The first anniversary of the earthquake that killed some 220,000 Haitians and left an estimated 1.5 million homeless is likely to increase calls for donors to deliver on their promises of recovery aid and to spur questions about a cholera epidemic that has killed some 2700 Haitians. A presidential election stalemate adds political volatility to the Caribbean country's woes. Memorials services will be held in many cities of the world, in Haiti and at the United Nations.
There were at least 85 confirmed UN fatalities, including mission head Hedi Annabi.
The International Donors’ Conference Towards a New Future for Haiti, held on Mar 30 at UN headquarters, demonstrated an international commitment to Haiti’s short and long-term recovery, according to a UN press release. It yielded more than US $9 billion in pledges for Haiti’s reconstruction but questions remain about the rate of delivery on the pledges and the way money is being spent.
Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive told the BBC recently that his government had too little influence because aid money was channelled through outside agencies.He added that only 20 per cent of the aid pledged had been received so far.
According to the Bay State Banner in May, a half-million homeless received tarps and tents; far more are still waiting under soggy bed sheets in camps that reek of human waste. More than 4.3 million people got emergency food rations; few will be able to feed themselves anytime soon. Medical aid went to thousands, but long-term care isn’t even on the horizon. The newspaper notes the growing discontent in the country. Haitian leaders — frustrated that billions are bypassing them in favor of UN agencies and American and other non-governmental organizations — are whipping up sentiment against foreign aid groups they say have gone out of control.
The Guardian newspaper questioned in December why, when some 12,000 non-governmental organisations are in Haiti and involved in the recovery effort, so many people have been infected with cholera, a disease that is easily treated and controlled. In the 11 months since the quake, according to the article, little has been done to improve sanitation -- a reliable measure against the disease -- across the country.
The earthquake destroyed much of the infrastructure for holding an election. The first round of the presidential vote saw low turnout, fraud, rampant disorganization, violence and voter intimidation. There were 19 candidates on the ballot. Rioting followed preliminary results that showed carnival singer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly eliminated in favor of ruling-party candidate Jude Celestin by less than 1 per cent. Former first lady Mirlande Manigat was in first place. Most candidates have called for the results to be thrown out. The government of President René Préval has promised a recount.
This is from World News Forecast.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Poverty In Africa
DEVELOPMENT
About the goals UNICEF's role What UNICEF is doing © UNICEF/HQ98-0891/Pirozzi
Goal: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Targets by 2015:
Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Reducing poverty starts with children.
More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million – live on less than US $1 a day.
Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.
Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s rights: survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and exploitation. It creates an environment that is damaging to children’s development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.
One than 1 billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the essential goods and services they require to survive, grow and develop. Some regions of the world have more dire situations than others, but even within one country there can be broad disparities – between city and rural children, for example, or between boys and girls. An influx or tourism in one area may improve a country’s poverty statistics overall, while the majority remains poor and disenfranchised.
Each deprivation heightens the effect of the others. So when two or more coincide, the effects on children can be catastrophic. For example, women who must walk long distances to fetch household water may not be able to fully attend to their children, which may affect their health and development. And children who themselves must walk long distances to fetch water have less time to attend school – a problem that particularly affects girls. Children who are not immunized or who are malnourished are much more susceptible to the diseases that are spread through poor sanitation. Poverty exacerbates the effects of HIV/AIDS and armed conflict. It entrenches social, economic and gender disparities and undermines protective family environments.
Poverty contributes to malnutrition, which in turn is a contributing factor in over half of the under-five deaths in developing countries. Some 300 million children go to bed hungry every day. Of these only eight per cent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
The best start in life is critical in a child’s first few years, not only to survival but to her or his physical, intellectual and emotional development. So these deprivations greatly hamper children’s ability to achieve their full potential, contributing to a society’s cycle of endless poverty and hunger.
See map: Childhood is under threat from poverty
Fulfilling children’s rights breaks that cycle. Providing them with basic education, health care, nutrition and protection produces results of many times greater magnitude than these cost-effective interventions. Their chances of survival and of a productive future are greatly increased – as are the chances of a truly fair and peaceful global society.
UNICEF responds by:
Building national capacities for primary health care. Around 270 million children, just over 14 per cent of all children in developing countries, have no access to health care services. Yet improving the health of children is one responsibility among many in the fight against poverty. Healthy children become healthy adults: people who create better lives for themselves, their communities and their countries. Working in this area also helps to further Goal 4 – to improve child survival rates.
Helping the world's children survive and flourish is a core UNICEF activity, and immunization is central to that. A global leader in vaccine supply, UNICEF purchases and helps distribute vaccines to over 40 per cent of children in developing countries. Immunization programs usually include other cost-effective health initiatives, like micronutrient supplementation to fight disabling malnutrition and insecticide-treated bed nets to fight malaria.
Along with governments and non-governmental organizations at national and community levels, UNICEF works to strengthen local health systems and improve at-home care for children, including oral re-hydration to save the lives of infants with severe diarrhoea and promoting and protecting breastfeeding.
Getting girls to school. Some 13 per cent of children ages 7 to 18 years in developing countries have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of rural children in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet an education is perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls. Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this UNICEF activity furthers Goals 2 and 3: universal primary education and gender equality.
To that end, UNICEF works in 158 countries, calling on development agencies, governments, donors and communities to step up efforts on behalf of education for all children, and then coordinating those efforts. Programmes differ from country to country according to needs and cultures, but may include help with funding, logistics, information technology, school water and sanitation, and a child- and gender-friendly curriculum.
Supporting good nutrition. UNICEF seeks to help stem the worst effects of malnutrition by funding and helping countries supply micronutrients like iron and vitamin A, which is essential for a healthy immune system, during vaccination campaigns or through fortified food. UNICEF, governments, salt producers and private sector organizations are also working to eliminate iodine deficiency, the biggest primary cause of preventable mental retardation and brain damage, through the Universal Salt Iodization (USI) education campaign. UNICEF also works through communities to talk with child caregivers about how to provide sound nutrition for children, particularly via breastfeeding.
In emergency situations, UNICEF assesses the nutritional and health needs of affected people, protects and supports breastfeeding by providing safe havens for pregnant and lactating women, provides essential micronutrients, supports therapeutic feeding centres for severely malnourished children, and provides food for orphans.
Assisting in water and sanitation improvement. One in three children in the developing world – more than 500 million children – has no access at all to sanitation facilities. And some 400 million children, one in five, have no access to safe water. Meanwhile, unsafe water and sanitation cause about 4,000 child deaths per day. Through advocacy, funding and technical assistance, UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities and to improve and promote safe hygiene practices.
About the goals UNICEF's role What UNICEF is doing © UNICEF/HQ98-0891/Pirozzi
Goal: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Targets by 2015:
Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Reducing poverty starts with children.
More than 30 per cent of children in developing countries – about 600 million – live on less than US $1 a day.
Every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually it is a child under the age of 5.
Poverty hits children hardest. While a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human, it is most threatening to children’s rights: survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from harm and exploitation. It creates an environment that is damaging to children’s development in every way – mental, physical, emotional and spiritual.
One than 1 billion children are severely deprived of at least one of the essential goods and services they require to survive, grow and develop. Some regions of the world have more dire situations than others, but even within one country there can be broad disparities – between city and rural children, for example, or between boys and girls. An influx or tourism in one area may improve a country’s poverty statistics overall, while the majority remains poor and disenfranchised.
Each deprivation heightens the effect of the others. So when two or more coincide, the effects on children can be catastrophic. For example, women who must walk long distances to fetch household water may not be able to fully attend to their children, which may affect their health and development. And children who themselves must walk long distances to fetch water have less time to attend school – a problem that particularly affects girls. Children who are not immunized or who are malnourished are much more susceptible to the diseases that are spread through poor sanitation. Poverty exacerbates the effects of HIV/AIDS and armed conflict. It entrenches social, economic and gender disparities and undermines protective family environments.
Poverty contributes to malnutrition, which in turn is a contributing factor in over half of the under-five deaths in developing countries. Some 300 million children go to bed hungry every day. Of these only eight per cent are victims of famine or other emergency situations. More than 90 per cent are suffering long-term malnourishment and micronutrient deficiency.
The best start in life is critical in a child’s first few years, not only to survival but to her or his physical, intellectual and emotional development. So these deprivations greatly hamper children’s ability to achieve their full potential, contributing to a society’s cycle of endless poverty and hunger.
See map: Childhood is under threat from poverty
Fulfilling children’s rights breaks that cycle. Providing them with basic education, health care, nutrition and protection produces results of many times greater magnitude than these cost-effective interventions. Their chances of survival and of a productive future are greatly increased – as are the chances of a truly fair and peaceful global society.
UNICEF responds by:
Building national capacities for primary health care. Around 270 million children, just over 14 per cent of all children in developing countries, have no access to health care services. Yet improving the health of children is one responsibility among many in the fight against poverty. Healthy children become healthy adults: people who create better lives for themselves, their communities and their countries. Working in this area also helps to further Goal 4 – to improve child survival rates.
Helping the world's children survive and flourish is a core UNICEF activity, and immunization is central to that. A global leader in vaccine supply, UNICEF purchases and helps distribute vaccines to over 40 per cent of children in developing countries. Immunization programs usually include other cost-effective health initiatives, like micronutrient supplementation to fight disabling malnutrition and insecticide-treated bed nets to fight malaria.
Along with governments and non-governmental organizations at national and community levels, UNICEF works to strengthen local health systems and improve at-home care for children, including oral re-hydration to save the lives of infants with severe diarrhoea and promoting and protecting breastfeeding.
Getting girls to school. Some 13 per cent of children ages 7 to 18 years in developing countries have never attended school. This rate is 32 per cent among girls in sub-Saharan Africa (27 per cent of boys) and 33 per cent of rural children in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet an education is perhaps a child’s strongest barrier against poverty, especially for girls. Educated girls are likely to marry later and have healthier children. They are more productive at home and better paid in the workplace, better able to protect themselves against HIV/AIDS and more able to participate in decision-making at all levels. Additionally, this UNICEF activity furthers Goals 2 and 3: universal primary education and gender equality.
To that end, UNICEF works in 158 countries, calling on development agencies, governments, donors and communities to step up efforts on behalf of education for all children, and then coordinating those efforts. Programmes differ from country to country according to needs and cultures, but may include help with funding, logistics, information technology, school water and sanitation, and a child- and gender-friendly curriculum.
Supporting good nutrition. UNICEF seeks to help stem the worst effects of malnutrition by funding and helping countries supply micronutrients like iron and vitamin A, which is essential for a healthy immune system, during vaccination campaigns or through fortified food. UNICEF, governments, salt producers and private sector organizations are also working to eliminate iodine deficiency, the biggest primary cause of preventable mental retardation and brain damage, through the Universal Salt Iodization (USI) education campaign. UNICEF also works through communities to talk with child caregivers about how to provide sound nutrition for children, particularly via breastfeeding.
In emergency situations, UNICEF assesses the nutritional and health needs of affected people, protects and supports breastfeeding by providing safe havens for pregnant and lactating women, provides essential micronutrients, supports therapeutic feeding centres for severely malnourished children, and provides food for orphans.
Assisting in water and sanitation improvement. One in three children in the developing world – more than 500 million children – has no access at all to sanitation facilities. And some 400 million children, one in five, have no access to safe water. Meanwhile, unsafe water and sanitation cause about 4,000 child deaths per day. Through advocacy, funding and technical assistance, UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities and to improve and promote safe hygiene practices.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Poverty and Tyranny in Appalachian Forest
Poverty and tyranny central to immoral practice of mountain destruction, water and air poisoning
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - 03/10/10 06:36 PM ET
The Appalachian forest is the oldest and richest ecosystem north of the equator, having survived the Pleistocene ice era and provided the seed stock that reforested the continent. Appalachia has 80 species of trees and more biodiversity per cubic meter than anywhere on the continent.
Now the Massey Energy coal company, the largest practitioner of mountaintop removal, and a few corporate cronies are accomplishing what the Pleistocene could not: flattening Appalachia’s mountains, obliterating those ancient forests and the historic landscapes where Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone roamed and which birthed country music, NASCAR races and rough-hewn heroes for every American war. Using mammoth machines designed to replace human workers, and explosives with the power of a Hiroshima bomb each week, coal companies have already flattened 1.4 million acres, buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams and blown up 500 of America’s oldest mountains.
Industry’s claim that mountaintop removal brings prosperity to the region is a demonstrable lie. To the contrary, the out-of-state companies and Wall Street banks that control Appalachian coal are liquidating the resources of the region while impoverishing its residents. West Virginia, ground zero for the plundering of Appalachia, is blessed with some of the country’s richest resources yet is America’s 49th poorest state. In fact, coalfield counties throughout the region have some of the highest poverty levels in the nation.
Mountaintop removal is incompatible with either economic development or human habitation. Once-thriving communities like Whitesville, Marsh Fork, Shumate and Lindytown are now ghost towns dotting the coalfields. They stand emptied by residents fleeing the blasting, the choking dust, dried-up and poisoned wells, disappeared and contaminated streams, slurry spills, floods, landslides, mudslides and the murderously overloaded coal trucks that speed down narrow mountain roads. In fact, coal companies engage in a deliberate policy of buying and closing coal towns and paying the residents to leave. Then, after a few short years of production, the companies leave too, abandoning depopulated hollows and barren moonscapes that are useless for economic development or functioning ecosystems.
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts has observed that, through Massey’s brand of mountaintop removal, CEO Don Blankenship has “caused more suffering to more people in Appalachia than any other human being.” Both the Catholic and Presbyterian churches have condemned mountaintop removal as “sinful” because of its impact on God’s creation and Appalachia’s communities. Morality aside, mountaintop removal is undeniably a criminal enterprise. Mr. Blankenship acknowledged, in a recent debate with me, that mountaintop removal cannot be accomplished without violating the law. His company paid a record $20 million penalty for 60,534 Clean Water Act violations it admitted committing between 2000 and 2006, including spills of deadly chemicals like arsenic and selenium illegally dumped into Appalachia’s waterways. Thanks to the coal industry, every waterway in central Appalachia is now contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals like mercury. But the fines are merely a business expense, which explains why Massey has since admitted to 12,500 more Clean Water Act violations.
Coal companies avoid serious legal consequences for their crimes by subverting democracy, corrupting elected officials, buying judgeships, capturing the regulatory agencies, muzzling public participation and obscuring government transparencies. Ironically, mountaintop removal is only profitable due to huge public subsidies. A recent study on the impact of coal on Kentucky’s state budget concluded that the industry generated roughly $528 million in tax revenues in 2006.
However, placating King Coal cost the Bluegrass State $642 million to maintain thousands of miles of coal roads and other public subsidies – a net loss of $115 million annually.
The Kentucky study did not even consider the public health consequences of mining or its many other externalized costs. The Appalachian Regional Commission recently concluded that Appalachians suffer the worst health in nation and the coal mining areas suffer from higher morbidity and mortality than anywhere else in the region. The closer you are to a coal mine the sicker you’re likely to be. The ARC study confirmed the finding of another 2009 study by West Virginia University showing that health costs in coal mining areas exceed the economic contributions of the entire coal industry by up to $50 million annually.
The coal barons who have shed 90 percent of their workforce over the last 40 years in a ruthless campaign of mechanization now shed crocodile tears for the 6,000 strip miners who they claim will lose their jobs when mountaintop mining is abolished. But this is another canard. They know that underground mining that will replace it employs many more miners per ton than strip mining. Another industry myth is that ending mountaintop removal would cause higher energy prices.
But only about 5 percent of the nation’s electric power comes from mountaintop removal. A 2009 study by Synapse Energy Economics found that the cost impacts would be insignificant.
It’s not a good thing for Appalachia, America, or democracy when corporations own the landscape and drive people off the land. West Virginians, Virginians, Kentuckians and Tennesseans are proud of their mountain heritage and they dearly love the hills and hollows. A robust majority want to see mountaintop removal ended. Even West Virginia’s senior senator, Robert Byrd, acknowledges the growing consensus against this extreme strip mining. They know that Appalachia at long last must move toward a diversified economy that will provide sustainable jobs and relieve the state of boom-bust cycles that spiral always toward poverty and tyranny.
Kennedy is senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of Waterkeeper Alliance.
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr. - 03/10/10 06:36 PM ET
The Appalachian forest is the oldest and richest ecosystem north of the equator, having survived the Pleistocene ice era and provided the seed stock that reforested the continent. Appalachia has 80 species of trees and more biodiversity per cubic meter than anywhere on the continent.
Now the Massey Energy coal company, the largest practitioner of mountaintop removal, and a few corporate cronies are accomplishing what the Pleistocene could not: flattening Appalachia’s mountains, obliterating those ancient forests and the historic landscapes where Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone roamed and which birthed country music, NASCAR races and rough-hewn heroes for every American war. Using mammoth machines designed to replace human workers, and explosives with the power of a Hiroshima bomb each week, coal companies have already flattened 1.4 million acres, buried nearly 2,000 miles of streams and blown up 500 of America’s oldest mountains.
Industry’s claim that mountaintop removal brings prosperity to the region is a demonstrable lie. To the contrary, the out-of-state companies and Wall Street banks that control Appalachian coal are liquidating the resources of the region while impoverishing its residents. West Virginia, ground zero for the plundering of Appalachia, is blessed with some of the country’s richest resources yet is America’s 49th poorest state. In fact, coalfield counties throughout the region have some of the highest poverty levels in the nation.
Mountaintop removal is incompatible with either economic development or human habitation. Once-thriving communities like Whitesville, Marsh Fork, Shumate and Lindytown are now ghost towns dotting the coalfields. They stand emptied by residents fleeing the blasting, the choking dust, dried-up and poisoned wells, disappeared and contaminated streams, slurry spills, floods, landslides, mudslides and the murderously overloaded coal trucks that speed down narrow mountain roads. In fact, coal companies engage in a deliberate policy of buying and closing coal towns and paying the residents to leave. Then, after a few short years of production, the companies leave too, abandoning depopulated hollows and barren moonscapes that are useless for economic development or functioning ecosystems.
United Mine Workers of America President Cecil Roberts has observed that, through Massey’s brand of mountaintop removal, CEO Don Blankenship has “caused more suffering to more people in Appalachia than any other human being.” Both the Catholic and Presbyterian churches have condemned mountaintop removal as “sinful” because of its impact on God’s creation and Appalachia’s communities. Morality aside, mountaintop removal is undeniably a criminal enterprise. Mr. Blankenship acknowledged, in a recent debate with me, that mountaintop removal cannot be accomplished without violating the law. His company paid a record $20 million penalty for 60,534 Clean Water Act violations it admitted committing between 2000 and 2006, including spills of deadly chemicals like arsenic and selenium illegally dumped into Appalachia’s waterways. Thanks to the coal industry, every waterway in central Appalachia is now contaminated with dangerous levels of heavy metals like mercury. But the fines are merely a business expense, which explains why Massey has since admitted to 12,500 more Clean Water Act violations.
Coal companies avoid serious legal consequences for their crimes by subverting democracy, corrupting elected officials, buying judgeships, capturing the regulatory agencies, muzzling public participation and obscuring government transparencies. Ironically, mountaintop removal is only profitable due to huge public subsidies. A recent study on the impact of coal on Kentucky’s state budget concluded that the industry generated roughly $528 million in tax revenues in 2006.
However, placating King Coal cost the Bluegrass State $642 million to maintain thousands of miles of coal roads and other public subsidies – a net loss of $115 million annually.
The Kentucky study did not even consider the public health consequences of mining or its many other externalized costs. The Appalachian Regional Commission recently concluded that Appalachians suffer the worst health in nation and the coal mining areas suffer from higher morbidity and mortality than anywhere else in the region. The closer you are to a coal mine the sicker you’re likely to be. The ARC study confirmed the finding of another 2009 study by West Virginia University showing that health costs in coal mining areas exceed the economic contributions of the entire coal industry by up to $50 million annually.
The coal barons who have shed 90 percent of their workforce over the last 40 years in a ruthless campaign of mechanization now shed crocodile tears for the 6,000 strip miners who they claim will lose their jobs when mountaintop mining is abolished. But this is another canard. They know that underground mining that will replace it employs many more miners per ton than strip mining. Another industry myth is that ending mountaintop removal would cause higher energy prices.
But only about 5 percent of the nation’s electric power comes from mountaintop removal. A 2009 study by Synapse Energy Economics found that the cost impacts would be insignificant.
It’s not a good thing for Appalachia, America, or democracy when corporations own the landscape and drive people off the land. West Virginians, Virginians, Kentuckians and Tennesseans are proud of their mountain heritage and they dearly love the hills and hollows. A robust majority want to see mountaintop removal ended. Even West Virginia’s senior senator, Robert Byrd, acknowledges the growing consensus against this extreme strip mining. They know that Appalachia at long last must move toward a diversified economy that will provide sustainable jobs and relieve the state of boom-bust cycles that spiral always toward poverty and tyranny.
Kennedy is senior counsel for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of Waterkeeper Alliance.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
Genocide In Darfur Sudan
Genocide in Darfur, Sudan
About the size of Texas, the Darfur region of Sudan is home to racially mixed tribes of settled peasants, who identify as African, and nomadic herders, who identify as Arab. The majority of people in both groups are Muslim.
In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month.
Government neglect has left people throughout Sudan poor and voiceless and has caused conflict throughout the country. In February 2003, frustrated by poverty and neglect, two Darfurian rebel groups launched an uprising against the Khartoum government.
The government responded with a scorched-earth campaign, enlisting the help of a militia of Arab nomadic tribes in the region against the innocent civilians of Darfur.
Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.
Americans have a particularly important role to play in supporting peace in Darfur. The US government has been proactive in speaking out in support of the people of Darfur, but there is still much work that needs to be done. The United States and international governments have yet to take the actions needed to end this genocide.
Long-term peace in Darfur requires that the government of Sudan, the Janjaweed militia forces and the rebel groups of Darfur find a way to resolve their political and economic disputes. The international community managed to broker a peace deal in May 2006, but violence in Darfur actually increased in the wake of this deal.
Thousands of innocent civilians continue to die from murder, disease and starvation every month. Today, millions of displaced civilians living in refugee camps are in dire need of international support as the violence continues.
At this time, human security is the highest priority for the people of Darfur. The world has left the responsibility of providing security to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur. As Sally Chin of Refugees International has noted, the world has given the African Union “the responsibility to protect, but not the power to protect.”
We must now work to ensure that the world fulfills its responsibility to protect the civilians of Darfur.
This is from Darfurscores.org http://www.darfurscores.org/darfur
About the size of Texas, the Darfur region of Sudan is home to racially mixed tribes of settled peasants, who identify as African, and nomadic herders, who identify as Arab. The majority of people in both groups are Muslim.
In the ongoing genocide, African farmers and others in Darfur are being systematically displaced and murdered at the hands of the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes. The genocide in Darfur has claimed 400,000 lives and displaced over 2,500,000 people. More than one hundred people continue to die each day; five thousand die every month.
Government neglect has left people throughout Sudan poor and voiceless and has caused conflict throughout the country. In February 2003, frustrated by poverty and neglect, two Darfurian rebel groups launched an uprising against the Khartoum government.
The government responded with a scorched-earth campaign, enlisting the help of a militia of Arab nomadic tribes in the region against the innocent civilians of Darfur.
Since February 2003, the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the government-sponsored Janjaweed militia have used rape, displacement, organized starvation, threats against aid workers and mass murder. Violence, disease, and displacement continue to kill thousands of innocent Darfurians every month.
Americans have a particularly important role to play in supporting peace in Darfur. The US government has been proactive in speaking out in support of the people of Darfur, but there is still much work that needs to be done. The United States and international governments have yet to take the actions needed to end this genocide.
Long-term peace in Darfur requires that the government of Sudan, the Janjaweed militia forces and the rebel groups of Darfur find a way to resolve their political and economic disputes. The international community managed to broker a peace deal in May 2006, but violence in Darfur actually increased in the wake of this deal.
Thousands of innocent civilians continue to die from murder, disease and starvation every month. Today, millions of displaced civilians living in refugee camps are in dire need of international support as the violence continues.
At this time, human security is the highest priority for the people of Darfur. The world has left the responsibility of providing security to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Darfur. As Sally Chin of Refugees International has noted, the world has given the African Union “the responsibility to protect, but not the power to protect.”
We must now work to ensure that the world fulfills its responsibility to protect the civilians of Darfur.
This is from Darfurscores.org http://www.darfurscores.org/darfur
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Appalachian Poverty
This is one one topic that gets me on my soap box everytime I think about it. Why as a country do we allow people to live in such horried conditions. It may be a case of out of sight out of mind. There are news stories from time to time but then these people are treated like second class citizens. 
Monday, January 3, 2011
Hunger and Poverty
Hunger and World Poverty
About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.
There are effective programs to break this spiral. For adults, there are “food for work” programs where the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on. This both nourishes them and builds infrastructure to end the poverty. For children, there are “food for education” programs where the children are provided with food when they attend school. Their education will help them to escape from hunger and global poverty.
This comes from: Hunger and World Poverty Sources: United Nations World Food Program (WFP), Oxfam, UNICEF.
About 25,000 people die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, according to the United Nations. This is one person every three and a half seconds, as you can see on this display. Unfortunately, it is children who die most often.
Yet there is plenty of food in the world for everyone. The problem is that hungry people are trapped in severe poverty. They lack the money to buy enough food to nourish themselves. Being constantly malnourished, they become weaker and often sick. This makes them increasingly less able to work, which then makes them even poorer and hungrier. This downward spiral often continues until death for them and their families.
There are effective programs to break this spiral. For adults, there are “food for work” programs where the adults are paid with food to build schools, dig wells, make roads, and so on. This both nourishes them and builds infrastructure to end the poverty. For children, there are “food for education” programs where the children are provided with food when they attend school. Their education will help them to escape from hunger and global poverty.
This comes from: Hunger and World Poverty Sources: United Nations World Food Program (WFP), Oxfam, UNICEF.
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