In many places around the world, women and young girls are viewed as commodities. Whether or not they are raped themselves, women’s bodies are used to atone for crimes committed by others. More than 700 million women alive today were married under 18, and more are used as a way to bring justice to criminals.
In some countries, it is legal for a rapist to escape prosecution if he marries his victim, who is usually a minor. This practice is allowed in Algeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. The law was also up for debate in Mozambique earlier this year. Even in places where the law is not on the books, often rural, traditional customs allow for it.
This year, a man in Zimbabwe raped a 14-year-old girl. He had been harassing her, and her grandmother told her to marry him. After the rape, her grandmother continued insisting she marry the man, and he took her away from her home. Against the law of the state, he called her his wife and continued raping her until her mother paid for her bus fare to get home.
A 13-year-old girl in India also reported that cops forced her to marry one of her attackers after being gang-raped.
The motivation behind the marriages has to do with honor. Girls who lose their virginity are seen as worthless, or unable to find a husband, so their families will often marry them off to their rapist in order to restore their honor. Some countries do not view marital rape as a crime, so anything happening within marriage is seen as honorable. Sometimes there is external pressure to force their child into marriage.
In 2012, 15-year-old Amina Filali killed herself by ingesting rat poison after she was forced to marry her rapist. She endured continued rapes and beatings before committing suicide. Her family and her rapist’s family agreed to have the two married, in part because of honor, but also because of pressure from authorities.
Families also force children into marriage because of war. Child marriage is seen as protection from the raping and kidnapping that often happens in conflicts.
Honor is a major factor, and rape causes shame for the victim, not the attacker. Sometimes the quest for honor affects justice for rape victims. In Northern Africa, the punishment for rape depends on whether the victim is a virgin or not. In Pakistan, although a Women’s Protection Bill was passed in 2006, if a woman is of “generally immoral character,” punishments are not as severe or are completely ignored.
A Somali girl named Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was gang-raped by three men in 2007. The family reported the incident to the militia, but instead of prosecuting the perpetrators, Aisha was stoned to death. According to the local police force, she had committed adultery.
The honor associated with young girls’ virginity extends beyond their own sexual experiences. Sometimes local law will allow young girls to be raped because of crimes committed by family members. The idea is that a girl’s loss of virginity is a blow to the entire family’s honor, so the crime of the family can be paid by her body.
This year, in a northern Indian village, a leader ordered the rape of a 14-year-old girl. Her brother had sexually assaulted another woman. The victim’s husband was to carry out the rape himself, while she received no assistance. A 22-year-old was ordered to be gang-raped by 13 of her neighbors for going outside her community for a relationship. A 24-year-old was gang-raped because her brother eloped with another man’s wife. She was then forced to marry one of her attackers.
All of these women’s bodies are being used in the name of justice. The highest reports of rape come from Europe and America, but the social stigma, discriminatory laws and patriarchal culture of some areas of the world prevent women from speaking out against their attackers.
Women fear the consequences of speaking out. Sometimes they are not even related to a crime, but their bodies are used to exact “justice,” anyway.
– Monica Roth
Sources: Amnesty International 1, Amnesty International 2, Al Jazeera America, Jezebel, UNICEF, Mumbai Mirror, The Nation, The Daily Beast, NewsdzeZimbabwe
Photo: The Daily Beast
Vietnamese Art Programs for Children
Education reform, particularly in Vietnam’s rural areas, is slow. With the social gap pushing the Kinh majority and ethnic minorities further apart, alleviating rural poverty is becoming increasingly difficult. Rural minority children are being left behind. Thankfully, there are some humanitarian relief programs that are determined to make a difference.
The Rock Paper Scissors Children’s Fund was started by an American mother of two adopted Vietnamese girls. She wanted to help her daughters’ native land by introducing opportunities in art and music in the village of Cam Duc.
The organization joins with local schools and orphanages to foster hundreds of children’s penchant for art. The Rock Paper Scissors Children’s Fund uses donations to help with the children’s school and book fees, purchase more art supplies and bring in more instruments, since students share violins. The organization not only hopes to reach more children, but also to help them effectively. The Rock Paper Scissors Children’s Fund takes children beyond the restrictive parameters of the everyday classroom and builds community.
Similarly, the Catalyst Foundation partners with adoption agencies. This foundation organizes cultural camps and hosts the annual Little Red Fairy My Vietnam Contest. The contest is an opportunity for the foundation to hand out scholarships in order to motivate children to continue developing their talents.
Tohe is an art program that focuses on impoverished children throughout the country, not exclusively in rural villages. Established in 2006, Tohe has a special focus on disabled children. Tohe holds weekly classes at welfare centers in and around Hanoi, Vietnam’s capital.
The program aims to raise confidence within the children and decrease the social stigma surrounding disabled children. These classes have creative playgrounds, where children use clay and recycled materials to create patterns, toys and structures.
Some of the art pieces are incorporated in commercial merchandise, such as prints for laptop cases and clothing. Tohe hopes to expand its collaboration with retailers. Profits are cycled back to Tohe to help improve the program. To date, over a thousand children have been touched by this initiative. The program wishes to merge with the education sector in order to create a greater influence.
The survival of small scale art programs is difficult. In most countries around the world, developed or developing, art is often seen as a past time chiefly for the privileged. Even in the West, funding for the arts in school is lacking. By high school, students are prompted to choose courses that will steer them toward a practical career. These courses are often in science, technology or business.
Moreover, there is sometimes stigma around making art into a career because of the financial position in which it often results. In growing up, there is a pressing expectation for practicality.
The expectation to be practical is palpable even more so in impoverished regions of the world. Households withdraw their children from basic schooling so they can help contribute to the family income. If these families reach a point where they must give up basic education, then pursuing the arts is surely out of the question.
It is important to show governments the importance of a well-rounded education. In order to break the cycle of poverty, building a future for children must start with promoting their growth in critical thinking and their use of imagination.
-Carmen Tu
Sources: Adopt Vietnam, GIVE, Indiegogo – Tohe, Rock Paper Scissors Children’s Fund, UNICEF
Photo: Rock Paper Scissors Children’s Fund
Hurricane Arthur and Surge Technology
When Hurricane Arthur touched down on the east coast of the U.S., he blew in with a new tool that would help coastal residents understand–and react to–stormy water conditions.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) released a Google map-powered water surge tracking system that visually represents the risk posed to those whose homes are within the scope of upcoming tropical cyclones. Most coastal residents are familiar with the concept of storm surges but often underestimate the potential impact they could make. Many others are simply reluctant to believe that harm could reach them.
Jamie Rhome, who runs the NHC’s Storm Surge Unit, has attested to the doubtful demeanor of coastal inlanders. “We could convince people right along the beach that the ocean has a potential to invade their home, that was a relatively easy sell,” said Rhome in an interview with Public Radio International. “But what was really, really hard is to convince people that might be 10, 15, 20 miles inland that saltwater could invade their homes; it was really hard to get people to evacuate during a storm.”
A surge occurs when winds and low atmospheric pressure combine to raise sea level and push water inshore. Consequences are flooding, water damage to buildings and death to those who caught in the worst circumstances. The NHC hopes to prevent each of these outcomes as best as possible by educating the public with their storm surge maps.
Storms on the eastern and southern coasts of the United States are frequent enough for their inhabitants to generally understand what may be coming their way. Those living close enough to the coast but at a questionable distance are less aware, the most reluctant to take action and will benefit most from the new technology.
Storm surges are becoming increasingly problematic even for seasoned coastal dwellers due to rising sea levels and the growing populations of seaside cities. “That means more people, more things, harder evacuations,” stated Rhome.
It is hard to believe that Hurricane Katrina happened almost ten years ago, especially since its devastating effects are still felt today. Cases like Katrina and the more recent Ike and Sandy are constant reminders to not take threat of tropical cyclones lightly, but stubbornness often prevents people from burdening themselves with over-preparedness. The NHC hopes that with its real-time storm surge maps, people will make better educated decisions at any point within a storm’s lifespan for their own safety.
The storm surge maps are the first of their kind and will undergo a two-year trial period to gauge their impact and effectiveness. The NHC is emphasizing user experience research during its trial period to improve the usability and readability as the technology develops. If successful, the storm surge maps could be released worldwide where the effects of tropical cyclones are even more devastating.
For most U.S. residents, evacuating from an upcoming storm is doable. Although there are disadvantaged Americans with less agency to prepare for or flee from a hurricane, the U.S. infrastructure is generally more resilient than many other areas in the world.
Developing island nations such as Haiti, who was hit by four tropical cyclones in 2008 alone, are the most vulnerable.
In the near future, it is hoped that technology and a solid internet connection will be accessible by all, including the NHC’s surge maps equipped to display storm conditions for any area in the world. At the end of the day, natural disasters are harmful regardless of where they occur and remain the most uncontrollable threat to global health. Circumstances are severely worsened when poverty is thrown into the mix.
Even if it is difficult for people to evacuate, seeing the danger before it arrives might compel people to make the decision to flee. No matter how inconvenient it is to pack up and go, a human life is worth more than taking the risk to stay. That is the sentiment the NHC hopes to instill.
– Edward Heinrich
Sources: PRI, NOLA.com
Photo: CNN
Women’s Bodies as “Justice”
In many places around the world, women and young girls are viewed as commodities. Whether or not they are raped themselves, women’s bodies are used to atone for crimes committed by others. More than 700 million women alive today were married under 18, and more are used as a way to bring justice to criminals.
In some countries, it is legal for a rapist to escape prosecution if he marries his victim, who is usually a minor. This practice is allowed in Algeria, Bahrain, Indonesia, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria and Tunisia. The law was also up for debate in Mozambique earlier this year. Even in places where the law is not on the books, often rural, traditional customs allow for it.
This year, a man in Zimbabwe raped a 14-year-old girl. He had been harassing her, and her grandmother told her to marry him. After the rape, her grandmother continued insisting she marry the man, and he took her away from her home. Against the law of the state, he called her his wife and continued raping her until her mother paid for her bus fare to get home.
A 13-year-old girl in India also reported that cops forced her to marry one of her attackers after being gang-raped.
The motivation behind the marriages has to do with honor. Girls who lose their virginity are seen as worthless, or unable to find a husband, so their families will often marry them off to their rapist in order to restore their honor. Some countries do not view marital rape as a crime, so anything happening within marriage is seen as honorable. Sometimes there is external pressure to force their child into marriage.
In 2012, 15-year-old Amina Filali killed herself by ingesting rat poison after she was forced to marry her rapist. She endured continued rapes and beatings before committing suicide. Her family and her rapist’s family agreed to have the two married, in part because of honor, but also because of pressure from authorities.
Families also force children into marriage because of war. Child marriage is seen as protection from the raping and kidnapping that often happens in conflicts.
Honor is a major factor, and rape causes shame for the victim, not the attacker. Sometimes the quest for honor affects justice for rape victims. In Northern Africa, the punishment for rape depends on whether the victim is a virgin or not. In Pakistan, although a Women’s Protection Bill was passed in 2006, if a woman is of “generally immoral character,” punishments are not as severe or are completely ignored.
A Somali girl named Aisha Ibrahim Duhulow was gang-raped by three men in 2007. The family reported the incident to the militia, but instead of prosecuting the perpetrators, Aisha was stoned to death. According to the local police force, she had committed adultery.
The honor associated with young girls’ virginity extends beyond their own sexual experiences. Sometimes local law will allow young girls to be raped because of crimes committed by family members. The idea is that a girl’s loss of virginity is a blow to the entire family’s honor, so the crime of the family can be paid by her body.
This year, in a northern Indian village, a leader ordered the rape of a 14-year-old girl. Her brother had sexually assaulted another woman. The victim’s husband was to carry out the rape himself, while she received no assistance. A 22-year-old was ordered to be gang-raped by 13 of her neighbors for going outside her community for a relationship. A 24-year-old was gang-raped because her brother eloped with another man’s wife. She was then forced to marry one of her attackers.
All of these women’s bodies are being used in the name of justice. The highest reports of rape come from Europe and America, but the social stigma, discriminatory laws and patriarchal culture of some areas of the world prevent women from speaking out against their attackers.
Women fear the consequences of speaking out. Sometimes they are not even related to a crime, but their bodies are used to exact “justice,” anyway.
– Monica Roth
Sources: Amnesty International 1, Amnesty International 2, Al Jazeera America, Jezebel, UNICEF, Mumbai Mirror, The Nation, The Daily Beast, NewsdzeZimbabwe
Photo: The Daily Beast
NGOs in the DRC Reject Drones
Drones buzz through the skies of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to monitor this mineral-rich country that has been racked with war for 20 years. The U.N. Stabilization Mission, or MONUSCO, a peacekeeping operation with over 21,000 personnel, brought two of these Unmanned Aerial Vehicles into action in the DRC last April. MONUSCO then offered to share drone-collected information with humanitarian NGOs working in the DRC.
The offer was emphatically rejected.
The NGOs reject drones because MONUSCO is a military operation. International NGOs are humanitarian and as such are bound to the principles of “neutrality, impartiality and operational independence.” Using drones for both military and humanitarian information gathering compromises these principles.
A July 14, 2014 statement released by NGOs working in the DRC pointed to the potential for data gathered with a humanitarian objective nevertheless informing combat operations.
2006’s guidelines for how humanitarian actors and MONUSCO are to coordinate has recently been revised, but IRIN reports that a final draft “does not directly address the use of info gained through drones.”
NGOs are concerned that they have no guarantee the info will come from non-drone sources.
Drones have served both military and non-military purposes in the past. For example, while one drone might use its infrared camera to search for people congregating at night (a sign of an attack brewing), another drone might be tasked with monitoring the geological activity of a volcano.
On May 5, 2014, drones in Rwanda that were flying over Lake Kivu relayed information indicating a ferry had capsized, leaving 20 people in the water struggling for their lives. Rescuers saved 14 people who probably would have drowned otherwise.
However, the issue here is not whether drones are capable of serving a non-military function; humanitarian organizations know they would find information gathered by drones helpful. The issue is that, according to certain core principles, humanitarian NGOs cannot take sides in a war.
The drones’ many uses could embroil the NGOs in the conflict because MONUSCO might use “humanitarian information” for military purposes.
The region these drones patrol is highly unstable, with many armed groups fomenting conflict there. Last June, members of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a militia group with a large presence in the DRC, proclaimed their desire to disarm and negotiate. Provided the offer to disarm was genuine, some thought this might stabilize the region to a certain extent.
However, recent attacks on barracks in Kinshasa by a separate group highlight how one party’s exit from the conflict can hardly be used to foretell an end to the larger conflict. Because of this, drones will remain a fixture in the DRC’s skies.
-Ryan Yanke
Sources: IRIN, BBC News, The New York Times
Photo: BBC
The Link Between Poverty and Education
It is a well-documented fact that children from low-income households are significantly less likely to be successful than their middle and upper class counterparts. Studies have repeatedly shown a link between poverty and education. Family income is one of the strongest predictors available for measuring success, both in the classroom and later in life.
With fewer resources and less of a focus on education at home, children growing up in poverty are behind from the very beginning. Household stresses from living in poverty build up in the child, making it extremely difficult to concentrate on education.
Even if they are going to school regularly, children in poverty often fail to get an adequate education due to the stress of destitution. Since they have such a difficult time in the classroom, the kids fall into the poverty trap, in which their lack of education prevents any rise on the social ladder.
Until recently, it was unclear exactly what biological process made that the case. However, recent studies have pointed towards working memory as the key psychological factor linking poverty and education, specifically in academic achievement.
Working Memory Links Poverty and Education
Working memory is a “temporary storage mechanism” that lets us hold information and facts in our head for short-term usage and manipulation. The process of using working memory is central for reading, problem-solving and learning new languages.
A number of studies have shown that children with the best working memories also tend to have the highest test scores and the best grades. Children in poverty consistently have a less developed working memory than those above the poverty line.
With a dearth of educational resources in poor countries, an underdeveloped working memory often goes unnoticed and untreated.
This means that in addition to dealing with stress at home, children in poverty also have trouble remembering basic facts and instructions at school. Unable to stay on task, and struggling to keep up, their failure at school only adds to their stress level.
What’s more, a study published in the Development Science journal showed that, “Stress in early childhood negatively affects a child’s working memory in adulthood.”
The problems for children in poverty become even bigger problems in their adult lives. While a poor working memory for a child only means bad grades, it spells unemployment and crushing poverty for an adult.
The answer must come well before adulthood. With properly trained educators, an underdeveloped working memory can be easily spotted and rectified before it becomes a larger problem.
The lack of a proper education makes up a major part of the poverty trap — a phenomenon in which people living in poverty cannot rise up due to scarce resources, depression, lack of opportunity and other issues. The poverty trap can start before the child ever enters the classroom, and it has long-term psychological consequences.
Even from early childhood, poverty can create both a biological obstacle and an inescapable trap that collectively reduces the likelihood for academic and monetary success.
– Sam Hillestad
Sources: PsyBlog, PNAS
Digital Banking Changes the World
Cash-based systems for holding money are inefficient and hold a lot of risk, with especially high consequences for the world’s poor. With ‘digital cash’ and saving methods, more people are able to experience financial inclusion in modern banking, suffer less risky consequences and begin investing in their future.
Much of this banking is done through mobile phones, which have become increasingly available to developing countries. About 89 mobile phones exist per 100 people in these areas. Even non-financial institutions, such as small businesses, use mobile payments in order to perform faster business and expand their customer base.
Studies in Mexico have shown that in areas where more banking institutions were introduced, there was a rise in informal small businesses, as well as a seven percent rise in incomes. This demonstrates that greater access to banking systems can lead to economic stimulation.
Having financial transactions performed on mobile phones makes banking services cheaper and more feasible for the poor. Digital banking also comes with better financial records, making it easier for banks and other lending programs to develop credit scores, and lending methods that are tailored to their clients.
With digital banking, immediate transactions can be made from the comfort of one’s home, saving people time and money by avoiding a possibly long commute and day away from work in order to get to a bank. Digital banking also makes money less susceptible to common risks such as thievery, natural disasters, or manipulative friends and relatives.
Some people in these situations even pay others to keep their money safe, adding another unnecessary payment to their expenses.
Long distance transfers also become easier to accomplish. Many households in developing countries receive their income from a family member working in other parts of the country who sends money periodically.
A poll was conducted in 11 sub-Saharan African countries that discovered that 83 percent of those polled had made a payment to someone far away using cash. This involved giving money to bus drivers, asking friends to carry money, or taking time off work to deliver the money themselves.
These processes are not only unsafe, but they can be unreliable and slow.
After a bank was set up in a region in Malawi in 2002, farmers used it to hold their money after the harvest, so that they would be able to continue buying fertilizer throughout the year. Their crop yields grew, therefore increasing overall income, while allowing these farming families to send children to school for even more future investment.
Recently in Kenya, clients of M-Pesa, a mobile money program, were observed and compared to Kenyans without the program. When natural disasters or unexpected events came, M-Pesa clients were able to receive financial assistance from friends and relatives at a much faster rate, making any negative impact much smaller, and allowing their regular lives to be interrupted as little as possible.
The success of M-Pesa has sparked motivation for other countries to create similar programs. Tanzania has over 47 percent of their population using mobile banking, and Uganda has begun the process, and already has 26 percent of their population as a member of a mobile banking system.
Even governments benefit from mobile banking. Since Mexico’s adoption of digital banking in 1997, their government lowered their spending on wages, pensions and social welfare by $1.3 billion, or 3.3 percent annually.
A study was done in India that concluded the government could save $22 billion annually just by digitizing all payments and transfers.
Although digital banking is expanding throughout the developing world, there are still 2.5 billion people without any banking system. Governments, non profits and private groups are now working on making banking more digital, and therefore more accessible to these bank less people.
-Courtney Prentice
Sources: Skoll World Forum, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Forbes, Global Envision, TIME, Foreign Affairs
Photo: Gulf Business
The Status of Orphans in Developing Countries
Losing a parent is undoubtedly a traumatic experience for any child. It is an experience that will follow that child, likely playing a large role in their development and the opportunities they will have later in life.
Globally, 153 million children are orphans; the number of orphans in developing countries is enormous: 132 million. Here are 5 facts about the 132 million orphaned children in developing nations.
1. The large amount of orphans in developing countries is a result of many negative circumstances. Among these are natural disasters, famine and war. However, AIDS is the most significant reason children in a developing country lose their parents. In 2007 alone, AIDS left 15 million children orphaned after one or more of their parents passed away from the disease.
More than 24 percent of orphaned children had parents taken from them by AIDS. In 2008, 430,000 children were infected with the disease as well.
2. Asia holds the largest number of orphaned children, at 71 million – India alone is home to 31 million orphans. This is followed by Africa, which harbors 59 million.
3. Each day, 39,000 children are forced from their homes alone because of the death of a parent, family illness or abuse and abandonment.
4. After losing parents, circumstances for children drastically decline. They typically lack basic needs, like food and shelter. Education, however, is the first to be sacrificed, especially for older children who stop attending school to care for their younger siblings. These children try to provide for themselves and their younger siblings, often endangering their health.
The International Labor Organization reports that orphans are often found working in commercial agriculture, as well as street vending and housekeeping. Seven percent of orphans are stolen and sold into the sex industry.
5. The number of orphans is growing. Predictions for the next five to 10 years show the trend moving upward. By 2020, more than 200 million children could find themselves orphaned. This is almost three percent of the world population.
Despite the harsh reality of being orphaned in a developing country, it’s important to note that the rate of children becoming orphans in developing nations is finally slowing. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child has become the most rapidly and widely ratified human rights treaty in world history. It lays down a set of rights for each child and, as nations struggle to bring much needed care and protection to their orphans, provides pathways and options for each nation to do so.
– Rachel Davis
Sources: Humanium, Moju Project, UNICEF
Photo: The Guardian
The Philippines: Land of Typhoons
Every year, 20 typhoons pay a visit to the Philippines. In their wake, they leave towns and cities bursting at the seams with flood water that residents must wade though in order to get to their jobs and homes.
This is what residents of Quezon City had to deal with again as Typhoon Rammasun hit. The numbers were huge: 12,000 people were displaced, 38 people were killed when Rammasun hit this land of typhoons and at least eight were missing shortly after the storm.
People’s homes, 19,000 in all, were left damaged.
Meanwhile, in the town of Noveleta, people braced against 185 mph wilds. The typhoon cut across Luzon, shutting down the capital and leaving a trail of blackouts and ravaged trees as it passed.
Then it set course for Southern China.
Before the storm had even reached the country, China was already feeling its effects. Heavy landslides and rainfall killed 45 people before the full brunt of the storm could even be felt. Torn-apart power lines plunged the region into darkness, and 21 people went missing. China prepared for the oncoming 140-kilometer-per-hour winds that had yet to come.
For the Philippines, the aftermath of Rammasun serves as a bad memory of the destruction caused last November by Typhoon Haiyan. The November storm killed over 5,000 people and left more than 1,600 missing, surging the ocean into massive, tsunami-like waves that surged onto land.
Unidentified bodies found resting places in mass graves.
But the problems weren’t buried with the Philippines’ dead. More than one million people have been left financially devastated with the destruction of 33 million coconut trees across the country. The trees, which will take eight to 10 years to grow back, served as the livelihood of poor Filipino farmers.
Sixty percent of farmers in the Philippines were already impoverished, and the November blow Haiyan delivered made their situation desperate.
Farmers weren’t the only group affected; with 30,000 boats destroyed in Haiyan’s massive waves, the livelihoods of poor fishermen were also at stake. They now face relocation in regions far from the coast, preventing them from returning to their trade even with the restoration of their fishing vessels.
With Rammasun’s latest rampage, the farmers and fishermen of the Philippines are now in serious need of aid.
– Rachel Davis
Sources: CBC News 1, CBC News 2, Oxfam
Photo: The Australian
Effects of the Junta in Thailand
Since May 22, 2014, Thailand has been under the strict reign of a military junta. Many worried about the immediate effects of the ousting of the prime minister and the social upheaval it spawned. Two months later, Thailand remains under the same leadership with the detrimental effects to their economy to prove it.
Domestic demand and investment are the two hardest hit regions of Thailand’s delicate economy, as the growth continues to slow at a steady pace. Efforts are being made to improve the economy with little to show for it.
The junta ordered the price drop on diesel fuel and cooking oil for a six-month period, angering the local businesses that rely on that as income.
The Bank of Thailand originally believed in a 2.9 percent growth rate for the 2014 economy and has lowered that estimate to an extremely modest projected growth rate of 1.5 percent. This drop clearly depicts the failing changes being made by the junta.
In attempts to encourage the process of internal and external investment in Thailand, the junta has cleared 100 incentives in just two months, costing an estimated $6.3 billion to follow through with the pitches. Still, they managed to change the negative national deficit to surplus hundreds of millions of dollars with little announced plan of action for the money.
However, it appears that Thailand is finding moderate success in the international market, with increases in exported goods to the United States and Europe. For the first time in six months, Thailand increased shipments to China, one of their main buyers.
The economic effects appear to be undetermined with a range of positive and negative effects influencing the lives of millions. For instance, many rural dwellers are out of reach from the programs being kickstarted in major cities.
In the midst of the economic shift lies the ongoing ethnic conflict in isolated provinces. The non-existent work done by the junta in Thailand to address the attacks demonstrates the weakness and short-term mentality of the junta.
Thailand is incapable of success with a constant fear of violent outbreak looming in the forefront of their minds.
In light of this, four were killed due to a bombing in the southern Pattani province as an attack against the insurgence in the area.
Over 5,000 have fallen victim to the horrific violence and the junta appears to side step each outbreak of violence.
The stability of the military junta is questionably short-term, with the likelihood of a social-born revolt to take it down. The junta demonstrates efforts being made in the economic sector of the country while ignoring the human rights issues occurring throughout the country.
It’s unlikely that the junta will gain support if they continue to ignore the ethnic cleansing in southern Thailand.
– Elena Lopez
Sources: Wall Street Journal, NASDAQ, ABC News, Radio Australia
Photo: Fox News
Gorillas in Rwanda Help Development
Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda is home to over 500 gorillas that are changing the face of Rwanda’s communities. A tourism revenue-sharing scheme allows five percent of the annual income in the national park to be distributed among local areas.
Mountain gorillas in Rwanda are an endangered species that can only be found along the borders between Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They attracted more than 1 million tourists between the years of 2006 and 2013 and generated $75 million in revenue for the national park system.
With this large amount of money coming in, the Rwandan government created a system where five percent of the national park’s income would be divided among surrounding communities.
According to the Rwanda Development Board, more than 39,000 people have benefited from this program.
Since the program’s conception in 2005, $1.83 million has been distributed to fund 360 community projects across the country. These projects have included things like roadwork, building bridges, bee keeping, water and sanitation projects, handiworks and small and medium enterprises.
Many of these initiatives have had a focus on sustainability. Conservation of nature is a priority for Rwanda, as it has such a positive impact on the country as a whole.
In addition to community projects, the money has been used for various public works. The Rwandan government built 57 primary schools throughout 13 districts, reaching about 13,700 students in the past 10 years. Twelve health centers have been built in areas where health care was previously difficult to acquire.
There is a lengthy process to determine which projects will receive funding from the tourism revenue program.
The Rwanda Development Board analyzes each community to ensure funds are allocated to the appropriate initiatives.
“We sit down with community leaders and decide how to distribute the money according to the priorities in the area, to address the issues that prevail in the area,” said Telesphore Ngoga, the conservation division manager at The Rwanda Development Board.
The tourism revenue-sharing scheme has allowed communities to thrive in a way that would not be possible otherwise.
“Local residents are the primary beneficiaries as it has helped set up community businesses and income generating projects that has improved lives and the communities’ economy,” said Rwanda’s Prime Minister, Dr. Pierre Damien Habumuremyi.
– Hannah Cleveland
Sources: The Guardian, Rwanda Eye
Photo: The Guardian