Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Potential Hope for Myanmar: Will the IDA Offer Aid?

Myanmar
Earlier this summer, the state counsellor and minister for foreign affairs  (also a Nobel Peace Prize winner) of Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, spoke at the opening ceremony of an International Development Association (IDA) meeting held in Myanmar to spread awareness about conditions in her country.

IDA is a sector of the World Bank that aims to assist the world’s poorest nations. IDA is currently working towards a triannual replenishment initiative and Myanmar is one of the possible recipients. The recent meeting was the second of four talks about the replenishment plan in 2016.

While the meeting was held in a more urban area of the country, Suu Kyi urged attendees to consider sending aid to the rural villages of her country. According to Suu Kyi, these areas suffer from a lack of electricity, hunger, poor education, and a lack of jobs.

She told her audience, “We would like to work together with you to lift our people…out of a situation where they are dependent either on other institutions or on other people to survive. We want our people to feel that they are capable of carving out their own destiny.” While Myanmar has already received financial report from IDA, the country hopes to receive greater aid in the future.

While speaking, Suu Kyi organized her points to fit with the numerous themes of the meeting. She worked to highlight how each theme would impact the small nation. She also shared that two of the nation’s current goals include working towards national reconciliation and internal peace.

Suu Kyi does not wish to take aid away from other countries that may need it as much, if not more, than Myanmar, and acknowledges that she knows many other nations working towards development too.

She believes that Myanmar needs more material and logistical support from the IDA to address some of the current issues plaguing the country. In the words of Suu Kyi, “ending poverty is a difficult task, and we all have to join in.” Suu Kyi supports Myanmar, now it’s up to the IDA if they do too.

– Carrie Robinson

Photo: Flickr

China’s Free Technical Training to Reduce Poverty

Technical Training

Although China has experienced an annual GDP growth rate of 10 percent since the 1970s and lifted 800 million citizens out of poverty, 82 million of its rural poor continue to live on less than $1 a day. In an effort to combat poverty, the Chinese government has launched a free technical training program for the rural poor.

According to ONE, a poverty campaign organization, millions of people fail to escape the cycle of poverty because they do not have access to quality education. More specifically, currently, 59 million children of primary school age do not attend school. Though governments provide free public education programs, many families living in poverty send their children to work or have them help out at home.

In China, only 40 percent of rural students attend high school because they cannot afford the tuition, uniforms and other costs. Many students also drop out in middle school to work and help support their struggling families. By the time they are of college age, only five percent of rural students remain in the education system.

There are resource disparities between rural and urban students that have contributed to these statistics. Urban students have access to newer technology and well-qualified educators who teach them English, reading, math and sciences in state-of-the-art classrooms. Meanwhile, the rural poor learn from under-resourced teachers in crowded rooms.

Uneducated individuals living below the poverty line mostly participate in non-formal economies as self-employed entrepreneurs. Two-thirds of the Chinese rural population work in the farming, forestry and fishing industries, which make up 40 percent of all employment in China.

Providing technical and vocational education to the rural poor through China’s free program provides the necessary skills to access better career opportunities.

An estimated 1,000 Chinese schools will provide free technical training to impoverished rural communities over the next four years. Project participants will also receive a yearly subsidy of $450 from the government poverty relief fund.

“Anyone who is able to work from a poverty-stricken area can receive training,” the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development announced. The two institutions urge local governments to implement subsidies, provide fee exemptions and implement other policies to encourage students to pursue education.

– Ashley Leon

Photo: Flickr

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Buffett Donates $2.2 Billion to Gates Foundation

Gates Foundation
This year, as part of his annual pledge to eventually contribute 500 million shares of the Berkshire Hathaway Inc to the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, Warren Buffett recently donated nearly $2.2 billion worth of class B stocks in support of improving global health and embarking on a new challenge to assist U.S. education.

In 2010, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett created the Giving Pledge, which rallied the world’s billionaires to donate at least half of their fortunes to charity. Since the pledge has been put into place, 154 affluent individuals have made the oath.

Gates acknowledges the possibility of failure in some projects, but remains optimistic, stating “we not only accept that [projects will fail] we expect it—because we think an essential role of philanthropy is to make bets on promising solutions that governments and businesses can’t afford to make.”

Bill and Melinda Gates are both optimistic about the future of the Foundation, which is aimed at alleviating extreme poverty and poor health in developing countries in addition to improving the failure of America’s education system.

According to a SEC document filed on Thursday, July 13, 2015, Buffett donated 14,968,423 shares of Class B Common Stock valued at $145.93 per share to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Buffett also donated 1,047,785 shares of Class B Common Stock to foundations owned by his three children: the Sherwood Foundation, the Howard G. Buffett Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.

Warren Buffett believes philanthropy is associated with taking risks and remains steadfast and patient whenever Berkshire investments bear no fruit. “If you succeed in everything you’re doing in charity, you’re attempting things that are too easy,” Warren Buffett declared in 2011.

The philanthropist also donated $215 million worth of stocks to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, which is named after his late wife. The main objective of the Susan Thompson Buffett foundation is to provide scholarships for eligible recipients within the Nebraska region on a competitive basis.

Buffett has vowed to give away 99 percent of his wealth in support of charitable causes and innovative solutions to end global poverty. After over 10 years of donating to the Gates foundation as well as other nonprofit organizations, Buffett’s fortune is now estimated at approximately $65.6 billion.

Buffett’s recent donation to the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, when added to the other donations made over his lifetime, brings his total donations to more than $28.5 billion.

– Shanique Wright

Photo: Finance Buzz

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Domestic Workers in Mexico: Accessing Education

Domestic Workers
Teresa Ramirez Murillo was born in the Mexican state of Guanajuato in the 1960s. Ramirez grew up on a farm where she helped her family grow and harvest corn and beans. Most of the farm produce was used to feed the family of nine and the little that was left over was sold for minimal profit. Ramirez says life in the countryside was hard and the land “gave you very little for all you put in.”

One Woman’s Quest for Education

Given the lack of opportunity and the preponderance of low-paying jobs in rural Mexico, Ramirez left her hometown when she was 11 to go work in Mexico City as a domestic worker. Ramirez claims this was a very good decision, as it allowed her to send remittances back to her parents that helped them pay for much needed medical services, medicines, clothes and food.

Furthermore, Ramirez believes she would be lost in the world if she had not gotten out of rural Guanajuato, since she would never have attained the standard of living and the skills she has today.

Through her job as a domestic worker, Ramirez was allowed to continue her elementary school education as an adult. During the time she worked for an American family in Mexico City, she was not only allowed but encouraged to go back to school after work. Ramirez was able to complete elementary school up to the third grade before the night school for adults she attended closed. After this, she did not return to school and as time went by, she began to feel that the opportunity had passed.

Ramirez’s deep love of school and passion for mathematics inspired her determination to give her children a full education. She used the money she earned as a domestic worker to give her three sons an education that would let them “do something with their lives.”

Today, Ramirez’ three sons are very accomplished young men. Ricardo Ramirez, the oldest, finished his university degree in accounting and is currently completing his masters in business administration.

Her youngest son follows in Ricardo’s footsteps and the middle son prepares to enter university to become a defense attorney. Ramirez’s sons have accomplished what she could never have dreamed of as a child in Guanajuato, and she is very proud that her domestic worker job could provide and finance her children’s education.

For Ramirez, working as a domestic worker allowed her family to make the transition from poverty to lower middle class and created the groundwork for future generations to begin life in a higher rung of society. As such, every subsequent generation of her family can continue to rise as their parents are given better and better opportunities.

Ramirez was very lucky that the families she worked for were respectful, fair and always paid for the work Ramirez did accordingly. This is not the case for many domestic workers in Mexico.

The Domestic Worker’s Plight

According to Mexico’s national statistics, there are 2.3 million paid domestic workers in Mexico, of which a vast 95% are women. There is also an unknown number of women working as domestic workers in the informal sector.

Whether working in the informal sector or not, many domestic workers in Mexico face sexual and physical abuse and unfair work conditions. The Guardian reports there are usually no employment contracts so domestic workers have no guaranteed fair pay and their employers take advantage by paying very low wages.

For a long time, no domestic workers’ union existed so women had no one to defend their rights or pursue cases of abuse; domestic workers in Mexico were entirely alone.

At the end of 2015 domestic workers decided they were fed up being treated as less than human and formed the first National Union of Domestic Workers (Sinactraho). General secretary of the Union, Marta Leal-Morales, told the BBC, “this union would be to defend the rights of domestic workers, so they could have a better quality of life.” The purpose of the union is to ensure that Ramirez’ positive experience as a domestic worker becomes the rule rather than the exception. Most domestic workers in Mexico want it to be a right, not a matter of luck, to benefit from their work.

Hopefully, the Union will bring the shift to domestic work becoming a transition job that allows families to cross the bridge out of poverty and move forward toward a better life for themselves and future generations.

– Christina Egerstrom

Photo: New Statesman

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Six Facts About Poverty in Serbia

Poverty in Serbia
In recent years, poverty in Serbia affected astounding rates of unemployment despite reasonably high levels of development. The country faces unique geographic and economic difficulties that make poverty reduction especially difficult.

Top Six Facts about Poverty in Serbia:

  1. One in four people in Serbia lives below the poverty line, making it the poorest country in Europe. However, poverty statistics alone do little to illustrate Serbia’s complex problems that make destitution so prevalent. Many external and internal factors, some of which are uncontrollable, heavily contribute to poverty in Serbia.
  2. In 2014, Serbia’s population and economy took a massive hit. In May of that year, flooding caused serious damage within Serbia — many towns were destroyed and thousands of people displaced. The Serbian government estimated the total damage at 1.5 billion euros. The GDP growth rate decreased 4.4% to an alarming negative 1.8%. While those numbers have since begun to increase, there’s no getting around that such a devastating event will take years to recover from.
  3. The areas hit hardest by the natural disaster — small southern towns and rural regions — had the highest incidence of poverty before the flood. These areas are dependent on smallholder farming and often have less access to education than major cities. In 2014, the southeastern region of Serbia had poverty rates close to four times higher than those in Belgrade, the nation’s capital city.
  4. Unemployment remains a huge problem in Serbia, with a reported 1 in 5 people unemployed and half of the country’s youths jobless. The United Nation’s report suggests that much of the potential workforce is unequipped to participate in the economy due to a lack of education.
  5. Despite persistently high rates of corruption in the entire Balkan Peninsula, Freedom House has rated Serbia a highly democratic and free nation, which gives hope for the future. As a result of the improvements made by the government to encourage democracy and freedom, Serbia has begun negotiations to join the European Union. Membership to the E.U. is a major developmental goal for the Serbian coalition government.
  6. Even though Serbia recently faced a massive economic setback, The World Bank has a positive outlook for the nation’s economy. Likewise, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) sees the current government as demonstrating a strong commitment to economic transformation to eliminate poverty in Serbia.

These six facts about poverty in Serbia are not exhaustive, nor are they a tell-all of the conditions within the Balkan country. Even with relatively little aid from international groups and extremely costly natural disasters, Serbia has shown some real progress in recent political and economic development. Joining the E.U. may give the Serbian government the resources it needs to adequately address issues of poverty and unemployment.

– John English

Photo: Flickr

The World Bank: Alleviating Poverty in Cameroon

Poverty in Cameroon
Cameroon is a low-middle income country located in Central Africa. Although the country’s GDP growth has accelerated to 6.2%, poverty in Cameroon has hardly decreased since 2001. Complications with fiscal debt and fragile political conditions have put Cameroon in an immensely difficult position.

Growing regional disparities have also created challenges for Cameroon. Northern regions of Cameroon are often characterized by high poverty rates, malnutrition and food insecurity. These areas also have limited access to healthcare, education and clean water. Rural poverty in Cameroon is up to 72% and 55.8% of poor households are located in rural, northern areas.

Over the past decade, the World Bank has implemented various programs to improve conditions and poverty in Cameroon. Listed below are the results of World Bank projects that have increased GDP, provided safer health care and improved the lives of thousands of Cameroonians.

The Programs

Agricultural Competitiveness Project

The project was launched in 2010 to increase agricultural productivity. Focuses were placed on the development of rural infrastructure, investment in value chains, as well as production of broiler and pork meat.

  • Crop yields for rice, maize and plantain increased by 16, 98 and 220% (respectively).
  • Production of broiler meat doubled.
  • Average annual pig and poultry live weight increased by 122 and 257% (respectively).
  • Egg production increased by 141%.

Cameroon Health Project

The ongoing project focuses on maternal and child health, in addition to the prevention of transmissible diseases. The project covers six million people in 44 health districts.

  • The proportion of fully vaccinated children doubled.
  • The assisted birth rate increased by 20%.
  • The proportion of health facilities attaining a 75% average score on the quality index of service has increased from 9.3 to 71.6% since 2012.

Community Development Program Support Project II

The project, launched in 2009, aimed to improve the delivery of basic services in target communes and support decentralization.

  • Over 90% of participating communes benefitted from project grants.
  • In urban areas, 400,000 more people have access to all-season roads.
  • Nearly 530,000 more people benefit from appropriate drainage.
  • Over 1.5 million more people have access to improved water sources.

A Brighter Future

As Cameroon moves forward, a developmental focus will be placed on achieving GDP growth in a fiscally responsible way and to equitably translate that growth into poverty reduction. By reducing poverty, particularly in the rural regions of northern Cameroon, the country will be able to improve conditions and promote positive domestic growth.

In order to directly combat rural poverty, the World Bank is implementing the Social Safety Nets Project. The fund program will reach 65,000 households in five of the poorest regions of Cameroon. Over a two-year period, participating households will receive $1,400 every two months and partial public works employment. Additionally, participants will receive training to improve their health, nutrition, education and skills.

With the help of the World Bank, poverty in Cameroon will be cut faster and some of the poorest families in the country will have the capability to invest in a brighter future for their children.

– Kristyn Rohrer

Photo: Doculab

Economic Stability Would Reduce Poverty In Seychelles

Poverty In Seychelles
Since gaining its independence from Great Britain in 1976, the Republic of Seychelles has made tremendous strides in its social, political and economic sectors. However, poverty in Seychelles still remains a major concern.

The Republic of Seychelles is an archipelago located in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa. The country consists of a total of 115 islands, with only ten currently inhabited.

Of the country’s 86,000 inhabitants, 39.3 percent of the citizens are estimated to live below the poverty line. Data gathered by both Rural Poverty Portal and CNN report that economic issues have directly resulted in perpetuating poverty in Seychelles.

Seychelles’ economy is described as being rather unpredictable as it heavily relies on two major industries: tourism and fishing. While both industries provided sustainable income in the past, geographical obstacles and recent climate change threaten future sustainability.

The geography of Seychelles makes trade and export particularly difficult since all products must be either shipped or flown to and from the island. Additionally, the distance that Seychelles has from markets in Asia and the Pacific forces the country to pay high insurance and tariff fees for goods imported into the island. This disadvantage resulted in an increase in fuel and food prices, leaving many citizens at an economic disadvantage.

Likewise, geographic location makes it susceptible to piracy, which often results in financial blows to tourism and fishing. For instance, CNN states that piracy damages the fishing industry by forcing the government of Seychelles to restrict fishermen from sailing beyond specific perimeters off the coast. These governmental restrictions have lead to overfishing and competition between local fishermen.

In addition, recent climate change negatively affected the economic stability of Seychelles. Climate change has made weather patterns increasingly unpredictable — a lack of foresight that disrupts the productivity of Seychelles local farmers.

In regards to climate change, the Ambassador for Climate Change and Small Island Developing State Issues of the Republic of Seychelles, Ronald Jumeau, states that “[Climate change] affects the rains. The drought is getting longer. The rainy season is getting shorter. We’re getting the same amount of rain in less time, which creates landslides in the hills, and that sort of thing.”

Additionally, there is hope for those who are suffering from poverty in Seychelles. The country’s government has taken small steps in reducing poverty by tackling climate change and improving economic flaws.

In recent years, government officials in Seychelles have taken major efforts to combat climate change by legally protecting half of the country’s land area from further human development. In addition, Seychelles committed itself to ending piracy through the signing of anti-piracy laws with the EU, as well as tax exchange agreements with The Isle of Man. Both decisions shall benefit Seychelles and improve the country’s economic relations.

Regardless of these improvements, the government still has a plethora of work to do to completely eradicate poverty in Seychelles.

Teamwork is essential to positive change, and this small country could experience a massive decline in poverty if those dedicated to eradicating global poverty and significant figures in the government of Seychelles collaborated with one another to combat economic and environmental issues.

– Shannon N. Warren

Photo: Flickr

5 Facts About Hunger in Burundi

Hunger in Burundi
A decade of social and political conflict has left Burundi, a landlocked country in east-central Africa, facing increasing levels of food insecurity. With a dense population of 11.8 million people, many citizens are facing poverty and malnutrition: Burundi is considered to be in the ninth-worst food security crisis in the world. Here are 5 facts regarding the situation of hunger in Burundi.

5 Facts About Hunger in Burundi

  1. Burundi is ranked as one of the poorest countries in the world. As of 2019, more than 65% of Burundians live below the poverty line. More than 50% are chronically hungry, and the total annual production of food in Burundi would only cover 55 days per person per year.
  2. Burundian citizens rely on agriculture. About 80% rely on farming to meet their food needs. Due to the average of 248 people per square mile in Burundi and the annual 3% increase in population, the amount of farming land available is extremely limited, reducing the total capacity of food production.
  3. Only 1/3 of Burundian children complete middle school. Children in poverty are often taken out of school to work in the fields, which perpetuates the cycle of under-education and poverty. The World Food Program is working to support schoolchildren by providing them with meals, their program reaching about 600,000 children every day to help ensure that they stay in the classroom.
  4.  The World Food Program is helping to support farmers in Burundi. The World Food Program has been working since 1968 to combat hunger in Burundi, which includes supporting smallholder farmers. The program works to build systems that combine smallholders’ produce and improve food management after harvest.
  5. The Terintambwe ‘Take a Step Forward’ program has been working to combat hunger and poverty in Burundi. This program, which focuses on providing skills training, income support and capital transfers to help participants start their own small businesses, is working to improve lives in Burundi. According to a report by the Global Hunger Index, the number of adult participants eating only one meal a day at baseline dropped from 81% at the beginning of the program to 8% at the end of the program.

Burundian citizens suffering from poverty and hunger are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance. Organizations such as the World Food Program and the Terintambwe ‘Take a Step Forward’ program are working to reduce hunger in Burundi, and both seek out voluntary donations to fund their programs. Support of governmental institutions in Burundi such as the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, Ministry of National Solidarity and the Ministry of Gender are also essential to reducing hunger in Burundi. With these steps in place, the work to improve the lives of Burundian citizens can begin.

– Ayesha Asad
Photo: FreeImages

Talking About Poverty: What is the Definition of Global Poverty?

Global Poverty Definition
How does one define global poverty? The term is often used in news programs detailing hunger and disease in third-world countries, but what exactly does living in poverty mean?

Merriam-Webster defines poverty as, “The state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions.” Based on this definition, the true definition of poverty actually varies from country to country, from city to city, and from town to town based on socially constructed benchmarks for wealth.

Statisticians in the United States and India describe living on less than $1.90 a day (which approximately 702 million people worldwide do) as “extreme poverty.”

Other statisticians prefer to also factor access to health care, education, clean water, and food when assessing global poverty rates. In particular, lack of access to clean water and food are seen as primary symptoms of poverty in developing countries.

Again, this lack of access is seen as a symptom of poverty in relation to the United States and other first-world countries, where access to freshwater and food is a comprehensive widespread system across the nation.

 

Current State of Global Poverty

 

Currently, 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to clean drinking water. The population of the United States was 319 million people in 2014, where a family of four has the ability to use up to 400 gallons of water each day.

Furthermore, around 27 percent of all children in developing countries are classified as underweight or stunted as a result of living in poverty. Being underweight and stunted growth is particularly prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia.

Global poverty still proves to be difficult to quantify without comparing living standards between countries. However, it’s important to note that poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa can look vastly different from extreme poverty in the United States. Developed countries typically have more safety nets and welfare structures in place to assist their poor while developing countries continue to struggle to support large quantities of impoverished citizens. Thus, while it’s important to prioritize domestic poverty in the U.S., it’s equally important to prioritize the world’s poor who live in worse living conditions.

– Bayley McComb

Photo: Flickr

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Humanitarian Aid is Effective in Combatting ISIS

Combatting ISISISIS recruits much of its membership in the states where it operates. With the increased debate on why this is an occurrence, providing aid to refugees is effective in combatting ISIS because it decreases the chances of them joining the faction.

In an interview with the Daily Beast’s Michael Weiss, Abu Khaled, an Islamic State defector, calls his organization “a welfare state” because it pays for housing and childcare for fighters and residents alike.

Khaled is alarmingly correct. A 2015 Quantum study found that 12% of surveyed ISIS and surrounding extremist group members joined their entities because of money. The report explains that the same militants who fight for their fortunes are from Syria and Iraq.

As monetary compensation is used as a tool to convert impoverished locals into extremists, humanitarian aid is effective in combating ISIS and other extremist groups. However, the U.N.’s budget for Syrian refugees is 65% short of what is required to provide adequate assistance.

Failing to give substantial support to those who need it most explains why many turn to ISIS. Out of all the people who stayed in Syria, 10 million of them have an insufficient food supply. Joining ISIS is a choice of survival when it is the only way to accommodate hunger.

When developed countries give aid to these countries’ refugees, it reduces the need to choose jihad over starvation. The financial factor of pursuing terrorism diminishes when food is on the plates of 10 million starving Syrians.

Appealing to the poor is not a new tactic of radicalism. The ETA, a Basque nationalist group, grew its membership among lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

While poverty is not the only source of extremism, policymakers widely accept it as a valid component. Even U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledges it as “a root cause of terrorism.” Humanitarian efforts by the U.N. are stagnant, but the United States is leading the world in giving to Syrian refugees, providing $419 million in additional aid.

Despite more funding being present, America alone cannot endure success in alleviating Syria’s poverty and combatting ISIS. Foreign policy expert Helen Milner of Princeton University writes that there is “support for the hypothesis that multilateral aid is preferred to bilateral.” Most respondents also classified multilateral aid as the most effective solution.

America has more in its budget than most countries, yet there is still a disparity between the how much the U.S. donates and how much it actually could donate to the Syrian crisis.

Middle Eastern refugees are incentivized to follow the cash flow of prosperity. Western nations can fill the void before ISIS and other extremist groups beat them to it.

– Noah Levy

Photo: Flickr