Brazil introduced a new law that requires schools to spend at least 30 percent of their meal budgets on produce from small farms. Many schools are now giving priority to small, local farms, and 70 percent of food consumed in Brazil comes from small farms. Before these changes were made to help small, local farms in Brazil, the market for school meals was primarily dominated by big food companies, and by middlemen who would exploit small farmers’ business.
Brazil is better known for its large industrial farms which produce the country’s top export commodities such as sugarcane, oranges and soy. However, most food consumed by Brazilians is grown by small family farms. These family farmers are often poor and cannot compete with industrial farms. Thus, they are inevitably forced to give up their farms and move to cities in search of better job opportunities.
The new school feeding program has not only helped keep children well fed, but has also cut government spending on school meals by cutting out the middlemen, and has increased the income for Brazilian farmers. Brazil is making great progress in trying to fix its economy by investing in agriculture and, more specifically, small family farms that feed the country.
– Kayla Mehl
Photo: Flickr
10 Facts About the War in Donbass
The conflict may be occurring in a reduced capacity, but the reality remains that there is a war in eastern Ukraine. Ongoing attention is required to create a lasting peace for the communities in this region.
– Eva Kennedy
Photo: Flickr
Kopernik: Using Technology to Improve the Developing World
Billions of people all over the world lack the technology allowing them access to light, fuel-friendly cooking and clean drinking water. This is why Kopernik, a nonprofit technology company, is working to distribute simple, life-improving technologies to the world’s poorest communities.
The company provides these communities with items such as water filters, solar power lights and cooking stoves. Nicolaus Copernicus is the organization’s namesake since Kopernik is meant to be a catalyst for change and new ways of seeing the world. Kopernik distributes the best technology for the developing world through sourcing, connecting and reinvesting.
Sourcing
Kopernik uses its website to spread awareness about its technology. In response, countries submit proposals for the items they need the most. Then Kopernik publishes projects on the website in order to raise funds.
Connecting
Once the projects are fully funded — usually by donors — Kopernik ships the technology to its local partners. People then buy that technology at an affordable price through those local partners.
Reinvesting
Next, the local partners repay the money from technology sales to Kopernik. This money is then reinvested into new technology. Kopernik also works with local partners to assess the technology’s impact and share feedback with technology producers.
Funding
Kopernik is a nonprofit organization with a for-profit arm. The for-profit part of the organization is a consulting firm that works with technology companies in product development. The profits from the consulting business are then channeled toward the nonprofit operations.
Kopernik receives funding from companies, government development programs and individuals. Its partners also provide in-kind support such as free or discounted services. This keeps the organization’s operating costs low.
Technology
Kopernik is helping women access clean birth supplies and information about safe birthing practices. For example, in the Chittagong district of Bangladesh as well as Laos, the nonprofit provides JANMA clean birth kits to women. These birth kits contain sterile tools to reduce the risk of infection during childbirth.
In Vietnam, the organization has also connected 90 families with hearing-impaired children with affordable hearing aid technology. This makes it possible for children to learn to speak and form a better bond with their families and communities.
Impact
So far, Kopernik has served 396,325 people and distributed 90,359 technologies. It has funded 170 projects and reached 26 countries, among them Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Ghana and Nigeria.
According to Patrick Vinck of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, “New applications of technologies to humanitarian action may be the most important factor influencing humanitarian effectiveness over the next decade.” In this regard, Kopernik’s emphasis on technology distribution represents great gains for the world’s anti-poverty organizations with only more progress to come.
– Liliana Rehorn
Photo: Flickr
Poverty in the Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands are an island country in the Pacific Ocean consisting of 29 atolls and five islands. The atolls and islands form two approximately parallel chains: the Ratak (sunrise) and the Ralik (sunset). Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands lies in the Ratak Chain in the East. The population of the Marshall Islands was 52,993 in 2015.
Before its independence in 1986, the Marshall Islands had been under the governance by Spain, Germany, Japan and the United States. The agreement that granted the Republic of the Marshall Islands its sovereignty — the Compact of Free Association (COFA) — allows Marshallese individuals to easily relocate to the United States and obtain work there. About one-third of the population has relocated to the United States, and more than 120,000 Marshallese live in northwest Arkansas and nearby places.
Poverty in the Marshall Islands
Poverty in the Marshall Islands is an urgent concern because of scarce natural resources, high unemployment rates and wealth inequality.
In the Marshall Islands, only 39.3% of the population aged 15 years and above is employed. For every one thousand babies born, 30 die before their birthday — the fourth highest in the Pacific region.
Wealth inequality and poverty in the Marshall Islands are also significant. The Ebeye city, the second-largest city in the Marshall Islands, is also known as the “Slum of the Pacific.” With a land area of 0.14 square miles, it has a population of about 12,000. This city is extremely overpopulated, outranking New York in the number of people living per square mile.
The Marshall Islands comprise about 750,000 square miles of ocean but only about 70 square miles of landmass. Even though people in Ebeye are surrounded by nothing but water, one of their major daily tasks is to search for clean water. Ebeye is badly polluted, and family members take turns sleeping because of the lack of land and money for housing. Constant floods threaten people’s homes and their possessions. However, a mere 30-minute boat ride away lies the Kwajalein atoll, which the U.S. army rents for the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site. In this American middle-class neighborhood, scenes usually include people drinking cocktails and dancing in the warm Pacific breeze, while many of the neighboring islanders live on less than $1 a day.
Massive Nuclear Testing
The Marshall Islands were the testing site for the U.S. of their nuclear bombs during the Cold War. From 1946 to 1958, a series of 23 nuclear devices were tested in these islands. One of the bombs, Castle Bravo, which was a newly designed dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb, was denoted on an early morning in March 1954. It was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.
Two atolls were destroyed because of the series of nuclear testing. In 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission regarded the Marshall Islands as “by far the most contaminated place in the world.” Before the United States conducted its first test in the Marshall Islands in 1946, there were 167 people living on Bikini Atoll, and thousands living on nearby atolls. The Marshallese living on Bikini Atoll were displaced twice because of the testing, but the ongoing nuclear radiation has been causing long-lasting health problems for both the people and the environment — 40 years after the testing, studies still showed that “eating locally grown produce, such as fruit, could add significant radioactivity to the body.”
Climate Change
Floods and droughts are destroying the “islander lives” of the Marshallese. States of Emergency were declared when waves as high as three feet hit the cities and for droughts leaving six thousand people surviving on less than one liter of water per day in 2008 and 2013. If global temperatures rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the Marshall Islands may disappear. The Marshall Islands are some of the most vulnerable islands to the effects of climate change.
US Foreign Aid & Military Agreement
Direct U.S. aid accounts for 61.3% of the Marshall Islands’ $137.4 million budget for the fiscal year 2010. Under terms of the Amended Compact of Free Association, the U.S. is committed to providing approximately $70 million through 2023, including contributions to a jointly managed trust fund by the U.S. and the Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands are renting the Kwajalein Atoll to the US Army, and their national defense is largely dependent on the U.S. On the flip side, the U.S. is benefiting from its unique and strategically important position in the Pacific Ocean.
Reducing Poverty
Forty percent of the total population in the Marshall Islands were under 15 years old in 2011 census, and 14% were under 5 years old. These young people can be great assets if provided good education and development, and they are the primary focus when fighting to reduce poverty in the Marshall Islands.
– Helen Yu Tang
Photo: Flickr
Poverty in Mali
As the 12th poorest country in Africa, Mali has remained poverty-stricken for many years. Malnutrition issues, lack of education and conflict are the main causes of poverty in Mali.
The average wage in Mali is $1.25 per day, and more than half of the population currently lives below the international poverty line. This contributes to Mali being one of the least developed countries in the world. The average life expectancy of adults in Mali is 55, due to malnutrition and the lack of access to clean water.
Mali is mostly self-sufficient in the food market. Many people work on farms in order to grow crops to provide for their families and communities. Mali faces many issues involving its climate and landscape. Two-thirds of Mali is desert, meaning that immediately, droughts become a serious issue. With poor soils, millions find it difficult to grow the crops they need and due to low wages, they are unable to buy what their family demands. As a result, malnutrition becomes a leading issue and is the main factor of poverty in Mali.
Poor education facilities across the country have led to poverty across Mali and as poverty heightens, the level of education deteriorates further. School enrollment is currently at 67% and across the country, the adult literacy rate is 38.7%. This is one of the lowest literacy rates in the world, as the global average stands at 86%. This figure shows that the level of education needs to be higher, which means that facilities need to be improved and the level of teaching must be higher.
The current conflict is adding to the problems revolving around poverty in Mali as over half a million families are affected. As the conflict continues, Malians are fleeing to neighboring countries in seek of asylum. Families continue to live in poverty as food shortages continue to be an issue. As people are moving away from Mali, they are not earning enough money to provide their families with what they need.
The United Nations World Food Programme is aiding Mali by providing nutritional support to those who still live there. In 2013, around 125 thousand people were provided with food support in the north of the country. Others in the south are also aided while they work on community-building projects. The program is helping to provide citizens with money to buy fresh vegetables and meat, which not only helps to provide for families but also to boost the local economy.
– Georgia Boyle
Photo: Flickr
Kapuluan Coconut: Improving Philippine Farming Communities
In 2013, the Philippines was struck by Typhoon Haiyan, wiping out the majority of its leading agricultural product: coconut palm trees. Nearly 33 million trees were left in ruins, inflicting economic strife upon Philippine farming communities.
Will Lauder, the founder of Kapuluan Coconut, initially had the purpose of visiting the Philippines for a surf trip before hearing about the typhoon. Following the news of the devastation left behind from the storm, Lauder adjusted his itinerary and traveled to the Philippines to offer relief by delivering clean water to affected communities. It was this first-hand experience that led Lauder to create Kapuluan Coconut as an initiative to restore the mass desolation of coconut palms on the island through a “One for One” program.
Although Filipino farming communities are a globally dominant source of coconut oil production, farmers live under exploitative working conditions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Of the three million coconut farmers within the industry, 60% live in extreme poverty. The quality and production of coconut oil have been compromised through industrialization processes, inflicting a type of “modern slavery” for coconut farmers.
Recognizing the reality of the coconut farming industry, Lauder created Kapuluan Coconut in order to restore the Philippines’ source of coconut palms, enhance the sustainability of farming conditions for coconut farmers and offer a coconut product with the finest quality.
Lauder argues, “everyone supports Fair Trade coffee; what about coconut?” With this, he implemented the “One for One” program which plants a palm tree for every Kapuluan Coconut product sold. As a result, jobs will be created for sustainable coconut oil farming thus providing an increase in prices, income, and job opportunities for Filipino communities.
Kapuluan Coconut’s efforts are to restore the “tree of life” that drives Filipino agriculture and to give back to local Filipino community organizations, such as the Lingap Center. This past December, Kapuluan donated $5 per sale to the Lingap Center for children, which offers assistance for children that have suffered from abuse, abandonment, and exploitation.
By subscribing to the email list, users will instantly receive a 10% discount on their first purchase while simultaneously helping to plant their first coconut tree. Through his experience and initiative efforts to help improve Philippine farming communities, Lauder says, “true happiness is… how helpful you are to people and to the world.”
– Amy Williams
Photo: Flickr