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The Abahlali Movement’s Role in Eradicating South African Poverty

Abahlali
Apartheid in South Africa began in 1948 when the National Party was voted into power, favoring the white minority over the black majority. The African National Congress (ANC) then rose up to lead an opposition to apartheid and many ANC leaders, like Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned for years. Eventually the National Party became willing to negotiate a non-violent transition to a majority black rule after numerous protests. Apartheid came to an end after the first multi-racial elections in 1994, bringing the first black president into power: Nelson Mandela. Since then, the ANC has struggled to make the country equal for all races after all of the imbalances the apartheid created with things like healthcare, education and housing.

The Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement (also known as the Shack Dwellers Movement) was created to spread equality and help to fully end the long-lasting effects of apartheid. It started in early 2005 in Durban, South Africa and is still largely located in this port city, but it has become the largest organization of militant poor in South Africa in terms of mobilized peoples. The movement originated with a road blockade near the Kennedy Road settlement that was protesting a local industrialist buying the nearby land that these shack dwellers were promised by the new ANC government in order to create better housing.

This movement has grown rapidly to having over 30 settlements with tens of thousands of shack dwellers supporting them. The movement has suffered over a hundred arrests, ongoing death threats, regular police assault and intimidation from local parties in the last couple years alone. However, it has still been able to progress to the point that it has a persistent voice for inhabitants of informal housing settlements. Against the actions that have thrown thousands of people out to the streets, they have marched on and occupied police stations, offices of local councilors, newspaper offices, municipal offices and the City Hall.

Under the slogan “No Land, No House, No Vote,” the group has organized a very controversial, but extremely effective boycott of the local government elections. The Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement is distinctly against all forms of discrimination, corruption, repression and the concentration of land, wealth and power in any one party’s hands. They stand for a fair distribution of this land, wealth and power and for the right of the city’s inhabitation for every citizen.

Amongst other victories, the Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement has won access to schools, stopped the industrial development of the land promised to the Kennedy Road residents, democratized the governance of multiple other settlements, stopped countless evictions and forced multiple government officials and projects to actually focus on the poor. The movement’s main goal was originally to obtain land and housing in the city, but since it started it has successfully politicized and fought for an end to forced removals and for access to education, water, sanitation, health care and electricity. The movement has even set up gardening projects and sewing collectives for people living with AIDS and for orphans with AIDS.

For more information, address the Abahlali baseMjondolo Movement’s webpage at https://abahlali.org/ or watch the documentary about the movement entitled “Dear Mandela,” with the following webpage: https://www.dearmandela.com/.

– Kenneth W. Kliesner

Sources: Dear Mandela, Abahlali (1), Abahlali (2), CIA World Factbook
Photo: Western Cape

Poverty Levels Increase from Conflict in Eritrea

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Situated on the Red Sea, Eritrea is one of the youngest independent countries in the world, but it is also one of the poorest. Eritrea has had to deal with being a small, seriously poor country with many socio-economic problems since it won independence from Ethiopia after 30 years of war in 1993. Like many African nations, the Eritrean economy is largely based on subsistence agriculture with around 60% of its population relying on agricultural activities, like livestock and crop production or fishing, for food and income. In 2003, Eritrea had an annual per capita income of $150 and as a result was ranked at 155 out of 175 countries on the Human Development Index. Food insecurity and poverty are extremely widespread and are increasing; nearly half of their food has to be imported even with adequate rainfall.

More than 50% of the entire country was below the poverty line, and 44% of children under the age of five were underweight between 1990 and 2001. Around 2 million Eritrean people, a large amount of the population, are experiencing economic hardship. The low productivity of their livestock enterprises and crops extremely harm rural households, the most affected by poverty. Nearly two-thirds of all the households in Eritrea lack food security.

Some of the worst droughts in Eritrea’s history threatened the lives of over a third of the population from 2002-2004. Large quantities of livestock perished or were sold fairly cheaply to pay for food and crop production greatly fell by about 25%. Malnutrition levels are very high in Eritrea and the rural people do not have much access to social services like healthcare and purification systems for clean drinking water. Many women are the heads of their households and have to produce food and care for their children. These types of households are largely disadvantaged because they rely greatly on the help of male relatives and neighbors who may not always be available when they are needed.

The mandatory military service and armed conflicts take many men away from their families and villages and this plays a large role on the severity of poverty in the country. The border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia left tens of thousands of people killed and although a peace deal was agreed upon, there are still tensions between the disputed territories. There have been more people condemned to poverty than have been lifted out of poverty from the war in Eritrea, but the government has been working toward diplomatic solutions with Ethiopia. After Ethiopia sent in troops to Eritrea in March 2012, Eritrea remained peaceful and announced that it would not retaliate, rather it would use the proper diplomatic channels to resolve the issue and eventually bring economic growth to both countries.

Though the situation does not look promising for many rural families, Eritrea has traditional ways of protecting the rural poor communities. Wealthier families dispose of assets, like livestock and crops, and then make loans to their poorer relatives and neighbors during times of great stress. A community’s wealthier families will help households that are physically unable to cultivate their own land at different times of the agricultural cycle.

– Kenneth W. Kliesner

Sources: Geneva-Academy, IRIN News, Rural Poverty Portal
Photo: WFP

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Lupita Nyong’o Shines in the Role of an Advocate

All eyes are on Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o as her newfound fame thrusts her into the global center stage. Born in Mexico as the child of prominent Kenyan politicians before later moving to the United States for college and graduate school, Nyong’o has had a truly global life thus far. Her travels have been the best education of all, bestowing upon her a rare sense of worldly wisdom and care for humanity. Her compassion and her astute perspective on the world makes her performances that much more extraordinary and poignant.

Before her role as Patsey in “12 Years A Slave,” Nyong’o starred in several other socially conscious films, one a drama about HIV/AIDS and another a documentary drawing attention to the treatment of Kenya’s albino population. Although she has not been in the public spotlight for very long, she has already managed to voice some groundbreaking thoughts regarding race, gender, beauty and charity, making it clear that she is a burgeoning beacon of the philanthropic spirit and a trailblazer for human rights advocacy.

Here are several thoughts from Nyong’o:

1. “You can’t rely on how you look to sustain you. What is fundamentally beautiful is compassion for yourself for those around you. That kind of beauty enflames the heart and enchants the soul.”

2. “As I look down on this Golden Statue, may it remind me and very little girls that no matter where you’re from your dreams are valid.”

3. “You have to allow for the impossible to be possible.”

4. “Human beings have an instinct for freedom.”

5. “Feel the validation for your beauty, but also get to the deeper business of feeling beautiful inside. There is no shade in that beauty.”

6. “I have phenomenal parents… to watch those two people do so much and mean so much to everyone but at the end of the day still have the humility to serve. I thank their example because at the end of the day I just feel it is my deeds that are more important than my fame.”

These words of wisdom from Nyong’o teach us that, above everything else, we are all equally deserving and capable of love, admiration, success and humanity. Beauty, in the sense of living a beautiful life of compassion and friendship, is something universally available and unhindered by the situations of one’s birth. May every person take Nyong’o’s message to heart, and begin to fully realize his or her amazingly valued position in the grand global community.

– Stefanie Doucette

Sources: The Independent, Huffington Post, Pinterest, The Root
Photo: The Advocate

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How to Measure Women Empowerment

Since the landmark 1995 Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action that increased attention on women empowerment and women’s rights on the international stage, the movement towards gender equality has continued to expand. Women’s empowerment is a central key to reduce poverty and promote development around the world.

The Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) was developed in 1995 by the United Nations Development Programme to measure the relative empowerment of women in a specific country. The GEM supports the Human Development Index (HDI) by adding another measurement index to evaluate development.

The HDI is the leading composite index to measure a country’s social and economic development. This is a single statistic, which combines together a country’s life expectancy, education and income. This was developed to measure development as not just economic advances and increases in income, but to measure the improvements in the human condition. However, the HDI is limited because development contains a wide number of other factors that can measure human well-being.

Similar to the HDI, the GEM is a single statistic that focuses on three indicators: proportion of parliamentary seats held by women, percentage of women in economic decision making positions and income level. Although this statistic conveys the percentage of women in economic and political decision making roles, it does not reveal other more meaningful factors that measure women’s empowerment. Women’s empowerment is multi-dimensional and complex and requires a wider framework.

Measuring women’s empowerment can be broken down into five dimensions: economic, social and cultural, legal, political and psychological.

Economic empowerment includes having control over income and family resources, ownership of assets, opportunity for employment and access to markets and representation in economic decision-making roles. With economic empowerment, women can gain financial independence, enter the workforce, and have equal opportunity to gain positions of economic power.

Social and cultural empowerment includes absence of discrimination against females, control over their own bodies, freedom from sexual and domestic violence, having access to family planning services, greater visibility in social spaces and shifts in cultural norms that place women subservient to men. Social and cultural empowerment is essential to not only giving women control over their own bodies, but also providing them with education opportunities to better their lives.

Legal empowerment provides the framework for legislation that expands knowledge and awareness of legal rights. This will expand the opportunity for individuals to mobilize for increased women’s rights laws, utilizing the judicial system to create reform from above.

Political empowerment includes having the right vote, having knowledge of and the ability to be involved with the political system and being represented in local and national governments. Political empowerment creates female representation in the political system, while voting, lobbying and mobilizing empowers women to support policies and causes that they believe in.

Psychological empowerment involves self-worth and psychological happiness. Psychological empowerment comes with the acceptance of women’s rights and their inclusion in society.

There is no single indicator to measure how far women have come, and how much more women still have yet to go to achieve gender equality. Understanding the different dimensions of women’s empowerment is important to develop policies that will enhance gender equality and begin the shifts in cultural norms to promote women’s rights.

– Sarah Yan

Sources: Agrigender, La Follette
Photo: LitStack

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“War on Poverty”: Are We Progressing?

In his State of the Union Address 50 years ago, Lyndon B. Johnson declared a “War on Poverty,” joining the ranks of other war-dominated rhetoric such as the most recent endless war on terror and the ever-elusive war on drugs. Has the war on poverty made significant progress or has it turned into a stalemate like the other United States preemptive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? Johnson’s efforts to eradicate poverty in America included programs such as Head Start, Food Stamps, Medicaid and Job Corps, some of which were included in the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which strengthened overall efforts to further policies that eliminate poverty, expand educational opportunities and provide health services for those in need.

While there continue to be debates over whether Johnson’s initiatives were a success or a total disaster, they nonetheless serve as an appropriate frame of reference to the current poverty-reducing legislation that exists today.

‘Half in Ten Act’

One such legislation is the bill H.R. 2182, ‘The Half in Ten Act,’ that would, if successful, cut poverty in 10 years, with the long-term goal being the total eradication of poverty in America. Senator Barbara Lee provides tangible solutions to end poverty, such as investing in job creation and training, implementing anti-poverty programs and early childhood education and providing quality college education, all of which are included in the Act. This Act coincides with U.S. President Barack Obama’s statements addressing poverty in his recent budget proposal.

The Half in Ten campaign has four main goals: create good jobs, promote economic security, strengthen families and cut poverty in half in 10 years. It is a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, the Coalition on Human Needs and The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Small Steps Forward

While the war-based rhetoric is consequential in itself and implies that there will be a loser and a winner in the war on poverty, the declaration of the war on poverty nonetheless sets the stage for national discourse regarding poverty reducing legislation.

A recent poll conducted by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, revealed that Americans want more programs to combat poverty. Most Americans agreed with the statement “most people living in poverty are decent people who are working hard to make ends meet in a difficult economy” and nearly as many agreed that “the primary reason so many people are living in poverty today is that our economy is failing to produce enough jobs that pay decent wages.”

While chairman Paul Ryan has recently dubbed the War on Poverty to be ineffective and a complete failure, it nonetheless pushed Americans in the right direction to confront global poverty and the institutions that exacerbate already harsh living conditions in the developing world. Rather than dismissing the opposition simply because of their ideological views, it is more useful to analyze the long-term trends in poverty.

In 2013, a Columbia study found that the poverty rate fell from 26 percent in 1967 to 16 percent in 2012, proving that perhaps the social safety net programs that were implemented 50 years ago under Johnson’s presidency had some positive effect after all.

– Rozali Telbis

Sources: Marketplace, The Week, Huffington Post, Half in Ten, Bill Moyers
Photo: National Review

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Sex Workers in the First World

Activists for women’s rights will argue both sides of the prostitution spectrum; some say it can be liberating for women who are able to find financial independence, that the amount of abuse is thoroughly overestimated and that it is a job like any other and should have the same benefits and regulations. Others say it is a violation of women, that it is a humiliation and never a freely-made choice.

Last February in Barcelona, 15 women ranging from 22 years in age to 50 years in age attended an ‘Intro to Prostitution’ course organized by Conxa Borrell. Borrell commented that “[w]e’re at an impasse where people are unemployed, and they still have to pay their mortgages and feed their children. This is a line of work that many women feel they can do.”

Lidia Falcón, founder of the Feminist Party in Spain, condemned this course saying it had an “underlying suggestion that some women are working in the profession out of their own free will. It’s a false, repugnant discussion about liberty, as if being a sex worker is something you can choose to do because you like it. They say they’re helping women, but they’re just helping them to be exploited and humiliated.”

However, most accounts from women who have worked as sex workers do not report being humiliated. An anonymous publication in The Globe and Mail on March 4 tells of a woman’s personal experience working in the prostitution industry: “I was broke and did what I had to do to survive. On the other, I was able to keep my head up because it was not hard to rationalize away my choices: Our society is based on a system of exploitation, and you have to ask if sexual services are really so different when you get over people’s hangups about sex.” Point being, is selling your body really so different from selling any other product for cash?

In Tunisia, where prostitution is regulated by the state, sex workers demand for their brothel to be reopened after radical Islamists threw them out. “We know the state cannot help us financially, because the current economic situation is so bad,” says Souhir, a Tunisian sex worker. “That’s why we’re calling for the brothel to be reopened, so we don’t have to ask for charity.”

None of these woman claim that they are forced to be sex workers, but they do all share the similarity of having fallen on hard times financially. This begs the question: would there still be sex workers if there was no poverty, and if so, would people like Falcón still call it an exploitation and humiliation?

– Lydia Caswell

Sources: The Free Press Journal, The Globe and Mail, Al Arabiya
Photo: Rediff

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The Indian Caste System

Although the Indian caste system is no longer legitimate, its repressive characteristics still affect the lives of the Dalit population today, particularly its women.

According to Human Rights Watch, the caste system in India “is perhaps the world’s longest surviving social hierarchy” and is a “defining feature of Hinduism.”

“A person is considered a member of the caste into which he or she is born and remains within that caste until death,” the organization said in a report.

Graham Peebles, director of the Create Trust, a UK based charity that helps disadvantaged women and children, said that women suffer the most under the caste system.

In a Counterpunch article, Peebles said Dalit women suffer the most under the caste system despite its being banned by India’s constitution. They tend to become victims of sexual slavery, humiliation and torture. They are also denied access to land, water and education.

Peebles argues that they are living under a type of apartheid in which “discrimination and social exclusion is a major factor.”

That is not to say, however, that Dalit women are the only females who struggle under the Indian caste system.

Indian authorities are constantly unsuccessful in seeking justice for the rapes that occur throughout the country. India’s National Crime Records Bureau estimates that rape cases increased up to 900% over the last four decades. In 2011 alone, more than 24,000 rapes were reported.

But unlike girls who are born into a middle class family, Peebles believes that girls born into a Dalit family receive little attention due to the media’s success in making the country look like a Bollywood film to international observers.

India can definitely improve in several areas regarding the unfair treatment of women. However, with the outlawed caste system still in place, these improvements seem unlikely to occur any time soon.

– Juan Campos

Sources: CounterPunch, Human Rights Watch
Photo: Kamla Foundation

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Brazil Replaces Poverty With Culture

Vale_Cultura_Brazil_poverty_culture
For decades, Brazil has been considered an underdeveloped nation with inequality, crime and dirty slums. Yet Bolsa-Familia, the country’s largest welfare program, has in recent years transformed Brazil’s poverty predicament for the better. Launched in 2003 by former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the program has benefited almost 50 million Brazilians and become a guide for numerous similar programs worldwide.

According to the World Bank, Bolsa-Familia is a primary reason for Brazil’s most contemporary social improvements. On the condition of sending their children to school and to regular medical exams, underprivileged Brazilian families receive an equivalent of about $35 each month withdrawn from a state-run bank by each family’s mother. Not only does this promote investment in children, it also empowers women to take financial responsibility for their households.

Bolsa-Familia is responsible for about 28% of Brazil’s poverty reduction. In the decade between 2002 and 2012, the proportion of Brazilians living with less than the $32 equivalent decreased from 8.8% to 3.6%.

Yet even with such extreme improvement in the lives of Brazilians, there is still more work to be done. When asked what they like to do for fun, a shocking 85% of Brazilians answered, “watch television.”

In an innovative effort to develop cultural expansion within the country, Brazil has developed a program known in Portuguese as Vale Cultura. The program constitutes a rechargeable coupon worth around $20 per month, available to Brazilians who make at most $300 per month.

While some may argue that both Bolsa-Familia and this new Vale Cultura program drain state funds and promote a dependency on welfare, various reports have noted otherwise. Of those on Bolsa-Familia, 12% have been able to give up the benefit, which accounts for less than 0.5% of Brazil’s gross domestic product. Such extensive success at such a low cost gives reason to believe that Vale Cultura may be an exciting opportunity with little risk.

Brazilians, according to a study conducted in Sao Paolo in 2013, on average only pick up four books per year and finish only two. The country is relatively isolated, despite its recent economic successes, and the poorest Brazilians are disproportionately underprivileged when it comes to cultural sophistication. Vale Cultura is an attempt to remedy this conundrum.

It will take time, of course, for Brazilians to develop a taste for this newly available culture. But culture minister Marta Suplicy is not disillusioned by the time it will take for this program to see success. The purpose is for people to try new things and to attain access to the cultural attractions many Brazilians previously ignored.

– Jaclyn Stutz

Photo: The Guardian
Sources: The Washington Post, The World Bank, The Guardian, BBC

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How China Overcame Poverty

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During the past three decades, more than 500 million people in China were lifted out of extreme poverty. And now, those people are buying the same goods that Americans have been purchasing for decades.

The Birth of Entrepreneurship in China

Peasants wanted ownership over the land they farmed and they did not achieve this under Mao Zedong’s rule. Deng Xiao Ping dismantled the farm communes set up by Mao and established a household responsibility system that led towards a more stable society, thus allowing for the establishment of a civil society with growth in the non-government sector. In about 40 years, the number of Chinese NGOs went from 6,100 to 354,000.

Emerging Market Consumer

The number of Chinese people earning $1,000 or more is equal to the number of people earning the same amount in Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey combined. China has been catching up to western markets and it has been catching up faster than other markets.

Youth in China Earning More and Spending More

The new generation in China has more education and therefore, more opportunities to work outside of factories. The young Chinese people have the highest incomes and they are willing to spend it. Specifically, they are spending more to be connected; they are buying smartphones. As incomes rise, consumers spend money on food, personal care products and smartphones.

ChinaIncomeAge

China is the first developing country to half the number of people living in poverty. During the past 34 years, the number of people suffering from hunger was reduced from one-third to one-tenth. China is not only lifting its own people out of poverty, it is also lending aid to Asia and Africa. These efforts have made the China Development Bank the world’s largest lender.

– Haley Sklut

Sources: Skoll World Forum, The Atlantic, CNN
Photo: Flickr

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Japanese Prime Minister Will Not Revise Apology Over WWII Sex Slaves

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced this week that he will not retract his country’s official apology for its military’s use of sex slaves during World War II. Abe’s cabinet had been reviewing a landmark 1993 cabinet statement in which Tokyo acknowledged for the first time that the Japanese military had directly or indirectly been involved in establishing brothels for its soldier in territories occupied by imperial Japan during its brutal conquest of east Asia in first half of the twentieth century. Up to 200,000 women are estimated to have been forced to work as sex slaves in Japan’s military brothels.

Speaking on Friday to the budget committee in the upper house of the Diet, Japan’s parliament, Abe said he had, ” no thought of my cabinet revising,” the 1993 apology, known as the Kono statement, after then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono. “We must be humble regarding history… it should not be politicized or made into a diplomatic issue,” Abe said.

The decision by Abe, a rightwing nationalist who recently angered his country’s east Asian neighbors by visiting a controversial war shrine commemorating Japan’s war dead, is being seen as an effort by the hawkish prime minister to placate South Korea, which has criticized Tokyo for its perceived failure to atone for wartime atrocities. Japan annexed the Korean peninsula in 1910 and ruled it as a Japanese colony until the end of World War II in 1945.

Abe’s attempt to mollify Seoul, a strategic partner in countering China’s economic and military rise, comes ahead of a possible meeting between the Japanese prime minister and South Korean President Park Geun-hye next week on the sidelines of a nuclear disarmament summit in The Hague.

On Wednesday, Japanese Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs Akitaka Saiki traveled to South Korea in a bid to lock down a meeting between the two leaders at next week’s summit. After meeting with his South Korean counterpart, Akitaka left without obtaining a commitment from South Korea for a meeting between its president and Abe, as Seoul continued to insist that Tokyo do more to make amends for it militaristic past.

The Prime Minister’s decision not to revise the 1993 apology comes about two weeks after Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga announced that Abe’s government was forming a team to review the Kono statement, in which Tokyo acknowledged for the first time that, “The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women.” Comfort stations is a Japanese euphemism for the brothels operated by the Japanese imperial military in territories conquered by Tokyo during its conquest of east Asia in the first half the twentieth century.

Abe’s refusal to revisit Tokyo’s groundbreaking admission represents a u-turn for the sometimes hard line prime minister, who at times has pushed a revisionist version of history that white washes over Japan’s wartime atrocities. When he was running to be the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in 2012, Abe said “there was no evidence” that the comfort women had been forced to work in the brothels.

Late last year, Abe angered China and South Korea, both of which were occupied by Japan during the first half of the twentieth century, when he visited Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine that commemorates Japan’s war dead, including 14 Class A war criminals.

– Eric Erdahl

Sources: BBC, BBC, Nikkei Asian Review
Photo: Enformable