Some News About Poverty and Hunger
I thought I'd write a "Peace on earth, good will towards men" post about places on earth where there is more peace this year. You know - downward trends. Fewer bodies in the streets than a year ago or a decade ago. More harmony. Catholics and Protestants singing carols together in a Belfast pub. People walking home after dark without getting picked off by snipers. Fewer people blown up by a mine as they walked across a meadow. You get the idea.But I couldn't find any places like that.
Apparently, no one has come up yet with quantifiable stats for determining if a country has become more peaceful. I welcome you to search the net and prove me wrong. However, in my peregrinations I did find some semi-optimistic information over at the United Nations Statistics web site, which I am about to share with you.
I found the UN's 2006 progress report on how their Millennium Development Goals are coming along. These are goals set in 2000 for how things should look in 2015. We are talking less poverty, less malaria, more education, more clean water - a world that is up to the Minimum Daily Requirement we North Americans and Europeans take for granted. I think that's a pretty good starting point toward more peace and less misery. So let's see how we're doing.
Goal One: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Target 1: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day.
Are there wonderful Christlike economies out there where people don't use money but grow and share their crops and medicines and textbooks? Or is this a goal worth striving for?
The good news: Eastern Asia (China, Korea) has already beat the target. We're so adapted to thinking of those countries as prosperous we forget they weren't that way as recently as 1990. Southeastern Asia, which includes countries as poor as Cambodia and Myanmar, (pop quiz: name a country that borders Myanmar) has already beat the target. The islands of the South Pacific have already beat the target. Bad news: Sub-Saharan Africa has made almost no progress at all. In fact, the number of people living in extreme poverty there has increased by 140 million.
Target 2: Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Not doing so good, folks. The percentages of people in the "developing world" who go hungry every day are going down - but it's a minuscule decline. In 1990, 33% of Sub-Saharan Africans went hungry every day. In 2003, down to 31%. Big deal. And because of population increase, the actual number of people who never get enough beans to fill their stomach - is up.
But, hey - the poor will always be with us, right? And there's plenty of food in my refrigerator.
The entire report is well worth pondering. Check it out at Millennium Development Goals Report: 2006
Cartoon by Kaur Chand Badhok, India
Labels: Simple Justice
posted by Christopher Newton at 8:29 AM
3 Comments:
How about education? I don't know about "everywhere in the world," but Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, India and Nepal have more schools (pre-schools, primary, secondary),with more services such as libraries and computer labs than in the year 2000, thanks to a great organization called Room to Read (www.roomtoread.org) The same organization is enabling girls (who usually get the short end of such luxuries as schooling) to get education all the way through secondary school by providing scholarships, paying school fees, buying uniforms, providing bicycles so they can get to school, and encouraging them and their families to value the educational process. Other organizations, individuals and American school groups also have committed to improving educational opportunities in very poor villages around the world. I think those children who are benefiting from education would say "Yup, Pondering Pig, things are getting better. We have hope for the future."
To continue on my above comment, education pays big dividends in developing countries, especially for girls. Education gives them a chance to get out of the cycle of grinding poverty and exploitation, to raise healthier children because they have learned about sanitation and nutrition, and to be able to work somewhere that pays a decent wage...maybe they'll even have a chance to make decisions about the future of their countries. Decisions that lead to peace and well-being. It doesn't have to be "just a dream."
Hey Chronicler, I don't think I ever looked in your refrigerator. My refrigerator is full, however - with all the leftovers from an incredible Christmas feast. I have never known a day of hunger in my life, except when I've been on a diet.
I don't feel a bit guilty about it, but I carry a strong sense that I want to give back, share what I got with those who got nothing.
And I don't think what America has done or not changes that. I think when the USA donates billions for aid to some military dictatorship in Africa - or for AIDS prevention - they have a strategic aim. It used to be to contain communism and it worked pretty well. Today, the goal is probably to reduce terrorism by helping the poor lands that spawn the terrorists. And, so far, big financial aid isn't working as well as it used to. American prestige ain't what it used to be. In fact, as you imply, anti-American feeling has gotten stronger and stronger, irrelevant to how much we are donating.
I am not criticizing our strategic plans, by the way - that's what nations have to do.
My goal is different - I just want to help shift the balance between rich and poor a little tiny bit. Spread the wealth around a little tiny bit more. Or help create more wealth. Like Patrushka says, I'm up for giving some little kid in a desperately poor place, a place that's a quantum leap different than what the poorest kid in the USA or Canada knows (hyperbole warning), giving that kid a chance like we had. Give some smart girl child in Cambodia a chance to become a lawyer, say. And put sex traffickers behind bars herself.
I spent some time in South Africa a few years ago. I traveled around a bit, spent a few weeks in two of the poor black townships. Just put a face on poverty for me. Since some of the kids spoke some English (Afikaans is the main European language), I was able to talk with them - young guys who wanted to go to university someday, to be a doctor - but all just a pipe dream because there was absolutely no path for a poor township kid. And South Africa is the wealthiest sub-Saharan country. Just put a face on poverty for me.
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