Archive for category: Global Poverty

Key articles and information on global poverty.

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Bangladesh Raises Millions out of Poverty

Bangladesh Raises Millions out of Poverty
A new report from the World Bank shows that Bangladesh has made great strides in reducing poverty since the year 2000. According to the report, the nation has reduced the number of people living in poverty by 26% in only 10 years. This reduction in poverty occurred even with a growing population. In total, the number of people living in poverty was reduced from 63 million in 2000 to 47 million in 2010.

The reduction of poverty in Bangladesh is credited to two factors. The first is an increase in labor income. Rural wages have increased since 2000, lifting millions out of poverty. The second is a decrease in fertility rates. As more Bangladeshis choose to have fewer children, there are “lower dependency ratios and more income-per-capita.”

While the World Bank applauds the successes of poverty reduction in Bangladesh, a number of factors must be accomplished in order to lift the remaining 47 million impoverished Bangladeshis above the poverty line. The World Bank believes that investment in agriculture is essential since 72% of all Bangladeshis live in rural areas. Promoting jobs in manufacturing and the service sector is also critical for sustainable poverty reduction.

In addition to focusing on industry-specific growth, the World Bank recommends increasing female participation in the labor force. Women currently make up only 35% of Bangladeshi workers. As more women join the workforce, a family can earn more income and lessen the risk of living in poverty.

– Jordan Kline

Sources: World Bank, CIA
Photo: Travel Supermarket

Poverty in Mauritania

Poverty in Mauritania

The West African country Mauritania borders the North Atlantic Ocean and marks the western edge of the Sahara desert. Like many countries in North Africa, it is rich in oil and other natural resources. Unfortunately, Mauritania itself has one of the lowest GDP in Africa; like similarly resource-rich countries, it, too, suffers from what is known as the resource curse. Poverty in Mauritania is quite prevalent — the World Food Programme estimates 42% of the population is in poverty — and is caused by a number of factors.

1. Geography and Climate: Only 0.5% of Mauritania’s land — a little over 1 million square kilometers — is suited for agriculture, but a majority of Mauritanians still depend on agricultural subsistence or raising livestock. Food insecurity is a severe problem due to incessant cycles of drought and erosion; such cycles were severe enough to force nomadic Mauritanians to the main cities in the 1970s and 80s. Because of Mauritania’s placement against the Atlantic Ocean and prevailing winds, the country is afflicted by intense dust storms at times.

2. Increasing Terrorist Threat Discouraging Investment: Travel to Mauritania has been discouraged in the last decade as militant Islamic groups have moved into the North Africa region; kidnappings of travelers for ransom or by al-Qaida groups (AQIM) have been reported by US State Department travel advisories as recently as May of this year. Travel is particularly dangerous in the northern and southeastern regions of the country. The security risk discourages foreign investment, especially in extractive industries where natural resources are located in rural areas.

3. Spill-Over from Neighboring Conflicts: Even though health care services are strained for funding for Mauritanian citizens, the country also faces further difficulty due to conflict that spills over from neighboring countries. Tens of thousands of refugees from Mali fled ahead of the conflict erupting in their country; the Mbera camp is one such refugee camp in which NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has worked extensively. These camps are often far removed from the rest of the country, straining degrading or nonexistent infrastructure required for transportation of health care supplies and food.

On the whole, Mauritania has a great opportunity for improving the living conditions of its population. Its vast natural resources have been left relatively untapped — oil was discovered first only 12 years ago — which presents an opportunity for responsible resource extraction and processing so as to avoid the worst of the “resource curse.” The country has a long relationship with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and its inflation rates have remained steady in the past few years despite the risk for severe crises due to high food prices. If foreign investors can find a secure environment in which to responsibly invest in its vast natural resources, Mauritania has great potential to face — and overcome — its extreme poverty.

– Naomi Doraisamy

Sources: CIA World Factbook, International Monetary Fund, MSF, World Bank,World Food Programme
Photo: Cultureist

Who Runs the World? Girls

Who Runs the World? Girls
‘Never stop trying.’ ‘Choose your own destiny.’ ‘Follow your heart’. These are the types of responses that prevailed when CNN asked people around the world to reflect upon the premiere of CNN Films’ upcoming documentary, “Girl Rising,” a powerful documentary that aims to prove how education can truly change the world, especially for young girls.

“Girl Rising” follows young girls from around the world in their quest to change their lives through education. Studies have shown that education can be “the most important factor in lifting a girl from poverty, mistreatment and drudgery into a fulfilling and rewarding life.” The CNN-sponsored documentary seeks to prove this idea through the personal triumphant success stories of real girls who are forging their paths in the world against all odds.

When asked to share their own advice, many people around the world wrote into CNN with personal stories of their own struggles and to show their support of the documentary’s message.

Most of the respondents were women like Meera Vijayann, who grew up in a small town in southern India and left her job at the city’s matchmaking and firework industries to pursue an education, finally succeeding in becoming a writer and nongovernmental organization worker. Irene Moreno Jimenez, whose remarkable late mother’s teachings and childhood in Mexico inspired her to dream big and value her mind as “the place where freedom is fought for—and won.”

Though the women who responded to CNN’s question hailed from different corners of the globe, their essential message was the same. These women’s tales encourage young girls and women to keep an open mind, not get discouraged by setbacks, and dare to dream.

What these women’s stories and “Girl Rising” hope to communicate is that education is more than the sum of its parts. Education is not merely a collection of diplomas or a good report card or an expensive textbook. Rather, education’s importance lies in its ability to allow girls to face the challenges that lie ahead of them with courage and determination.

“Girl Rising” aired on CNN On June 16th and features renowned actresses and writers including Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Selena Gomez.

– Alexandra Bruschi

Source: CNN, Women News Network
Photo: Raising Jane

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West Africa Restoring Healthy Ocean Habitats

West Africa Restoring Healthy Ocean Habitats
As the world celebrated World Environment Day on June 5th, countries in West Africa looked to continue their work to preserve fish ecosystems and ocean habitats that are currently under threat.

Oceans provide food for over 1 billion people globally and provide income for 200 million people in developing countries. Along the coastal regions of West Africa, fishing practices provide half of the fish catch for the entire continent; fish is a source of income and nutrition in West Africa, especially for the poor. The World Bank says that fishing earns these West African countries approximately $4.9 billion per year. As a result, GDP has increased at the national level and provides local communities with an income and greater food security.

However, the marine sources and habitats that support them are being threatened by weak management, declining fish stocks, local exploitation and harmful fishing practices. In addition, foreign industrial ships stalk African coasts and steal fish stocks. To combat this, in 2009 the World Bank launched the West African Regional Fisheries Program (WARFP), which helps governments strengthen ocean management. WARFP has four main areas of focus: good governance and sustainable fisheries management, reducing illegal fishing, increasing the contribution of marine resources to the local economy, and coordination, monitoring and evaluation, and program management. The program helps communities in Ghana, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal.

The program has helped people in these countries to successfully achieve national, regional and local reforms that educate and empower fishing communities to work together and share their resources. By stamping out illegal fishing in Sierra Leone, creating community-based monitoring in Liberia and encouraging locals to engage in fishing in Senegal, World Bank programs have aided in the fight to preserve and maintain the environment and ocean resources that are so vital to fishing.

“Developing partnerships between countries along the coast of Africa is key to promoting the recovery of Africa’s fish resources and preserving the ocean environment,” said Colin Bruce, World Bank Director for Regional Integration. In order to continue protecting West Africa’s marine environment, research and management programs need to continue, which in turn will secure a better future for the fishing communities of the region.

– Chloe Isacke

Sources: World Bank, WARFP
Photo: Knowing South Africa

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Countries with High Rates of Child Poverty

Countries with High Rates of Child Poverty
3. Romania
After the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Romania struggled economically. Farmers were especially vulnerable, and the impact of the USSR’s collapse is evident today in the status of Romania’s children. Children in rural areas are exceptionally poor, often not receiving the nutrition needed to maintain good health. This results in many physical problems that are left untreated. Many children in rural areas are also deprived of an education.

2. The United States
Yes, you read that correctly. The United States is second place among the developed countries of the world in the percentage of children below the poverty line. This shocking number is due to the stark income equality in America. UNICEF’s research reveals that American children are more likely to fall below the poverty line than children in any other developed country due to the growing wealth gap in the United States.

1. Bulgaria
The Southern European nation of Bulgaria is the developed nation with the highest child poverty rate in the world. Plagued by increasingly low wages and high utility prices, the children of Bulgaria are suffering in families that can no longer afford to put food on the table. The unemployment rate reached 10% in the last year, inciting a wave of protests that threaten the stability of the country. Several desperate Bulgarians, unable to feed their families, have resorted to self-immolation in dramatic protest to get the government to implement changes.

– Josh Forgét

Source: The World Bank, The Washington Post, The Economist
Photo: Press TV

UNICEF Job Openings

UNICEF Job Openings
UNICEF has job openings across the globe. For information on jobs at UNICEF, visit this link.

Australian Students Live Below the Line

Live Below the Poverty Line

Recently, students at the University of Melbourne in Australia spent five days on less than two Australian dollars a day in order to raise awareness for those living in extreme poverty.

Students participated in this as part of the Live Below the Line challenge, a program of the Global Poverty Project.  The Global Poverty Project is in organization designed to advocate for the world’s poor and get citizens effectively engaged in the fight to end extreme poverty.  Their Live Below the Line Challenge, which spans three continents, asks participants to spend five days living below the poverty line in an effort to show solidarity with the world’s poor and to raise money and awareness for their cause.

The challenge of the Live Below the Line campaign is effectively budgeting resources so that participants have the food to last themselves 5 days.  Participants are not allowed to take snacks from their pantries or consume anything that had been bought before the challenge unless it was factored into their five day budget.  Their diet consisted mainly of pasta, lentils, fruit, and rice for the duration of the challenge, and they were only allowed to drink tap water.

The students at the University of Melbourne raised over $24,000, which is more than any other Australian university.  The closest American university to raising this amount was the University of Notre Dame, raising only $3,239.  Some celebrities are also involved in the Live Below the Line challenge, ranging from Ben Affleck to Hugh Jackman.

This was an impressive achievement for these Australian students.  However, as hard as it seems to buy food on such a low budget, participants still had it better off than the world’s poor.  They had access to shelter, sanitation, and healthcare—things that most of those living below the poverty line do not have.   It is hard for us in the developed world to imagine the amount of hardship faced by the world’s poor, but the Live Below the Line challenge gives a small peek into the lives of the least fortunate.

Citizens interested in the program should go to www.livebelowtheline.com where there are further descriptions of the program, recipes and other helpful resources.  The website also contains leaderboards so that participants can see what individuals or groups have achieved the most fundraising so far.  The question that the challenge poses to all of us in the developing world is obvious:  Can YOU Live Below the Line?

– Martin Drake

Source: Live Below the Line, The Age
Photo: VSO

What The Hunger Games Tells Us About Global Poverty

The Hunger Games Global Poverty
For a young adult series, Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games offers a surprisingly biting criticism of the status quo in the West. Her story is one of a privileged district in society that is altogether indifferent to the suffering going on outside its boundaries.  Although Collin disguises it with different names, she has not ventured far from our present reality of global poverty.

The Hunger Games is set in a dystopic future world, where citizens live in an area divided by districts. District One & Two are the wealthiest, and control the majority of the resources. As they spread further and further out, the regions become more impoverished. The heroine of the novel, Katniss Everdeen, is from the last, District 13, and relies on her wits, her will and a crude bow and arrow to support her family. Through its fantastical descriptions, outlandish characters and futuristic technology, Collins’ world manages to appear quite distinct from our own. Yet, in a thinly veiled criticism Collins has painted an unsettling portrait of ourselves and the world we live in.

 

The Hunger Games: A Lesson on Global Poverty

 

The parallel escapes many of the fans of the books, but those who live in District One are akin to the top percent in the world: they have enough to eat, access to clean water, safe homes and opportunities for betterment. For this percentage of the world, daily life is not a struggle: it is a thing to be enjoyed, to find happiness and meaning, to indulge in fads and fancies and fashion. Much like the District One in the books, the humans in District One seem bizarre and alien in comparison to those struggling on the fringes. They have none of the same concerns and seem largely unaware of the brutal reality that exists just beyond their borders.

The Hunger Games offers an uncomfortable mirror to our own world. In our daily lives, we often obsess about trivialities: we track celebrities, dedicate time to watching who wore what dress, aim to buy smartphones and cars while the vast majority of the world struggles to scrape a living out of the most dire circumstances.

As audiences, we automatically condemn District One; without even meeting them, we judge everyone in it and see the plot’s revolution as inevitable and cheer for Katniss. In reality, however, we are not quite as benevolent. We are quick to make excuses to preserve self-interest. Poverty and the state of the world do not often rank among our daily concerns, as much as what to wear and what people think of us. On the national scale, US foreign aid consists of less than 1% of the budget; this covers everything from healthcare to military aid to food assistance.

The Hunger Games has captivated a number of readers in the United States; and yet, for some, Collins has posed a very uncomfortable and very important question – what makes us so different from District One?

– Farahnaz Mohammed

Photo: Film.com

Ultimate Value of Millennium Development Goals

millenium-development-goals-value
Not all of them will be met, but that does not mean that they have not been effective. The deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will expire at the end of this year, and certain goals, like universal primary education and reducing maternal mortality by 75%, won’t be achieved. But the progress towards these goals is undeniable, and, while it may be hard to quantify, these gains likely would not have occurred without the MDGs.

The goals have effectively highlighted certain issues. The U.N.’s developmental outline was embraced by a multitude of countries upon its release in September of 2011. As such, it has been a focus of the international policy and development strategies of many countries, as well as providing a yardstick against which to measure progress.

While progress can be attributed to many diverse factors, including individual countries’ economic growth or political stability, one area where the impact of the MDGs is clearly perceptible is in foreign aid. Global aid reached $128 billion in 2009, twice that of a decade earlier. The majority of that aid is going to the world’s poorest countries, particularly for organizations including the Global Health Initiative, the Global Climate Initiative, and Feed the Future.

These initiatives, as well as all other aid and funding aimed at reaching the Millennium Goals, have already reached millions of people globally. And already in the works is a framework for a new set of development goals, to supplant the current MDG’s. For the long term, the impact of the Millennium Development Goals has only just begun.

– David Wilson

Sources: Christian Science Monitor
Photo: Oxfam

Global Poverty by the Numbers

global-poverty
Global poverty is not just about numbers. Statistics in income, wealth distribution, disease, and education never tell the whole story of individual lives in harsh conditions. Poverty affects health, life expectancy, maternal mortality, educational opportunity, environmental risk, and many other factors that contribute to individual and collective well-being. Nevertheless, numbers show a lot about the challenges of global poverty, and better data can inform better solutions to the problem of global poverty.

Reports on global poverty commonly use GDP to determine the relative wealth of countries. Such numbers allow researchers, governments, and relief organizations to determine areas of the world where poverty is most severe. Using 2012 figures from the IMF World Economic Outlook Database, the magazine Global Finance states that Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many of the poorest countries in the world. Indeed, according to those estimates, 19 of the 20 poorest countries in the world can be found in that region. Measured by per capita GDP, the five poorest countries in the world are:

Life expectancy at birth in the poorest countries in the world is 2/3 that of some of the world’s wealthiest nations:

Child mortality rates in these countries where poverty is the worst are also expectedly high. The probability of infant death per 1,000 births is as follows:

  1. Eritrea: 68
  2. Burundi: 139
  3. Zimbabwe: 67
  4. Liberia: 78
  5. Democratic Republic of Congo: 165

In comparison, the average life expectancy in the U.S. and the U.K. is 79 and 80 respectively. The infant mortality rate is 5 per 1,000 in U.K. and 8 per 1,000 in the US. Using the GDP metric, the U.S. ranks 7th on the list of wealthiest nations, with an estimated GDP of over $49,000; and the U.K. ranks 23rd, with an estimated GDP of almost $37,000. The richest nation in the world is the oil-rich microstate of Qatar, with a per capita GDP of over 100,000 dollars. Life expectancy in that country is 82 years. The probability of infant death is also 8 per 1,000 live births.

– Délice Williams

Source: Global Finance,WHO
Photo: Melange