Poverty and Economics

Via: CRIN
Underdevelopment can have hugely negative affects on children across the globe. It leads to extreme poverty and can limit access to education, health care and food. The impact on children is shocking:

*Worldwide 600 million children are living in absolute poverty
*30,000 children die each day due to poverty
*Over 300 million children go to bed hungry every day
*The cost of eradicating world poverty is estimated at 1% of global income

Childhood poverty is a huge constraint to growth. By investing in children the obstacles facing developing countries can be lessened, partly by creating a healthy, educated generation that can effectively contribute to the economy. Countries need to focus budgets on the needs and the rights of children.

The right economic policies can lift poor children out of poverty, by ensuring access to services, providing public goods, and creating a stable macroeconomic environment. Conversely, many economic policies, if poorly designed or implemented, can also push large numbers of people further below the poverty line.

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"The warmth of the people's hearts is slipping away."

Zimbabwe crisis leads to moral decay

Via: BBC

Photo: AFP

How do you tell your children it is important to get an education when jobs - if you are lucky enough to get one - have worthless salaries," asks one Zimbabwean mother. "They know that a quick deal on the black market can give them the same amount as a month's salary."

Tuition fees increase every term and students find it impossible to pay even for notebooks, much less books. You have to go on the black market in order to pay for all this. "It is so hypocritical," said one young student.

The official rate for $1 is 250 Zimbabwe dollars but on the black market $1 can net you more than 40,000 Zimbabwe dollars. That's fine if you can get your hands on foreign exchange, but what happens if you can't? "I earn 200,000 [Zimbabwe] dollars a month," said a security guard. "But cooking oil costs 90,000 and I still haven't paid for food, rent, clothes, school fees and transport to work. How am I supposed to live?"

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Reflection of the Day: Victory For Humanity

"Be Ashamed to Die Until You Have Won Some Victory For Humanity."
(Horace Man)

Reflection of the Day: Empathy

EMPATHY
"The discoveries of how we can grow and the insights we need to have really come from the inside out. To have genuine empathy, not as a make-nice tool but as an understanding, is essential to the next step." (Patricia Sun)

Rambling at 2:00AM or the beginning of something?

We must jettison this “me” mentality for a comprehensive worldview that values and promotes social/civic involvement, charitable work and community cohesiveness.

At the foundation of humanity's success is its ability to harness its collective strength through meaningful relationships based on mutual compassion and support, cooperation and love. To the degree that humanity can actualize/embody these attributes is the degree to which humanity becomes and/or is an international community.

The litmus test for the global community would be to measure how it treats the weakest segment of the community. In this spirit, the international community would be able to replace this "me-first" mentality and/or way of thinking, for an all inclusive “we”mentality.”

Sounds like I'm rambling....I'm going to bed!

Reflection for the Day

During my readings I often come across various quotes that inspire a moment of reflection. With that in mind, I thought I would share these quotes with the intention that they may be of some benefit to you as they were for me. Feel free to send me quotes via e-mail (msf2018@columbia.edu) that you feel inspire you!

Reflection:

“We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life.
We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for purpose.
We cherish our freedoms but long for connection.
In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger.”
(David G. Myers)

"I've seen happiness in the eyes of other HIV-positive people"

Via: Plusnews.org
Photo by: Zoe Eisenstein

Samira Perreira Fernandes, 22, found out three years ago she was HIV-positive. She believes she contracted HIV from her foreign husband, whom she met and married in Cape Verde. A few months after finding out, she went public about her status on television.

She told IRIN/PlusNews about her experience. "I was worried because of my husband's behaviour. He slept with lots of girls and was trafficking drugs. I knew about HIV and everything indicated that both of us were taking risks. I told my husband I was going to do a test, which I did with the help of a psychologist.

When I got the result, I showed it to him and I was so angry that I wanted to kill him. He fled Cape Verde. First off, I didn't tell anyone, but then people started to get suspicious. People are curious, and when they are in doubt they will do everything they can to find out. There was a lot of discrimination and I moved house lots of times, but the houses where I lived never let me use the kitchen or the bathroom.

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Vicious Circle: Poverty, HIV, Neglect, ending in the Sex Business

KENYA: Youth, sex and tourism on the coast

Via:PlusNews.org

Photo:IRIN

With so many tourists on the coast, and so few other jobs available, for some there is little option other than to join the sex trade. “There are no jobs and to get a job is very hard. We look for jobs but we can’t get any because there are so few,” said Alice

Many other young women, however, are forced into prostitution by members of their family, according to Stella Muchiti Mulama, assistant programme manager and researcher for the Straight Talk programme. “Children are often coerced into prostitution by elder people […] Parents actually push their children to do sex work. It happens quite a lot. Sometimes mothers, who are also involved in sex work, bring their daughters into it too. We have had stories of mothers forcing their children to have sex with clients in order to earn their school fees,” she said.

Elizabeth Akinyi, the head of projects at the Coast Province branch of SOLWODI agrees with this view: “Parents play a big role. The children of sex workers are very much at risk. They are abused by the customers that come to see their mothers; sometimes the girls are also made to serve the men.” There are however many other factors that bring young women and girls into the sex industry: peer pressure, financial and social circumstances, and low aspirations, added Akinyi.

“Peer pressure is also a big factor as well as a lack of basic needs. There are children who are staying in families that are very poor. There are parents who can’t even afford to give their children sanitary towels. There is also the issue of ‘this is what I want’. There was one girl who was saying to me, ‘I wanted to buy these hipster jeans, but my mother refused, so I did this [prostitution] so I could get the jeans’,” she said.

Although earnings in the sex trade can vary widely, potential income is much greater than if working in any other profession. According to sex worker, Jane [not her real name], 22: “It [the income] depends on the competition, the season and where you are. It’s never specific. In the low season you end up offering yourself for 20 KES (Kenyan shillings) [US 30¢] if the tourists aren’t there. It can be 5,000 KES [US $70] if the tourists are there. House help is very badly paid. I used to go around and wash people’s clothes. But at the end of the day they give you 150 KES [$2], which is nothing. So you have to look for other ways to pay rent and buy clothes,” she said.

Winkler said, “Many children […] are orphans because of HIV. This often leads to them dropping out of school, and lack of education. I see it as a kind of ‘vicious circle’, starting with poverty, HIV, neglect, and ending in the sex business at the [Kenyan] coast.”

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"I had no alternative but to sell my body"

KENYA: Illiteracy, Poverty aggravating HIV among northern women
Via: PlusNews.org
Photo: Justo Casal

"My father was killed, our livestock stolen ... I had no alternative but to sell my body," said Halima Wario, a young HIV-positive woman who takes care of her three sisters. "Two months after the attack, I moved and started [commercial sex] work."

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ETHIOPIA: Rural HIV - time to wake up and smell the coffee

Via: PlusNews.org
Photo: Victoria Av

The outbreak of war between Ethiopia and neighbouring Eritrea between 1998 and 2000 swelled the army's ranks to about 350,000 soldiers, who spent months at a time in border areas where commercial sex work flourished. When the fighting ended, most of these men were demobilised and returned to their rural homes to continue farming.

In Ethiopia, where 85 percent of the country's 71 million people live in the still conservative countryside, Birhanu's openness in discussing AIDS is far from the norm. "HIV is not at all common here in these rural areas," he said. "I do encourage other farmers to go for testing - I think that's important - but I've never heard of anyone who has HIV or AIDS." The ministry of health estimates rural HIV prevalence at 1.9 percent, compared with the national average of 3.5 percent.

"The government enterprise is reporting many of their staff are dying of HIV/AIDS on these coffee farms; many are dying and many are vulnerable," Gashaw said, adding that HIV was also a growing threat among smallholders. "A smallholder coffee farmer in Yirgacheffe may deny that HIV/AIDS is a problem, but the transfer of the disease from urban to rural areas is growing, and many people are dying," he said.

Low awareness means stigma and discrimination are high, with half the rural women interviewed in a 2006 demographic health survey admitting they would not want to care for a relative with HIV in their own home. As a result, many HIV-positive people remain in denial rather than seeking treatment. "The government has voiced their concerns, yet little is being done to change the situation," Gashaw noted. "The lack of studies and preventative programmes in these coffee-growing regions is very concerning."

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ETHIOPIA: Flower industry needs to nip HIV in the bud

Via: PlusNews.org
Photo: Victoria Averil/IRIN

DEBRE ZEIT, 17 May 2007 (PlusNews) - Ethiopia's flower industry is a booming business, but AIDS campaigners fear that inaction by farm owners and government, combined with a poorly educated workforce, could provide fertile ground for HIV. "I've been working here for six months and in that time I've never heard mention of HIV/AIDS," Sofanit Nigusu, 21, told IRIN/PlusNews as she carefully pruned rose cuttings in one of a huge number of commercial greenhouses at the heart of the country's flower industry. "I know it's a problem, but outside [the capital] Addis Ababa nothing is done about it."

Ethiopia's floriculture industry generates over US$20 million per year and is projected to more than double in size over the next few years. But there are growing concerns that little is being done to address the AIDS pandemic in an industry notorious for attracting a transient, uneducated workforce vulnerable to the virus.

"The problem we face is that the flower industry is an emerging industry, but growing very quickly," said Gashaw Mengistu, coordinator at the HIV/AIDS Resource Centre in Addis Ababa. "Now, the majority of workers come from nearby villages, but in the future there could be a crisis, as people are lured from around the country to work on the farms, living together in camp-like settings ... this is when conditions are ripe for the spread of the virus."

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KENYA: Slum women struggle to put food on the table

Via:IRINnews.org
Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

Patricia Atieno lives in Kibera, a large slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, but spends most of her mornings looking for short-term employment as a house help elsewhere in the city. "I have been doing domestic work for a decade now; my family depends on it," she said. "In the past it was easier to find work but not any more. The employers now hire and dismiss us indiscriminately." Like Atieno, many of Nairobi's women slum dwellers are the breadwinners. "We have to work harder and move from one place to another to increase our chances of getting work," she added.

According to the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (Habitat), Nairobi's slums are overcrowded, with four to six people living in one room. The dwellings are very close to each other; services are basic, while morbidity and mortality rates are high. City authorities say more than 1.6 million (out of Nairobi's estimated population of 3.5 million) live in the slums or "informal settlements". Most live below the poverty line - earning less than US$7 a week - according to experts. The women who seek domestic work earn a meagre 200-350 Kenya shillings (US$3-5) per task. Aged between 14 and 40 years, they sit at the periphery of upmarket residential estates for up to seven hours every day hoping to be hired. Despite the uncertainties of the work they do, however, the women insist they would rather engage in traditional household chores than in "the flesh thing" (prostitution).

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KENYA: Slum women struggle to put food on the table (Continued)

Via: IRINnews.org
Photo: Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

But they complain that harassment is a significant problem at work. "We usually do laundry, ironing and clean houses," one of the women, who requested anonymity, explained. "But sometimes we get crazy people who ask us to do extras.

"I worry whenever a man comes to hire me because I have been coerced into sexual encounters without which I would not be paid my dues on several occasions," she added. "Sexual harassment is becoming a very common part of this job. We are desperate for the money so we oblige at times."

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Child Protection: Street Children {Ethiopia}

Via:Voanews.com
By: Angel Tabe

Our series this week focuses on the increasing number of Africa’s children who are making their homes in the streets of major cities across the continent. So why does the problem exist and why is it getting worse? What is being done to help homeless children?

Assefa Bequele is the executive director of the African Policy Forum, an advocacy center in Ethiopia. VOA English to Africa reporter Angel Tabe asked him why children end up living on the streets. “The breakdown of family structures, for example the rising level of divorce, poverty, school system not progressing, orphans as a result of the AIDS pandemic, communities have failed to provide a conducive ecology for families and the state, to provide for the basic needs of its people.”

The absence of the above factors which Bequele describes as all important for the survival of children has forced children to resort to irregular trade, dangerous sex, and becoming vulnerable, even to those who are supposed to protect them like law enforcement officers. Bequele says, “Indeed, the officers are not the best friends these children can have, viewed by some as a potential danger, so we need to think about a child-friendly environment.”

Despite a vibrant NGO community working for the welfare of children, Bequele says it’s practically a drop in the ocean when you consider the dimension of the problem. “You can hardly expect it to be addressed through the kind action and generosity of small NGOs however good their work may be. It requires community action and large scale government intervention.” Already, he adds, African governments recognize the need for child protection, but there is a huge gap between rhetoric and reality. “Given resources available, the burden is quite enormous. Quite frankly, children are not a priority. Yes we love our children, but much remains to be done putting children on the public agenda.”

Bequele shares his recommendation. “At the end of the day, the family is the best source of protection for children. We should carry out long term measures to strengthen the family e.g. job creation, combating high mortality rates, universal education. For the short term, pressure the most important actors so that urban development has children at the center of the policy paradigm. Local governments, municipalities, city administrations should ask themselves the question: What are we doing to ensure that children are catered to, to make the city a zone of peace?”

Click here to listen to the interview with Assefa Bequele

Report on Child Deaths Finds Some Hope in Poorest Nations

Via: Celia W. Dugger
Photo: Joao Silva

The rate at which young children perish has worsened most disastrously over the past 15 years in Iraq, hard hit by both sanctions and war, and in Botswana, Zimbabwe and Swaziland, devastated by AIDS, according to a report released yesterday by Save the Children. But researchers also found against-the-odds progress in some of the world’s poorest nations.

Bangladesh has profoundly improved the chances that a child would survive by promoting family planning, a strategy that has enabled women to have fewer children, space births and strengthen their own health and that of their babies.
Nepal, despite a decade-long Maoist insurgency, has halved the death rate of children under age 5. It has enlisted the help of 50,000 mothers, most of them illiterate, who have squeezed vitamin A drops into the mouths of every child, hauled laggards in for vaccinations and even diagnosed pneumonia and dispensed medicines to combat it.

And Malawi, with an extreme shortage of doctors and nurses, has made surprising gains by taking simple steps that require no professional skills, for example distributing nets that protect children from malarial mosquitoes.

“In 2007, when we know what to do and how little it costs, that 28,000 kids are still dying each day is just plain wrong,” said David Oot, a public health expert on the team that produced the Save the Children report, “State of the World’s Mothers: Saving the Lives of Children Under 5.”
Despite many hopeful stories, broad progress against infant and child mortality has flagged since international health agencies began a campaign to reduce deaths 25 years ago, the researchers concluded. By the end of the 1980’s, global rates of child mortality had fallen 20 percent, and the lives of 12 million children were saved.

“Much of the momentum behind the child survival revolution has now been lost, and gains achieved in the 1980s and early 1990s have slowed or reversed,” the report says. “Under-5 mortality declined by only 10 percent from the early 1990s to 2000.”
Among the 60 developing countries where 94 percent of the child deaths occurred, 20 have either made no progress or have regressed, while 24 have cut death rates of children under 5 by at least 20 percent.

Iraq experienced the most staggering rise in under-age-5 mortality — 150 percent over 15 years. Since the war began in 2003, deteriorating health services, rising inflation and electricity shortages have worsened living conditions, the report said. In 2005, about 122,000 Iraqi children died before their fifth birthdays.

In countries that progressed, a focus on family planning was central to progress, the report said. In the five countries that made the greatest strides in reducing child deaths — Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nepal and the Philippines — women’s use of contraceptives rose and fertility rates declined. In those countries, mothers were less likely to be physically depleted by having too many babies in too short a time. With fewer children, families were also able to invest more in the care of each child.

Political will was also an essential ingredient of success — and in Malawi, Tanzania, Nepal and Bangladesh was even more important than national wealth, the report found. Egypt, which has cut the death rate of children under age 5 by 68 percent since 1990, more than any other country, has shown a particular commitment to children’s health, said the researchers at Save the Children, a nonprofit group, and other experts.

“In words and deed, Egypt has put children more at the center of their social agenda than most other countries,” said Ruth Levine, author of “Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health (Center for Global Development, 2004).
Egypt has carried out a comprehensive effort to improve the health of mothers and children. It invested in clean water and public health campaigns to teach the importance of hand-washing in disease prevention. It built roads that sped access to hospitals. It renovated dilapidated clinics. It made sure most mothers had midwives or other skilled workers to attend births. It strove to perfect immunization campaign strategies.

“There is a way to do a blanket of public health interventions that is very effective,” said Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, a pediatrician and chairman of the Department of Prevention and Community Health at George Washington University School of Public Health, who served as a consultant on a United States-financed maternal and child health program in Egypt.

Bill Clinton announces AIDS drug deals

Via: By KAREN MATTHEWS, Associated Press Writer
Photo: Reuters

NEW YORK - Former President Bill Clinton announced agreements with drug companies Tuesday to lower the price in the developing world of AIDS drugs resistant to initial treatments and to make a once-a-day AIDS pill available for less than $1 a day.

The drugs to battle so-called "second-line" anti-retrovirals are needed by patients who develop a resistance to first-line treatment and currently cost 10 times as much, Clinton said. Nearly half a million patients will require these drugs by 2010.
Clinton's foundation negotiated agreements with generic drug makers Cipla Ltd. and Matrix Laboratories Ltd. that he said would generate an average savings of 25 percent in low-income countries and 50 percent in middle-income countries.
Clinton also announced a reduced price for a once-daily first-line AIDS pill that combines the drugs tenofovir, lamivudine and efavirenz.

He said the new price of $339 per patient per year would be 45 percent lower than the current rate available to low-income countries and 67 percent less than the price available to many middle-income countries.
The Clinton Foundation's activities are being financed by UNITAID, an organization formed by France and 19 other nations that have earmarked a small portion of their airline tax revenues for HIV/AIDS programs in developing countries.UNITAID will provide the foundation with more than $100 million to buy second-line medicines for 27 countries through 2008.

"Every person living with HIV deserves access to the most effective medicines, and UNITAID aims to ensure that these are affordable for all developing countries," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy, chairman of UNITAID's board, said in a statement.

Since starting its HIV/AIDS Initiative in 2002, the Clinton Foundation has worked with 25 countries in Africa, the Caribbean and Asia to set up AIDS treatment and prevention programs.The foundation also provides access to lower-priced AIDS drugs in 65 countries. Some 650,000 people are now receiving AIDS drugs purchased through the Clinton Foundation. Clinton said Cipla and Matrix collaborated with the foundation to lower production costs in part by securing lower prices for raw materials.

Let Your Own Light Shine

"And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

-Nelson Mandela

Why We Should Act!

“Less than 10 per cent of the children who have been orphaned or made vulnerable by AIDS receive public support or services.”

(Ann Veneman, Executive Director of UNICEF)

Get all girls into school and give them a fighting chance against HIV

Via: CRIN
Across the world today, one in every five girls of primary school age are not in school. When girls miss out, not only are they denied the chance to learn to read and write, earn a living and participate in democracy, it also puts their lives in jeopardy. Education gives women and girls the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to protect themselves against HIV and AIDS. The Global Campaign for Education is calling on world leaders to join up and take urgent action now. They must ensure everyone, especially girls, can go to school and get the education needed to fight for their rights. Poorer countries need to enact policies that will make school free, accessible and safe for girls and boys, whilst rich countries must live up to promises repeatedly made, and still not fulfilled, to increase aid in support of these policies.

Around the world, 80 million children - mostly girls - are out of school. Eight hundred million adults, mostly women, cannot read and write. Yet free education has been enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948.

Giving girls the chance to learn to read and write not only fulfils their right to an education – but it also helps them in challenging the many power imbalances between men and women, and crucially in protecting themselves against HIV.

In a survey carried out last year 30 per cent of girls in South Africa said that their first sexual experience was under force or threat of force. When it comes to HIV and AIDS women and girls fare the worst – accounting for 74 per cent of young people living with HIV in Africa.

At present many women simply do not have the power they need to decide who to have sex with, when to have sex and how to have safe sex. Education can give women a chance to challenge this situation. The more education women and girls receive, the better they are able to negotiate safer sex and HIV rates. This is clearly demonstrated in Swaziland, where two in three girls who are in school are HIV negative, while two in three of girls out of school are HIV positive.

Girls who complete primary school are 50 per cent less likely to be infected with HIV. Seven million cases of HIV could be prevented in a decade if all children attended primary school.

Not only are educated girls better able to protect their own health but they are also able to make informed choices that can protect the health of their family and earn a greater income, giving them more bargaining power within the home:
~The children of women who can read and write are 50 per cent more likely to live past the age of 5.
~In poor countries, each year of schooling increases girls' future earning power by 10-20 per cent.

The Global Campaign for Education asks that leaders no longer turn a blind eye whilst the rights of women and girls are denied. Give them a fighting chance. Ensure education is of high quality, free and accessible to everyone, especially girls.


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Sex work thrives as girls struggle to survive

ZIMBABWE: Sex work thrives as girls struggle to survive

Via: IRIN
Photo: IRIN
Dressed in a tiny white skirt and a top, Linda, 16, (not her real name) struts into a nightclub in Madlambuzi, a sprawling rural settlement in Zimbabwe's Matabeleland South Province. Swinging to the deafening music, she scans the room for potential customers.

She joins a group of visibly drunk girls with pints of clear beer in their hands. Sex work is a last resort of girls desperate to make a living in this poverty-stricken village, or just to "get money to feed our families," Linda told IRIN.

"I was deported as an illegal emigrant from Botswana in December last year, where I used to work as a maid. I have no means of getting money to feed myself and my little child. This is why I am here," she said.

"My parents died two years ago, and I am the one responsible to fend for my two siblings and my only child. They look forward to me to bring food home. There are no jobs here, [and] food is very expensive," she added.

Desperate times
Gordon Chavhunduka, sociologist and political commentator, said Zimbabwe's "social fabric is fast collapsing, just the way the economy is. It's sad that people, especially the vulnerable ones - let alone young girls - would do terrible things just to survive in this economy. It's a sad story."

Linda has many difficulties to contend with besides soaring food prices and the rocketing inflation that has sent the economy into a tailspin, but worst, she feels, is facing criticism from her neighbors and relatives for selling her body.

According to village elders, sex work has been spreading rapidly in rural Matabeleland, especially where there are drinking spots or nightclubs. "These girls are a disgrace. We know survival is not easy, especially considering that commodities are expensive in shops and the there are no jobs, both here [countryside] and in towns, but selling their bodies is wrong," said Methuseli Dumani, a village elder. "We have tried talking to some of them to abandon their evil deeds but they would not listen. Each time the sun sets, you see them trickling in [the club] and start soliciting. We don't know how they can be stopped, at least for the preservation of our culture, which disapproves of prostitution," he added.

Linda and her colleagues know they are seen as immoral people, but say they have no choice. "I know what I am doing is wrong - it is even forbidden in the Bible - but there is no other means through which I can make a living. If I don't go out and sell my body, then my family will starve. Relatives and neighbours say I am a disgrace, but when I go to them and ask for maizemeal or money to help the family, they just look aside; yet they love to be critical."

After a while, Linda gets a "customer", a bald-headed man old enough to be her father, and disappears with him. 'Anita', another sex worker, said the poverty ravaging Matabeleland often forced girls as young as 13 to sell their bodies.

"Save for those who have breadwinners in South Africa and Botswana, many families here have no one looking after them at all. Many of us dropped out of school because our parents could not afford the school fees," she said.

Despite the dangers
Anita is adamant that she understands the dangers of sex work. "Everyone knows there is AIDS; it has actually killed a lot of people here, and some are even ill right now. I am personally afraid of the disease and I always insist on the use of condoms," she said. "For an all-night session, I charge something like Z$200,000 [US$8 at the informal market rate], and half that amount for a short-time session, which normally lasts for only two hours," Anita explained. "Our customers are normally truck drivers who deliver beer from Bulawayo, and those who go or come from Botswana to deliver or collect some goods."

An official of the Matabeleland AIDS Council said a recent survey in southern Zimbabwe had revealed that rural Matabeleland was worst affected by the AIDS pandemic, mainly because of its proximity to South Africa and Botswana. According to 2005 UN estimates, HIV prevalence among people aged 15-49 was 18.8 percent in South Africa and 24.1 percent in Botswana, with Zimbabwe estimated at 20.1 percent.

"Many people in this province work in Botswana and South Africa. Often it's a single partner of the family, say a husband or a wife, and because they stay away from their partner for long, they end up engaging in extramarital relationships, which have the potential of spreading the virus," the official told IRIN.

"Prostitution is another cause [of spreading HIV infection], and it is sad that we are seeing it rearing its head in rural areas," he said. "It just shows how desperate people are."