Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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What Causes Hunger in Africa

What causes hunger in Africa? To be certain, Africa is by no means a single entity. The second largest continent on Earth, Africa is an enormous landmass that is home to a wide variety of landscapes, cultures and people.

That said, the continent is also home to much of the world’s hunger, spread across several of the world’s poorest countries. Approximately 30 million people in Africa face the effects of severe food insecurity, including malnutrition, starvation and poverty.

Ending hunger not just in Africa but wherever it occurs is crucial to solving impoverishment and, accordingly, is a leading priority for many humanitarian organizations.

 

Causes of Hunger in Africa

 

1. Lack of Infrastructure

Many of the African countries in which there is widespread hunger are countries in which there is also plenty of food. Agriculture is the leading economic industry in several of the hungriest African nations including Niger, Ethiopia and Somalia.

The issue is not that there is a lack of food, the issue is that there are are often no reliable pathways for getting that food from the fields into that hands of the people who need it the most. Many hungry countries lack accessible rural roads on which food could be transported into the countryside.

Where it does not already exist, building the infrastructure necessary for distributing food is essential to ending hunger in Africa.

2. Poverty

Poverty is a cause of hunger in Africa as well as an effect. Nearly a third of individuals living in sub-Saharan Africa are “undernourished,” and 41 percent of people in that same area live on less than U.S. $1 daily. That’s no coincidence; high rates of poverty are correlated with high rates of hunger because acquiring adequate food provisions requires ample resources, not only financial but social as practical as well.

3. Gender Inequality

According to one of the most successful hunger-focused humanitarian organizations, The Hunger Project, gender inequality is a major driving force behind hunger because food tends to go further in the hands of women. When women have adequate food supplies, they as well as their families experience better health and social outcomes than when men have sole control of food rations.

However, in many African nations experiencing hunger crises, though women do the majority of agricultural work, they do not control their own access to food. Addressing gender inequality where it occurs in Africa will be central to eradicating hunger.

4. AIDS

AIDS is especially prevalent in southern Africa (Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe), where approximately six million people are estimated to live with the condition. Not only does AIDS render these individuals too sick to do any sort of agricultural work (which, if farming is their livelihood, can throw them into poverty), it can also render them to sick to leave their homes to acquire food for themselves and their families.

– Elise L. Riley

Sources: Save the Children, The Hunger Project, World Food Programme
Photo: Ceasefire Magazine

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Millennium Challenge Corps Helps Philippines

child poverty
The Millennium Challenge Corps, or MCC, recently announced that the Philippines is eligible to receive another five-year extension on funding. The MCC is funded by the U.S. Congress and is meant to be an incentive for countries who actively reform policies to improve government functions.

This new five-year plan is intended to continue funding poverty alleviation projects within the Philippines. Washington recently announced the Philippines’ eligibility to continue the program.

“The selection of the Philippines for a second compact is a recognition of President Aquino’s commitment to good governance. I believe a smooth transition to a second compact will help the Philippines in further institutionalizing good governance policies and reforms,” said Ambassador Jose Cuisia, Jr.

The compact will aid the country in further deterrence of corruption. The Philippines’ government has operated under these regulations and is looking forward to reaping the benefits of continued funding.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation was founded in January 2004 by U.S. Congress. The MCC is an independent agency is committed to intelligently funding U.S. aid to countries in need of support. A part of its mission focuses on country-lead solutions that enable the countries to prioritize the areas of concern they find to be the most pertinent.

In addition, the chosen countries set up local MCC headquarters in order to monitor progress and work closely with the people and programs they are implementing. The MCC works in the world’s most severely impoverished countries in order to strengthen infrastructure to help lift people out of poverty.

The MCC operates on three main principles that are prerequisites for countries to be considered as eligible to receive funds: good governance, economic freedom and investments in their citizens. Although these requirements are loosely worded and give room to numerous interpretations, the MCC goes through a strict identification process to identify candidates for the long-term funds.

This will be the Philippines second compact. The first compact, awarded in 2010, comprised of $214.4 million to repair infrastructure and roads and another $120 million for poverty alleviation projects and community affairs.

In addition to the Philippines, Nepal and Mongolia were also selected by the Board of Directors to be eligible for funding and investment.

For the MCC to continue funding a country the country must show gradual improvement. One of methods of measurement the board uses to evaluate is per capita income level. The countries who receive compacts from the MCC have to show an increase from a Low Income Category to Low Middle Income Category.

Overall, the MCC was founded on principles that support international development through direct funding to areas the countries they decide to be the most pertinent to overcoming poverty. The MCC allows the countries to choose how they believe their country should best spend the money it has been given.

– Maxine Gordon

Sources: Yahoo News, MCC
Photo: Wall Street Journal

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Paying Out-of-pocket for Healthcare Contributes to Poverty

The UN recently announced that paying out-of-pocket for healthcare leads to “deep impoverishment” in many nations. It is estimated that 80 percent of people throughout 44 countries do not have healthcare due to the high cost.

“It is the poorest with the highest needs who suffer the most from having to pay out-of-pocket healthcare expenses,” says ILO Health Policy Coordinator, Xenia Scheil-Adlung.

According to the World Health Organization, over 100 million people fall into poverty every year due to medical expenses. An additional 150 million are required to contribute almost half of their incomes on medical bills. The majority of these countries lack social healthcare programs, affordable insurance options or government-funded healthcare.

Remarkably, a great deal of those living in impoverished areas devote relatively more money to health services than people living in wealthy, developed countries. For instance, in Germany where almost every citizen has social healthcare, residents pay only 10 percent of national medical expenses.

On the other hand, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo very few residents have access to healthcare and they pay approximately 70 percent of national medical care costs. Similarly, in Seirra Leone, citizens pay over 75 percent of total healthcare expenses out-of-pocket. This has resulted in deep impoverishment in Seirra Leone and other similar nations.

“At least 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to the most basic healthcare,” said Dr. Rüdiger Krech, Head of Social Protection in the Division Health, Education and Social Protection at GTZ. “Often it is because they cannot afford it. As a result, millions become very sick or die every year from preventable or curable medical conditions. For example, the toll from treatable infections and preventable complications of pregnancy and delivery is more than 10 million deaths each year,” Krech added.

Since 2010, national economic consolidation policies have delayed and adversely affected efforts toward universal healthcare. Recent policies have cut back health services and reduced wages for healthcare workers, augmenting the financial hardship on private households.

Officials state that universal healthcare access is a key element in the global initiative to end poverty. Director-General of the International Labor Organization, Guy Ryder, emphasizes that universal healthcare diminishes inequality and promotes economic growth.

“Social health protection is not only a key tool to make health care accessible to all and to free millions of people from poverty. It is also an investment in health, productivity and development—an investment that is a prerequisite for international competitiveness,” said Assane Diop, Executive Director of the ILO.

Experts agree that investments in healthcare systems create economic growth for all parties involved as well as raises in productivity and wellbeing for residents. Many urge that in order to overcome the global health crisis, policies for universal healthcare must be initiated.

– Meagan Douches

Sources: United Natons, World Bank, World Health Organization
Photo: Empower Magazine

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Child Poverty Rate Increases in the US

Increasing economic inequality between middle and upper economic classes has grown since the ’90s. Children living in urban centers remain the most affected by poverty and low income.

Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health released a statement based on a study showing that poverty increased dramatically after the recession in 2007. The report states, “Years after the end of the Great Recession, child poverty remains widespread in America’s largest cities. Nearly three children in five living in Detroit are poor, according to the most recent Census figures, a rate that has grown by 10 percentage points since the onset of the Great Recession in 2007. Most children in Cleveland and Buffalo also live in poverty, as do nearly half the children in Fresno, Cincinnati and Memphis.”

The way the U.S. defines poverty is different from the way many other countries define the issue. Most other countries measure poverty after a person has received the social service benefits. However, the U.S. Census measures a person who is below the poverty line before they receive government funded social services that could technically keep them out of poverty.

Children in poverty then, are measured without the benefits that have otherwise kept them out of poverty. Contributing writer, Tim Worstall, of Forbes Magazine writes, “It’s the number of children who would be in poverty if there wasn’t this system of government alleviation of poverty. When we do actually take into account what is done to alleviate child poverty we find that it’s really some two to three percent of U.S. children who live in poverty. Yes, that low: the U.S. welfare state is very much child orientated.”

The Center for American Progress Fund reported that over 45 million Americans are living in poverty. For a family of four this would mean making a combined income of $23,834 or less in a year. Poverty is concentrated disproportionally in the South. Mississippi, for example, is currently at the top of the list with an overwhelming 24.1 percent of the population living below the poverty line.

Some aspects that affect the structural reasons for poverty consist of low economic mobility, federal minimum wage and little to no healthcare coverage. Because children born into poverty start out with a smaller pool of resources to draw from, the cyclic nature of poverty continues generation after generation. Minimum wage is another factor in the conversation as states such as Louisiana, Alabama and South Carolina adhere to federal minimum wage of $7.25.

Healthcare is nearly impossible for families living below the poverty line to afford especially if they have jobs that do not provide benefits.

The concentrated collective poverty of certain demographics is reinforced by state and local governments. Concentrated collective poverty refers to a relatively affluent country that has destitute segments of the population living in long-term poverty. Although the rate of child poverty in the U.S. is skewed, there are still large demographics underserved with a lack of resources.

– Maxine Gordon

Sources: Forbes, Salon, Britannica
Photo: Century Times

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Pakistani Taliban Executes Peshawar School Massacre

The city of Peshawar, Pakistan mourns deeply in the wake of the Pakistani Taliban’s deadliest attack to date. An estimated 132 children and nine staff members were killed in a devastating massacre targeting a school in the northwest region, where gunmen and suicide bombers inflicted damage so horrific that even the Afghani Taliban have condemned their actions. Most of the victims were children of military families enrolled at Peshawar’s Army Public School.

On Wednesday, the Pakistani Army pointedly allowed numerous television crews to enter the school grounds, where they were able to observe the crime scene for themselves and broadcast those observations back to their respective audiences. Images captured by international news teams revealed the devastating extent of the brutality, showing classroom floors coated with blood, walls covered in hundreds of bullet holes, and rooms blown apart by suicide bombers.

The international community has collectively vocalized utter contempt over the massacre, and Pakistan was immediately consumed by a state of national outrage. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif responded by declaring three full days of mourning and announcing an abrupt end to the moratorium on the death penalty for terrorist actions.

This decision by Sharif is quite significant given the country’s past responses to terrorist groups. Despite the fact that terrorism in Pakistan has taken more than 50,000 lives since 2001, there has long existed a puzzling lack of a national consensus to fight terrorism. In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday’s massacre, politicians refrained from publicly declaring whether they thought the Taliban had been behind the attack, even though the Tehreek-e-Taiban Pakistan, or TTP, had quickly claimed responsibility. The militants describe the Peshawar disaster as an act of revenge for an army attack that they claim killed approximately 1,000 of their own people.

The Taliban has a lengthy history of attacking schools. As an extremist group that first emerged in northern Pakistan in the early 1990s, the Taliban wields its own version of Islamic law as a major justification for and motivation behind its actions. The Pakistani Taliban adamantly opposes Western education for children, especially for girls. Education activists in Pakistan claim that this opposition is the Taliban’s way of trying to exert control over the population by keeping young people in the intellectual dark. An educated girl or boy represents a threat in the eyes of the Taliban, and the terrorist group actively works to eliminate these perceived threats through violence and oppression.

The Peshawar school massacre represents a departure from the Taliban’s usual school attacks. Militants in the past typically attacked schools while they were empty at night, specifically hoping to have the institutions shut down rather than directly harm students. The Taliban has also tried to threaten Pakistan’s education system by intimidating teachers and pressuring parents to quit sending their kids to class.

Some are beginning to question whether the Peshawar attack will force Pakistan to decidedly confront the terrorist group in a way it has generally refrained from doing in the past. Pakistan has long held an ambiguous view of Taliban militants, a phenomenon known as “good Taliban” and “bad Taliban” that for the past decade has baffled the Pakistani public and sent terribly mixed messages to the West. In the wake of the attack, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif announced “there will be no differentiation between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Taliban,” while acting foreign minister Sartaj Aziz has described the tragedy as “our 9/11” and a “game changer.”

– Shenel Ozisik

Sources: BBC 1, The Guardian 1, The Guardian 2, BBC 2
Photo: Flickr

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Google Plans to Bring Internet to Remote Areas

Google has partnered with the French space agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales, to provide rural and remote areas of the world with Internet access. The partnership aims to reach higher ground with the Project Loon initiative.

Project Loon is a Google research and development project with the mission of providing Internet access to rural and remote areas. The project uses high altitude balloons to create an aerial wireless network that project Wi-Fi signals.

The balloons are solar powered and each is coordinated to make movements in a complex formation to provide continuous service. Google’s new approach on these balloons involves using technology with powerful satellites. Powerful satellites will provide more responsive Internet for the balloons to harness and spread.

They rise more than 60,000 feet above the Earth’s surface, placing them far beyond the reach of airplanes and atmospheric storm systems.

Satellite Internet is already becoming faster and more inexpensive at a steady rate. About 1.5 billion people get home Internet through a satellite connection, though only 0.2 percent of people in developed countries are connected through satellite.

Google wants to launch 100,000 balloons into the stratosphere to offer free Internet access in remote and rural locations around the world, and retrieve them when they lose air and fall to the ground.

To date, there are 75 Google balloons airborne, hovering somewhere near the far reaches of the Southern Hemisphere. These balloons automatically regulate their altitudes according to the algorithms to catch wind drafts and keep them on path.

A majority of the world still lacks Internet access, even after the 1.8 billion people that joined the Internet in 2014. An astounding 4.4 billion people still have never been online.

Internet access can benefit those in developing countries, especially those in India, where the population has more mobile phones than sanitary toilets. In India, over 1 billion people are still offline.

Moreover, China’s massive population of 1.3 people may be iPhone-obsessed, but more than half of its population still remains disconnected.

The Internet can be a useful tool for farmers, as access to the Internet allows farmers to be updated on constant climate changes, and projected problems in the seasons that may affect crop growth. Moreover, Internet access can also be a useful education tool used in schools for learning, and it can improve literacy rates.

Google’s balloons may sound expensive, but research actually indicates that these balloons are cheaper than setting up and maintaining cell towers, and the balloons are also more effective to bring access to remote areas.

Although Google’s project has faced criticism and doubts along the process among Project Loon, Google notes that the next big step is testing how the balloons handle thousands of pounds of pressure.

Google’s engineers have spent weeks trying to isolate any problems they had in the past with the balloons that are already hovering over vast remote areas. Google has the potential to deliver its promise of Internet access across the world and to regions that have been without it with precise research and design.

– Sandy Phan

Sources: Google, NPR
Photo: Digital Trends

Perkins International: Redefining Blindness

perkins international
People who are blind still have yet to see a world in which they are given the same opportunities as their sighted peers, but there is one organization paving the way for this to happen. Perkins International is a collaborative effort with a mission to provide education and services to those all around the world who are blind or visually impaired.

This progressive, multi-faceted organization works on local, national and global levels in more than 60 countries, joining forces with a number of nonprofits and Disabled Persons Organizations along with academic institutions, foundations and government agencies.

Together they are committed to strengthening disability policies, increasing access to information and assistive technology, expanding education opportunities and transitional outcomes, and building sustainable local capacity.

In addition, there are five areas of focus (distinct lines of businesses) that operate every day to carry out these goals, driven by a team of experts with a passion for actively seeking the next innovative challenge to evolve as an organization.

  1. Perkins School for the Blind – Operates as the headquarters for the Community Services programs including itinerant services, independence courses for public school students, evaluations and assessments for communities, and training for professionals.
  2. Perkins International – Works to develop sustainable capacity in 67 countries via local and on-the-ground partnerships. It provides resources, training and advocacy to improve the lives of 4.5 million children around the world without access to education due to blindness.
  3. Perkins Products – Develops and distributes accessible technology in 170 countries, ranging from the classic mechanical Perkins Brailler to cutting-edge tools like the LightAide. The U.S. Department of Commerce recent presented Perkins Products with the President’s “E” Award, the highest recognition of any U.S. entity may receive for contributing to the increase of American exports.
  4. Perkins eLearning – Serves as an online portal designed to provide resources and support to anyone, anywhere, in the field of blindness education. It offers high-quality webcasts and webinars on a variety of topics, and it provides professional development and graduate level credits to educators via online workshops.
  5. Perkins Library – Considered to be one of our nation’s oldest accessibility services since 1835, this library circulates thousands of items in braille, audio, electronic and large print formats to about 28 thousand patrons in the U.S.

These five focus areas allow people with blindness the accessibility that they need for leverage in a world where opportunities are scarce even for those who have vision.

Recently, Perkins President and CEO Dave Power spoke at TEDxBeaconStreet about how we’re making the world accessible with new innovations in braille technology, facial recognition software and transportation that will help increase independence for people who are blind.

“The technology is pretty exciting, but technology isn’t the biggest barrier,” he said. “We, sighted people, are much more of an obstacle.”

So what can we do to change this?

“We need to make the world more accessible for them,” Power said. “We need to help them access information, navigate from place to place and find their way into our workforce and into our communities.

– Chelsee Yee

Sources: Perkins, YouTube
Photo: Perkins

EU Grants Help Seychelles Fulfill Regional Leadership Role

seychelles
Two separate grant agreements between Seychelles and the European Union were signed on December 10. The two agreements will provide as much as $6.4 million in order to help foster sustainable development and fight the effects of climate change in the archipelago nation.

The two agreements come on the heels of warnings from both the UN and the World Bank Group about the potential of climate change to exacerbate poverty in coastal communities. Seychelles’ economy—dependent chiefly upon tourism and tuna hauls—is particularly vulnerable to effects of climate change.

Recently, Seychelles has become something of a regional leader in the fight for sustainable development. Seychelles has already reached the majority of the UN Millennium Development Goals, and is now advocating the adoption of “blue economy” principles, which emphasize the protection of maritime resources and the economic potential of the Indian Ocean’s fishing, shipping, energy and tourism sectors.

Seychelles Foreign Affairs Minister John-Paul Adam believes that the development of the blue economy could allow the Indian Ocean to become a hub of sustainable ocean management and resiliency in the face of a changing climate. Adam, speaking at the 38th annual ministerial meeting of the G77 plus China, said, “The blue economy provides a blank canvas to many developing countries to charter a completely new sustainable development pathway that is to their best interest.”

In a press statement at the same meeting, Adam called for cooperation amongst southern hemisphere nations in science and technology in order to bolster blue economy sectors. Seychelles is also doing its part in building regional cooperation, strengthening bilateral ties with Fiji in the fisheries sector.

Seychelles’ efforts to sustain development and mitigate the compounding effect of climate change on poverty exemplify the kind of regional leadership that will be necessary in meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Similarly, the EU grants will need to be replicated by wealthy nations in order to provide developing nations with the financial resources necessary to not only continue developing, but to do so in a sustainable and climate-conscious way.

– Parker Carroll

Sources: Chatham House, Seychelles News Agency 1, Seychelles News Agency 2, Ventures Africa
Photo: Seychelles News Agency

Lessons Learned from the Successes of PEPFAR

PEPFAR
The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, started by President George W. Bush in 2003, has tried to tackle the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. The program has been tremendously successful, providing treatment for two million people and care for 10 million, including four million orphans and vulnerable children. Below are three major lessons the world of development and poverty alleviation can learn from the successes of PEPFAR.

1. Country Ownership

One of the unique components of PEPFAR is the role host countries play in the design and implementation of interventions. Ninety percent of the partner organizations that work with PEPFAR in the field are local. There is not a blanket approach, meaning that governments have to take ownership for the programs that are executed in their countries. Each country has a different approach that fits the needs of the HIV/AIDS epidemic within its borders, making the interventions more successful.

2. Focus on Results and Accountability

Even with criticism that development goals cannot be boiled down to pure numbers, PEPFAR’s intense focus on results has proved to be successful, especially when trying to build monitoring and evaluation capabilities country-to-country. A focus on results helped keep countries accountable to the goals of PEPFAR. With better monitoring and evaluation capabilities, governments can be kept more accountable and transparent when working on development projects.

3. Engagement of All Sectors

PEPFAR was one of the first projects to try to engage all sectors of the economy, not just national governments. The project included civil society, non-governmental organizations, faith-based and community-based organizations and the private sector in the implementation of specific interventions. This inclusion helps to address underlying and periphery issues that prevent or hinder interventions, like government stability, personal freedoms and development standards.

– Caitlin Huber

Sources: PEPFAR, Avert, Smith
Photo: Huffington Post