The theme of this year’s World Health Day, held annually on April 7th, was to promote the awareness of vector-borne diseases. Vector-borne diseases are transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes, flies, ticks and water snails, among other disease-carrying pests.
This year the World Health Organization (WHO) promoted the slogan “small bite, big threat,” in the hopes that they would be able to increase awareness on how people across the globe can protect themselves and their families from these pests and the viruses that they may transmit.
Vector-borne diseases have radically increased in the past few decades, aided by an increase in urbanization, international travel and environmental changes.
More than one billion people each year are affected by these diseases, which include malaria, dengue fever, Lyme disease, schistosomiasis and yellow fever.
Efforts to control the spread of these diseases have included the distribution of bed nets and insecticides, the use of body repellents and protective clothing, and the push for clean water and adequate sanitation.
WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, noted, “A global health agenda that gives higher priority to vector control could save many lives and avert much suffering. No one in the 21st century should die from the bite of a mosquito, a sand fly, a blackfly or a tick.”
The focus this year is on dengue fever, which is currently the most rapidly spreading vector-borne disease in the world.
Dengue fever, also known as “breakbone fever” due to its symptoms, is a severe flu-like disease marked by vomiting, bleeding, body aches and difficult breathing. There is no known vaccine or cure available.
During the past 50 years, dengue fever has spread rapidly to more than 100 countries. Prior to 1960, dengue had seen some 15,000 cases, whereas now over 380 million cases of dengue fever persist.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently working on a vaccine for dengue fever in partnership with a company specializing in vaccine development, Inviragen. They have gone through clinical trials in a number of countries including Singapore, Colombia, Thailand and Puerto Rico, and analysis of those findings is still underway.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is campaigning alongside the WHO to address this growing concern.
Previous programs to curb the spread of vector-borne diseases have proven successful, for example, the United States’ effort to combat malaria.
Malaria is the most deadly of vector-borne diseases, killing 1.2 million people every year. Multiple campaigns have been launched to prevent the spread of this disease, including the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. PMI has distributed more than 120 million bed nets since 2006, as well as delivered more than 135 million doses of combination drug therapy.
These success stories provide hope for current efforts to control other vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever and schistosomiasis.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: Mission of the United States, Voice of America
World Bank to Fund ACE Project in Africa
On April 15, 2014, the World Bank confirmed they would be funding 19 Centers of Excellence in Central and West Africa.
These university-styled centers will also be receiving financing for specific research in math, agriculture and health issues, science and technology.
The Africa Centers of Excellence (ACE) is a project that aims to help form scientific and research skills in adolescent Africans. With the addition of these programs, World Bank’s Vice President in Africa, Makhtar Diop, hopes that more jobs will be formed, economic standing in Africa will grow and adolescents will gain an education in areas that are growing increasingly more important, such as disease control.
World Bank has agreed to fund $150 million, with the majority amount of $70 million going to Nigeria. The other government receiving funding are: Ghana, which is receiving $24 million; Senegal, $16 million; Cameroon, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Togo, each of which is receiving $8 million.
In addition, the Gambia is also being given a $2 million credit, and a $1 million grant to go towards training for students and faculty, as well as to provide higher education to students.
During a time when the continent is facing a severe drop in skilled workers and trained health care workers, the ACE is giving hope and a chance for young students to excel in areas that also benefit Africa as a whole. These areas of study will open doors for students and also equip them with skills for jobs that will provide job security because of high demand.
The focus on Health and STEM research aims to relieve the African countries from the struggling “researcher-to-population ratio” that is negatively affecting the overall health care. Africa currently has a very high mortality rates for mothers, which is 500 maternal deaths for every 100,000 births.
The ACE’s funded program will overall benefit young students, as well as alleviate the current problems with researcher-to-population ratio, economics, health care and poverty.
– Becka Felcon
Sources: World Bank, Punch, All Africa
Marijuana Tours Help Jamaican Economy
As of January 2014, Jamaica had an unemployment rate of 14.9%, which was a decrease from the 15.4% in December 2013.
Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley’s celebrity in the U.S. and openness about his use of marijuana has formed a reputation for Jamaica as being an island where marijuana use and sales are legal. Jamaica is in actuality a very conservative country that prohibits the use and distribution of marijuana.
The growth of marijuana crops, in fact, have steadily declined because of the war on drugs by the U.S. and other competitors, but this has not hindered American travelers from visiting Jamaica in hopes of experiencing the effects of marijuana that Bob Marley openly supported.
Regardless of the decline, Jamaica still has a vast supply of marijuana tourists from the U.S. and all over the world. Jamaica is still the lead smuggler of marijuana into the U.S., which brings a great deal of people into the country to buy weed and explore the cannabis culture in Jamaica.
Many growers are quickly learning that making money off of tourists is quite easy when it includes marijuana. Nine Mile, famous for being the hometown of Bob Marley, offers many different marijuana tours, each of which take relatively large groups of Americans, Germans and Russians through small marijuana farms.
These tours are also common in Negril, Jamaica, and are slowly adapting to become common in places such as Colorado and Washington state, where marijuana has become legalized.
With these tours, average-to-minimum waged locals are able to make a decent chunk of money by letting tourists explore their farms and sample their inventory, often leading many of the tourists to purchase their product.
One Jamaican marijuana farmer dubbed “Breezy” sells his bags of marijuana through the wall-hole of a museum, where marijuana tourists line up and smoke weed, usually just for the sheer novelty that Bob Marley smoked weed on the same island.
One tourist traveling from Minnesota stated, “I can get stronger stuff at home, but there’s something really special about smoking marijuana in Jamaica. I mean, this is the marijuana that inspired Bob Marley.”
The large amount of marijuana tourism that is illegally occurring in Jamaica begs the question of why it hasn’t been legalized.
Marijuana could prove to be a great benefit and a pillar for health tourists. One Jamaican scientist named Henry Lowe, who was a partner in developing a marijuana-based glaucoma treatment, believes that legalizing marijuana could bring in even more tourism than there already is.
By legalizing marijuana, attention and money is estimated to be pulled from gangs and arresting large criminal parties and be refocused on other important matters, such as creating official jobs for those living below the poverty line and helping lower class growers gain a larger following. Overall, the island would benefit and reap massive economic gain by legalizing marijuana and freeing up money.
– Becka Felcon
Sources: Trading Economics, The Guardian, Telegraph
Photo: High Times Caribbean
Top 5 U.S. Philanthropists
When you think of Bill Gates, is your first thought Microsoft or astoundingly wealthy billionaire? How about philanthropist? The latter may have slipped your mind completely.
Through the joint efforts of the Philanthropic Research Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on creating philanthropic awareness, Forbes compiled a list of America’s fifty top philanthropists that have given the most money away. Below are the top five U.S. philanthropists.
Bill Gates falls into the utmost categories of the elite, leading the way as the world’s richest person with a net worth of an estimated $76 billion. Gates has lead the way as the world’s most wealthy man fifteen out of the last twenty years.
1. Not only does Gates’ hold the spot as the world’s richest man, but with the collaboration of his wife, Bill and Melinda Gates have snagged the spot as the U.S. top philanthropists donating $1.9 billion in 2012. The Gates’ lifetime giving is estimated at a whopping $28 billion.
2. Not to be outdone, Warren Buffet makes a close second having donated $1.87 billion in 2012 with a net worth of $58.7 billion. He fell short of the Gates’ by only $35 million. However, Buffet has committed to donating the remainder of his fortune before or upon his death mandating that it be put to use within ten years following the donation.
3. George Soros, founder of Soros Fund Management LLC and Forbes’ number one hedge fund manager, has donated $763 million with a lifetime giving of $10 billion putting him comfortably in third place.
4. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg secured the fourth spot. With an estimated net worth of $23.4 billion, Zuckerberg donated $519 million in 2012 thus extending his lifetime giving to $549 million.
5. The Walton family, most notably known for Wal-Mart, are brought in at the final spot as the top five U.S. philanthropists. With a net worth of $144.4 billion, they gave $432 million dollars in 2012 bringing their lifetime giving to $4.6 billion dollars.
The total amount of money given by these top philanthropists towards philanthropic work in 2012 was more than $5.48 billion. That’s nearly one-fifth of what it would cost to end world hunger with the annual shortfall sitting at $30 billion per year.
Of the top philanthropists mentioned, no one donated more than 3.2 percent of their net worth but the astounding amount given by less than ten individuals cannot be ignored.
Forbes has reported that there are currently 1,645 billionaires in the world. It will take more than a call to action by the elite philanthropists. In order to put world hunger to an end, it will take a small step from everyone capable of helping.
Just think, how much is 3.2 percent of your net worth? How can a portion of the money you spend regularly be used to make the life of someone stricken by poverty more sustainable? The answers do not lie solely in how much the monetarily elite of the world are donating, but the efforts made by those with the power to influence those groups.
– Janelle Mills
Sources: Philanthropic Research Institute, Forbes, The Borgen Project, BBC, Forbes
Photo: Skunkpot
Internet.org
Currently two-thirds of the world’s population, a staggering 5 billion, live without access to basic internet. A lifestyle difficult to imagine here in the U.S. and other countries that have integrated internet into virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Internet.org, a group of powerful allies, is dedicated to utilizing their combined resources to change this.
Internet.org is an innovative partnership spearheaded by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook,who is committed to reducing the cost of bringing internet access to the world. The plan is to provide universal access to internet by lowering the cost of serving data by tenfold and reducing the amount of data required to run basic apps by the same amount. These major cost reductions are the keys to reducing the cost of internet access 100-fold. This is the amount of cost reduction that would make it possible to for a worldwide internet providing infrastructure to exist and this group is determined that it can be achieved through technological innovation.
According to Internet.org, providing universal internet access is a fundamental step in the struggle for global resource equality. Access power is so valuable today because the internet is “the backbone of the knowledge-based economy.” This statement recognizes the global shift currently taking place since the advent of the internet that is moving society from a mainly resource-based economy to knowledge-based economy. By providing another 5 billion people across the world to the knowledge economy an unprecedented change could take place., driving the economy up, and impacting poverty worldwide.
“The internet’s impact on global growth is rising rapidly. The internet accounted for 21% of GDP growth over the last five years among developed countries… the internet is also a catalyst for job creation,” according to McKinsey & Co. While this kind of economic growth may not be immediate, the plan has potential to stimulate economies worldwide.
In order to achieve this feat, Internet.org is delving into some large-scale innovative projects to combat even larger technological and socal challenges. Some of these include high-altitude, long-endurance planes, satellite systems and even lasers.
The founding members of this group are impressive, including tech giants Ericsson, Mediatek, Opera, Samsung, Nokia and Qualcomm. Looking at this short list of big names, it is not surprising that some have immediately questioned whether there are purely capitalist motives for these companies that are being disguised behind a humanitarian agenda.
However, in Deloitte’s study on the “Value of Connectivity” they found that “expanding internet access in developing countries to levels seen today in developed economies, we could increase productivity by as much as 25 percent, generating $2.2 trillion in GDP and more than 140 million new jobs, lifting 160 million people out of poverty,” while also having the ability to “deliver critical information on nutrition, hygiene and disease prevention. Once connected, people gain access to basic tools like health information, financial services and education that can help them live fuller, better lives and join the worldwide economy.” With the promise of this kind of massive economic benefit in the developing world, many believe that the motives behind this cooperative effort are somewhat irrelevant.
The concern over hidden agendas may provide the project with the high level of visibility both from those who are critical and those who are supportive. Ultimately, time will be what tells us if this project is able to have the kind of success that will drive the change that it expects.
– Leonna Spilman
Sources: Internet.org, McKinsey & Company
Photo: La Nacion
Global Banana Disease Threatens Production
In the past few weeks we have seen the rapid spread of what could become a devastating threat to the world’s banana population – a fungus known as Panama Disease Tropical Race 4 (TR4).
TR4 is a soil-born fungus that attacks plant roots and is now known to be deadly to the Cavendish banana, which is the world’s most popular and valuable banana crop, making up 95% of banana imports.
The fungal banana disease began its devastating journey in Southeast Asia, decimating tens of thousands of crops in Indonesia, China, Malaysia and the Philippines. TR4 has most recently been discovered in Jordan and Mozambique, indicating its spread beyond Asia to Africa and the Middle East.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) notes that there is already a risk that the fungus has spread to the world’s most important banana-growing areas in Latin America. These countries include Ecuador, Costa Rica and Colombia, where hundreds of thousands of people rely on the banana trade to make a living each day.
Not only is the banana an essential component of more than 400 million people’s diets, it is also an essential component of their monetary livelihood. According to one estimate, TR4 could destroy up to 85% of the world’s banana crop by volume, decimating thousands of plantations across the globe and severely impacting the $8.9 billion banana trade.
One leading banana expert, Professor Rony Swennen claims, “If [TR4] is in Latin America, it is going to be a disaster, whatever the multinationals do. Teams of workers move across different countries. The risk is it is going to spread like a bush fire.”
The FAO has further warned that TR4 represents an “expanded threat to global banana production” and that virtually all export banana plantations will be vulnerable in the coming weeks unless TR4’s spread can be stopped or new resistant strains developed.
The Cavendish banana is not the first to fall prey to such a fungal epidemic. Prior to its cultivation, the Gros Michel banana had been wiped out by a similar strain of the Panama disease.
Current researchers are attempting to discover new banana varieties that are resistant to the fungus or develop disease-resistant GM strains. However, a concerted effort between the industry, research institutions, government and international organizations will be necessary to prevent the spread of the disease.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: Bloomberg, The Independent
Photo: Flickr
Curbing the Spread of Vector-Borne Disease
The theme of this year’s World Health Day, held annually on April 7th, was to promote the awareness of vector-borne diseases. Vector-borne diseases are transmitted through the bites of infected mosquitoes, flies, ticks and water snails, among other disease-carrying pests.
This year the World Health Organization (WHO) promoted the slogan “small bite, big threat,” in the hopes that they would be able to increase awareness on how people across the globe can protect themselves and their families from these pests and the viruses that they may transmit.
Vector-borne diseases have radically increased in the past few decades, aided by an increase in urbanization, international travel and environmental changes.
More than one billion people each year are affected by these diseases, which include malaria, dengue fever, Lyme disease, schistosomiasis and yellow fever.
Efforts to control the spread of these diseases have included the distribution of bed nets and insecticides, the use of body repellents and protective clothing, and the push for clean water and adequate sanitation.
WHO Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, noted, “A global health agenda that gives higher priority to vector control could save many lives and avert much suffering. No one in the 21st century should die from the bite of a mosquito, a sand fly, a blackfly or a tick.”
The focus this year is on dengue fever, which is currently the most rapidly spreading vector-borne disease in the world.
Dengue fever, also known as “breakbone fever” due to its symptoms, is a severe flu-like disease marked by vomiting, bleeding, body aches and difficult breathing. There is no known vaccine or cure available.
During the past 50 years, dengue fever has spread rapidly to more than 100 countries. Prior to 1960, dengue had seen some 15,000 cases, whereas now over 380 million cases of dengue fever persist.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is currently working on a vaccine for dengue fever in partnership with a company specializing in vaccine development, Inviragen. They have gone through clinical trials in a number of countries including Singapore, Colombia, Thailand and Puerto Rico, and analysis of those findings is still underway.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies is campaigning alongside the WHO to address this growing concern.
Previous programs to curb the spread of vector-borne diseases have proven successful, for example, the United States’ effort to combat malaria.
Malaria is the most deadly of vector-borne diseases, killing 1.2 million people every year. Multiple campaigns have been launched to prevent the spread of this disease, including the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. PMI has distributed more than 120 million bed nets since 2006, as well as delivered more than 135 million doses of combination drug therapy.
These success stories provide hope for current efforts to control other vector-borne diseases such as dengue fever and schistosomiasis.
– Mollie O’Brien
Sources: Mission of the United States, Voice of America
What’s the Matter with Mexico’s Margaritas?
They are small, green and Mexico’s staple fruit, but they are also rising steadily in price.
Mexico’s lime prices are soaring upwards of 50% each month this year, and it is taking a devastating toll on the Mexican working class. The prices are currently at an all-time high.
What is the cause of the hyperinflation? Limes have always been the most dependable fruit to sell in Mexico, so what are the reasons behind this sudden disruption?
Tax reform has caused a spike in inflation this year, and products such as sodas, junk foods and now limes are all incredibly expensive.
Limes were added to the list of pricey groceries after a disease struck the citrus fruits in Colima, Mexico. The disease is called “huanglongbing” (or “citrus greening disease”) and it infects fruit by way of tiny insects that infect both the tree and the fruit. The trees are left producing bitter, hardened limes until it ultimately dies.
Climate change is also to blame. “With the arrival of winter there has been a cold snap in nearby states,” stated Juan Leana Malpica, a Morelos state lime grower. The fruit do not taste as fresh; the quality of the Mexican limes is suffering.
A bartender from Mexico City, Manuel Ambrosio, states that because of the lack of limes he is unable to give his customers the same sized portion margaritas as before. Customers are upset that the quality of the fruit has gotten worse and Ambrosio’s business is declining because of it.
Margarita sales are down 30% because of the poor lime conditions and Ambrosio stated that “this is the worst [he’s] seen prices in four years.”
A safe fix is hard to find though. The violent outbreaks in Michoacan make the importation of limes difficult for growers because they do not want to risk putting their products on the roads. Vigilante groups are destroying dangerous drug cartels, and the threat of having lime growers’ livelihood intercepted is too high and too much of a hazard.
The United States is concerned about the risk of imported limes bringing in disease. Some importation services have been limited, including airlines, and this is also bringing up costs in Mexico.
Mexico is attempting to squelch this problem by cutting off infected lime tree branches and using nitrogen in October 2014 to make the trees flower “in February, March and April” of 2015. Rafael Abriz Cervantes of the Agriculture Ministry also mentioned that technology is being tested in hopes that it will help remedy the situation and bring back their staple fruit.
– Becka Felcon
Sources: Bloomberg, CNN, LA Times
Photo: Westword
The Relentless President of Syria
Once an apolitical ophthalmologist in London, the president of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, has proven himself to be a more ruthless leader than the average Western-based eye doctor. The civil war, raging for over three years in Syria, has demolished entire cities, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians and displaced even more. While most dictators would have stepped down by this point, Assad continues to exert a perverted power over the masses.
Hezbollah even claims he has won. The Shi’a Islamic militant group has notoriously supported and fought beside the Syrian government in efforts to defeat the rebels attempting to oust Assad from power. As such, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah announced in a newspaper interview that any attempts at a military overthrow of the Syrian government have failed.
Nasrallah also expressed, in the same interview, his views on the origin of the war itself. Rather than a fight against corruption and for democracy, freedom and justice, Nasrallah believes the Syrian rebels mostly wanted to change the policies of the Syrian government in terms of Hezbollah and the Palestinian resistance movement. But whatever the primary goals of each individual rebel might be, Nasrallah does not think they stand a chance anymore. Incapable of waging a war large enough to take down Assad, the rebels may very well be weakening.
According to Lebanese sources, Assad is planning to run for reelection in July with a new campaign starting in May. The move, supported by Russia as a method of avoiding a power vacuum in the country, is rejected by the opposition. The extensive destruction caused by the civil war, in addition to the fact that many citizens are currently living in refugee camps in neighboring countries, makes it extraordinarily difficult for a reasonable number of people to freely and fairly exercise their right to vote.
It is not surprising, then, that the United States is taking extra measures to bring down Hezbollah. In an effort to undermine Hezbollah’s assistance of the Syrian regime, the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bipartisan bill entitled the Hezbollah International Financing Prevention Act. The bill, if passed, will impose sanctions on any financial institutions found to be aiding Hezbollah in some effect. Hezbollah in recent times has wrought havoc on the region in ways the U.S. clearly does not appreciate, causing the Western nation to speak out against the terrorist organization that has had such a large affect on the civil war in Syria.
Hezbollah’s actions have not only resulted in a less than desirable outcome in Syria- they have also caused some lashing out in Lebanon. Many of Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims, who support the Syrian rebels, have reportedly attacked Hezbollah bases in acts of revenge fro the organization’s action in Syria. These attacks serve to augment a mounting fear that Syria’s civil war could spread, such that a civil war erupts in neighboring Lebanon as well. Assad’s power is clear. One can only hope that Syria’s destruction is not fatally contagious.
– Jaclyn Stutz
Sources: Al-Monitor, Al Arabiya, The Guardian, Haaretz
Photo: Accuracy In Media
USAID Official Questioned On Aid in Afghanistan
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has spent approximately $17 billion in Afghanistan since 2001. In a recent letter from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the general counsel claims that USAID has not been diligent in monitoring the use of money to prevent contract aid from being used by groups linked to terrorist organizations.
The letter declares that USAID has purposely withheld information regarding these funds and the fact that the Afghan government did not exercise oversight regarding the appropriation of those funds. John Sopko, the inspector general for SIGAR, stated “USAID kept this information from Congress and the American people.”
Yet a spokesperson for USAID, Matthew Herrick, has denied any wrongdoing on behalf of the agency. Herrick claimed that USAID complied with all requests from members of Congress and their staff to show documents relating to the matter.
In order to ensure the money was not spent in a fraudulent manner, the House Subcommittee on National Security questioned the USAID Assistant Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan Donald L. Samper. Members on the subcommittee called into question the ability of Afghan ministries to oversee the allocation of USAID funds.
In a country notorious for its corruption, USAID conducted internal risk reviews of its dealings in the country. But Rep. John Tierney of Massachusetts stated that although USAID conducted risk reviews of seven of the thirteen Afghan ministries and made 333 recommendations on how to lessen the risk to USAID funds, the agency provided direct assistance to the seven ministries and only required 24 of the 333 recommendations to be implemented.
Sopko called for the Afghan government to take more concrete steps to increase its oversight of USAID-funded projects and decrease corruption before USAID doles out any more funding for development assistance. Overseeing the proper delegation of funding to Afghanistan has been emphasized recently. In 2012 the US government concluded that a contractor working there had links to networks that provided parts of improvised explosive devices to be used against US troops.
This latest revelation comes amidst another scandal in which the USAID spearheaded a so-called covert “Cuban Twitter” project codenamed ZunZuneo. As a result, the federal agency has been under increasingly strict scrutiny from Congress.
– Jeff Meyer
Sources: UPI, USA Today
Photo: The Guardian
Women’s Education in Violence Prone Countries
In recent days, U.S. Senator Ed Royce (CA-R) announced that on April 3 the Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on Women’s education in violence prone countries and how it can promote the creation of economic opportunities and counter radicalism. The hearing will count with the presence of three experts on women’s education. In the words of Royce, the aim of the hearing is to assess “how a failure to appreciate its importance can result in missed opportunities for development and counter-radicalism.”
In the last three decades education opportunities have been greatly expanded, yet women are still at a disadvantage. The difference in countries like Pakistan can be as much as 30 points. While 70 percent of men over 15 years of age are considered literate, for women this only reaches 40 percent. In Afghanistan, this difference is even more astonishing where only 13 percent of women can read and write.
According to Royce, the hearing will reinforce the correlation between women and girl’s education and the promotion of economic growth, childhood development and an increase in life expectancy overall. There is strong evidence that connects women’s education and an increase in a country’s GDP. As women enter the labor force they increase the earning potential of their family. Moreover, as women tend to spend their income on children more than men, this helps increase a child’s survival more than twenty times than families supported only by men.
Pakistan is of special interest, which is why, after the hearing, the committee will move on to considering the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act (H.R. 3583). In honor of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Malala Yousafzai, this bill would require that 50 percent of the scholarships awarded under it be given to Pakistani women.
This comes at the same time when private donors have pledged to donate 1 billion to Pakistan for the support of educational programs over the next three years. According the former prime minister and now UN special envoy for education Gordon Brown, the goal is to provide education to 55 million Pakistanis over the age of ten who are considered illiterate. Pakistan’s government also wants to dedicate more resources to education in order to eventually achieve universal education. This is good news for women and girls in Pakistan, since one of the major goals of the pledge is to get a step closer to the eradication of child marriage, child labor, and gender discrimination.
– Sahar Abi Hassan
Sources: House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Brown, House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Photo: Glamour