Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Malnutrition in Guinea

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The small west-African nation of Guinea has one of the lowest life expectancies in the world – just 39 for men and 42 for women. Political instability, ethnic violence and natural disasters all contribute to about 28 percent of the Guinean population’s status as food insecure, according to a 2012 study by the World Food Programme (WFP).

One of the nations affected by the deadly Ebola crisis of late last year, the Center for Disease Control reports that nearly 2,500 Guineans died as a result of the disease.

However, there is a quieter killer claiming countless more lives than were lost in the Ebola epidemic: malnutrition. A supremely young nation wherein 2 of 5 residents are below the age of 15, an estimated 212,569 Guinean children died last year as a result of malnutrition, the WFP found.

UNICEF found that 16 percent of children under the age of 5 were malnourished in 2012, the same year a cholera outbreak seized the Guinean community, infecting 2,000 and killing an estimated 82.

Malnutrition and disease are closely linked, with the U.N.’s Standing Committee on Nutrition asserting malnutrition to be the largest contributor to disease and disability worldwide.

Both HIV and tuberculosis continue to be the leading public health concerns in the region, and given their interconnectivity with malnutrition, especially in the case that the mother is infected and risks transmitting the disease to their children, the U.N. targets this population specifically through specialized parameters included in their Guinea nutrition programme.

The WHO believes malnutrition to be responsible for one-third of of all child deaths, however, it is rarely listed as a cause of death in itself. Inadequate nutrition can weaken the immune system to the point where it’s unable to fight of disease. Consequently, malnutrition plays a role in countless preventable deaths across the globe.

This is why the WFP in 2014 provided 2,400 people with AIDS and TB treatment, while also establishing 141 nutrition centers across country, where Guineans can receive specialized fortified foods called Supercereals, with sugar and enriched vegetable oil.

– Amanda Burke

Sources: WFP 1, CDC, WFP 2, Action Against Hunger, Reliefweb
Photo: Flickr

Maternal Mortality in Sierra Leone

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Sierra Leone, a small country on the West African coast, gained independence from Britain in 1961. Ranked as the least developed country in the world in 2007, poverty and maternal mortality are some of the main problems that Sierra Leone faces today.

As of 2010, Sierra Leone had a maternal mortality rate (MMR) of 857 per 100,000 live births, making it one of the most dangerous countries in the world for women to give birth. This high maternal mortality rate was mainly due to hemorrhages, a cause of 26 percent of maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. Since Sierra Leone only collects annually one-forth of the blood it needs for transfusions, hemorrhages are a major danger during childbirth. Other contributors to the high MMR are obstructed labor, anemia and toxemia during pregnancy.

Approximately 73 percent of births in Sierra Leone occur in rural areas, where access to health care during pregnancy is normally limited and maternal healthcare does not have as many beneficial outcomes compared to healthcare in urban areas. Many women who need cesarean sections do not receive them, due to the fact that even if a birth attendant is present, many birth attendants are actually aides who do not have the qualifications to perform a cesarean section or to do other tasks that are necessary to help the mothers survive.

Maternal mortality is also prevalent because of a lack of sanitation. Traditional practices also play a cause, since many communities choose home-births instead of modern health care facilities.

Another cause of maternal mortality in Sierra Leone is the high rate of adolescent marriages. Forty-four percent of girls in Sierra Leone marry before they reach the age of 18. Adolescents are more likely to suffer during pregnancy and childbirth, as their bodies are normally not developed enough to carry a baby and deliver safely.

Contraceptive use is also not widespread in Sierra Leone, contributing to Sierra Leone’s high MMR. Only about 7 percent of women use contraceptives, leading to a high fertility rate of 5 children per woman. This contributes to more children and more pregnancy related complications.

In 2010, in order to reduce the MMR and the high rate of children’s deaths in Sierra Leone—almost one-third of children died before they reached their fifth birthday as of 2007—the government of Sierra Leone implemented a policy that would provide free healthcare for pregnant and lactating women and for children under the age of five. This policy led to increased amounts of antenatal care visits immediately after it was introduced, but antenatal care visits decreased once again a few months later, and the policy was not as impactful as hoped.

Therefore, despite the 2010 healthcare act, Sierra Leone is still facing high rates of maternal mortality and a high rate of deaths among children under 5. However, there is hope. Thanks to a now thriving mining industry and a GDP that is growing, Sierra Leone’s economy is looking up. Hopefully, these economic benefits can be invested in the healthcare industry and can help contribute to the supplies and care that pregnant women and their children need.

– Ashrita Rau

Sources: The Borgen Project 1, The Borgen Project 2, Amnesty International, UNFPA, WHO 1, WHO 2, The Guardian, ICRW
Photo: Flickr

Internet.org and the Global Internet Dream

Internet.org-Facebook
The promise of the Internet to promote gender equality, health and education in the developing world can be seen as the global internet dream. For the two-thirds of the planet lacking internet access, making this dream a reality is a major challenge moving forward.

Facebook’s internet.org platform has been seen as having the potential to better promote this dream. And though the problem certainly has the potential to greatly improve conditions of connectivity worldwide, a lack of attention to net neutrality and privacy separates that potential from progress and puts users of the platform in danger.

A letter posted to Facebook on May 18 by advocacy group Access Now, and signed by a variety of organizations, criticized the issues and the groups demands.

On issues of net neutrality, the platform has been criticized for the practice of zero-rating, defined in the letter as “the practice by service providers of offering their customers a specific set of services or applications that are free to use without a data plan, or that do not count against existing data caps.”

Zero-rating is an inherent aspect of internet.org’s model. Under this model, certain sites are free after being reviewed by guidelines. Other sites face potentially being routed through internet.org’s proxy server. The server also strips sites of content which violates data use guidelines, which ranges from videos greater than one MB in size to pervasive modern design features such as Javascript.

Along with assisting the platform in zero-rating content creators, the proxy server makes the surveillance and censorship of the platform easier. In an article titled, “Internet.org is Not Neutral, Not Secure, and Not the Internet,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out that HTTPS encryption on sites which run through the proxy server is only possible on the Android version of the service. Though this certainly provides protection to some users, the majority of those that could benefit from using internet.org have basic feature phones, on which Android software is not usable. The May 4 update to the program also prohibits TLS and SSL encryption, according to the letter posted by Access Now.

As a result, oppressive governments will be able to pressure Facebook to provide information about individual users, block web pages and even block users. This lack of security assigns a responsibility to Facebook which endangers users, the letter alleges.

Facebook responded to these concerns in an article titled, “Internet.org: Myths and Facts,” though the response has been seen as inadequate by critics of the platform, with issues of encryption and net neutrality remaining key points of criticism.

The promise of the global internet dream is Facebook’s vision in the creation of internet.org. And though the service currently has the potential to make that dream a reality, greater steps must be taken by all parties involved for the two-thirds of the population for whom that dream matters most.

– Andrew Michaels

Sources: Facebook, Access Now Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet.Org,, Hindustan Times, SiliconBeat
Photo: TNW News

Brothels Bred from the Broke

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In many parts of the world, including the United States, brothels exist. They have astounding symmetry in areas with high rates of  poverty and gender inequality. Workers receive little to no pay. Often former victims of human trafficking and prostitution become brothel owners. Women make up the majority of owners. The end of the road for women and children who have been trafficked for commercial sex purposes is usually a club or brothel.
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Sadly, what many do not realize is that the women found in brothels are often not forced, but only do so as a result of economic desperation. However, some of the younger victims are held captive, sold by their families or born into the brothel.

Born into the Brothel refers to children of brothel workers, whose other female family members have been brothel workers. These children grow up living in the brothel. Recruitment for brothels is often easy due to the extreme poverty and vast need for economic resources. Essentially, brothels target low income areas as a primary source for recruitment.

Brothels generally avoid areas with a high concentration of NGOs and law enforcement. Therefore, rural areas absent of NGOs are now being targeted by brothels. In these areas, there is a lack of law enforcement involvement and organizations to empower women. The recruitment efforts are based on the use of economic exploitation.

Recruitment is often done by elderly women who are either former brothel workers or came from impoverished communities. Now, having obtained their own brothels, they exploit their own past experience of economic need. These women send older prostitutes back to their own villages or villages known to be poor to recruit new staff for their establishment.

Recruiters have direct and personal knowledge of an area, and know exactly which families to target. They are aware of who is struggling the most, which families have too many daughters and which families have had the death of a parent or a marital breakdown.

According to reports from UNICEF of the women that end up in brothels in Asian countries such as Nepal, 86 percent did not know that they were going to become apart of the sex market when they left home. Furthermore, of those victims, 82 percent were promised jobs that did not include working at a brothel in prostitution. Families that covet advanced earnings due to economic need, willingly send their daughters. In regions such as Southeast Asia, husbands are permitted to sell their wives to brothels legally. Rural areas have become breeding grounds for girls who become forced into the sex industry. The supply is continuous due to the cycle of poverty in these regions.

– Erika Wright

Sources: Hist-Chron, UNICEF
Photo: Flickr

4 Global Poverty Facts to Share

Global-Poverty-Facts
Most people are aware of the existence of poverty on the global level. Many frequently receive flyers in the mail or run into something on the Internet asking to donate to the cause. However, many people are unaware of how concentrated and gendered poverty is and exactly how much money it would take to tackle worldwide poverty. Here are four facts on global poverty to help expand your understanding.

1. Sixty-five Percent of the World’s Hungry Are Located in Seven Countries

Most of the hungry people in the world can be found in India, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh. Because of the concentration of these people, those born in these countries are at a greater risk of living in deplorable conditions. The poor economic opportunities and limited availability of education in these countries perpetuates the cycle of poverty; thus, expanding and continuing hunger, malnutrition and vulnerability to natural disasters.

2. Global Poverty has a Different Affect on Women

Sixty percent of the hungry people in the world are women. Like men, poverty forces impoverished women to be at risk of starvation, malnutrition and poor health. However, unlike men, poverty makes it harder for women to have access to education and contraceptives. Because of the lack of gender equality in many of these countries, poverty disproportionately affects women. Women have even less access to education than men and they often times do not have the opportunity to utilize contraceptives because of the lack of availability and the cost. The minimal access to contraceptives puts women at a greater risk of dying during childbirth. The lack of gender equality also makes it harder for women to utilize education to exit the cycle of poverty.

3. Global Poverty Can End with the Help of 100 People

Often times, poverty seems like a hard giant to tackle because of the seemingly massive price tag. However, if one hundred of the world’s richest people contributed some of their net worth, poverty could be eliminated “four-times over.” This option is not particularly favorable among many because it seems to put unwanted pressure on people who seem to have no obligation to help those they have not met. However, there is another alternative that would alleviate pressure on the world’s wealthiest people.

4. $30 Billion per year From the U.S. Government Would Eradicate Global Hunger

One of the biggest resources is a national government. Many have estimated that $30 billion a year could end global poverty. This may seem like a lot of money to the casual onlooker, but when taking into consideration that $530 billion was committed to the U.S. military in the 2010 national budget, it is a doable amount. Through the reallocation of money into the foreign aid budget, the U.S. could be the biggest contributor to eliminating global poverty.

– Erin Logan

Sources: U.N. Millennium Project, Poverties.org, The Hunger Project, The Borgen Project, Oxfam, FAO, UNDP
Photo: Huffington Post

“Big Push” Poverty Solution Program

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In 1981, more than 50 percent of the world was in poverty. In 1990, only 43 percent lived on $1.25 a day. Today, only 21 percent are under the poverty line.

There’s no doubt that poverty is declining around the globe. But almost all of the gains have come from pulling up those just under the poverty line, rather than from those considered “ultra-poor.”

The ultra-poor and the poor, although both suffer from poverty, cannot be compared. The ultra-poor cannot send their children to school because they simply cannot afford it. They can’t take out loans or use banks because they lack the skills to do so. If they receive money or animals for free, they immediately spend the money and savor the food. The ultra-poor are in a trap so deep it’s almost possible to escape.

The ultra-poor have been in need of a new approach, a comprehensive solution that will train, prepare, challenge and ultimately bring them hope of a future with traction and sustainable success.

One such approach offers a viable solution. In 2002, the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee, an antipoverty group, started a program in Rangpur to help the severely impoverished “graduate” from poverty. The Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative included the following key ingredients: money-making assets such as goods to start a store or land to plant seeds; training on how to use these assets as well as financial opportunities; a small regular grant of food or cash to provide time off from labor or begging to learn new skills; access to basic health services and frequent check-ins.

The program was complex and expensive. It required working with the families intensively for over two years. The results, however, were astonishing and worth the hard work.

Almost all the participating families changed their lives. A year after the program ended 97 percent were considered graduated; they had satisfied most of the basic indicators such as having cash savings, steady food sources, diversified income, a tin roof and latrine, among other things. Three years later the number was 98 percent.

Since then, 1.4 million households have participated in this program.

The Consultative Group to Assist the Poor at the World Bank along with local NGOs in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras and Peru have carried out similar, successful programs, focusing on people living on less than $1.25 a day.

Aid groups around the world have been refining the “big push” approach, a burst of intensely focused help for a limited period of time, for over 25 years. This concept isn’t ground-breaking, but the results of this study definitely are, showing that the positive effects of a well-designed “big push” approach can continue even after the program stops.

The most important effect from this study has been the improved mental state of those who participated. Many of the researchers have attributed the continual success of the families to the fact that they have found hope of liberation from the cyclical nature of poverty.

– Alison Decker

Sources: Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times , China Daily, Yahoo News, Futurity, National Public Radio
Photo: Flickr

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Does Global Aid Really Work?

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People living in extreme poverty see an improvement in their living conditions when they earn just a little extra money from farming or raising livestock.

This is according to Dean Karlan, founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, or IPA. The nonprofit researches and evaluates different programs fighting world poverty so as to inform its own poverty-combating program initiatives.

Karlan studied economics in graduate school at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is now a professor at Yale. He began researching poverty and started IPA in order to answer the question, “Does global aid work?”

Prior to starting IPA, Karlan was displeased with how little research existed on global aid programs and their effects. It was impossible to know precisely how much people’s lives were improving due to aid.

This is an ongoing debate, and today, two polarizing views on global aid prevail. Some believe that the U.S. and other nations need to invest more, while others think that enough money has already been wasted on a fruitless cause. Through IPA, Karlan is working to produce tangible evidence about global aid to dispel the second view and, in turn, combat poverty.

Karlan and his colleagues ran a five-year-long experiment with the poorest families they could find in six developing countries. The team divided the families into two groups. The control group received nothing, while the other group was given a hefty aid package for up to two years. The package included livestock (for raising), livestock training, food or cash, a savings account and physical and mental health aid.

After observing both groups for the duration of the study, Karlan and his colleagues concluded that families who were given aid, made a little more money and had more food to eat than the control group. Moreover, families continued to generate more income a year after they stopped receiving aid.

Karlan reports, “We see mental health go up. Happiness go up. We even saw things like female power increase.”

The measured effect of aid was quite slim. Incomes and food consumption rates in the study increased only by about five percent in comparison to the control group. It is hard to forecast the long-term impact since the families were only observed for a year following the experiment.

Nonetheless, the aid package still has an impact in the short term for the participating families and appears to have promising long-term effects. Giving families an extra boost is exactly what may enable them to begin climbing out of extreme poverty, albeit slowly.

“Moving poverty is hard,” explains Sarah Baird, an economist at George Washington University. “[But] the fact that [Karlan and his colleagues] were able to move it, and it was sustainable after a year, I think is important.” The study supports the conclusion that aid from charities and governmental programs do have a positive impact.

A little bit of money can go a long way for those in extreme poverty. At the very least, it offers hope, and makes a difference for the families who receive it.

– Lillian Sickler

Sources: NPR, American Program Bureau, Innovations for Poverty Action
Photo: Flickr

Roots Up’s Dew-Collecting Greenhouse

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As of June 2014, 2.7 million Ethiopians experienced “Crisis and Emergency” levels of food insecurity according to the World Food Programme. Only a quarter of arable land in Ethiopia is being used for agriculture and the limited technology available to subsistence farmers means many crops rely on rainfall for water. This is an increasingly risky move as droughts the world over get longer and harsher. Yet, a low-tech, self-watering greenhouse designed by the nonprofit Roots Up could help Ethiopian farmers increase their yields.

The Dew Collector greenhouse is designed to collect both rainwater and condensation. As temperatures rise during the day, water evaporates from the plants inside the greenhouse. The farmer can open a flap at the top of the building to allow cool evening air in, which causes the water to condense into dew that is then redirected into a collection tank for re-use. The water collected from the greenhouse’s condensation is so pure that it can be used for drinking and bathing, not just irrigation.

According to Mathilde Richelet, the co-founder of Roots Up, “People have access to very little drinking water all year long… They have a long way to the river, which is practically dry during the dry season, and this water has a very high level of turbidity. So the dew-collector greenhouse has several purposes. First, it will allow farmers to collect the appropriate amount of safe drinking water needed for the body a day. Then, farmers can irrigate their plants.”

Elegant solutions like the Dew Collector greenhouses are going to be vital in the next few years. Ethiopia is facing an ongoing drought and an influx of refugees from neighboring countries gripped by violent conflict. The world at large faces similar problems. The World Food Programme reports that 805 million people are undernourished worldwide, and 2013 saw the world’s population of refugees top 50 million for the first time since World War II. A growing population of displaced people combined with a growing water shortage due to climate change spells trouble for countries in conflict-ridden parts of the world.

Roots Up aims to launch the first of its greenhouses in Northern Ethiopia this year, with support from the University of Gondar. Its long-term goal is to train farmers in northern Ethiopia to use affordable technology to become financially and technologically independent. This training will help wean the community off expensive food aid programs and set them up with a sustainable alternative. Eventually, Roots Up hopes to help farmers in north Gondar establish profitable agricultural enterprises of their own, such as growing fruit trees.

Amazing innovations like the training programs and greenhouse that Roots Up have created are fantastic and will eventually improve the lives of many people. However, these alone will not solve the underlying problems causing these challenges. The international community must continue its efforts to stop climate change and peacefully resolve conflicts if countries like Ethiopia are to continue to grow and thrive. Hopefully the next decade will see progress on all fronts.

– Marina Middleton

Sources: Mic, Roots up, Inhabitat, Fast Company
Photo: Inhabitat

What Are the Root Causes of Poverty?

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To understand the root causes of poverty, poverty must first be defined. Poverty is qualitatively defined as having inadequate access to basic human needs, such as food, water and shelter. The World Bank routinely uses the metric of living on less than $1.25 a day to provide a rough estimation of the underlying financial conditions of poverty. According to the World Bank, around one billion people globally fell under the category of surviving under $1.25 a day in 2011. Poverty is a multifaceted issue that exists based on the interplay between many root causes. But what are these conditions that preface poverty itself?

Food insecurity is one commonly noted characteristic of impoverished societies around the globe.

One reason for the lack of stable food supply is weather, especially extreme weather events. In many countries, extreme weather can wreak havoc not only on crop yields but entire economies. The extreme weather can cause further food insecurities for impoverished individuals via rising food prices as less food is being supplied to the market. Mother Nature can play a critical role in the lives of those in poverty by reducing the ability of a population to feed itself.

Another key factor in the cycle of poverty is lack of education or access to education.

A U.N. report showed that 171 million could be lifted out of poverty if all impoverished students had access to education enabling them to read. Across the globe, those who are least educated tend to most likely be impoverished. The correlation between insufficient education and poverty is a strong one and the reasons are clear-cut. Without education (or access to it), the impoverished face an upstream battle in the labor markets. It is much more difficult to find a higher quality occupation, or trade that pays better wages, when a person is illiterate or lacks other skills learned in school. This lack of human capital creates barriers for those in need of better opportunities and perpetuates the cycle of poverty.

The third root cause of poverty is man-made.

Political strife in the present or recent past plays an important role in the manifestation of poverty. Violence, instability and corruption, brought about by a country’s political divides, contribute to volatile economies and enormous bloodshed. Day-to-day life can be completely disrupted for the population and the conditions of poverty begin to appear: lack of shelter, food and finances. The issues sometimes worsen as poverty can lead to more civil or social unrest, prolonging conflict and instability.

Other common root causes of poverty include insufficient labor rights and discrimination, as witnessed in the “Untouchable” caste system in India. These social injustices further entrench the unfortunate cycle of poverty.

Poverty is the result of insufficient opportunities for a human being to survive, grow and prosper. Knowing what causes poverty and treating poverty are two entirely different dilemmas. Due to the fact that many of these causal factors can be dependent on one another, there is no easy solution to breaking the cycle of poverty. Yet, by attempting to understand the underlying reasons for the existence of poverty, society can make strides in the struggle against it.

– Martin Yim

Sources: World Bank, BBC, U.N.
Photo: Flickr

Does Urbanization Reduce Poverty?

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Urbanization is the process of moving people from rural areas into urban areas. Organizations like the World Bank have found success in this process all over the world. However, there can be some disadvantages to relocating people from slums to cities. Regardless of the cons, urbanization has improved the lives of many in China, Ghana and Latin America.

One benefit of urbanization is increased access to resources like clean water and food. In African rural areas, mothers walk miles for clean water. The World Bank has directly improved lives in Ghana with labor reallocation; the idea of increasing productivity by managing human capital. Moving people to jobs requiring more productivity has contributed to economic growth in Ghana, as well as increases in income for families who typically work in agriculture.

However, without proper monitoring, urbanization does not always work. According to the World Bank, “if not managed well, [it] can also lead to [the] burgeoning growth of slums, pollution, and crime.” This then raises the question of whether urbanization is really a good idea. Much of the world is becoming more urbanized and the U.N. believes this is a good way to reduce poverty.

The United Nations Population Fund, or UNFPA, recognizes the growth in urban culture and believes it can help solve many problems in developing countries. Although there is a rise of inequality in urban areas, according to UNFPA, “urbanization has the potential to usher in a new era of well-being, resource efficiency and economic growth.”

Urbanization is a controversial idea and another potential solution is rural development. According to the World Bank, “it can be done with complementary rural-urban development policies and actions by governments to facilitate a healthy move toward cities.” Development of rural areas allows people to stay where they are and adopt certain aspects of urban culture, such as increasing access to clean water and food while improving living conditions.

Whether it is urbanization or rural development, it is vital to implement new ways to help people in developing countries as cities and economies grow. The mentioned solutions above are two of many that could help reach the goal of ending poverty by 2030.

– Kimberly Quitzon

Sources: World Bank, Spy Ghana, UNFPA
Photo: Flickr