Information and stories about United Nations.

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Food Insecurity in India

Food Insecurity in India
The Indian government is currently considering a special session of parliament to pass a bill on food security. While some dismiss the effort as a rather blatant ploy for votes by the ruling Congress party, the issue of food security is very real for the world’s second-most populous country.

The UN World Food Programme recently released a report on food security in the Indian state of Maharashtra that highlights the challenges for India as it seeks to push forward in its economic and social development. Maharashtra is one of the largest states in population and land area in the country. The state has varied landscapes, varied demographics, and is an excellent example of the complexities involved in Indian food security.

Two key factors in addressing food security and social and economic issues arising from widespread hunger and malnutrition are child mortality and under-nutrition. Half the districts of Maharashtra suffer from under-five mortality rates higher than the national average of 74.3 per 1,000 live births. The state also struggles in comparison to the national average of under-weight children, with 26 of to 33 districts above the national percentage.

In both children and adults, improving the nutritional level can improve an individual’s productivity level. Given the implications such improvements hold for the overall development of a community, there are several programs working to reduce and prevent under-nutrition. Unfortunately, these programs are plagued by the problems of centralized implementation, often resulting in more affluent populations receiving aid over the populations most in need.

Availability, access, and absorption of food are also critical issues in Indian food security. Changing rainfall patterns in Maharashtra have created new challenges involving these aspects. Effective irrigation infrastructure and practices are notably lacking throughout much of the state, causing widespread low crop productivity. Low crop productivity, in turn, reduces a household’s income, limiting their buying power of food commodities they do not grow themselves.

Even when food is available, water-borne illnesses can drastically reduce the number of nutrients absorbed. Cleaner irrigation practices and modernized infrastructure are proven methods to improve the morbidity and mortality rates from these diseases, and a healthier population is a more productive population.

More effective irrigation is not the only infrastructure needed in Maharashtra. Road improvements are critical to improving food access in the region. Reliable roads not only open up economic opportunities but also serve to connect a rural population to health and education resources. This connectivity, particularly to educational opportunities, can help diversify rural economies away from a sole reliance on agriculture.

Women are also an important part of the successful implementation of food security and development programs in Maharashtra. Reducing and eliminating gender inequality is a top priority of the UN World Food Programme. In Maharashtra, women’s land ownership rights are particularly critical in integrating women into the food security solution.

Even with modest progress, the challenges facing Maharashtra and India as a whole are daunting. Government, private sector, and foreign investment in the implementation of responsible and sustainable development practices is critical. More critical, however, is the collaboration of the local communities receiving the aid. Without a comprehensive, collaborative approach, the many challenges of food security in Maharashtra and India could continue to afflict several future generations.

– Lauren Brown
Source: UN World Food Programme, BBC
Photo: Ask Use

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Understanding Hidden Hunger

Understanding Hidden Hunger
Sight and Life, a prominent group working to fight micronutrient deficiencies prevalent among the world’s poor, has recently released its Hidden Hunger Index. Hidden hunger is defined as a chronic deficiency of necessary micronutrients. Rather than a lack of food or calories, this type of hunger results from a diet low in specific nutrients. This condition affects approximately 1 in 3 people in the world today and accounts for about 7% of diseases around the world. Although the signs are not visible, hidden hunger has long-term consequences for overall health, productivity, and mental development. The most common deficiencies are in vitamin A, iodine, folate, and B vitamins. Women of reproductive age and young children are most severely affected by this condition.

In addition to its negative and often permanent health effects, hidden hunger has numerous economic consequences. It aggravates global poverty in multiple ways and minimizes countries’ growth in economic productivity. It also increases child and maternal mortality, causes birth defects, diseases, and disabilities. Unfortunately, it also restrains the empowerment of women by adversely affecting their health.

The Hidden Hunger Index concluded that hidden hunger in pre-school age children was alarmingly high in sub-Saharan Africa, India, and Afghanistan. High Hidden Hunger Index was found to correlate with low Human Development Index, a measure based on three basic qualities of human well-being: a long and healthy life, education, and standard of living. While many micronutrient deficiencies were found to occur in groups, iodine deficiencies were often found independently. This is probably due to differing country laws on salt iodization. Iodine deficiency accounts for approximately 18 million children born mentally impaired each year.

Hidden hunger and its related health issues are significant obstacles to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) laid out by the United Nations. The Hidden Hunger Index shines a light on micronutrient deficiencies and acts as a tool for activism. While there is information concerning hunger issues with root causes in a lack of food and calories, and about single micronutrient deficiencies, information about multiple micronutrient deficiencies is sorely lacking. Sight and Life developed the Hidden Hunger Index in the hopes that it will “serve as a tool to stimulate global efforts towards scaling up nutrition interventions”.

– Katie Fullerton

Sources: Micronutrient Initiative, Hidden Hunger Index
Photo: The Guardian

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Climate Refugees Intensify Global Warming Debate

Climate Refugees Intensify Global Warming Debate
People on different sides of the global warming debate now must consider a new element to the discussion as countries around the world try to address the question of how to treat “climate refugees.”

Guidelines for the treatment of internally displaced people as a result of war, violence, or natural disasters have existed for over 50 years. However, the question of how to treat displaced people who have been displaced within their home countries because of disasters brought on by climate change has yet to be answered.

Walter Kaelin, the former representative of the UN Secretary-General on the Human Rights of Internally Displaced Persons, frames the problem by saying, “There are unclear mandates for [aid] agencies to respond to cross-border displacement since no NGO or agency has responsibility for overseeing people displaced by natural disasters.” The legal questions regarding how to treat or assist people across international borders as a result of natural disasters have not yet been resolved. Some countries and organizations have shied away from addressing the issue of climate refugees because it could involve a lengthy formal process of international negotiations. The result is that climate refugees who apply for asylum after natural disasters can be rejected by possible host countries and have few if any, fall-back options.

At the 2010 Cancun conference on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the question of how to treat climate refugees was raised when the term “climate change-induced displacement” was mentioned for the first time in such a setting. However, the group refused to propose guidelines for the treatment of those displaced. At a recent conference in the Pacific Rim, the matter received considerable attention, in part because people from the so-called “drowning islands” (Pacific nations that are succumbing to rising sea levels) face the prospect of becoming climate refugees themselves as a result of disasters caused by global warming. Various U.N. agencies are studying the matter more closely in the hope of finding workable and livable solutions for those affected.

– Délice Williams

Source: IR in News,Climate Refugees
Photo: Space.City

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Fighting Human Trafficking

HumanTrafficking
The Assistant Foreign Minister for Legal Affairs, Dr. Abdul-Rahim Al Awadi, expressed that fighting human trafficking “depends largely on addressing poverty and weakness, as well as on building national capacities to tackle such crime.” According to him, the U.A.E. has been committed in its contribution to this fight, which included the creation of a trust fund to aid those affected by human trafficking, and the release of a trafficked person’s report in 2012 for the first time. Dr. Al Awadi pointed out that addressing human trafficking is not merely a job for the countries where these crimes are taking place, instead, it is a “shared responsibility,” a cooperation with the countries where these trafficked persons came from. He says that coordination should occur between labor exporting countries and labor importing countries.

The U.A.E. has dealt with these crimes in accordance to international measures since the creation of the Comprehensive National Campaign for Anti-Human Trafficking in 2006; they established trials for those accused of trafficking, protected victims, and fortified global partnerships. Also, in 2006, the U.A.E. put the Federal Anti-Trafficking law into action, which is the “first law of its kind in the Middle East.” The state has also used the media to spread awareness and implemented procedures at entry ports.

In hopes of fighting human trafficking, and especially focusing on trafficking of women and children, the U.A.E. joined the U.N. Convention against trans-national organized crime. Further more, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi granted 15 million dollars to the United Nations initiative on human trafficking which was launched in 2008. Lastly, to the countries where persons are more prone to becoming victims of human trafficking, Dr. Al Awadi suggests that they avert the very factors which lead to human exploitation, and that they ensure that women are not falsely recruited and then exploited instead.

– Leen Abdallah
Source: Khaleej Times

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Universal Primary Education

Universal Primary Education
Since 1999, when 106 million children were not in school, much progress has been made. Today, approximately 61 million are out of school, and yet more progress is needed. In the past five years, due to the economic crisis, many nations decreased their foreign aid spending and thus progress was hindered. According to the World Bank and the U.N., the majority of children not attending schools live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, with at least half living in areas that are politically unstable.

Despite some progress, it is crucial to note that there is a percentage of people/areas that is not accounted for in the statistics of progress and primary education. For example, according to the U.N., 90% of primary aged children living in developing countries are now in school as opposed to that percentage being 82% in 1999. While the rise in percentage sounds great, “broad figures [have the tendency to] mask localized problems,” and thus, in actuality some countries barely have any primary aged children attending school. The children who are most unaffected by the progress and recent advancement are the extremely poor and the minorities. Nigeria, Yemen, Ethiopia, South Sudan, India,  Haiti, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Bangladesh account for half of the world’s children not going to school.

There is a demand for new donors or ‘funders,’ now that many nations have cut back on their foreign aid, from the private sector and through public fundraising. Part of the U.N. 2015 Millennium Goals was to ensure that all children have equal access to primary education and to increase females’ enrollment in schools. However, experts are claiming that education goals are difficult to reach due to issues such as child labor, cultural values, and other reasons. For example, in some cultures, it is valued more that daughters stay home while the sons receive an education. The women assume the housewife role while the men are valued to be the knowledgeable providers.

In addition to child labor and cultural values, there are many concerns regarding harassment and safety of the children attending schools. For example, some female students in Sierra Leone reported being sexually harassed by teachers in exchange for good grades. And it is almost impossible to forget the story of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl, who was shot by the Taliban for her advocacy of education for girls. Despite the unfortunates, where instituting education does work, it makes an incredible difference. Rebeca Winthrop, the director of the Center of Universal Education at the Brookings Institution in Washington, expressed that there are children who continue to learn even in refugee camps. Where there is desire, willingness, and determination, there is much hope for universal primary education and even further schooling.

– Leen Abdallah
Source: New York Times
Photo: Globalization 101

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Progress Is Being Made Towards MDGs

Millennium Development Goals

Twenty nations have made huge strides in just a few years towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The Millennium Development Goals are a series of international development goals set by the United Nations in 2000 that aim to eradicate poverty, hunger, and disease and improve the quality of life for the world’s poorest by the year 2015. Nations, that were described as troubled and conflict-hit, had not met any of the MDGs in 2010 have now at least met one. The World Bank cites better data collection and monitoring that have made progress more discernible.

The World Bank noted that countries Afghanistan, Nepal and Timor-Leste have decreased the number of people in extreme poverty by fifty percent or increased the number of girls enrolled in schools.

The World Bank aims to find ways to help countries that have relapsed such as Yemen which until the Arab Spring in 2011 was on course to reduce maternal mortality. It also aims to help conflict-hit countries transition from receiving humanitarian aid that ends once the cameras leave to building foundations for long-term development. To do so, the World Bank is working with the UN which has historically assisted with peace-keeping and humanitarian assistance.

World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, called the results a wake-up call to “the global community [to] not dismiss these countries as lost causes. Development can and is being achieved, even amid fragility and violence.”

The World Bank plans to focus on aid effectiveness by studying how aid money is used and if it actually impacts the poor, particularly with the reduction of aid from the U.S. and Europe.

– Essee Oruma

Source: Reuters
Photo: A Celebration of Women

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Human Rights a Priority for World Bank

Human Rights a Priority for World BankIndependent United Nations experts are advising the World Bank to include human rights standards in their criteria for giving loans and all other interactions with developing countries. The World Bank will hold a review in the upcoming months to discuss its social policies and is expected to adopt international human rights standards.

When the World Bank does not consider the human rights of a specific country before investing, the organization risks unintentionally hurting the extremely poor in that country. This happens because some development ends up benefiting the wealthy people while the poor suffer. For example, poor farmers may lose their land, and therefore livelihood, in order to build new housing structures that have been sanctioned by the World Bank.

The group advocating for human rights standards in the World Bank includes representatives for the Special Rapporteur (and its sub-groups on extreme poverty and human rights, rights of indigenous peoples, and rights to food) and the Independent Expert on foreign debt and human rights.

As such, the World Bank can expect to hear arguments from this group urging them to consider issues like “disability, gender, labor, land tenure, and the rights of indigenous people” in the meeting. These suggestions will also be open for public comment. The goal of adding human rights criteria to World Bank standards is to ensure that the poor benefit development as well as wealthy people.

The World Bank will update its “safeguard policies,” its social and environmental policies, to make sure that the voices of the poor are not overpowered by the wealthy. This review, which will analyze the activities of the World Bank for the past two years, is a huge opportunity for the organization to begin to reach out to the world’s poorest.

– Mary Penn

Source: India Blooms
Photo: The Foundry

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UNICEF’s Global Education First Initiative

UNICEF's Global Education First Initiative
Josephine Bourne is the Associate Director of UNICEF. She sat down for an interview with the Inter Press Service to give her thoughts on the upcoming meetings to be held in Washington D.C. on the Global Education First Initiative.

The meetings will bring together Ministers in Finance from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, South Sudan, Yemen, Nigeria, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. The topic of conversation will focus on sustainable solutions between the private sector and civil society organizations. The meetings will center around the importance of education on the global economy.

Bourne believes that the initiative will provide an increased pressure for political commitment in the field of education.  She stated that UNICEF would like to continue to work towards ensuring education for the most vulnerable children, particularly girls, with disabilities as well as children living in conflict territories.

When Bourne was asked if there was one thing in particular that greatly diminished a child’s opportunity to obtain an education, she bluntly stated that being born into poverty as a girl in a rural area is a huge disadvantage. The longer a girl is able to attend school, the fewer children she will have – an incredibly important factor in poverty reduction.

Around the world, girls who have seven years of education have 2.2 fewer children than those that do not. When those girls have children, those children will be healthier and better educated, helping to lower the poverty percentage in their given communities. Bourne believes that this environment leads to economic growth, more female leaders, and more sustainable development.

In the interview, Bourne was also asked about gender equality and education. She said that girls from disadvantaged groups are oftentimes the most marginalized because of the special risks that could take them out of school. She believes that there is serious inequity in schools around the world.

Women’s education and empowerment have been a popular theme in the media lately with the recent release of the documentary “Girl Rising”. While this is a very positive thing, Bourne was quick to note, however, that the increased media attention to gender and education inequality, as well as the empowerment that comes with it are not enough to bring about social change. In her opinion, in order to create lasting change, we need the complete commitment of all duty bearers; from organizations such as UNICEF and the UN to parents and communities; to be involved in the promotion of the human right of education for all children around the world.

– Caitlin Zusy

Source: Inter Press Service
Photo: UNESCO

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Berry and Kors Launch Watch Hunger Stop

Berry and Kors Launch Watch Hunger StopThe LA Times has reported that Halle Berry has teamed up with Michael Kors to help stop world hunger. The duo has announced their new campaign entitled, Watch Hunger Stop. The program will provide meals to children in Africa, Syria, and possibly Central America. The money will be raised through the sale of Kors’ $295 runway watch. The program has a high-efficiency rate as each watch can provide 100 meals for children as part of the U.N. World Food Programme.

The announcement of the campaign comes during Berry’s pregnancy- an additional beneficial aspect of the program. The actress states that she hopes to be able to travel to these countries during her pregnancy to speak with women about prenatal care. This helps raise awareness for women who may not have been exposed to such education. Increased knowledge of prenatal care as well as increased food in the region could greatly improve children’s quality of life, as well as potentially work to lower infant mortality rates. The lowering of infant mortality rates is incredibly important as mothers who have confidence their children will survive to have fewer children.

Berry has told the press that she would like to use her celebrity status for the benefit of people around the world. She would like to use this opportunity to speak to women around the world who struggle to feed and tend to their children. Berry seems well versed in the knowledge that hunger is a dangerous predictor of quality of life, and seems motivated to work towards the elimination of world hunger, something we could all strive to achieve.

– Caitlin Zusy

Source: LA Times

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Extreme Poverty Could End by 2030, Says World Bank President

Extreme Poverty Could End by 2030, Says World Bank PresidentThe world could end extreme poverty by 2030, according to Jim Yong Kim, president of the World Bank Group. “This feasible but ambitious goal should bring unity, urgency, and energy to our collective efforts in the fight against poverty.”

The percentage of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased by 22 percent from 1990 to 2010. Kim believes this number could decrease to a total of 3 percent by 2030 if nations work together to combat extreme poverty.  He acknowledges the immense difficulty but still finds it achievable.

He points to pass successes, such as the first Millennium Development Goal.  The first goal to halve extreme poverty was accomplished five years ahead of schedule.  The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most successful global anti-poverty initiatives in history. April 5, 2013, is the 1,000-day mark until the 2015 target for the completion of the MDGs. Governments, international organizations, and civil groups aim to accomplish the goals before the approaching deadline.

Kim believes success “requires transformational changes in fragile states.” The world’s poor reside in fragile states, and stronger governments must support more delicate countries. The key to alleviating poverty is averting financial shocks, such as climatic disasters, gas prices, or financial crises. Countries must build stronger infrastructures, so they will survive such spontaneous situations.

The main obstacle for combating extreme poverty is global climate change, and Kim worries about the effect of climate change on those with limited resources.  “It is the poor—those least responsible for climate change and least able to afford adaptation—who suffer the most.”  NASA published conclusive evidence that sea level is rising, global temperatures are increasing, and ice sheets are shrinking.  These issues present new challenges for the world’s poor that governments need to address in order to alleviate extreme poverty.

– Whitney M. Wyszynski

Source: The Guardian, Flickr