Land ownership plays an important role in the fight against global poverty. Secure land rights for women living in poverty allows them to live a more “healthy, safe and productive life,” according to the World Bank. According to the United Nations (U.N.), more than 380 million women and girls lived in extreme poverty in 2022 with projections of more women living in extreme poverty by 2030 than present-day if current trends continue in sub-Saharan Africa. Women need direct access to land for “gender equality, food security, health, family welfare, protection from sexual violence and other forms of physical abuse,” the World Bank stresses. The risk of women facing domestic violence decreases eight times when women have land ownership rights.
Benefits of Secure Land Rights for Women
As of 2023, according to the U.N., women account for only “one in five landholders” worldwide despite making up 43% of global agricultural workers and producing “80% of food in developing countries.” In some countries where women lack secure land rights, when women become widows, their inlaws may force them off their husband’s property/land, leaving them without arable land from which to derive income and sustenance for themselves and their children, the U.N. explains. More than 100 countries continue to deny the right for women to inherit their husband’s property. Secure land rights for women increase economic empowerment and food security, mitigating multi-dimensional and fiscal poverty in the developing world.
Women’s Land Rights and its Impact on Children
Women’s land rights have a significant impact on children’s quality of life by strengthening food security, health and welfare and education. In developing nations where women cannot be title holders of land, many mothers cannot afford to send their children to school due to low household incomes.
The U.N. highlights that by empowering women through land rights, household nutrition can improve due to access to agricultural produce available for both sustenance and income. In fact, children would face a 33% lower risk of being severely underweight if women had stronger property and inheritance rights. Furthermore, women tend to prioritize the well-being of their families in their choices both nutritionally and generally.
Women’s Land Rights and Productivity
Secure land rights for women also help alleviate global poverty by increasing productivity. This is visible in Tanzania, where as of 2023, more than 80% of women are engaged in the agricultural industry. In Tanzania, women with stronger land rights earn up to 3.8 times more income and are more inclined to have their own personal savings. According to the U.N., global hunger would decrease by 17% (equating to about 150 million people) if “women had the same access to productive resources as men” to rise out of poverty and achieve economic independence.
The U.N. reports that, through traditional knowledge, women are able to “find innovative solutions to address desertification, land degradation and drought.” This is visible in areas such as Jordan, where a women-run plant nursery began with the aim of producing drought-resistant seedlings for land restoration.
Examples of Progress in Securing Women’s Land Rights
In 1956, the government of India created the Hindu Succession Act to give equal inheritance rights to both sons and daughters. Amended in 2005, the act explicitly gives daughters rights to their parents’ land and property. However, a 2013 U.N. Women’s survey found that one in four women did not know they had any right to inherit family land with just one in eight women inheriting parts of their family land. Furthermore, the study also found that fears of creating conflict in the family held women back from claiming their rightful share of land.
The Landesa’s Girl Project, run by Landesa, an organization dedicated to securing land rights for millions of families, collaborated with the Indian government in 2010, in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, to educate children both girls and boys about women’s land rights, helping to close the gap between policy and practice. The initiative has enabled women to improve their socio-economic prospects through better awareness and access to information about their right to ownership of land.
In Sierra Leone, ownership of land for women is an economic resource as women depend on the land for their livelihood and subsistence. Lack of ownership limits their economic opportunities and leaves them vulnerable to displacement, violence and extreme poverty. The introduction of the Customary Land Act and the Land Commission Act in 2022 has helped promote gender equality throughout Sierra Leone. The Customary Land Act has meant that the liquidation of family-owned land requires both the consent of the husband and wife.
Moreover, in Sierra Leone, the National Land Commission Act mandates the formation of a committee to regulate land administration, stipulating that a minimum of 30% of the committee members must be women. This provision aims to empower women and enhance their rights and control over land.
Secure land rights for women help alleviate global poverty, which is why SDG 5 (the goal to reduce gender inequality) and SDG 1 (the aim to eradicate poverty) go hand-in-hand.
– Kishan Patel
Photo: Flickr
Organizations Working for Child Education in Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka is considered a developing nation, as its GDP per capita in 2021 stood at $1,973. The quality of life in Sri Lanka also remains low, with 13% of the population living on less than $3.65 a day in 2016. Despite the setbacks that Sri Lanka faces, the country has made many strides regarding child education. Currently, the literacy rate in Sri Lanka stands at 93%. According to Sri Lankan laws, education is free and mandatory for all children until the ninth grade. Afterward, the child can choose to continue their education or take on a job. Many organizations are continuing to work to improve child education in Sri Lanka.
ChildFund Sri Lanka
ChildFund Sri Lanka is a nonprofit organization working to improve child education in Sri Lanka. The organization implements “child protection, humanitarian assistance, early childhood development, education and youth empowerment” programs. According to UNICEF, preschool education in Sri Lanka is poor. Only 39% of preschool teachers received at least one year of professional training. There is an insufficient focus on the stimulation of motor, cognitive and socio-emotional skills. ChildFund Sri Lanka implemented the Eat, Play, Love – Early Childhood Development program. The program aims to improve health, nutrition and early learning experiences for children. ChildFund Sri Lanka is on track to reach 1 million people by 2024.
SOS Children’s Villages
Another organization working for child education in Sri Lanka is SOS Children’s Villages. SOS Children’s Villages estimates that 15,000 children are growing up without parental care and 14,000 children are not in school due to financial difficulties. SOS Children’s Villages is working to ensure that all children in Sri Lanka grow up in a caring and financially secure family. The organization strengthens and supports children’s families but also provides solutions for children who are unable to grow up with their biological parents. After 41 years of service, SOS Children’s Villages have impacted 17,000 lives of youth and put 4,000 children under financially secure care.
Sri Lankan Children Foundation
Another nonprofit organization working for child education in Sri Lanka is the Sri Lankan Children Foundation (SLCF). The mission of the SLCF is “to improve life chances for underprivileged children in Sri Lanka.” In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed 14,000 children, damaged 183 schools and impacted about 100,000 children. The SLCF is working to find ways to help Sri Lankan children, particularly orphans, whom epidemics, poverty and natural disasters like the tsunami of 2004 impacted. In 2021, the SLCF implemented a successful program in which they renovated the playground and washroom of a children’s primary school and also provided educational materials to respond to the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown.
ChildFund Sri Lanka, SOS Children’s Villages and the Sri Lankan Children Foundation are just three of the many organizations working to improve education for children in Sri Lanka. Each is making a significant impact in ensuring children in Sri Lanka have access to quality education, equipping them to find the path to a brighter future.
– Yana Gupta
Photo: Flickr
The Programs Addressing Learning Poverty
Poverty and illiteracy are closely intertwined. In impoverished areas, access to education can often be financially out of reach, exacerbating other related issues such as hunger and limited resources. Globally, there are at least 763 million adults who lack basic literacy skills, with two-thirds of this population being women. Moreover, in low-income countries, approximately 60% of 10-year-olds struggle with learning poverty, preventing them from reading or comprehending simple stories.
Why Pursue Literacy?
Literacy often bridges the barrier between being financially destitute and successfully independent. After age 5, a child’s survival can increase up to 31% when their mother has some level of education. Furthermore, global studies indicate a 9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling a child receives.
Literacy is a tool to battle the inequalities of poverty. It allows chances for social mobility and economic growth, which fosters both community and individual development, as well as equality. Marginalized groups such as women and girls have even less access to education than others and coupled with poverty, sexism is exasperated through a myriad of societal factors. When impoverished women are provided with more opportunities for literacy, they have greater life choices for themselves and go on to positively impact the health and education of their families.
COVID-19
With the onset of the COVID-19 virus, worldwide literacy programs struggled to accommodate new, unknown challenges. Prolonged school closures and varying management strategies led to an increase in learning poverty among children around the world.
In low and middle-income countries worldwide, the incidence of learning challenges has risen by 13%. Before the pandemic, 57% of the global population faced educational difficulties, but this number has since surged to 70%. In Latin America and the Caribbean, 80% of primary school-aged children currently struggle to comprehend basic written text, a stark increase from the pre-pandemic rate of approximately 50%. Similarly, in South Asia, 78% of children struggle with reading, up from the pre-pandemic rate of 60%.
In response to the learning crises presented by COVID-19, a number of countries have implemented the RAPID framework, a guide to “tackle learning losses caused by the pandemic and build forward better that is based on five evidence-based policy actions.” The policy responses focus on 60 low and middle-income countries, with reports paying special attention to Cambodia, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire, India, Mongolia, Romania and Zambia.
The acronym RAPID stands for:
Only one-fifth of the 60 countries had comprehensive strategies to accelerate literacy and education. Still, there is room for more work.
Programs Fighting That Aim to Alleviate Learning Poverty
Around the world, there are programs that exist to promote universal literacy.
Going Forward
The need for educational resources for the global poor has always been pressing, but in the wake of the changing, post-pandemic world, it is vital to consider the future. A world of economic liberty and human rights is impossible to achieve without universal literacy. Learning to read is just one step toward progress, but a vital one. By supporting the myriad of programs that look to instate that, people around the world can participate in steps toward a new future and eliminate learning poverty.
– Char Nieberding
Photo: Flickr
Unpacking the Humanitarian Crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh
The Lachin Blockade
Prior to the invasion, Nagorno-Karabakh slowly plunged into poverty and insecurity with dramatically lowering human rights standards. In December 2022, Azerbaijani protestors blockaded the Lachin corridor, the only connecting road between Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia. This effectively ceased any movement by Artsakh’s residents. Both nations set up checkpoints at their borders.
As a result, food and medical supply deliveries were nearly halted. The main food markets in the villages within Nagorno-Karabakh were closed. Some locals did not see fresh produce like fruits and vegetables for months. Armenian authorities began rationing supplies.
Access to medical supplies in the region was also significantly restricted. People could not access necessary supplies for infant care, like diapers. The Red Cross brought medicine and necessities such as baby formula across the corridor, but this was only a short-term solution. Armenian authorities in Artsakh became so desperate, that they asked for an airbridge to bring supplies to the region.
The blockade of the Lachin corridor undoubtedly lowered the quality of life of Armenians residing in the area. The hospitals within Stepanakert and the other villages in the area ran out of supplies. Children had to be treated with medication meant for adults. Grocery store aisles were empty. Gas and electricity were only sporadically available. Prices for mundane goods skyrocketed.
The low quality of life in Artsakh due to the lack of access to basic necessities made it increasingly difficult for Armenians residing in the area to carry out their daily lives.
Artsakh’s Progressive Isolation
While the blockade stopped supply lines, Russian peacekeepers set up opposing checkpoints. They barred entry to any who attempted to access the region, even for humanitarian purposes. In one instance, they stopped a man attempting to bring toys to Artsakh from Armenia.
The U.S. Department of State condemned Azerbaijan for Artsakh’s progressive isolation. Azerbaijan entirely cut off Artsakh from the rest of Armenia in July 2023, barring even the Red Cross from entering the territory after accusing the Armenian branch of the Red Cross of smuggling unauthorized materials into the region. As living conditions in Artsakh became unbearable, the 120,000 Armenians residing in the region sought refuge in Armenia.
In September 2023, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent nearly 70 metric tons of humanitarian aid to Nagorno-Karabakh, including critical food aid. Russia delivered fifty tons of humanitarian supplies to Stepanakert, the region’s capital. Around the same time, the United States offered $11.5 million in humanitarian assistance to address the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a September 2023 press release, United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We encourage the sides to engage in direct talks and focus on ways to increase the flow of humanitarian supplies to the population of the region. The United States remains committed to supporting efforts between Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve long-standing issues and achieve a dignified and durable peace.”
Looking Ahead
Samvel Shahramanyan, the head of Artsakh’s local government, signed a decree according to which all of the republic’s state institutions will be inactive by January 2024. Some have called for international intervention and retribution in the wake of Azerbaijan’s actions to reclaim Nagorno-Karabakh.
While the current conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia does not appear to be approaching resolve, international groups and nations have rallied together to provide aid. Border and cultural conflicts are difficult to resolve. Thus, providing humanitarian protection and aid to address the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh is paramount for the foreseeable future.
– Tatiana Gnuva
Photo: Flickr
Why Child Poverty In Azerbaijan Is Still An Issue
In the last two decades, child poverty in Azerbaijan has shown improvement amid economic expansion. However, this economic growth has also led to increased inequality. The benefits of this growth are primarily in urban areas, while rural regions face diminishing opportunities, resulting in a notable rise in child poverty among affected communities.
The Causes
Despite its increasing wealth and growing influence in wider regions, poverty and corruption still overshadow much of the development occurring in Azerbaijan.
More than 90% of Azerbaijan’s exports come from the concentrated area of Greater Baku, located near the offshore oil and gas reserves of the Caspian Sea. This means that the money earned from exports often only reaches a relatively small area. According to the 2021 World Bank report, Azerbaijan exhibits more than two times the inequality of any other country in Europe and Asia. While More than 40% of the population works in agriculture, it only accounts for 5.7% of exports. More than 60% of Azerbaijan’s poor live in rural areas that depend on agriculture as their primary source of income, highlighting the large divide between the different regions of the country.
The Effects
There are currently around 20,000 children without parental care in Azerbaijan. Though many of their parents are still alive, extenuating circumstances like poor treatment and abuse can lead to children in poverty becoming ‘social orphans.’ Faced with unbearable living conditions out on the streets or in underfunded orphanages, these children often find themselves victimized emotionally and physically with little to no avenues out of this situation many children find themselves victimized emotionally and physically. These unaccompanied minors also have limited access to education, making the poverty trap even harder to escape.
Around 11% of girls marry before the age of 18. Different factors such as religion, education or social status can exacerbate child marriage, but often poverty is the driving force behind it. Child marriage rates are highest in the more rural areas of Azerbaijan, where many families marry off their daughters in the hope of securing a more prosperous life for them.
Azerbaijan currently considers child marriage a significant issue, but the prevalence of children born out of wedlock suggests that the practice might be more common than officially reported. Each year, thousands of unmarried mothers give birth to children. One contributing factor is the occurrence of illegal marriages involving girls under the age of 15. These underage brides are unable to legally marry until they are older, so their children are classified as born out of wedlock until they can marry within the legal framework.
The Issue of Child Labor
There has been minimal advancement in eliminating child labor in recent years. A 2001 study revealed that at least 70,000 children aged 5 to 14 were performing some form of child labor. Many struggling families use child labor to augment their income, and many children without families use it simply to survive. The agricultural sector employs the majority of child laborers, while street children and those from marginalized communities often find themselves in more perilous situations. These “worst forms of child labor” encompass activities like forced labor, involvement in the drug trade, begging under coercion and engagement in prostitution.
Ongoing Efforts and Solutions
One way to tackle child poverty in Azerbaijan is through education, and the country has made remarkable progress in this field in recent years, with its public spending on education increasing by more than 5% since 2018.
The 2022 update of the human capital index even recognized Azerbaijan as one of the top 10 global improvers with respect to progress in health and education between 2010 and 2020. Still, there are vast differences between the quality of schooling for children in and out of poverty. Standardized testing shows that students from wealthier families scored 96 points – the equivalent of three school years – above students from poorer families. There was also a divide seen between urban and rural areas, where rural students scored 48 points lower on average. To target these inequalities, there is a need for Azerbaijan to continue to invest in educational access, particularly in poorer regions.
One NGO making strides in tackling child poverty with education is United Aid for Azerbaijan (UAFA). Founded in 1988 with a goal to ‘aid long-term development of life in Azerbaijan, with particular focus on children, health and education’, the organization now operates from 21 different regions of the country and has helped more than 13,000 children by developing social services for those in need of special protection and reducing the number of young people in state care. The country has also seen support from other organizations such as the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which rehabilitated and furnished 33 schools across Azerbaijan between 2021 and 2022.
Looking Ahead
While there are still significant issues with child poverty in Azerbaijan, the country has also seen significant improvements. UNICEF reports that in the last two decades, child mortality rates have fallen (going from 54.172 to 18.746), poverty rates have drastically decreased as a whole and primary school enrolment has improved. As Azerbaijan’s economy expands, the country could also benefit from increasing its investment in the nation’s most promising asset – its youth. This commitment is crucial to continually improving the quality of life for all young individuals who require support.
– Jodie Donovan
Photo: Flickr
The Hanging Library Tackles Child Illiteracy in Nigeria
In January 2023, Cristian Munduate, UNICEF Nigeria representative, made a statement highlighting that, in Nigeria, “75% of children aged 7-14 years cannot read a simple sentence or solve a simple math problem.” Education quality, literacy and school attendance is one of the ongoing struggles in Nigeria, preventing many young children from acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills to find employment and lift themselves out of poverty. While primary education is officially free and mandatory for children, the reality vastly differs. Only 61% of children under 11 regularly attend school at the primary level, and in the northern states of Nigeria, the general net school attendance rate is just 53%. Due to low literacy rates in the country, efforts are underway to improve illiteracy in Nigeria.
About Illiteracy in Nigeria
There are a variety of factors that prevent children from receiving quality education. For instance, in the northern states where the education is predominantly Qur’anic, religious educators do not teach foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Additionally, cultural/societal norms discourage girls’ formal education. In addition, in states such as Borno, Yobe and Adamawa, which are experiencing conflict, classrooms have faced destruction and schools remain shut.
At a literacy conference in 2018, Minister of Education Mallam Adamu Adamu highlighted his view that illiteracy in Nigeria is responsible for “rising incidence of drug abuse, juvenile delinquency, examination malpractice, cultism, armed robbery, human trafficking, kidnapping, communal clashes and terrorism.”
In Nigeria, a literacy gap exists between genders and between urban and rural locations, highlighting the socioeconomic norms that prevent access to quality education from being a universal right for children across the nation. Notably, in 2018, the literacy rate for males in urban areas stood at 86.4% whereas the rate for females in rural areas stood at 35.4%, according to a publication by the Federation of American Women’s Clubs Overseas (FAWCO).
The Hanging Library from the Neo Child Initiative
The Hanging Library, a project started in 2017 by the nonprofit The Neo Child Initiative, is an example of a creative method to facilitate and encourage reading among Nigerian children, helping reduce illiteracy in Nigeria and improve school attendance.
The project entails utilizing unused fabric to create a “handmade library” that looks like a hanging shoe rack nailed to a wall. The rack holds up to 50 books. The materials come from donations from volunteers and a book drive. So far, the initiative has established 50 hanging libraries and provided schools with more than 5,000 books in six states in Nigeria.
The founders of the project understood that, with more than half of the country’s population living on less than $2 per day, there is very little disposable income available for books and educational materials. By increasing children’s access to books, the organization hopes that literacy levels can start to improve across the board and children can gain exposure to a more expansive worldview.
The Benefits of Literacy
Even on a local level, improved literacy and better education quality will have profound effects on the future of Nigerian children. An undeniable necessity for employment, heightened literacy will help youths participate in the global knowledge economy and provide them with the skills to make calculated decisions in their daily life and to lift themselves out of poverty.
Furthermore, encouraging reading and high literacy from a young age will have generational impacts. Children who grow up reading will prioritize education over labor for their own children, creating a positive cycle and also enabling the parents to engage and help their children with schoolwork.
– Eleanor Moseley
Photo: Flickr
A Look at The Top 7 Diseases in Nepal
Top 7 Diseases in Nepal
Conclusion
For each of Nepal’s most prevalent diseases, their fatality levels have decreased substantially over the last 15 years. This is in large part due to the work of NGOs and nonprofit organizations such as USAID and WHO helping to improve levels of malnutrition and standards of WASH. USAID is currently working with the Government of Nepal to improve the country’s public health services, providing critical care to Nepal’s poorest and most vulnerable. Yet communicable and preventable diseases in Nepal continue to be a leading cause of death, and more work needs to be done to ensure these numbers continue to improve.
– Eleanor Lomas
Photo: Unsplash
Strengthening Education in Colombia
Colombia, located at the northernmost end of South America, has recently become an emerging power among second-world countries. Despite its prominent role in global trade and growing economy, some sectors of Colombia are lagging behind this development. In particular, strengthening education in Colombia is important because the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) suggests that more than 70% of 15-year-olds in Colombia lack basic literacy and numeracy.
Due to Colombia’s lack of emphasis on education, students often redo classes, and some even fail to enroll in school at all. In fact, according to World Education in 2018, the percentage of enrollments stood at only 42.5% for incoming high school students. Additionally, the number of students who had repeated at least one grade increased from 38% to 43% between 2009 and 2015. Out-of-school children are more susceptible to gang recruitment, drugs and teen pregnancies. Additionally, a lack of education ultimately ensures individuals remain stuck in cycles of poverty. In fact, the government statistics agency DANE highlights that about 19.6 million Colombians out of a general population of 50 million endured conditions of poverty by the close of 2021 while extreme poverty affected 6.1 million Colombians.
Strengthening Education in Colombia
In 2016, Andreas Schleicher, the director for Education and Skills at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), presented a report in Barranquilla with Colombia’s Minister of Education about education in Colombia. The report said, “As Colombia enters the global economy, its educational success will be measured by boosting national standards so that Colombian children match up to children around the world.”
The government of Colombia developed the Everyone Learns education program in 2012, targeting “elementary students in public schools in the poorest areas of the country.” This program, led by education minister Maria Fernanda Campo, focuses on math and language and has positively impacted more than 2.4 million students. The whole premise of this program is to hire some of the country’s most renowned teachers to teach in low-income areas of the country. This provides a better quality of teaching in necessary classes, including math, reading and language.
Drawing Inspiration from Others
Many impoverished children in Colombia are unable to attend school because they lack proper uniforms, books and supplies, which diminishes their opportunity to rise out of poverty. Local government funds or loans should be made available to low-income families so they can buy their children the necessary school supplies. Colombia can look to Brazil for inspiration. For example, in Brazil, the program known as Bolsa Família helps provide school supplies, clothing and shoes to lower-income families so their children can regularly attend classes. As a result, the enrollment rate in Brazilian schools increased significantly. In fact, in grades one to four, enrollment rates increased by 2.8% in the initial year and by about 5.5% after three years.
Another initiative Colombia could draw inspiration from is the Programa Nacional de Becas y Crédito Educativo in Peru. This program administers scholarships and education credits to students in poverty. Established in 2016, the program has had a positive impact on students. For the thousands of Colombians who lack the financial means to pursue education, following these programs could prove essential. By increasing the quality of teaching and making schooling affordable to students across the country, Colombia could see enrollment rates spike and tremendous motivation from students. More resources should be allocated to early childhood education to raise education outcomes and ensure that all students have a fair chance of success.
Although strengthening education in Colombia is no easy feat, with strong programs in place, the country can start reversing the negative trends in the education system. To make a real difference, though, Colombia needs to focus future efforts on solving issues that make it challenging for families to enroll their children in schools.
– Neil Chandran
Photo: Flickr
Ensuring Secure Land Rights for Women Alleviates Poverty
Land ownership plays an important role in the fight against global poverty. Secure land rights for women living in poverty allows them to live a more “healthy, safe and productive life,” according to the World Bank. According to the United Nations (U.N.), more than 380 million women and girls lived in extreme poverty in 2022 with projections of more women living in extreme poverty by 2030 than present-day if current trends continue in sub-Saharan Africa. Women need direct access to land for “gender equality, food security, health, family welfare, protection from sexual violence and other forms of physical abuse,” the World Bank stresses. The risk of women facing domestic violence decreases eight times when women have land ownership rights.
Benefits of Secure Land Rights for Women
As of 2023, according to the U.N., women account for only “one in five landholders” worldwide despite making up 43% of global agricultural workers and producing “80% of food in developing countries.” In some countries where women lack secure land rights, when women become widows, their inlaws may force them off their husband’s property/land, leaving them without arable land from which to derive income and sustenance for themselves and their children, the U.N. explains. More than 100 countries continue to deny the right for women to inherit their husband’s property. Secure land rights for women increase economic empowerment and food security, mitigating multi-dimensional and fiscal poverty in the developing world.
Women’s Land Rights and its Impact on Children
Women’s land rights have a significant impact on children’s quality of life by strengthening food security, health and welfare and education. In developing nations where women cannot be title holders of land, many mothers cannot afford to send their children to school due to low household incomes.
The U.N. highlights that by empowering women through land rights, household nutrition can improve due to access to agricultural produce available for both sustenance and income. In fact, children would face a 33% lower risk of being severely underweight if women had stronger property and inheritance rights. Furthermore, women tend to prioritize the well-being of their families in their choices both nutritionally and generally.
Women’s Land Rights and Productivity
Secure land rights for women also help alleviate global poverty by increasing productivity. This is visible in Tanzania, where as of 2023, more than 80% of women are engaged in the agricultural industry. In Tanzania, women with stronger land rights earn up to 3.8 times more income and are more inclined to have their own personal savings. According to the U.N., global hunger would decrease by 17% (equating to about 150 million people) if “women had the same access to productive resources as men” to rise out of poverty and achieve economic independence.
The U.N. reports that, through traditional knowledge, women are able to “find innovative solutions to address desertification, land degradation and drought.” This is visible in areas such as Jordan, where a women-run plant nursery began with the aim of producing drought-resistant seedlings for land restoration.
Examples of Progress in Securing Women’s Land Rights
In 1956, the government of India created the Hindu Succession Act to give equal inheritance rights to both sons and daughters. Amended in 2005, the act explicitly gives daughters rights to their parents’ land and property. However, a 2013 U.N. Women’s survey found that one in four women did not know they had any right to inherit family land with just one in eight women inheriting parts of their family land. Furthermore, the study also found that fears of creating conflict in the family held women back from claiming their rightful share of land.
The Landesa’s Girl Project, run by Landesa, an organization dedicated to securing land rights for millions of families, collaborated with the Indian government in 2010, in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, to educate children both girls and boys about women’s land rights, helping to close the gap between policy and practice. The initiative has enabled women to improve their socio-economic prospects through better awareness and access to information about their right to ownership of land.
In Sierra Leone, ownership of land for women is an economic resource as women depend on the land for their livelihood and subsistence. Lack of ownership limits their economic opportunities and leaves them vulnerable to displacement, violence and extreme poverty. The introduction of the Customary Land Act and the Land Commission Act in 2022 has helped promote gender equality throughout Sierra Leone. The Customary Land Act has meant that the liquidation of family-owned land requires both the consent of the husband and wife.
Moreover, in Sierra Leone, the National Land Commission Act mandates the formation of a committee to regulate land administration, stipulating that a minimum of 30% of the committee members must be women. This provision aims to empower women and enhance their rights and control over land.
Secure land rights for women help alleviate global poverty, which is why SDG 5 (the goal to reduce gender inequality) and SDG 1 (the aim to eradicate poverty) go hand-in-hand.
– Kishan Patel
Photo: Flickr
Addressing Malnutrition and the Poverty Trap
Since 1997, HIV/AIDS has cut five years off the life-expectancy of sub-Saharan Africans, and a 2004 study found that a small-scale farming family in Kenya could expect a 57% drop in crop productivity if the male head of their household died. The burden of illness imposed by tsetse flies (vectors for trypanosomiasis, or “African Sleeping Sickness”) has historically slowed the adoption of animal husbandry practices, and therefore agricultural productivity, in the areas of Africa where they are most abundant. Entire developing nations could expect a 2% to 7% drop in GDP because of iron-deficient anemia in their citizens, according to a 2005 U.N. Millennium Project Report. In 2018, malaria by itself was capable of draining roughly $12 billion from Africa’s GDP.
Malnutrition Fuels the Poverty Trap
Extreme poverty also pushes individuals into the path of multiple illnesses, and the malnutrition that so often attends poverty enthusiastically helps this process along. Malaria, measles or acute respiratory infections kill about 1 million children per year. That is more than one every 30 seconds, and the death rate is much higher among malnourished children. It can significantly impair the immune system’s ability to fight infection, an especially severe burden for those living with chronic parasite infections, which often require immune repair of tissue damage caused by the parasites. Malnourishment can also stunt the growth of fetuses, and make them more vulnerable to neonatal death from sepsis and diarrhea.
Multiple Traps
One can easily grasp this particular trap – the circular progression from poverty to malnutrition to disease and back again. One seems to flow naturally from the other. Interrupting the process is not so intuitive, and unfortunately, it is not as simple as just giving people more food. Even when people start to receive adequate nutrition, they still must deal with some biological ironies. In the case of parasites, better nutrition benefits them as much as it does their hosts, and a better-fed community fosters parasite reproduction as much as it does immunity, the former possibly outpacing the latter. The symptoms of schistosomiasis, a disease of parasitized blood, present as runaway inflammation, an immune overreaction that actually thrives on a well-nourished body.
The agricultural systems needed for better nourishment also present their own ironies, because they impose new infrastructure upon the natural environment, with repercussions that can restrain the disease-poverty cycle with one hand and unleash it with the other.
A good illustration of this is how agriculture changes the use of freshwater. The conversion of wetlands into orchards helped eradicate schistosomiasis in Japan, and the drainage of wetlands was an integral and successful component of malaria control in turn-of-the-century America. However, Egypt’s construction of the Aswan High Dam and irrigation network between 1960 and 1970 helped incubate a larger population of mosquitoes, mosquitoes capable of spreading lymphatic filariasis, an illness also known as human elephantiasis that disfigures those it infects by inhibiting the drainage of lymphatic fluid. A 1999 study showed Ethiopia experienced seven times as much malaria after the construction of dams and irrigation.
Multiple Solutions
After successfully reaching its Millennium Development Goal of cutting the number of people living in extreme poverty in half by 2015, the U.N. set its sights on achieving “sustainable development,” with significant implications for finally smashing the poverty trap. Sustainable development entails not only investing in agriculture and increasing access to food but also fostering a food infrastructure that both relieves micronutrient deficiencies (the most common variety of malnutrition) and provides the necessary infrastructure for education and sanitation.
According to a 2019 paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, there was a 37% difference in child mortality and a 20% difference in malnutrition between the richest and poorest among 43 developing countries that received safe water and sanitation. Some solutions can outsmart the poverty trap at its own game, creating cyclical, mutually reinforcing benefits. For instance, investment in education and health literacy can reduce the occurrence of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), and directly investing in the control of NTDs at $3.50 per child can in effect give them an entire extra year of education.
Fortunately, there are several ways that the developed world can address the challenges associated with poverty and work toward sustainable development. By maintaining a strong commitment to sustainable development goals and keeping the complex issues faced by millions in mind, there is hope for a future where hunger, illness and poverty are not inextricably linked. This collective effort can help break the cycle of poverty and create global conditions that prevent its return.
– John Merino
Photo: Flickr
5 Poverty-Fighting NGOs in Mali
5 NGOs in Mali
Prospects for the Future
While Mali’s situation might be worsening, the actions of the aforementioned NGOs prove that localized success is possible and that the fight to end poverty is not a lost cause. In the despair of poverty, these NGOs bring hope to those most in need.
– Daniel Pereda
Photo: Flickr