These three African men have used their horrific childhoods as fuel for activism to heal and prevent the abuse of future children.
Ishmael Beah – Author and UN Ambassador
During Sierra Leone’s civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, 12-year-old Beah became separated from his family and wandered the country with a group of other children. The group stumbled across a battalion of anti-rebel soldiers and the children were taken in and taught to kill.
Beah was rescued by UNICEF after living as a soldier for two years, and was taken to a rehab center where he struggled for eight months to remember who he was before the war. When he was 17, Beah was adopted by a member of UNICEF as a means to get out of Sierra Leone and attend school.
It was during his time at Oberlin College in Ohio that he wrote “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” which Beah claims he never meant to publish, but wrote to “find a way to give the human context that was missing in the way the issue of child soldiers were discussed.” His book has become a best-seller, and Beah has recently released his second book, “Radiance of Tomorrow.”
Beah is now a UN ambassador for children affected by war, and he travels with UNICEF to work with former-child soldiers. He remembers what it was like to suddenly find himself expected to be a kid again, and he wants former child-soldiers to know that they have options – that they can choose to live a life devoid of war.
Ricky Anywar Richard – Founder of Friends of Orphans (FRO)
At 14, Ricky was forced to watch as his entire family was corralled into their house, locked in, and burned alive. He was then bound into a service of slavery for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of northern Uganda where he regularly witnessed torture, rape, and murder.
He was one of the few who managed to escape and, after obtaining his degree, he set up Friends of Orphans (FRO), an organization that works to reintegrate former child-soldiers back into village life and provide them with the therapy and education necessary to become peaceful members of society. So far, the organization has helped 25,000 children attend school and learn a trade.
The organization also educates those with HIV/AIDs on how to deal with their disease and prevent further transmission. They have distributed over 100,000 condoms since beginning the program.
FRO has been awarded the John Templeton Foundation ‘Freedom Award’ and Ricky was awarded the ‘World of Children Humanitarian Award’ for his tireless work to provide a life for those who’ve had theirs stolen by war.
Emmanuel Jal – Musician, Activist & Founder of Gua Africa
Growing up in south Sudan, Jal was 7 when his father left to join the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), his mother was killed by soldiers and he saw his aunt raped. He was promised an education in Ethiopia as part of a group of kids, but upon arrival they were forced to become soldiers of the SPLA.
After nearly five years living as a soldier, Jal was rescued by British aid worker Emma McCune, who smuggled him into Kenya. When McCune was killed, Jal completed his education and now makes it his life’s work to share his story and is an advocate for the Make Poverty History campaign, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and the Control Arms campaign.
Jal has made a name for himself as a recording artist, releasing the album ‘War Child’ as well as a film and autobiographical book both under the same name. He travels the world speaking on the global issues that have played a hand in his life, and he’s most recently appeared at the TED Global Conference in Oxford.
Jal stresses that education is the only way to move forward and prevent further genocides, and has founded Gua Africa, a foundation to educate children. After being disappointed with the level of donations he recently embarked to eat only one meal a day, something he says is regular for the people in his country, and he donates the unspent money to his own organization.
-Lydia Caswell
Sources: CNN, Gariwo , Friends of Orphans , Huffington Post , Emmanuel Jal, Gua Africa
Photo: Tallawah Magazine
3 Extraordinary Former Child Soldiers
These three African men have used their horrific childhoods as fuel for activism to heal and prevent the abuse of future children.
Ishmael Beah – Author and UN Ambassador
During Sierra Leone’s civil war, which lasted from 1991 to 2002, 12-year-old Beah became separated from his family and wandered the country with a group of other children. The group stumbled across a battalion of anti-rebel soldiers and the children were taken in and taught to kill.
Beah was rescued by UNICEF after living as a soldier for two years, and was taken to a rehab center where he struggled for eight months to remember who he was before the war. When he was 17, Beah was adopted by a member of UNICEF as a means to get out of Sierra Leone and attend school.
It was during his time at Oberlin College in Ohio that he wrote “A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier,” which Beah claims he never meant to publish, but wrote to “find a way to give the human context that was missing in the way the issue of child soldiers were discussed.” His book has become a best-seller, and Beah has recently released his second book, “Radiance of Tomorrow.”
Beah is now a UN ambassador for children affected by war, and he travels with UNICEF to work with former-child soldiers. He remembers what it was like to suddenly find himself expected to be a kid again, and he wants former child-soldiers to know that they have options – that they can choose to live a life devoid of war.
Ricky Anywar Richard – Founder of Friends of Orphans (FRO)
At 14, Ricky was forced to watch as his entire family was corralled into their house, locked in, and burned alive. He was then bound into a service of slavery for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of northern Uganda where he regularly witnessed torture, rape, and murder.
He was one of the few who managed to escape and, after obtaining his degree, he set up Friends of Orphans (FRO), an organization that works to reintegrate former child-soldiers back into village life and provide them with the therapy and education necessary to become peaceful members of society. So far, the organization has helped 25,000 children attend school and learn a trade.
The organization also educates those with HIV/AIDs on how to deal with their disease and prevent further transmission. They have distributed over 100,000 condoms since beginning the program.
FRO has been awarded the John Templeton Foundation ‘Freedom Award’ and Ricky was awarded the ‘World of Children Humanitarian Award’ for his tireless work to provide a life for those who’ve had theirs stolen by war.
Emmanuel Jal – Musician, Activist & Founder of Gua Africa
Growing up in south Sudan, Jal was 7 when his father left to join the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), his mother was killed by soldiers and he saw his aunt raped. He was promised an education in Ethiopia as part of a group of kids, but upon arrival they were forced to become soldiers of the SPLA.
After nearly five years living as a soldier, Jal was rescued by British aid worker Emma McCune, who smuggled him into Kenya. When McCune was killed, Jal completed his education and now makes it his life’s work to share his story and is an advocate for the Make Poverty History campaign, the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers and the Control Arms campaign.
Jal has made a name for himself as a recording artist, releasing the album ‘War Child’ as well as a film and autobiographical book both under the same name. He travels the world speaking on the global issues that have played a hand in his life, and he’s most recently appeared at the TED Global Conference in Oxford.
Jal stresses that education is the only way to move forward and prevent further genocides, and has founded Gua Africa, a foundation to educate children. After being disappointed with the level of donations he recently embarked to eat only one meal a day, something he says is regular for the people in his country, and he donates the unspent money to his own organization.
-Lydia Caswell
Sources: CNN, Gariwo , Friends of Orphans , Huffington Post , Emmanuel Jal, Gua Africa
Photo: Tallawah Magazine
Africa’s Sahel Region in Need
In February 2014, the UN pleaded with aid organizations to meet a $2 billion challenge in order to face a food crisis in Africa’s Sahel region that could affect over 20 million people.
Africa’s Sahel region divides the Sahara Desert from the Sudanian Savanna, spanning the width of the African continent, and has, in recent years, been damaged by a process known as desertification. Desertification is caused by poor agricultural practices and natural soil erosion. Additionally, a combination of population growth, drought, and conflict has put the already vulnerable region at risk.
Of the 20 million food insecure inhabitants, 5 million are children at risk of acute malnutrition. Already, nearly 577,000 children die each year of malnutrition in the Sahel.
UN officials are especially concerned about the Sahel because, in 2013, donors only offered about 60% of the requested $1.7 billion. They argue that another shortfall would prove catastrophic for many of the region’s most vulnerable.
The requested $2 billion would fund a three-year development plan that includes the countries of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Gambia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal. The UN seeks to work with the governments of the Sahel in conjunction with international aid organizations to address the root causes of conflict and famine in the region in order to make the Sahel more food secure.
This is the first multi-year plan for the Sahel, and it represents a shift in the way the UN deals with food security issues.
In September of 2013, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Sahel, Robert Piper, said of the situation, “Business as usual doesn’t cut it . . . One of the problems we have today is that governments tend to want to fund food and nutrition . . .They are much more reluctant to fund, say, agriculture or water and sanitation inputs.”
Piper argued for the development of long-term solutions as the only option for the people of the Sahel.
Many of the food insecure are those who have been displaced by conflict. Violence in the Central African Republic, Sudan and Nigeria has lead to more than 730,000 refugees spilling into the region and some 495,000 displaced internally.
Without a plan to resolve these conflicts and care for the refugees, the continuing costs and caseload will become too great for the UN, Piper claimed.
– Chase Colton
Sources: UN News Centre, New York Times, BBC, UNOCHA Sahel, UNOCHA Piper
Photo: Reuters
Bill Nye, the “Science (Poverty) Guy”
The media’s coverage of the February 4 debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham overshadowed another important issue Nye highlighted on January 30: global poverty. The 2 minute video features Bill Nye discussing commonly believed myths about poverty.
MYTH #1: The United States spends 25 percent of its budget each year on foreign aid.
Bill Nye compares the federal budget to a dollar bill. Though some people assume that the budget is a quarter, it is actually less than a penny. “You can’t even cut a coin small enough to represent how much money is spent on foreign aid. It’s not that much,” said Nye.
REALITY= The US spends 0.8 percent of its budget each year on foreign aid.
MYTH #2: Wars & natural disasters kill more people than anything else.
“This idea that wars or natural disasters, tsunamis, earthquakes, kill most of the people – that’s wrong. It pales, it’s dwarfed by the number of people killed by preventable diseases,” Bill Nye said.
Children are dying every day. Though progress has been made in global health, there are still deaths all over the world. Those in poverty are at an even higher risk of dying.
Health and economic advancements have allowed people to combat this risk. However, preventable diseases continue to represent 7 out of the 10 leading causes for child mortality. It accounts for 83 percent of child deaths, with non-communicable diseases at 11 percent and injuries at 6 percent. “This is where we can change the world,” said Bill Nye.
REALITY= The leading cause of death for children under the age of 5 is preventable disease (communicable diseases, birth problems, nutrition.)
MYTH #3: U.S. citizens give money to Africa and nothing changes.
“People think that we’ve been sending money to Africa for decades and nothing’s improved; things are as bad as they ever were.” Approximately 10.5 million children under the age of five die every year. In 1970, that number was 17 million.
The most impressive declines occurred in countries that showed considerable economic improvement, making our monetary contributions a positive piece of the puzzle. Foreign aid has helped these people.
REALITY= That money has been making positive changes, like cutting child mortality in half within the past few decades.
“We have a real opportunity to leave the world better than we found it, to dispel these myths and move on to improve the quality of life of people everywhere,” said Bill Nye. “So let’s prevent the diseases. Let’s address a preventable disaster.”
– Samantha Davis
Sources: NPR, YouTube, World Health Organization
Photo: Brandon Hill Photos
Gilead to Cut Cost of Hepatitis C Drug Overseas
Approximately 150 million people around the world are afflicted with Hepatitis C, a deadly liver infection that causes severe complications among its patients. It looks as if this viral infection might have finally met its match with the introduction of Sovaldi (sofosbuvir), a supposedly highly effective new drug made by California-based pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Inc.
Gilead’s executive vice president, Gregg H. Alton, claims that the drug is among “the biggest breakthroughs in medicine in the last 10 years.”
Countries around the globe will be the judge of that, as the current high price of the drug is unaffordable to all but the wealthiest in most low and middle-income countries. In the United States, Sovaldi sells for $1,000 per pill, meaning that a twelve-week regimen would cost an estimated $84,000.
As most people afflicted with the virus are poor or incarcerated, this is fueling anger even in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Gilead Sciences is attempting to solve this issue by licensing the drug to a number of generic pharmaceutical manufacturers in India. Discussions are still underway but the price for a 24-week regimen of Sovaldi would run at about $2,500 for patients in public hospitals, community clinics, and NGOs.
This amounts to 2% of the U.S. price and the deal is slated to affect up to 60 low-income countries.
That said, activists continue to raise concerns about the cost of the drug.
Rohit Malpani, a policy director of Doctors Without Borders, agrees with other critics that Sovaldi could be sold for as little as $136 for a twelve-week regimen, substantially less than the licensing deal currently underway with Gilead. However, it is important to note that the pharmaceutical companies in India are the only players who will be able to bring the price of the drug down, depending upon the amount of competition.
Gilead has created programs for lower-cost versions of its HIV/AIDS drugs, so why not allow similar access to the Hepatitis C drug? Either way, Gilead Sciences will be making its fair share of money.
Analysts estimate that the drug will generate billions of dollars in annual sales, as about 3% of the world’s population has been infected with the virus. The last three weeks of 2013 alone generated more than $139 million for the medication.
With the price of Sovaldi in India currently up for debate, clinical trials are already being conducted to test the drug on the local population. If the licensing deal goes through with Gilead Sciences, it will take about two years before the product is actually available in India, and hopefully a number of other countries.
The hopes are that Sovaldi will eventually be accessible in resource-limited settings where it is most needed.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: NPR, The Hindu Business Line
Photo: NPR
3rd Agricultural Revolution – Yay, or Nay?
According to a United Nations report, supporting smallholder farmers could lift one billion people out of poverty.
Smallholder farmers provide over 80% of food consumed in the largest parts of the developing world and contribute to food security and poverty reduction. They also produce jobs; currently 2.5 billion people are full or part time smallholder farmers.
1.4 billion people are living under $1.25 a day in rural areas, and they are dependent on agriculture as their main means to a livelihood and food.
The world needs another agricultural revolution. Every 10% increase in farms yields a seven percent reduction in poverty in Africa and in Asia a five percent reduction.
Right now the breaking down of prime farming land, little investment in the cause, and the sidelining of small farms in developmental policies are what is holding the agricultural economy back from a new revolution.
“Two decades of underinvestment in agriculture, growing competition for land and water, rising fuel and fertilizer prices, and climate change have left smallholders less able to escape poverty,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) Executive Director.
A third agricultural revolution, following the British Agricultural Revolution and the Green Revolution, will potentially succeed in feeding the world by 2050.
In the British Agricultural Revolution, farmers improved fertile land in order to sustain the nutrients in soil. During the Green Revolution, cereal became a heightened focus when it was realized that 90 percent of the world’s food comes from cereals.
“You can cope and adapt to global warming but you can’t cope with hunger, famine or the lack of food to feed the rapidly increasing world’s population,” states Dr. John Baker, who was nominated for the World Food Prize in 2013. “Only four percent of the world’s surface has arable soil and that’s not likely to increase so we have to learn to farm it more sustainably which we simply haven’t been doing.”
Dr. Baker believes the key to ending poverty and feeding the world is through increased agricultural machinery.
“Primitive no-tillage tools simply fail,” Dr. Baker states.
And perhaps it’s a combination of improved agricultural machinery and an increase in the promotion of sustainable agriculture that will boost the opportunities for growth in smallholder farmers.
A report released by the UNEP-WCMC and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) provided recommendations in hopes of improving the relationship between policymakers and smallholder farmers.
The report included these suggestions:
The promotion of sustainable agriculture has focused on minimizing the impacts of agriculture on the environment and many smallholders feel this robs them of limited opportunities for growth. Farm- and community-level mechanisms that take these concerns into account while scaling up a sustainability landscape approach need to be developed.
Removing policy barriers to sustainable agricultural growth requires market-based mechanisms that provide smallholders with incentives to invest in sustainability, such as:
In order to provide smallholders with the information they need, investing in approaches such as farmer field schools and the use of rural radios and other mobile telecommunication methods is essential.
Additional research is needed on the drivers of change that influence smallholder practices–both negative (e.g. agriculture policies and subsidies) and positive (e.g. secure land rights, collective institutions and cultural values).
– Rebecca Felcon
Sources: IFAD, The Rural
Photo: Robots4Farms
Maternal, Newborn & Child Health 101
Maternal and Child Health Definitions
Maternal health refers to the health of women during pregnancy, childbirth and post partum. Neonatal or newborn health refers to the health of infants in their first six months of life child health in this context usually refers to young children in their first six years of life.
Maternal mortality
In the developing world pregnancy and childbirth can often cause severe complications including hemorrhage, infection, unsafe abortions, high blood pressure and obstructed labor. Unfortunately, if untreated maternal complications can lead to death. Every day approximately 800 women die from preventable conditions related to pregnancy and childbirth with 99% of these deaths occurring in the developing world; while this figure is still far too high, maternal mortality has decreased by 50% between 1990 and 2010. In 2010 287,000 women died in pregnancy or childbirth. Eighty percent of deaths are caused by infection or bleeding after childbirth, high blood pressure during pregnancy, or unsafe abortions.
Which Mothers are at Risk?
Adolescents and young women are at a greater risk than older women. The risk of pregnancy increases greatly if the girl is under 15; complications related to childbirth and pregnancy are the leading cause of death among adolescent girls in the developing world. Poor women, rural women, and women with low access to healthcare are the most at risk. Maternal mortality is strongly related to poverty and is a major health inequity. About half of all maternal deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa and one-third occur in South Asia. In the developing world, the probability that a woman will die from causes related to pregnancy is 1 in 150; in the developed world it is 1 in 3800.
Infant Mortality
Each year 2.3 million babies are stillborn and 2.9 million die in their first year of life; the vast majority of these infants are born in developing countries. Deaths are caused by preterm birth, infections such as sepsis, pneumonia, meningitis and asphyxia during birth (when the baby does not get enough oxygen).
How Can Mothers be Saved?
These conditions are highly preventable and many of these deaths could be prevented if women had access to good and reliable healthcare. Women in poor countries lack access to trained health professionals such as midwifes, doctors or nurses, and this is why complications lead to death. There are low cost, effective treatments for mothers and infants but many women do not receive any medical care, or the healthcare providers do not have access to the tools needed to treat the women and children. With improved access to maternal health care in poor countries many women and children could be saved.
The Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation is working to bring low cost interventions such as antibiotics, sterile blades to cut umbilical cords, and drugs to treat hemorrhaging in mothers and asphyxia in infants to poor communities around the globe.
– Elizabeth Brown
Sources: WHO, The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health, Gates Foundation
Photo: #Y4CARMMA
Refugee Population Down, Worrying Up
The updated 2013 population figures for refugee camps on the Thai-Burmese border show a decrease of 7.1 percent, according to The Border Consortium (TBC), an NGO that works with refugees and displaced people from Burma.
A majority of the departures from the camps, 7,649, consist of refugees leaving for a third country under the UNHCR’s resettlement program, according to the Democratic Voice of Burma.
Sally Thompson, executive director of TBC states, “It is important to note that while there was a net population decrease, new refugees are continuing to arrive in the camps; there were 3,300 new asylum seekers arriving in 2013. In addition, 3,137 children were born in camps…”
Despite the decrease, it does not mean that any less food, shelter, services, health care and protection are needed. There are still 120,000 people living throughout these refugee camps that need protection and humanitarian assistance.
Data from TBC shows that out of the 4,389 people who left the camps to return to Burma, 70 percent of those departures only included one or two people from a household, while the rest of their household stayed in the camps.
In addition to worrying about what is going to happen to their families that are left in the camps, Myanmar refugees located in Fort Wayne, Indiana are worried that a change in U.S. policy will hurt efforts to reunite them with relatives living in the city. The Post-Tribune explains that Fort Wayne is home to more than 4,000 refugees from the area formerly known as Burma.
The major concern according to Minn Myint Nan Tin, the Burmese Advocacy Center leader, is that the State Department has decided to stop accepting resettlement applications from Myanmar refugees living in the nine camps across Thailand. Refugees from Myanmar have been coming to Fort Wayne since 1993 to escape military rule in their homelands.
January 24 marked the end of applications since the State Department began issuing deadlines a year ago for refugees to decide whether or not they wanted to leave the Thai camps for the United States.
Christine Getzler Vaughn, State Department spokeswoman, explains that “The resettlement program will continue until we have completed the processing of every application received by the deadline for each camp, and we expect that to happen over the next two years.”
170 refugees will be relocated to Fort Wayne with approval of the State Department during the 2014 fiscal year.
– Lindsey Lerner
Sources: Post-Tribune, DVB
Photo: South China Morning Post
ECLAC Report of Latin America and the Caribbean
The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) presented a report on the economic and social panorama of the community of Latin American and Caribbean States in Havana at the 2nd Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) summit.
The ECLAC report stated that roughly 28.2% of the total population in Latin America and the Caribbean were living in poverty, with 11.3% living in extreme poverty. In numerical terms, this means 164 million people remain in poverty, while 66 million people are still living in conditions of indigence.
The poverty rate in Latin America and the Caribbean fell 1.4% on last year, and 40.5% of children and adolescents in Latin America can be classified as either poor or extremely poor.
Countries such as El Salvador, Honduras, Bolivia, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Peru have the highest level of child poverty, averaging around 72%. In contrast, countries with the least amount of child poverty such as Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Ecuador, Costa Rica, only 19.5% of children lived in poverty.
The poorest 5% received 5% of the total income, while the wealthiest quintile averaged 47% of total income. The regional average for unemployment fell by .1% on last year to 6.3% in 2013.
The report also highlights the record level of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the region, which hit an all-time high of $174.546 billion. This is a 5.7% increase over 2011 FDI levels and is the third year in a row in which FDI levels have increased.
The greatest increases in FDI over last year occurred in Peru (49%) and Chile (32%). Brazil received the largest absolute FDI inflow, with 38% of the total for the Latin America and Caribbean region. The biggest sector for FDI investment was in services (44%), then manufacturing (30%), and finally natural resource sectors (26%).
The forecast for GDP growth across the entire Latin America region in 2014 is 2.8%, slightly down from the previous estimate of 2.9% and mainly due to sluggish growth and downward revisions in the economic forecasts for Brazil, Paraguay and Venezuela.
Emerging markets continue to brace for the negative impact on growth to come from the tapering of the Federal Reserve’s bond-buying program, which began in January and is expected to hit emerging economies used to the high liquidity available in the global financial system.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: CEPAL, Independent European Daily Express
Photo: Fox News
Bolivia Announces Nuclear Energy Program
Bolivian President Evo Morales has announced the first steps towards building the first nuclear reactor in the country during his annual state of the union address to the Bolivian Congress. Morales stressed that the nuclear program will be developed for peaceful purposes with the help of France, Iran and Argentina.
Evo Morales called the nuclear development project a priority for Bolivia and stressed that the South American country “will not remain excluded from this technology, which belongs to all humankind.”
If Bolivia follows through on its claims, it will join the ranks of only three other Latin American nations with functioning nuclear programs. Argentina, Brazil and Mexico have had nuclear programs for peaceful purposes ever since the Treaty of Tlateloco in 1967 established a nuclear-weapon-free zone across Latin America.
Bolivia stated that Iran, France and Argentina had agreed to aid the country in its efforts to establish a nuclear weapons program.
Evo Morales is the first indigenous president of Bolivia and is known as a bombastic critic of the United States and its policies throughout Latin America. He expelled the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in 2011 and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2013 as an effort to reduce subversive US influence in the country.
Earlier this year, Bolivia became one of the last states in South America to have its own telecommunications satellite when China stepped in to help with the launch of the satellite, named after Tupak Katari, an indigenous folk hero who fought against Spanish colonialism.
The telecommunications satellite will help reduce the cost of communications and improve access to the Internet for many Bolivians living in rural areas. The move is also a further step towards increased independence from the West that President Morales would like to see more of.
In spite of these campaigns, Bolivia is expected to continue on a path of energy diversification by investing in explorations for oil and uranium reserves in Potosí.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: BBC, Latin Post, BBC, UPI
Photo: Polygrafi
ICJ for Peru Over Chile on Maritime Row
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nation’s highest court, recently ruled in favor of Peru in a territorial dispute over contested maritime boundaries between Peru and Chile. 14,670 square miles of ocean worth around $200 million in marine resources were at stake in the ruling.
Peru first brought the case against Chile to the ICJ in 2008. This case marks the precipitation of uncertainty produced by the Santiago Declaration of 1952, wherein Ecuador, Chile and Peru agreed to mark their maritime boundaries at 200 miles west of their land borders. This agreement allowed Chile to have more territory than Peru, which juts to the northwest.
The ICJ was careful to give consideration to both parties. Chile argued that the Santiago Declaration did indeed constitute an agreement on land boundaries, which the Court accepted in part. The ICJ agreed with Chile that the Santiago Declaration constituted an agreement on territories, but only for the first 80 nautical miles. Beyond 80 nautical miles, the Court drew a new equidistant boundary in favor of Peru.
Peru won roughly 8,100 square miles in the dispute, while Chile kept its prime fishing grounds. Chile and Peru are currently tussling over a 3.7-hectare swathe of land that the ICJ declined to rule on. Long-standing territorial tensions between Peru and Chile are again simmering, arising to the forefront of national debate.
It is unlikely tensions between the two countries will reach a boiling point, however. Peru and Chile have close economic relations and are members of the Pacific Alliance free trade agreement, consisting also of Mexico and Colombia. Further, Peru is the fourth-largest recipient of Chilean investment, and Chile has $13.6 billion invested in Peru’s retail and service industries. Bilateral trade between the two countries totaled $3 billion last year.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: Reuters, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist
Photo: The Nation