Malnutrition claims the lives of more than 3.1 million children a year. Those who survive face mental impairment as well as a heightened risk of disease or disability.
Yet the rising gross domestic product (GDP) of low-income to mid-income countries fails to correlate with a decline in stunted, under-weighted or wasted children. In field of development, many presume economic growth and improved standards of living lead to greater food security. S.V. Subramanian, a social epidemiologist at Harvard, reports an “insignificant decline in stunting” during times of economic expansion. He and his associates researched 36 of these countries, collecting data on children from 1990 to 2011. The Journal Lancet Global Health published the results this month.
With every 5 percent gain in GDP, less than 1 percent of decrease in stunting results. This results in a “zero effect” of GDP on child malnutrition, according to Subramanian.
Derek Heady of the International Food Policy Research Institute objects to this conclusion. “Income growth is a necessary condition for increased spending on food, health, education, sanitation and so on,” he asserts.
Subramanian, however, attributes this “zero effect” to disparities in income distribution and the inefficient delivery of health services. A rising GDP, he remarks, may not benefit every individual, region, or sector. For instance, these countries often invest money into sectors that initially led to the this growth. Such investments, however, often fail to improve child health.
India highlights this tendency. Its GDP has grown rapidly in recent decades, reaching an estimated 5 percent increase per year. This growth far surpasses that of most Western countries. Yet nearly half of children appear stunted and an additional two-fifths underweight. This limited food security among children has persisted as early as 1990.
Rather than investing in nutrition efforts in schools or clinics, the government focused on highway construction. A large population currently lacks basic sanitation. Child malnourishment endures without interventions in safe water, breastfeeding practices and food aid. Economic growth alone cannot resolve this health threat.
Lawrence Haddad heads the Institute for Development Studies in England. He highlights Ghana, Vietnam and Brazil as success cases; in these countries, malnutrition declined as a result of both economic growth and investments in water, sanitation, health services and nutrition programs.
“Unfortunately, with malnutrition, there is no silver bullet,” he elaborates. “It’s like a series of links in a chain, and if any one of those links is weak, it undermines everything else.”
Understanding the driving factors in malnutrition, though, promises reform in government spending. These growing economies hold the potential to combat this health crisis. First, though, strategic investment in the fields of nutrition and sanitation must occur.
– Ellery Spahr
Sources: NPR, Voice of America
Photo: United Nations Photo via photopin
5 Must-Reads for Young Humanitarians
The best way to lean about humanitarian work is to participate in it. But for those who are still getting their feet wet or are unsure where they fit in, the following books are must-reads to offer inspiration and possibly get your blood burning enough to climb on board whole-heartedly.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
By Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning husband-and-wife journalists Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the book follows its authors’ belief that individual stories are more powerful for calling people to action than statistics. The book is set up in two parts, where the first half is a series of essays recounting Kristof and WuDunn’s research regarding the oppression of women in (mostly) the developing countries of the world, and the second is a call for action – complete with steps to be taken and records of what is already being done.
Humanitarian Alert: NGO Information and Its Impact on US Foreign Policy
By Abby Stoddard
Stoddard writes a convincing account of how NGOs, even those unfunded in the country of action, have the power to effect local state policy. Her book compares the negative and positive aspects of NGOs, sifting through to determine an estimation of usefulness. Humanitarian Alert promises “[a]n array of sources, from embassy telegrams to interviews with state and non-state actors, creat[ing] a compelling picture of how narratives and numbers in humanitarian crises help or hinder response.”
Enough: Why the World’s Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty
By Roger Thurow & Scott Kilman
Written by two former Wall Street Journal reporters, Enough asks how it can be that there are people starving when we possess the tools and technology to feed everyone. With research and personal accounts from all over the world this book will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how people are fed in the world today.
An Imperfect Offering
By James Orbinski
The memoir of the man who has become one of the world’s foremost humanitarian doctors, the book recounts the suffering and dispassion left unchallenged in the world today and carries Orbinski’s belief in “the good we can be if we so choose.” The Observer writes, “A lesser man could have capitulated. Not so Orbinski, for whom, one feels, celebrity of any kind is far less interesting than the central question with which he struggles in this compelling book: ‘How are we to be in relation to the suffering of others?’”
In the Eyes of Others: How People in Crises Perceive Humanitarian Aid
By Caroline Abu-Sada
The misconceptions about aid held by those who benefit from it can be baffling. By divulging many of these false beliefs, Abu-Sada alerts humanitarian aid groups from all over the world to improve the way they promote themselves to those they are trying to help. The misconceptions of those in crisis and the developing world can greatly hinder the work for groups such as Doctors Without Borders and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), but In the Eyes of Others Abu-Sada explains how best to avoid common confusion and promote the true purpose of an organization in ways that will be positively received by foreign communities.
Whether any one of these listed books suggests your true calling, they each have a lot to teach us about how foreign policy and aid are received by, and influence, those they are meant to help.
-Lydia Caswell
Sources: Farming First, Amazon, The Guardian
Photo: Innovation Story
When Art and Sports Collide for Street Children
The second Street Child World Cup has officially kicked off as of March 28 where it first originated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
With the excitement surrounding the highly anticipated FIFA World Cup, the Street Child World Cup was set to precede FIFA.
The Street Child World Cup is an event made to focus on the plight of street children around the world while incorporating their love of soccer and arts to share their experiences with one another as well as bringing awareness to the public.
You may be asking yourself, what is a street child? The answer is as simple as the name sounds. A street child is a child forced to live a life on the streets doing whatever they can to survive with poverty more often than not being the heart of the problem.
Many street children are without homes or even families to go back to. Some have been torn away from their families during the outbreak of a war and others have lost their parents to HIV/AIDS.
There are also those children who are left to live a life on the streets as a means to provide for their family the best they can.
Warchild.org reports that the number of street children in the world is estimated to be over 100 million. To put this statistic in perspective, that is nearly one-third of the United States population.
The Street Child World Cup is more than just a soccer game where children around the world gather together. It is a global campaign to bring recognition to a marginalized youth and push for the protection of an easily overlooked group.
This 10-day event brings together teams of street children from up to 20 countries that will get the opportunity to interact with one another throughout the various workshops hosted.
In fact, rather than making the games the main focus, the campaign provides children with a creative outlet enabling them to express their plight through various workshops.
The workshops offer something for all of the participants ranging from technology based workshops, to the choir, photography, cooking, yoga, etc.
This campaign is being used to challenge the negative perceptions and treatment of street children around the world.
Street Child World Cup places the hardships that street children endure everyday at the forefront of the public consciousness by putting street children in the spotlight as media coverage and interest levels rise around the soccer games.
“Street Child World Cup is an initiative of UK registered charity Street Child United. The aim is to provide a platform for street children to be heard, to challenge negative stereotypes of street children and to promote the rights of street children.”
UNICEF reported that one billion children are deprived of at least one service essential to development and survival. Street children fall under this category all too well.
The Street Child World Cup gives the children a place to escape the dangers that have unfortunately become just another aspect of their lives.
– Janelle Mills
Sources: Street Child World Cup (1), Street Child World Cup (2), War Child, The Borgen Project
Photo: WordPress
Roberta Jacobson Visits Paraguay and Brazil
The Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson met in Asunción last Friday with Paraguayan President Horacio Cartes to discuss regional issues covering topics such as transnational crime, education and investment. Following the meeting, Jacobson highlighted the “common perspective” of the two administrations regarding transnational crime.
Authorities in Paraguay are concerned about Brazilian drug cartels operating in their country, which use Paraguay as a holding source after shipping in cocaine and marijuana from the Andean region.
Both countries emphasized their similar worldview on the local, regional and worldwide level. Roberta Jacobson stressed their cooperation on democracy, transparency, education and economic development.
Increasing cooperation on issues like education is important for Paraguay, where more than half of third graders cannot solve simple addition problems. Programs by the Inter-American Development Bank use comparative techniques to improve education standards.
In particular, one study compared the teaching techniques of Paraguayan teachers with techniques used in the United States. The study uncovered that most of the teachers in Paraguay made their pupils copy from the blackboard instead of actually solving math problems.
In Brazil, Jacobson visited the Minerao stadium in Belo Horizonte, where the US soccer team is set to play during the upcoming World Cup. Jacobson also discussed educational relations between Brazil and the U.S. and opened an Education USA office in Belo Horizonte. The Education USA office is intended to increase educational cooperation between the two countries by providing information about US colleges and universities to international applicants, thereby increasing international student enrolment within the U.S.
Education USA is headed by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, along with the new program “100K Strong in the Americas,” designed to increase Latin American student enrollment in the U.S. to 100,000 and American student enrollment in Latin America to 100,000 by the year 2020.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: Merco Press, La Nacion, Shanghai Daily, Inter-American Development Bank
Photo: Guanajuato
The Pros and Cons of Brazil’s Port Development
A port owned by a mining company in northeast Brazil is helping the local economy but polluting the region.
The Ponta da Madeira terminal was established in 1986 by Vale for the shipment of iron ore while simultaneously guaranteeing job stability for young people in Itaqui-Bacanga, an impoverished location in Brazil.
“Company trains arrive at the port, transporting minerals from Carajas, a huge mining province in the eastern Amazon region that has made vale the world leader in iron ore production,” said Global Issues. “The port also exports a large proportion of the soya grown in the centre-north of Brazil.”
However, George Pereira, the secretary of the Itaqui-Bacanga Community Association (ACIB), said Vale and other companies located around the area brought the wrong type of development into the region.
“We have more money in our pockets but no water to drink, because the rivers are polluted,” said Pereira. He believes that sanitation and education developments are more important for the community.
According to the article, ACIB was ironically created by Vale a decade ago to clean up the Itaqui-Bacanga area. However, Vale’s own creation is being awfully easy on the corporation.
On the other hand, Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) calls Vale the worst corporation in the world today.
The organization claims that the mining company is also among the largest producers of raw materials and has reported a profit of $17 billion in 2010.
But a FoEI study also found that Vale failed to help keep the environment clean.
“Despite setting out in 2008 its intention to cut its carbon dioxide emissions, Vale emitted – according to tis own figures – 20 million tons of CO2 in 2010, an increase of a third on 2007 levels (15 million tons),” said FoEI.
Moreover, FoEI also said that Vale has representatives both in the Brazilian government and the UN delegation who work hard to promote policies that “undermine global action on the climate crisis”.
Although Vale was able to create jobs for the impoverished in Itaqui-Bacanga, the company is actually causing more damage to the earth in the long run.
– Juan Campos
Sources: Global Issues, Friends of the Earth International
Photo: Panoramio
Monopolies in Mexico
The Federal Telecommunications Institute (FTI) of Mexico has taken a tough stance on three monopolies in the telecommunications and TV industries sector. Phone companies Telcel and Telmex, and Mexican TV firm Televisa were told to open up the industries to competition from foreign and domestic competitors.
The FTI demanded that competitors and companies share their infrastructure, lower the prices they charge for their services, and that the services they offer such as broadband and pay television be widely distributed to diminish their power.
The owner of Telcel and Telmex, Carlos Slim, is Latin America’s richest man, worth about $72 billion in 2013. Through América Móvil, Slim control approximately 80% of Mexico’s landline phone market and 70% of its wireless market through Telcel, an associated company.
Emilio Azcárraga, a TV magnate worth about $2.6 billion, owns Televisa, which controls about 70% of the broadcast TV market and 56% of the cable and satellite markets put together. The new law only allows for up to a 50% market share cap for both TV and telephone companies.
According to a press release by Televisa following the FTI’s ruling, under the new ruling the company will be required to let competitors use its infrastructure in the form of broadcast towers for a fixed rate.
But limits on the use of infrastructure also extend to América Móvil. The company could face competition in the mobile phone business if Mexican authorities auction off high-speed radio spectrum to its other rivals, allowing competitors an advantage against the telecommunications giant.
The IFT was created in 2013 after a push by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to introduce competition and regulation in the TV and telecommunications sectors of Mexico, notorious for their widespread pressures against regulators and other proponents of de-monopolization. Hopefully this is one step forward in the push against the powerful monopolies that have stifled growth in Mexico’s economy for so long.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: Forbes, The Economist, Wall Street Journal
Photo: Orientamos
Education in Haiti: All Children Reading
March 26 marked the grand opening of a brand new school for the Lekol S&H students in Caracol, Haiti. The students celebrated the inauguration alongside United States Ambassador Pamela White, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission Director John Groarke and Haitian officials, according to USAID Haiti’s Facebook page.
The new facility is one of many schools that fall under USAID’s All Children Reading program in Haiti. Also known as Tout Timoun Ap Li (ToTAL,) All Children Reading is one of the programs supported by U.S. and Haitian government collaboration in Haiti. Starting in 2011, Haiti’s Ministry of National Education and Vocational Training unveiled a plan to get more than 1.5 million students in school by 2016, says USAID.
The ToTAL program focuses on developing reading skills for Haitian students in first grade through third grade in the Port-au-Prince, Saint Marc and Cap Haitien areas. All Children Reading will provide more nearly 30,000 children and 900 teachers with critical reading curriculums to meet international literacy standards, says USAID. “In developing countries,” says the All Children Reading experts, “literacy leads to improved health, better education, greater employment opportunities, and more stable governments.”
The All Children Reading program partners with USAID, World Vision and the Australian government to utilize competitive science, technology and education grants to improve the school systems and educational opportunities for students in developing countries.
Awards are disseminated in two rounds, each of which has a different development focus. Round 1 “focuses on creating teaching and learning materials and education data applications to promote accountability and transparency” and has been awarded to 32 projects in more than 20 nations, according to the All Children Reading website.
Round 2 looks more to implementation strategies and technology solutions to improve education in Haiti. The three areas of focus for this branch of the project include promoting mother tongue instruction and reading materials, enhancing family and community engagement and supporting children with disabilities. All Children Reading prioritizes reading in the early school levels in order to instill strong education practices and create better and wider opportunities for children as adults.
Through programs such as ToTAL, the U.S government has trained nearly 900 teachers in new curriculum in both Haitian Creole and French. In addition, USAID has supplied Haitian students with more than 46,000 textbooks and workbooks. The ToTAL program has been introduced in more than 300 schools nationwide, such as the one in Caracol. In the years to come USAID hopes to reach more than 1 million children throughout Haiti, especially “as other partners extend the use of the program’s reading curricula and training methods beyond the development corridors.”
– Mallory Thayer
Sources: USAID, All Children Reading, Facebook
Photo: Save the Children
Modern Slavery in Hong Kong
Modern slavery is a different institution from the historical examples of slavery that we learn about in textbooks. In the 21st century, slavery is illegal in the majority of the world. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 declared, “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and “no one shall be held in slavery or servitude, slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Individuals who become modern human trafficking victims are often coerced, tricked or seized from their homes and forcibly exploited. They are trafficked through both underground and legitimate pathways, making their way across borders and oceans. This is not an issue confined to poorer, developing countries. Human trafficking victims enter Western countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom in large numbers.
The International Labor Organization estimates that in 2013, around 21 million people were smuggled around the world, with 11.7 million individuals in Asia. “There are 1.1 million new victims a year, which is 3,000 victims a day, 125 per hour.”
Hong Kong is China’s richest and most developed city. Hong Kong has the world’s ninth largest trading economy, with a gross domestic product of $261 billion. However, Hong Kong also has the largest income gap between its citizens of any developed country. Towering shining skyscrapers share the corner with decrepit apartment buildings falling apart from the weight of the families crammed within its walls.
The U.S. State Department report on Trafficking in Persons (TIP) for 2013 describes Hong Kong as both a destination and a transit area for men, women and children, from countries like Cambodia, Thailand, China, India, Vietnam, Philippines and Nepal, who are coerced into sex slavery and forced labor. Many migrant workers are also subjected to indentured servitude, with little pay and subjected to violence, harsh conditions, and little opportunity for escape.
Hong Kong officials did not recognize its human trafficking problem as a serious concern until 2013. But once the Hong Kong government acknowledged its problem, it could begin to document, collect statistics and analyze human trafficking within its city and create solutions. The TIP report labels Hong Kong as Tier 2; “the city is not in compliance, but the government is making significant efforts to improve.”
Under Hong Kong law, human trafficking is narrowly defined as individuals crossing the border for prostitution. The Hong Kong Department Justice is making positive strides to amend its Prosecution Code to include human exploitation cases. Most human trafficking cases go un-prosecuted and unpunished. The city’s strict immigration laws have driven human trafficking underground, making it extremely difficult to enforce. The majority of its victims will not escape and receive justice without the support of its government and law enforcement.
– Sarah Yan
Sources: South China Morning Post, UN, The Borgen Project
Photo: Impunity Watch
Malnutrition Persists Despite Economic Growth
Malnutrition claims the lives of more than 3.1 million children a year. Those who survive face mental impairment as well as a heightened risk of disease or disability.
Yet the rising gross domestic product (GDP) of low-income to mid-income countries fails to correlate with a decline in stunted, under-weighted or wasted children. In field of development, many presume economic growth and improved standards of living lead to greater food security. S.V. Subramanian, a social epidemiologist at Harvard, reports an “insignificant decline in stunting” during times of economic expansion. He and his associates researched 36 of these countries, collecting data on children from 1990 to 2011. The Journal Lancet Global Health published the results this month.
With every 5 percent gain in GDP, less than 1 percent of decrease in stunting results. This results in a “zero effect” of GDP on child malnutrition, according to Subramanian.
Derek Heady of the International Food Policy Research Institute objects to this conclusion. “Income growth is a necessary condition for increased spending on food, health, education, sanitation and so on,” he asserts.
Subramanian, however, attributes this “zero effect” to disparities in income distribution and the inefficient delivery of health services. A rising GDP, he remarks, may not benefit every individual, region, or sector. For instance, these countries often invest money into sectors that initially led to the this growth. Such investments, however, often fail to improve child health.
India highlights this tendency. Its GDP has grown rapidly in recent decades, reaching an estimated 5 percent increase per year. This growth far surpasses that of most Western countries. Yet nearly half of children appear stunted and an additional two-fifths underweight. This limited food security among children has persisted as early as 1990.
Rather than investing in nutrition efforts in schools or clinics, the government focused on highway construction. A large population currently lacks basic sanitation. Child malnourishment endures without interventions in safe water, breastfeeding practices and food aid. Economic growth alone cannot resolve this health threat.
Lawrence Haddad heads the Institute for Development Studies in England. He highlights Ghana, Vietnam and Brazil as success cases; in these countries, malnutrition declined as a result of both economic growth and investments in water, sanitation, health services and nutrition programs.
“Unfortunately, with malnutrition, there is no silver bullet,” he elaborates. “It’s like a series of links in a chain, and if any one of those links is weak, it undermines everything else.”
Understanding the driving factors in malnutrition, though, promises reform in government spending. These growing economies hold the potential to combat this health crisis. First, though, strategic investment in the fields of nutrition and sanitation must occur.
– Ellery Spahr
Sources: NPR, Voice of America
Photo: United Nations Photo via photopin
For North Korea, It’s Still 1940
North Korea and the United Nations go head to head on matters of human rights. In a resolution passed on March 28, the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva condemned North Korea for “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations, including crimes against humanity, that continue to be committed in the country.”
The resolution came shortly following a Human Rights Council Commission of Inquiry conducted earlier in the month, and received acceptance by 30 nations, against six opposing and 11 abstaining.
Many of the human rights violations allegedly occurring in North Korea are unparalleled in a world modernized by the 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights. A great number of people are detained in prison camps for crimes they did not commit. Their guilt, it seems, is declared by association with family members or close friends of those who allegedly committed political crimes. The Commission report provided evidence for circumstances of rape, murder and torture within the prison labor camps.
North Korean officials did not appreciate the Commission and resolution results. So Se Pyong, North Korea’s UN envoy, claimed the UN Human Rights Council had politically confronted North Korea, putting the nation on the defensive. When UN Human Rights investigators asserted North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un be tried for crimes devastatingly akin to those committed under Nazi rule, the country’s ambassador told the Council to “mind your own business.”
Despite the horrendous situation the investigative Commission has shown, many activists are pleased that the results have led to such strong support for the UN resolution. Rather than stopping at investigations of nuclear proliferation and weapons development, the United Nations will now be putting Security Council and General Assembly staff to work on bringing justice to North Korea.
At this point, some world powers are wary of the extent that can be done regarding the issue. At most, North Korea could be taken to the International Criminal Court by UNSC, yet China and Russia, both veto powers, voted against the March resolution. However, an increase in investigation could possibly turn the tide. Human rights may not yet be completely universal, but for now the world is making progress.
– Jaclyn Stutz
Sources: Al Jazeera, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Reuters
Photo: Yahoo
Divorce with Democracy in Turkey
Since becoming Prime Minister in 2003, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has contributed to calming Turkey’s military, strengthening its political parties, and increasing the personal freedoms of its citizens. United States Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both held Turkey on a pedestal as an example of the ability for Islam and democracy to coexist.
Yet the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has faced little to no opposition strong enough to challenge Erdogan’s position, for which he has won three successive elections. At over 11 years in office, Erdogan is now the second longest reigning Prime Minister in Turkey’s 94-year history. The nation is falling from its democratic grace.
When thousands of Turkish citizens protested the one-party state in the spring of 2013, Erdogan’s authoritarian power was evident. Tear gas, water cannons and mass arrests asserted the Prime Minister’s authority over those who wished to speak out. The in December parliament, led mostly by the AKP, presented a proposal to make protests against public services illegal.
Such actions, in addition to Erdogan’s attempts to limit and control social media, emphasize worrisome threats to basic human rights and democracy in Turkey. But the next set of elections is coming soon, and the simple fact that people continue to look towards it brings hope. Despite unfortunate actions resulting from Erdogan’s hoarding of power, Turkey formally remains a functioning democracy. If all goes as planned, the upcoming elections will take place in as free and fair an environment as ever.
Movement away from democracy in Turkey poses risks to the nation’s future political and economic security. With such tumultuous circumstances taking place in the nations bordering Turkey and in the Middle East in general, Erdogan arguably cannot afford to throw away its alliance with the United States and the Western world. Likewise, undemocratic actions take away from any chances Turkey has of being admitted in the European Union, whose membership requirements include a free market and democratic freedoms.
So while many may claim that Turkey, as a result, could not possibly move far enough from democracy as to put these alliances in true jeopardy, recent events have not sparked much confidence. Elections, however, will likely outline what the world can expect from Turkey in the near future.
– Jaclyn Stutz
Sources: Carnegie Endowment 1, Carnegie Endowment 2, Al Jazeera, Politico
Photo: Business Insider