Poverty, hunger and disease: so much done yet so much left to do

from The Guardian Katine Project

The millennium development goals set by the UN at the turn of the century made up the most aspirational development programme ever devised. But a progress report published today by Unicef says that even though more babies are surviving, more children are in school and fewer families live in poverty, urgent action is needed if the goals are to be met by the target date of 2015. Here Sarah Boseley and Larry Elliott look at seven of the goals and assess how much progress has been made

Goal 1: To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

Targets by 2015 To halve the proportion of people in 1990 who were suffering from hunger. To halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day

To monitor the fight against hunger, the UN took as its yardstick the proportion of children under five who are underweight. In 1990, 32% of under-fives in the developing world were underweight, undernourished and therefore at high risk of stunted growth, disease and death. Today that figure has come down, but not by much, to 27%. East Asia, the Pacific and eastern Europe have made the biggest advances and 58 countries are on target to reach the millennium development goal.

But 143 million children under five in the developing world continue to suffer from inadequate nutrition. The highest numbers are in south Asia, where over half the under-fives (54%) were underweight in 1990, but there is progress in this region, with the proportion falling to 46% by 2006. Asia, the second poorest part of the globe, has seen a drop from 41.1% living below the poverty line to 29.5% by 2004. However there have been no such gains in sub-Saharan Africa. If progress continues to be this slow and patchy, the 2015 target will be missed by a margin of 30 million children.

Poverty is more widespread in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else: in 1990, 46.8% of people were on less than $1 a day. That had reduced to 41.1% by 2004. Because of Asia's rapid economic growth, the overall level of poverty has been cut from 31.6% in the developing world to 19.2% and if this continues, the global target will be met, although Asia's success is masking the lack of progress in sub-Saharan Africa.

Progress report Target on poverty likely to be reached, but goal on hunger is unlikely.

Goal 2: To achieve universal primary education

Target To ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, both boys and girls, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling

The two indicators used to monitor progress in meeting this goal are the percentage of children enrolled in primary school and those who complete this stage of education by reaching grade five or "primary completion rate". Both developed and developing countries have put considerable effort into achieving the education goal and the Unicef report says there has been "substantial progress". Partly as a result of debt cancellation, countries such as Tanzania are on course to achieve 100% primary participation by 2015, although sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will not meet the target without more rapid progress over the next seven years. The UK has a 10-year £10bn programme for education in developing countries.

According to the Unicef report, more than 85% of primary school-age children are now receiving a basic education, although the figure drops to 70% in eastern and southern Africa and just 62% in west and central Africa. Between 2002 and 2005, the number of children out of school dropped from 115 million to 93 million, and of those still without a school place 41 million live in sub-Saharan Africa and a further 31.5 million live in south Asia.

Actual attendance rates tend to be lower than enrolment rates. In eastern Africa, for example, fewer than three out of five children attend primary school, and Unicef says that some of those are pupils of secondary school age who have started their education late or are retaking grades. For countries nearing universal primary education, Unicef says that reaching the last 10% of children out of school is a "particular challenge".

Progress report There are 86 countries in the world that have yet to achieve universal primary education. On current trends 58 will still not have done so by 2015. Even so, there are hopes that progress will be speeded up, with attention in the better performing countries now switching to quality of education and expansion of secondary schooling.

Goal 3: To promote gender equality and empower women

Target To eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015

The gap between boys and girls receiving a primary education narrowed between 1990 and 2005 - from 8 percentage points to 4 percentage points - but Unicef says big gender disparities remain, particularly in west and central Africa, the Middle East and north Africa, and south Asia. Only two thirds of countries met the target of gender parity in primary education by 2005, with one third achieving gender parity in secondary education. Gender disparities are greatest in rural areas and among poor households.

Progress report The gender equality target is unlikely to be met on current trends, even though Unicef says it is just a starting point towards the eventual goal of education being a "fulfilling experience for all girls and boys".

Goal 4: To reduce child mortality

Target To reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate

Unicef recently celebrated the passing of a milestone in the battle to reduce the death toll among babies in the developing world. In 2006, for the first time since records were kept, the number of children dying before their fifth birthday dropped below 10 million a year, to 9.7 million.

But baby deaths are still distressingly commonplace. The death rate is substantially higher in sub-Saharan Africa than elsewhere. In 1990, 187 babies and children under five died there for every 1,000 births. By last year, that had been reduced, but only to 160 per 1,000 births. South Asia has the next highest death rate, but has been making significant progress, dropping from 123 per 1,000 births in 1990 to 83.

The stakes are high. If the millennium development goal target is reached by 2015, 5.4 million children's lives will be saved in that year alone. Most deaths occur during and shortly after birth (37%), but preventable diseases also take a big toll. Pneumonia kills 19%, diarrhoea 17% and malaria 8%.

One bright spot has been the success of routine measles vaccination, which cut measles deaths by 75% in sub-Saharan Africa between 1999 and 2005. And when mothers bring their babies to be vaccinated, they are being offered other life-saving interventions at the clinic, such as bed nets to protect against malaria, deworming medicines and vitamin A.

Progress report A long way off target.

Goal 5: To improve maternal health

Target To reduce by three-quarters the 1990 maternal mortality ratio

Every year, half a million women die in pregnancy or childbirth, almost all of them in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Having a baby is a very high risk in southern Africa. According to the latest figures published today by Unicef, a woman has a one in 22 lifetime chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth, compared with one in 8,000 in countries like the UK.

It has proved very difficult to get accurate figures for maternal deaths in the developing world. Many countries have no system of death registration, and death from diseases such as Aids or malaria will not be added to the maternal mortality count, even though they are made more likely by pregnancy.

Experts believe that the global rate of maternal mortality did come down between 1990 and 2005, but only by about 5.4%. To reach the target, the death rate would have to come down by about that much every year.

But not even this small rate of progress is being achieved in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report from the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, Unicef and the UN Population Fund, which claims that the numbers of maternal deaths actually rose in sub-Saharan Africa from 212,000 a year to 270,000 over that period (although there was negligible change in the maternal mortality rate because live births also increased).

More than a third of the deaths are cause by haemorrhage and 16% by blood poisoning and infections including Aids. Skilled birth attendants are key to reducing deaths, but sub-Saharan Africa has only managed to increase their presence at births from 43% to 47% and South Asia from 31% to 40%.

However, antenatal care has improved in all regions. Preventing unplanned pregnancies could cut deaths by a quarter, but only 23% of sub-Saharan African women use any form of contraception.

Progress report A long way off target.

Goal 6: To combat HIV and Aids, malaria and other diseases

Target To halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV and Aids. To halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

The percentage of people living with HIV/Aids levelled off for the first time this year, UNAids said last month, at 33.2 million (less than last year's estimate because of a big revision in the figures). The number of new infections fell to 2.5 million and is now thought to have peaked in the late 1990s, when it was more than 3 million a year. But the total number of people living with HIV continues to rise, as people survive longer thanks to treatment. Efforts to educate young people about protecting themselves from HIV and encourage condom use have not been very successful. Only 24% of 15- 24-year-olds in low and middle income countries have a comprehensive understanding of HIV.

Malaria kills more than a million people a year, 80% of them children under five in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa has widely adopted, in principle, new antimalarial drugs recommended by the WHO, but they are not always given to the children who need them. While 16 out of 20 countries have tripled their use of bed nets to protect against bites from carrier mosquitoes, only a handful came close to the target of 60% bed net coverage set in 2000, and in sub-Saharan Africa only 5% of small children sleep under them.

Progress report Could reach target, but too soon to say.

Goal 7: To ensure environmental sustainability

Target To halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion without sustainable access to basic sanitation

With health and education given priority, sanitation has been the forgotten millennium development goal. Although sanitation coverage increased from 49% in 1990 to 59% in 2004, progress has been far too slow to meet the UN's goal and the Unicef report says that on current trends the target will be missed by more than half a billion people. This is despite the fact that the UN itself says that there is a direct link between sanitation and achieving the other goals.

Lack of sanitation, poor hygiene and unsafe drinking water cause the deaths of more than 1.5 million children every year from diarrhoeal diseases and lead to millions of children, particularly girls, being kept off school.

The latest figures, for 2004, show that 2.6 billion people - almost half the world's population - lack access to proper sanitation and Unicef admits that simply keeping pace with population growth remains a huge challenge. This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of people without access to sanitation has increased by 100 million since 1990.

Progress report With Unicef admitting that a lack of political support is a "major barrier to progress", the sanitation goal is one of the least likely to be hit, and will not be achieved for another 70 years on current trends.

Where The Millennium Development Goals Could Really make a Difference

from The Guardian Katine Blogs

Sarah Boseley

Lambert Etwaru, 13, gets up at sunrise with the rest of his family and all of them head for the fields, to dig out weeds and plant or harvest cassava, sweet potatoes, maize or beans, depending on the season. After a couple of hours, Lambert and three sisters head for school. They have had no breakfast. They will have no lunch either. Their first meal of the day, cooked from the crops they have helped grow, is when they arrive home at about 4pm.

In Katine, a rural area of northern Uganda, hunger is an inseparable part of childhood. This, among the mud and thatch houses which have no power, little sanitation and unsafe water supplies, is what the millennium development goals are all about.

Families such as Lambert's exist below the accepted UN poverty line of $1 a day. When they have finished cultivating their fields, which do not generate enough crops to sell, Lambert's father, Julius Elwangu (below), will head for the trading centre on the main road through Katine to try to earn some cash repairing bicycles. Mary Amulo, his mother (in Katine children are given grandparents' surnames) knits little woollen hats which occasionally a neighbour will come to buy for 1,300 shillings (37p). They need the money to pay for uniforms, exercise books, pens and exam fees so that their children can go to school.

Lambert and his sisters Betty, 15, Barbara, 12, and Angela, 10, all go to Tiriri primary school. They are lucky - the girls especially - because their parents believe in education. Their mother only made it to the third year of primary school. "My father brought me back home to look after a younger child," she said. "He said there is no need to send a girl to school."

Mary and Julius would like to see all their children reach secondary school, but money will be a big hurdle. The drop-out rate in Katine is 19% among boys and 22% among girls aged 6-12. Only a handful get beyond primary.

Mary's biggest concern at the moment is the state of the well, where she and the girls go twice a day to get water for drinking, cooking and washing. It is clearly polluted. Sometimes they see worms in the water and try to keep them from being washed into their yellow plastic jerrycans. The nearby swamp has invaded the well, thanks to heavy rains and broken stones that should have kept it out.

Bad water means disease. Small children like Mary's youngest, 18-month-old Jorrem, are especially vulnerable. Diarrhoeal diseases are responsible for 17% of the high death toll of under-fives in the developing world. But their undernourishment - the tell-tale pot bellies and stick legs are common in Katine - makes them more vulnerable to every kind of infection and particularly pneumonia (the biggest killer) and malaria. Katine's swamps provide a breeding ground for the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite. One of the best means of protecting children is to put them to sleep under bed nets, but few families have them - Mary and Julius do not - and where they do, often it is the head of the family who has its use.

Pregnant women are also highly vulnerable to malaria. In fact, pregnancy exacerbates the risk of many diseases, including HIV/Aids. Women in Uganda have a one in 25 lifetime chance of dying in pregnancy or childbirth. In Katine, many women cannot get to the health centre's maternity unit when they go into labour and deliver with the help of a traditional birth attendant. When there are serious complications, the absence of transport to get to hospital in Soroti, nearly 20 miles away, can be a death sentence.

B-schools, MIT to partner for poverty solutions

from The Business Standard

Archana Mohan
Nancy Barry, president of NBA Enterprise Solutions to Poverty and former president of Women�s World Banking (WWB), is set to have an Ahmedabad connection.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative, Barry, who has been ranked among the 100 most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine, has undertaken a move to bring her alma mater Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, (IIM-A), for partnering with her in offering enterprise solutions to fight poverty.

Barry�s NBA Enterprise Solutions to Poverty is an initiative undertaken jointly with the Inter-American Development Bank that looks at six countries to begin with � India, Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, China and Kenya.

The initiative has been formed to develop innovative and competitive models of business, to encourage micro-entrepreneurs and to mobilise masters� students in business schools towards investigating enterprise solutions that fight poverty.

Under the initiative, which is set to be kicked off in January 2008, students of IIM-A, Harvard and MIT are set to take up joint feasibility studies, research papers and case studies on subjects like supply chain management, micro-finance, agri business, enterprise solutions for inclusive growth for top companies interested in the development sector. Already six to seven private sector firms have signed up to partner with the educational institutes.

Vijayendra Haryal, a second-year Post Graduate Programme (PGP) student of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and co-ordinator of the initiative from the institute says that the programme is an opportunity to learn strategising on live projects related to inclusive growth in India.

�Already close to 25 students from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, have got associated with the initiative in teams of five each. Similarly, 16-18 students from Harvard and MIT will be a part of the joint projects,� said Haryal.

Around three to five faculty members from IIM-A, two from MIT and three faculty members from Harvard will also be involved with the initiative. The teams from Harvard and MIT will arrive at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad campus by January-end

Things were set rolling in August this year when Barry had come to the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, to interact with the students and decided to collaborate with the institute on projects that her foundation is working on.

Group battles Cambodian poverty one pig at a time

from The San Luis Obispo County Website

By LES BLUMENTHAL
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON --
Two hours south of the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, down a dusty dirt road, sits Sam Rong, a small rural village of one-room houses made of bits of wood and dried palm leaves built on stilts above green rice paddies.

Water buffalo and oxen till the fields as the occasional motorcycle with live chickens tied on back passes by. Fishermen cast their nets in rivers, and hand-powered machines using centuries-old techniques crush the rice.

Hot and tropical, Cambodia is one of the poorest nations in the world. Mosquito-born dengue fever remains a threat, e-coli and lead can lace the brackish water supplies, and nightmares of Pol Pot and the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge linger.

Extreme poverty is a reality, not a statistic.

But a tiny organization in Lacey, Wash., is trying to do something about Cambodia's poverty, and its solution is simple: pigs.

"Once you have gotten to know these people over a period of time, you simply cannot go back to the comfort of ignorance and distance from the wretched poverty that dominates most of the globe," said Brian Ebersole, a former speaker of the Washington state House of Representatives.

Ebersole and a small group of friends founded the Village Pig Project several years ago. They couldn't escape the memories of poverty they found in rural Cambodia when they visited the ancient temple at Angkor Wat.

The idea was to help a village work its way out of extreme poverty in a sustainable way. A Cambodian suggested pigs. There's a ready market for pigs in Cambodia, and they breed rapidly.

On a shoestring budget, the project has supplied pigs to more than 30 families in Sam Rong.

"When the problem is so large, you have to start somewhere," said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who met with officials of the Village Pig Project while she was in Cambodia over Congress' Thanksgiving recess.

"I am a Pol Pot survivor," said Darren Pen, 47, who immigrated to the United States nearly 20 years ago and eventually settled in Tacoma, Wash., where he raised a family in a tough neighborhood.

Pen tells a chilling tale of his life in Cambodia, including being buried in the ground up to his neck by the Khmer Rouge when he was a teenager.

"It was raining," Pen said. "I thought I would die."

He eventually was dug up and placed in a labor camp, but he managed to escape. After five years in a refugee camp in Thailand, which he said was just as brutal as the labor camps in Cambodia, he arrived in the United States.

By some estimates, more than 2 million Cambodians were slaughtered or died of starvation or illness during Pol Pot's reign.

Pen, a community activist and the president of the Khmer Community of Tacoma, Wash., who lost his mother, two sisters and a brother to the Khmer Rouge, has been back to Cambodia. He's on the board of directors of the Village Pig Project and has been to Sam Rong and seen the pigs.

"It's a piece of the puzzle," Pen said. "One thousand pieces come together into a big picture. It's little step by little step. When people are no longer hungry and have a little bit of money, they go to work and send their children to school. It's a major step out of poverty for these rural people."

Statistics help tell the story of poverty in Cambodia, which the United Nations says is the eighth least developed country in the world. Nearly 80 percent of Cambodians live on $2 a day; nearly a third live on a $1 a day or less. One child out of every six dies before age 6. The average age in Cambodia is 19, and 40 percent of the population is under 15.

"We are not trying to save the world, or even Cambodia," Ebersole said. "These are people we know; it is personal."

On a budget of about $25,000 a year, the project supplies each family with three piglets, pig food and visits from a veterinarian. The families are also given a $10-a-month stipend.

"It's an incentive to keep them from eating the pigs," said David Michner of Olympia, Wash., the president of the Village Pig Project.

Michner said the families breed the pigs and can sell them when they're big enough, or eat them. Eventually, the families are weaned off the program after the pigs raise three litters.

"We talked to a lot of people," he said. "There is a market for pigs, and they breed like rabbits. These are very poor people. We are teaching them how to make a living, survive until the next day and feed their kids."

The project has a Web site, www.villagepigproject.org, and does seek contributions. But at least for now, it plans to remain small.

"It's not a Bill Gates-size project," Michner said of the Microsoft founder's multibillion-dollar foundation.

Recently, tests showed the water supply at Sam Rong is tainted with e-coli and lead, and the project is looking to help solve that problem.

But for now, it's about the pigs.

THIS IS AMERICA - Show 1035 - Poverty In America

from Google Video



Join host Dennis Wholey for the second of two roundtable panel discussions on poverty in America. Guests include: Angela McGlowan of Fox News, Steve Aiello of Hill & Knowlton, Peter Edelman of the Georgetown University Law Center, Meredith Dodson of Results, Isabel Sawhill of The Brookings Institution, and David Jones of the Community Service Society of New York.

Beautiful Gate Crossroads Ministry

from You Tube



A three minute soft news piece about Beautiful Gate Crossroas, a ministry that helps poverty stricken children.

Made by a student on the 2006 School of Video Production at Media Village in South Africa.

www.natessite.co.nr

A Crisis Of Poverty

from The Hartford Couriant

By RACHEL GOTTLIEB FRANK

Courant Staff Writer

Connecticut's Child Poverty and Prevention Council met with a panel of national experts Friday to study recommendations to reduce persistent poverty in the state.

The bipartisan group of university professors and directors of institutes, task forces and think tanks throughout the nation winnowed a list of 67 recommendations assembled by the poverty council down to a more manageable 13. But statistics distributed at the same gathering by the state Commission on Children show that the scope of poverty in the state is far-reaching and persistent.

In 2006, one in 10 children under 18 lived in a family with income below the federal poverty level of $20,516 for a family of four, and there has been no progress in reducing that number since 1990, despite an aggressive effort to move welfare recipients into jobs.

The highest concentrations of poverty are in the cities. Last year, for example, with 43.4 percent of its children living in poverty, Hartford had the sixth-highest child poverty rate in the nation among cities with populations over 100,000. At the same time, it was estimated that 41 percent of the adults in Greater Hartford were functioning below the literacy level needed to earn a living wage, according to the Greater Hartford Literacy Council.

The panel set a goal of cutting the state's child poverty rate in half by 2014. It also recommended a multifaceted approach to improving education for poor children and stabilizing their families, by making child care, housing and health care more affordable through subsidies and more accessible through campaigns to ensure families know what's available to them.

To improve education and prospects for working parents, the experts suggested making preschool full-day and full-year and making grades K-3 full-year programs. They said that will improve the children's academic achievement and make it easier for their parents to work without having to pay for day care.

The panel also suggested the state establish an earned income tax credit for low-wage earners and advertise the existence of the federal earned-income tax credit.

To improve children's prospects of growing up in two-parent households, the group urged legislators to scrutinize the tax code to ensure there are no tax penalties associated with marriage and to concentrate on policies that will reduce teen pregnancy and the dropout rates of young men.

"There is increasing evidence that young, especially minority, males are dropping out of school and failing to enter the workforce and that these problems are contributing to low rates of marriage, the rise of lone parenting, high child poverty and a disturbing share of children whose fathers are imprisoned," the panel said.

In Hartford, a city with 36,000 children, as many as 6,000 — one in every six — have at least one parent in prison, according to Hartford-based Families in Crisis, an organization that helps families of prisoners. The agency's estimated range is 4,500 to 6,000, though experts say those numbers, based on the proportion of Hartford residents in prison, are conservative.

A walk in poverty's shoes

from the Dallas Morning News

Plunge2Poverty' is Waco couple's bid to convey reality of the condition

Q&A WITH ... Jimmy Dorrell has never experienced abject poverty firsthand. But that hasn't kept the Waco minister and teacher from feeling love and compassion for those who face such an existence. More than 20 years ago, he and his wife, Janet, sold their home and traveled the world to witness poverty up close.

"We have worked in the slums of Calcutta, hugged physically and mentally disabled orphans in Mexico City and drilled water wells in a small village of Haiti," Dr. Dorrell says in his most recent guidebook, Plunge2Poverty (New Hope Publishers).

The work had a huge effect on the couple's lives. But the big change came in 1986, when a youth minister friend from Oklahoma called to ask for help. The minister had some great kids in his youth group, but they lacked true compassion for those they talked about helping.

The Dorrells created a Plunge2Poverty simulation experience so that privileged and middle-class people can get a sense of the despair of poverty and homelessness.

The youngsters receive $40 of "simulated money" that is to last them through the weekend and cover all expenses, including food, rent, clothing, medicine and miscellaneous items. In addition, they may keep only four personal items, and almost everything – from a toothbrush to the Bible – is considered an item.

Today, more than 6,000 young people have experienced the intensive simulations.

To help spread the experience, the Dorrells this summer released the Plunge2Poverty guidebook. It helps those who want to develop their own poverty simulation know what's needed.

The book includes poverty facts and figures, not the least of which shows that approximately 1.4 billion people in the world live in what is described as "absolute poverty," meaning they are existing without even hthe basic necessities of life.

Dr. Dorrell is the executive director of Mission Waco, which he and his wife founded in 1992, and an instructor at Baylor University. He recently answered questions about their new book from Staff Writer Selwyn Crawford. Here are excerpts:

Briefly explain what a Poverty Simulation is.

An intensive (42-hour) blend of experiences of becoming poor and learning about God's concern for the poor.

Do you believe that a person who is not truly impoverished can fully comprehend the breadth and scope of such a condition through simulation such as yours?

No. We begin the weekend with a disclaimer because we know that an abbreviated poverty experience by those who have deep middle-class values and assets can only begin a process which must grow.

Have you and your wife's own lives been affected by doing the simulations?

Yes! We have watched thousands of participants "get it." They often come with narrow world-view presuppositions, and we watch them transform over the weekend.

Your book is a guidebook for people to do their own poverty simulation. Why did you feel the need to publish such a book?

Yes, it is a guidebook but more than a simple manual. There are theological concepts, experiential educational and behavioral principles, lots of global facts and issues, and processing ideas. Since we have done this 20 years now and have led several workshops on it, the requests came mostly from groups who lived too far from Waco to really make it happen.

Do you believe that the Plunge2Poverty Simulation experiences are better if you lead them, or will people get more from following your guidebook?

The setting in Waco is excellent and solid, and our experience leading them has enhanced our abilities to facilitate them, so Waco has some extra benefits. However, the logistics and skills to transplant it other places have proven very effective.

What sorts of changes have you noticed in people who have completed a Plunge2Poverty experience?

Initially, there is usually a new humility and gratefulness that is overwhelming. They begin to explore encrusted middle-class presuppositions and previously held misconceptions of the poor. We push for clear, defined "next steps" when they return home.

scrawford@dallasnews.com

Tall order to match Howard on poverty

from The Australian

ANALYSIS: David Uren

LABOR is promising to do more to raise people out of poverty but it will do well if it matches the previous government.

The buoyant economy has helped all sections of the community. The real incomes of the poorest 20per cent of households rose by 31per cent in the decade to 2005-06, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. This compares with a 32 per cent increase for people on middle incomes and 36 per cent for people on high incomes.

The halving of the unemployment rate from 8.5 per cent in 1996 to its recent low of 4.2per cent has been the most obvious improvement to living standards in lower-income households.

Work by the economic modelling institute NATSEM shows that the poverty rate among the unemployed is almost 60 per cent.

Improvements to pension indexation have greatly improved the economic status of the elderly and those on disabled and single-parent allowances.

Pensions used to be adjusted according to changes in the cost of living, but now they track average male weekly earnings, which rise more quickly as productivity increases.

The Howard government boosted payments to families on lower incomes and took steps to improve their tax treatment.

A family with young children earning 75 per cent of the average wage receives a top-up from the Government that lifts them to just under average earnings. This is nearly twice as generous as family support in the average developed country, according to the OECD.

Treasurer Wayne Swan is emphasising the workforce participation benefits flowing from the tax cuts, and is promising to make raising participation the centre of his economic agenda.

He can claim some credit for placing the participation incentives of tax on the political agenda. However, the pay-off from the tax cuts to be delivered in next year's budget are small relative to the cost. Based on Treasury estimates for the Coalition's tax package, it works out at about $500,000 for every new job created.

ANU economist Andrew Leigh says that while the strength of the economy has helped all groups, it should be simple to devise more targeted programs to assist the poor than have been deployed over the past decade.

He says intensive programs to help the early development of children in the poorest families have been successful in the US.

Restructuring the payment of teachers would give an incentive for the best to work in the most disadvantaged schools, he says.

Earned income tax credits, which have been used in the US and England, have also alleviated poverty by putting money on the table to encourage people to move from welfare to work.

However, the imperative to retain large budget surpluses while financing promised tax cuts may restrict the Government.

EC Pledges $160m for Poverty Reduction

from All Africa

The Times of Zambia (Ndola)

THE European Commission (EC) has pledged U.S.$160 million towards the Poverty Reduction Budget Support (PRBS) to Zambia in the 2008 national Budget.

Head of operations at the EC, Rafael Aguirre said in Lusaka yesterday that his organisation had committed to provide $160 million (approximately K610 billion) towards the 2008 Budget for poverty reduction.

Mr Aguirre said transferring resources directly to the Budget allowed the Government to determine how best to tackle poverty in line with its Fifth National Development Plan (FNDP).

He commended the Government for its broad commitment to poverty reduction, macro economic stability, sound public financial management and good governance.

Mr Aguirre, however, said there were areas of concern especially in the agricultural sector and the budget execution in general on which he said his organisation would continue to work with Government closely.

He welcomed the announcement of the revision of the fiscal regime for the mining sector and was confident that the potential additional resources would be put to good use in line with the priorities in the FNDP.

Mr Aguirre said cooperating partners had also encouraged the Government to continue with the fight against corruption.

He said transparency and accountability in the use of public funds required strong institutions like the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC) and the office of the Auditor-General.

Angelina Jolie adoption torture threats

from The Daily Telegraph

By Stephen Bevan

HER credentials as a caring superstar could hardly be bettered. Angelina Jolie, mother of four, is as famous for her well-publicised adoptions of children from Third World countries as she is for her Oscar-winning movies and relationship with Brad Pitt.

As a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees for the past six years, the beautiful 32-year-old actress has travelled frequently to impoverished African states, often to the heart of a conflict, to highlight the plight of the world's most desperate people.

In October, she visited Western Sudan to bring to the world's attention the appalling conditions endured by an estimated 2.5 million people who have fled brutal ethnic fighting in the war-torn province of West Darfur.

The visit took the film star within an hour's flight of neighbouring Ethiopia, the birthplace of her daughter Zahara, whom she adopted amid much publicity in July 2005 in what seemed to be a flamboyant act of charity.

Indeed, even the most cynical Hollywood-watcher couldn't fail to be moved by Jolie's description of the hell from which her new daughter had been removed.

The little girl's natural mother had, according to Jolie, died of AIDS. Malnourished and suffering from rickets, six-month-old Zahara was, it was claimed, just days away from death when Jolie found her at an orphanage in Addis Ababa, nursed her back to health and adopted her.

Although they knew Zahara had family back in Ethiopia, Jolie and Pitt have chosen not to visit Awassa, the lakeside town where the little girl was born. Had they done so, they may well have been shocked by what they found.

It has now been revealed that not only is Zahara's mother, Mentewab Dawit Lebiso, alive and well, but the man who arranged Zahara's adoption has been waging a campaign of threats and intimidation against her family.

When rumours surfaced last month in America that all was not as it appeared with the paperwork, the American headquarters of the international adoption agency Wide Horizons For Children initially insisted Zahara's mother was dead.

But in Ethiopia, the man who brought Zahara to the agency knows Mentewab is alive and has been attempting to shut her up. Traced to Zahara's home town, Mentewab and her extended family, speaking through interpreters, have now told their side of the story.

Although aged 24, she is struggling, between selling onions in a market, to finish high school. It is a measure of the desperate lack of opportunity afforded to young Ethiopians: in this part of the world, many people don't start any formal learning until they are in their mid-teens.

In taped interviews, Mentewab, her mother Almaz Elfneh, 45, and sisters Frehiwot, 18, and Zinash, 20, tell a disturbing story of rape, grinding poverty, lies and dubious official paperwork.

It was this, rather than AIDS, that took Zahara on the extraordinary journey from her starving family to an orphanage in Addis Ababa and on to the Hollywood mansion owned by two of the world's most famous film stars.

And while the American headquarters of Wide Horizons For Children and Jolie may well be oblivious to the harsh realities of what goes on in adoptions such as these, the revelations have come as no surprise to the man who arranged the adoption for the agency, 'Mr Fix-It' Girma Degu. Indeed, rather than try to deny it when confronted with the family's account of what happened, he went straight to the house where Mentewab was staying with her sisters in Awassa.

There, he threatened to have one of her sisters jailed for talking to journalists.

Mentewab was interviewed in the dirt yard outside her uncle's home. Her story starts in 2004, many miles from Awassa in the town of Shone, where she was staying with her grandmother while she attended school. One night, when her grandmother was away on business, a stranger broke in and subjected her to a brutal rape. When, a few months later, it became impossible to hide the fact Mentewab was pregnant, her relatives disowned her.

"I felt so lonely," Mentewab says in her native Amharic language. "I thought about having an abortion but I didn't have the money. There was nothing I could do."

In the absence of other options, Mentewab, who was determined to finish her education, went to stay with a cousin in nearby Hosanna.

Her baby girl was born at Hosanna hospital on January 7, 2005 - Christmas Day in Ethiopia. Mentewab called her Yemasrech, which means good news, although she was later renamed Tena Adam, the name of a local herb.

Impoverished Mentewab struggled to look after her daughter. When her mother Almaz learned of her plight, she came to Hosanna.

"She told me, 'It's all right, we can raise this baby together.' I think she thought I might kill myself if she didn't help me," Mentewab says.

All three returned to Awassa, where they stayed with Mentewab's uncle in a gloomy, cramped, three-room hut with a mud floor and tin roof on the outskirts of town. Almaz looked after the baby while Mentewab worked as a labourer on a building site.

Her meagre wages paid barely enough to feed them.

"Sometimes all I had was a piece of bread all day," she says.

Finally, when her uncle asked them to leave his house and find their own place, their family life went into a free fall.

"My baby was crying all the time because she was hungry. I thought she was going to die, so I ran away," Mentewab says.

It was the act of a frightened and ill-educated girl but her decision to flee was to have far-reaching consequences.

"After Mentewab left I didn't have money to buy her food so the baby lost a lot of weight," Almaz says. "She was really skinny. I was even thinking she could die. I went to the Kebele (the local council) and told them my daughter ran away and had left the baby with me.

"I said to them, 'Please take the baby before she dies.' They asked me to bring three people to witness that the mother had run away and that I could not afford to keep the baby."

Almaz had already been introduced to Girma, a local man, by her sister-in-law and he agreed to take the baby after the Kebele gave consent.

Girma took the baby to Addis Ababa, Almaz says.

"He promised he would keep in touch. He said he would bring back the baby to visit after five months and he would send me a picture.

"He also promised to introduce me to the family that would adopt her."

Almaz says she never told Girma or the authorities that her daughter had died.

"But then Girma came to me and told me that the baby had been adopted and taken abroad," she says. "He said there will be journalists coming to you and you must deny the whole story and say it is not your granddaughter."

After stories first began to circulate two years ago that Zahara's birth mother was still alive, Almaz says Girma dragged her to the local council offices and accused her of lying. He also tried to force her to say that Zahara was not her granddaughter.

"He brought this woman who claimed Tena Adam was her daughter," she says. "He tried everything to get me to say it's not my granddaughter. He even threatened he'd put me in jail and have me tortured."

But Almaz refused to budge.

The revelation that Zahara's mother is alive and living on a few dollars a week while she struggles to complete her education will come as a huge embarrassment to Wide Horizons For Children, which claims to have placed more than 10,000 children from all over the world with Western families since 1974.

Dr Tsegaye Berhe, head of the agency in Ethiopia, says he was told Zahara's mother was dead at the time of the adoption and has the official papers to prove it.

"We have to trust the documents we received," he says. "She (Almaz) has signed, three witnesses have signed, but the document is saying something different to what she is saying now. She said her daughter had died."

And in a move some might regard as intimidation, Berhe says he has asked the government to instruct Ethiopian police to investigate whether the grandmother lied to the Kebele. "We have already talked to the government," he says.

"The grandmother has given two statements. One that the mother is dead, another that she is alive. We have told the government what she is doing and that it has to take action because it is the government she's made to look foolish.

"It's a big scandal to say something then another thing the next day. That will make a big problem for her."

Berhe produced the paperwork he says was signed by Almaz and three other witnesses testifying that Zahara's mother had died, but refused to allow it to be copied or photographed. One of the three witnesses named in the document, Asegadech Asefaw, backs up Almaz's account that she told officials her daughter had run away.

Another of Almaz's former neighbours, Bekelech Haile, says she also confirmed Almaz's version of events but, strangely, her name does not appear on the document.

Witnesses say they've never heard of the name that does.

"I cannot read or write," Almaz now says. "I don't know what they wrote but what I said was that my daughter ran away, not that she was dead."

The adoption agency says it makes efforts to establish links between adoptive parents and a child's family. Berhe says he always arranges for adoptive parents to go to the village to meet surviving family, take pictures and videos, and even have some correspondence.

"It's very important because when the child grows, we don't want him or her to lose their identity," he says. "(The child) is going to ask a lot of questions . . . Why did you adopt me? Who are my parents? Where do I come from? Questions the child is going to ask."

Yet, according to Zahara's birth family, Jolie has never visited their home in Awassa, where donkeys, cows and goats vie with cars and trucks for space on the road. Indeed, she has never contacted them or even sent a picture of Zahara.

Berhe does not dispute Jolie never met the family but blames media interest.

"There were a lot of journalists following her," he says. "She was not able to travel as she would have liked."

As for Jolie's failure to make any contact, he says the agency gets regular reports on how Zahara is doing from social workers in the US "but with the connection between the blood family and the adoptive parents, it is up to them."

Meanwhile, Wide Horizons For Children moved rapidly to distance itself from Girma, the man who supplied Zahara and the paperwork.

Although Girma says that he worked for the adoption agency and has distributed business cards claiming he represents it, Wide Horizons For Children says he is not an employee but is employed by an orphanage in Awassa.

It does not deny, however, that it was he who brought Zahara to its officials.

"What he has done is tanta- mount to kidnap," Mentewab says. "He took my daughter and just disappeared with her, saying I was dead."

She does recognise that Zahara has far better prospects with Jolie and Pitt.

"She will have a better life with Angelina," she says. "The thing that makes me upset is saying I'm dead - I'm alive and have never had AIDS."

She would like Jolie to bring her daughter to visit her birthplace, a gesture that would mean everything.

East Timor Challenged by Poverty, Displaced People, UN Says

from Bloomberg

By Paul Tighe

East Timor's development is challenged by poverty and the estimated 100,000 people, or 10 percent of its population, still living in camps after civil unrest last year, the United Nations said.

``The challenges of governance and the legacy of the 2006 violent crisis and its aftermath still haunt the country's political leadership and affect the people,'' Dumisani Kumalo, South Africa's UN ambassador, who headed a team that visited the Southeast Asian nation last month, said yesterday in a report to the Security Council.

East Timor's security remains ``calm and stable, but fragile,'' Kumalo said in a statement on the UN's Web site.

Violence in the former Portuguese colony, also known as Timor Leste, erupted in March last year, resulting in the deaths of 37 people and driving 155,000 from their homes. Stability was restored with the help of international peacekeepers and East Timor this year held presidential and general elections.

``The mission left Timor-Leste convinced that the country is on the right path of regaining its role as a peaceful, stable, united and prosperous country,'' Kumalo said.

East Timor's government, with the help of the UN and international community, must improve the conditions for displaced people living in 53 camps in and around the capital, Dili, he said. It must also settle the issue of former soldiers who deserted the army, he added.

Armed Forces

Last year's violence began when former prime minister Mari Alkatiri fired a third of the country's armed forces for desertion, prompting clashes between groups from the western and eastern regions.

There was more unrest in August when the Fretilin party was excluded from government for the first time since East Timor gained independence from Indonesia five years ago.

Former President Xanana Gusmao assembled a three-party coalition without Fretilin following elections held June 30. Riots broke out Aug. 6 when he was appointed prime minister.

Jose Ramos Horta, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who replaced Alkatiri as prime minister, won a run-off presidential election in May.

East Timor still has weak institutions, leading to problems in running the country and its justice and security branches need strengthening, Kumalo said.

East Timor is one of Southeast Asia's poorest countries even though it holds the rights to an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 300 million barrels of light oil. It has a jobless rate of 50 percent and about 42 percent of 1 million people live below the poverty line.

The UN has been operating in East Timor since 1999, when the country voted for independence following a 24-year occupation by Indonesia. The country, lying about 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of Australia, became independent in May 2002.

To contact the reporter on this story: Paul Tighe in Sydney at ptighe@bloomberg.net .

President leaves behind a people left paralysed by their poverty

from The Independent

By Ian Evans in Harare

The road out of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, is a survey of disrepair. Broken traffic lights, rusting lampposts, rubbish-strewn scrub planted with maize by hungry people, broken down vehicles, hawkers with pitiful offerings, the choking fumes of cheap fuel.

The road itself leads to the poorer townships, the heartland of the opposition, and some possible answers to questions surrounding Zimbabwe: what has happened to this once-thriving country? And why have its people not risen up against its leaders?

Power cuts here are as mundane as rain showers. Sitting and drinking a beer waiting for a guide, the lights go out along a whole street without anyone raising an eyebrow, let alone a voice. My companions cover their ears, there's a rumble and the generators kick back in.

My township guide duly arrives and we hitchhike through the rain to Hatcliffe. The good news is the electricity is on. The bad news is that there are no street lights.

Two years ago Hatcliffe was targeted in Robert Mugabe's Operation Murambatsvina – Shona for "drive out the rubbish" – when thugs and police demolished shacks and stalls leaving tens of thousands of people without homes or work. He claimed it was tidying up the neighbourhood but human rights workers said that it was collective punishment of opposition supporters.

Within 10 minutes the lights are off again.

The man I have come to speak to is a civil servant but it is his daughter who is more vocal and passionate. A student in her early twenties, she sums up the mood of a desperate nation.

"Ten to 15 years ago we had a good life, things were stable here. Now it is going down and down. It will need a strong political person in [the ruling party] Zanu-PF to change things because we do not think Mugabe will step down. Inflation has ruined everything. You cannot plan or budget and nothing is available. It is OK if you are in Zanu-PF and know people because you can get what you want. But for normal people like us, it is very hard."

There is little optimism here that the talks between the ruling party and the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, brokered by neighbouring South Africa, will deliver fair elections next year.

The student is not confident about next year's vote and warns me of potential trouble. "African elections are very different to Western elections. You know there will only be one winner here. People know he will win. He will never give up power," she says.

Afterwards we walk back to my guide's house along the potholed road. I'd got used to no electricity, but no water is difficult. Limited supply from bottles obtained from a school are not enough to flush a now-full lavatory or have a wash.

The morning frees us from the vagaries of power cuts and brings an encounter with a man typical of both of the bravery and frustration of those who will not be cowed into silence by the police state. Harrison Mudzuri, 36, is a teacher and a father of three and he is happy to be quoted and photographed.

"I am not scared. I am motivated because this is a minority party ruling the majority," he says. "If we are afraid we are not going to gain anything. I am prepared to keep up the struggle and am ready to meet death. If we do not keep up the struggle it could mean death anyway – it is a no-win situation."

He has been a teacher for 15 years but has never known conditions to be so bad. His class is supposed to number 30 but he has 48 on the register. But not all turn up each day. "They are too hungry, they have to work or look after their sick parents. People are very poor and education is no longer a priority," says Mr Mudzuri, a member of the militant Progressive Teachers' Union of Zimbabwe.

His earnings leave him below the poverty line which has prompted colleagues to quit and sent once high literacy rates crashing. He has been arrested 12 times and been tortured by secret police.

But not all the people in Zimbabwe are suffering. We visit Borrowdale Brook, a wealthy enclave for Mr Mugabe's ministers, apparatchiks and a world away from Hatcliffe. Building work, manicured lawns, full shops, big cars and a golf club give it the feel of middle England, except this suburb houses Mr Mugabe's out-of-town retreat.

We drive past his high-fenced mansion guarded by troops armed with Kalashnikovs, bayonets drawn.

At the local supermarket, co-owned by the government minister Ray Kaukonde, we find fully stocked shelves, an abundance of fruit and vegetables and wine and spirits with price tags running into several hundred million dollars.

This wealth is beyond the imagining of the 40-year-old woman who runs a nearby orphanage for 60 children with HIV/Aids and who also has the illness for which she struggles to get antiretroviral drugs every month. Her soldier husband died from the ailment as did her two children aged six and two.

Asked why she runs the orphanage, she says: "They are all my children. I just want one of them to call me mummy so I can feel like a mother again."

Residents Facing Poverty Seek Community Response

from The Times Union

Tim Robertson
Staff Writer

Editor's Note: This is the third of a three-part series on poverty in Kosciusko County. The series looks at three local events aimed at raising awareness and facilitating responses to poverty in our area.

The day starts for Warsaw residents Jamie Caudill and Brandy Holle in much the same way as it starts for many of their neighbors across the county.

Caudill, 29, lives with her children, ages 2 and 10, and her boyfriend in a one-room efficiency apartment. She does not own a car, and must arrange a ride or walk more than five miles to her job at a local nursing home.

Holle, 27, lives with her 9-year-old son and her disabled fiance in a house she bought three years ago. But Holle's house has been foreclosed upon and she and her family must be out soon.

"In two months, I don't know if I'm going to have any place to live," she said.

Caudill and Holle are examples of a growing group in Kosciusko County, the working poor. Both women are involved in a local program aimed at helping them pull themselves and their families out of poverty. Every Monday, the women attend a 2-1/2-hour class called "Getting Ahead in a Just Getting By World," offered by local service agency Combined Community Services. They said, in the class they're learning to set personal goals and take steps to move their families past the daily cycle of survival and crisis negotiation and into a more secure environment.

But, Caudill and Holle said they're also learning that for effective, widespread change in the county's poverty situation, it takes the response and action of the entire community.

Brenda Rigdon, Kosciusko County Community Foundation development director, agrees. On Jan. 24, the KCCF will sponsor a workshop with Dr. Ruby Payne, a leading U.S. expert on the mindsets of poverty, middle class and wealth. Rigdon said the aim of the workshop is to act as a catalyst for action against poverty in the county.

Caudill said she has always lived in poverty. When she was 17, Caudill got pregnant and dropped out of high school. Five years later, she had another child. She said she got by working what jobs she could find and receiving public assistance for groceries and childcare items until 2005. That year, Caudill's 5-year-old son died and that's when she said she hit rock bottom.

"I went straight down hill," Caudill said. "I sat on my couch and I didn't care about anything else. The bills weren't paid and I didn't care that the bills weren't paid."

Holle also had a child when she was 17. Through a CCS program called Project Independence, Holle was able to complete a college degree in the field of health care. Holle said things were tough when she was studying.

"I was making about $3,000 a month. I was on food stamps and Medicaid, and I lived in an apartment with cockroaches," Holle said. "I couldn't afford diapers for my son."

Holle said things got better for her after she graduated. She found a job, though not in her field of study, and was able to buy a house and a reliable car.

Then disaster struck. Holle lost her job and, in the same month, suffered some serious health problems.

"I went from making about $40,000 a year down to about $12,000," she said. "I lost my home and now I'm trying to file for bankruptcy."

Philip DeVol is a consultant and trainer with Payne's organization aha! Process Inc. DeVol said Caudill's and Holle's stories demonstrate some of the main causes of poverty and barriers to leaving poverty.

"There are a lot of people that are playing by the rules, working hard and something comes along and blows up their day," DeVol said. "It's a very complex kind of picture."

DeVol said personal choices and individual situations play a role in most situations in which people lose their self-sufficiency. Often, he said, decisions are made within the context of sets of hidden class rules which exist within poverty, middle class and wealth. Those working to get out of poverty are often just one disaster or one illness from losing their self-sufficiency.

DeVol said individual choices and circumstances are not the only factors affecting those in poverty.

"It's not as simple as get sober, get a job, be more punctual, make better decisions," he said.

Many of the major factors, DeVol said, are found on the community level.

"American towns and cities are having a difficult time offering some very simple basics," DeVol said.

He said communities need to take a close look at how readily available well-paying jobs, good education opportunities, health care and fair credit are locally.

For example, DeVol said, local employers should know what it takes to provide basic, secure survival for a family in this county. According to a nationwide county-by-county survey by Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group Wider Opportunities For Women, in 2005 in Kosciusko County, an adult with an infant and a preschooler needs to make $13.38 per hour to be self sufficient. A single adult with an infant, a preschooler and a school age child needs to make $18.39 per hour to make ends meet.

DeVol said Payne's workshop will lay some of the groundwork for professionals from the health care, education, business and local government sectors to understand the hidden rules of living in poverty, middle class and wealth so they can take more effective action to help stabilize the local environment for those in poverty.

DeVol said communication is an important starting point.

"If we all agree on what poverty is like in Kosciusko County, if we share a common understanding of what poverty is, we'll be more effective when we come together to talk about what to do about it," he said.

DeVol said, because poverty isn't simply a matter of lacking financial resources, but a lack of spiritual, physical, emotional resources and support systems, all sectors of the community play a role in alleviating its affects.

"That's what I think the community's job is," DeVol said. "It's not just, 'Good luck pal, getting yourself out of poverty.' It's helping create this stable environment for people to live in."

According to DeVol, the participation of those living in poverty is key to a successful response.

"Often we end up doing our planning for helping people in poverty without any of them in the room," he said. "If we sit at the planning table with everybody, that is so much more useful than just telling people what to do."

When Caudill and Holle finish their 16-week course with CCS, they'll receive $100 in cash and free membership to the local YMCA. They said those are great rewards, but they feel the even bigger rewards will be tools they can use to bring their families closer to self-sufficiency.

Caudill wants to find a home for her children that will not be as crowded and stress-inducing.

Holle wants to find a place for her family to live and begin working to re-establish good credit.

Both women said with red tape involved in receiving public assistance and the common misconception that people in poverty are lazy or drug addicts, they know they're facing an uphill battle. But they're optimistic that things can change for people in need in this county.

UN Seeks Aid for Somalia, Sudan Refugees

from The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. humanitarian chief warned that terrible atrocities and urban warfare were engulfing Somalia's capital and called for a large increase in aid to handle a burgeoning population of refugees fleeing Mogadishu.

Undersecretary-General John Holmes also painted a grim picture of conditions for millions of people uprooted across the Somali border in Ethiopia's Ogaden province — which faces possible famine — and in Sudan's Darfur region, where violence continues.

In Somalia, he said, the U.N. estimates that more than half of the population of the capital, Mogadishu, — about 600,000 people — have fled an upsurge in violence and intimidation.

Holmes said 230,000 are now living along a 9-mile stretch of road between the capital, Mogadishu, and the town of Afgooye, which probably constitutes the single largest gathering of displaced people in the world today.

He told the U.N. Security Council that he drove along the road where over 70 makeshift camps have mushroomed and met many people who fled with only the clothes on their backs.

"I fear, on the basis of what I heard, that increasingly terrible things are now happening in Mogadishu, as it descends into the nightmare of urban guerrilla warfare and reciprocal atrocities," Holmes said.

He appealed for humanitarian organizations to step up their presence and said at least $400 million will be needed in 2008, up from $300 million this year, to help some 1.5 million people in need. But he stressed that "a robust humanitarian response cannot make up for the absence of desperately needed political and security progress."

Somalia has not had a functioning government since clan-based warlords toppled dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991 and then turned on each other, sinking the poverty-stricken Horn of Africa nation into chaos. The weak U.N.-backed transitional government, with help from neighboring Ethiopia, has been battling a ferocious Islamic insurgency that has killed thousands of people this year.

In the eastern Ethiopian region of Ogaden, where a low-level insurgency has escalated, there are fears "that already chronic food insecurity could give way to real famine conditions for a significant part of the 4.5 million population," Holmes said.

He said "a disaster could unfold with frightening speed" if steps weren't taken in the next few months to improve conditions.

Holmes cited limits on commercial traffic across the Somali border into the Ogaden, in part because of government concerns about arms smuggling, a poor rainy season, and difficulties in delivering food aid because of the insecurity and restricted access.

He said it is currently estimated that 950,000 people need 53,000 tons of food in the next three months, but the process of moving the first 9,000 tons to district capitals has only just been completed.

While the government believes claims of major humanitarian problems are exaggerated, Holmes said Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi "assured me that all necessary steps would be taken to avoid any famine."

In Darfur, Holmes said, some 13,300 relief workers are assisting 4.2 million people affected by the conflict, including 2.4 million displaced, "but the situation is gradually deteriorating, and the operation in many ways remains fragile."

Holmes said more humanitarian aid is needed and he will appeal for $825 million for 2008.

Holmes said nearly 280,000 additional people were forced to flee the violence this year to already overflowing camps or to the bush, which has led to increasing malnutrition in several areas of Darfur.

In Adilla, in eastern Darfur, he added, one medical clinic reported 183 cases of sexually transmitted infections in September, including 40 cases in children under five years old.

"In the Name of Love: Africa Celebrates U2"

from Jazz Quad

On April 1, 2008, Shout! Factory will release In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2, an album celebrating the music, culture and future of Africa, and an unprecedented musical homage to Bono and U2 for their ongoing humanitarian relief efforts aiding the beloved continent. A portion of the record's proceeds will directly benefit The Global Fund.

Produced by Shawn Amos and Paul Heck, In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 features Grammy Award-winning/nominated African artists as well as top up-and-coming talents including Angelique Kidjo, Les Nubians, Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars, Vieux Farka Tour, Vusi Mahlasela and the Soweto Gospel Choir. Initially inspired by his work in South Africa while running the Quincy Jones Listen Up Foundation, Amos re-entered the music industry with a heartfelt initiative to cultivate greater awareness of the emerging socio-economic success stories happening within many of the country's regions. Amos, a longtime fan of U2, witnessed Bono's direct philanthropic impact via the launch of the ONE campaign and (RED), and his poignant outspoken public commentary on the immediate financial needs facing Africa.

Amos felt it was essential that African musicians unite and collectively share their voices of pride, accomplishment and appreciation for both their native country and icons like Bono who've substantially embraced the fight against the global AIDS crisis, extreme poverty and the spread of malaria. On December 1, 2006 at the World AIDS Day benefit concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Amos approached Red Hot producer Paul Heck about co-producing In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2. Several notable African artists were performing as part of Heck's live production of Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti including Les Nubians, Tony Allen, Cheikh L and Keziah Jones. Heck expressed support for the budding project, and quickly became an invaluable partner with his strong ties to various well-established African artists and knowledge of a handful of buzz-worthy upstarts. Together, they consulted with the artists appearing at the World AIDS Day event, bringing Amos' personal dream a step closer to becoming a reality.

“Paul and I wanted to develop an easy entry point for the growing global community where they could get more involved and learn something deeper about Africa,” says Amos. “It's really a focus on the key successes of several regions, and the African artists who originate from these areas. It's our goal for the public to learn more about all the good that's happening in Africa. We are trying to garner excitement about the culture, in addition to drawing people toward the struggles of Darfur, etc. This is a project which celebrates Africa!”

12 original interpretations of classic U2 hit songs and some of their more obscure material are featured on In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2. The collection kicks off with Angelique Kidjo's powerful multilingual cover of the 1991 chart-topper, “Mysterious Ways.” Aerosmith's Joe Perry joins Sierra Leone's Refugee All Stars for an upbeat, guitar-driven take on “Seconds,” a track from U2's third studio release, War (1983). Rising Malian star Vieux Farka Tour offers a trancy, Sahara Desert blues-influenced rendition of “Bullet The Blue Sky,” an absolute standout performance of one of U2's most-played live in concert tunes. Additional highlights include Les Nubians dubbed-out dancefloor ready version of “With Or Without You,” the Soweto Gospel Choir's epic a cappella version of “Pride In The Name Of Love,” and Tony Allen's Afrobeat translation of “Where The Streets Have No Name.” Paul Heck notes that, “I was amazed when we approached the artists of how quickly they chose the songs they wanted to do. Many of them grew up listening to U2, and knew the songs so well.”

In The Name Of Love: Africa Celebrates U2 sets itself apart from an array of other tribute albums as Amos and Heck have captured a compassionate human element at its core. The liner notes include demographic information, e.g., each artist's country of origin, date of independence, population size, main export, major issue facing the region, recent actions taken to improve its current state, and relevant websites with additional information. All of the songs were recorded exclusively for this album, and a portion of its proceeds will directly benefit The Global Fund, the world's largest international financier of the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Shout! Factory is a diversified entertainment company devoted to producing, uncovering and revitalizing the very best of pop culture - The Stuff You Grew Up On But Never Outgrew. Founders Richard Foos, Bob Emmer and Garson Foos have spent their careers sharing their music, television and film faves with discerning consumers the world over. Shout! Factory's DVD offerings serve up classic, contemporary and cult TV series, riveting sports programs, live music, animation and documentaries in lavish packages crammed with extras. The company's audio catalogue boasts Grammy-nominated boxed sets, new releases from storied artists and lovingly assembled album reissues. These riches are the result of a creative acquisitions mandate that has established the company as a hotbed of cultural preservation and commercial reinvention.

Watching where they tread

from The Guardian Katine Project

John Vidal on how the fate of Katine's villagers lies in the hands of the leaders meeting this week in Bali to discuss climate change

Joyce Abuko in Katine treads as lightly as anyone on earth. She walks everywhere, or sometimes travels on the back of a friend's bike. Nothing she uses is wasted. Her home is made of mudbricks and grasses, her possessions total a couple of big yellow plastic jerry cans to collect water in, a mat to sleep on and some plates.

She burns a single candle at night and she cooks on wood which she collects from a nearby forest or, if she can afford it, charcoal. When she had a cow, it emitted a few climate-changing methane burps and farts, but that's about it.

Lifetime carbon dioxide emissions of this mother of five: a few kilos of carbon dioxide a year. Total lifetime carbon footprint: as near as dammit nil.

Similarly Katine, her community. The 24,000-odd people who live in the sub-county of the same name own one or two cars between them and almost certainly none have been up in an aeroplane.

They come and go by bus to the local town, Soroti, and some travel six hours to the capital, Kampala, once or twice a year.

Their cattle herds have a minimal impact, but altogether Katine is a minute contributor to the environmental problems of Uganda and the world.

Total emissions of 24,000 people? If all of them burn wood, then perhaps a few dozen tonnes of carbon a year – the equivalent of half a dozen two car UK families.

The report from the UN development programme last week set out the maths. Uganda's share of world carbon dioxide emissions was officially 0.0%, and its emissions share per person - remember that there are some very dirty industries and hundreds of thousands of old cars in Kampala - was 0.1 tonnes of carbon.

That compares with 20.6 tonnes for every person alive in the US - a 2000% difference. Put another way, one American emits the same amount of greenhouse gases as around 2,000 Katineans.

Three thousand miles away from Katine, in Bali, Indonesia, people like Joyce and places like Uganda are high on the international political agenda this week as world leaders start to thrash out a fair climate deal to follow on from the Kyoto agreement, which runs out in 2012.

Every day, Oxfam, the World Development Movement and other charities and scientists, ram home at the conference that those people with the lightest carbon footprint and the least means to protect themselves from climate change are inevitably going to be the first victims of developed countries' energy-rich lifestyles.

China may be the west's bogeyman, now emitting as much carbon dioxide as the US, but in per capita terms, each Chinese emits only one sixth of each American.

The damage that climate change will inevitably bring is not underestimated.

In the short term, says the UN, the effects of a 2C rise in temperatures - what scientists say is the absolute maximum that eco systems can tolerate - could be "apocalyptic" for the people of Katine and other poorest people.

People in rich countries can respond to climate change by adjusting their thermostats. In Katine, the crops fail, the seasons change, floods and droughts come when least expected, people go hungry, and women and children spend more hours collecting water.

The UN report was stark. Africa in 1992 emitted less than 3% of the world's emissions, but if average temperatures are allowed to rise by another two or three degrees an extra 600 million people in the continent will go hungry; more than 300 million more poor people could be flooded out of their homes, and 400 million more people could be exposed to diseases like malaria, meningitis and dengue fever. In other words, failure to act on climate change will have grave consequences in some of the poorest places in the world.

But there is some hope in Bali. Not only will any global agreement have to allow Uganda and other African countries to carry on developing, it will have to involve the rich countries helping the poor financially.

This might be done in different ways. Britain, for instance, may not be able to cut its emissions down, but it could pay Uganda to "offset" them by not cutting down its forests, which store carbon.

How much could that be? Uganda fells nearly 86,000 hectares (212,420 acres) of its forests a year, most of it for firewood and charcoal for people like Joyce. One analysis suggests that an "avoided deforestation" initiative could be worth nearly $172m a year to Uganda, depending on how much deforestation it could "avoid" and the market price for carbon offsets.

Rich countries are also under immense moral pressure in Bali to help Uganda and other developing countries adapt to the climate change that their actions over many years have created. In a minute foretaste of what could come, Katine lost perhaps one tenth of its crops this year in the huge rains that inundated 19 countries and did millions of pounds of damage.

On the outcomes of Bali and follow up conferences, hangs the fate of at least 10,000 places like Katine and more than 1 billion women in Joyce's situation. For the moment, they must go on helping themselves.

The treadmill of poverty

from The Toronto Star

System penalizes people who attempt to get ahead, study finds

Laurie Monsebraaten
Staff Reporter

Zuher Ismail just wants to get ahead.

The 23-year-old lives at home with his mother in social housing, and works while attending school part-time to earn a degree in business administration. He's not at home entirely by choice – he tried to make it on his own, because he didn't want to be a burden, but he couldn't make ends meet.

The catch is, by living at home, trying to work and go to school, both Ismail and his mother have been penalized. Some of the money earmarked for his schooling goes to cover his mother's subsidized rent, which has gone up by about $100, to $400 a month, due to his income and the fact that he's now living with her.

"That's just the way it is I guess," Ismail says. "I just want to complete my studies and get on with my life."

Escaping social assistance in Ontario is a vicious game of snakes and ladders where too often those struggling to get ahead end up further behind, says a new report on government social programs.

That's because federal and provincial policies aimed at helping the poor too often work at cross-purposes, punishing anyone who gets a job or goes to school to try to improve their circumstances, says the report by John Stapleton, who was a policy analyst in Ontario's social services ministry for 28 years.

"Life is tough for poor people – we know that. Why do we develop public policies that make it even tougher?" Stapleton asks.

The report, funded by the privately endowed Metcalfe Foundation, lists a litany of barriers to self-reliance. It starts with welfare, which deducts 50 cents for every dollar earned the moment a person on welfare gets a job. Other social supports such as public housing and subsidized child care are also often slashed as income increases, leaving those on welfare little incentive to move ahead.

"Working-age social assistance recipients in Ontario, especially those who are public housing residents, live with disincentives," the report says. "The more they earn, the more they lose benefits; when they tell the truth, they are penalized."

As a result, programs encourage non-reporting, discourage work and perpetuate abject poverty, it says. Stapleton, who hopes his report will help shape the McGuinty government's poverty-reduction strategy, says the situation is particularly perverse for children turning 18 in poor families.

He recounts Toronto Mayor David Miller's fury in 2005 when, after encouraging large companies to hire disadvantaged youth, parents told their sons and daughters to turn down job offers. The reason? Any income these youth earned would trigger automatic rent hikes in the families' subsidized housing and cuts to welfare cheques.

"These kids were caught in a tangle of social policies that made it worse for both themselves and their parents if they took advantage of opportunities such as Miller's initiative," says the report, entitled "Why is it so tough to get ahead? How our tangled social programs pathologize the transition to self-reliance."

Under provincial social assistance rules, when children turn 18 they are considered adults and expected to work. The same rule applies in public housing. Only if they are studying full-time can children over 18 remain in the family home without causing penalties. But if they move out, they often can't support themselves because it's difficult for disadvantaged youth to get jobs that pay living wages.

Ismail's story is all too common, says Stapleton, who spent the past year consulting widely with people in Toronto receiving basic welfare, called "Ontario Works," and ODSP, the province's disability support program.

His primary focus were first-generation immigrant adults on welfare and youth who have grown up in public housing.

Problems they encountered as they found work or enrolled in education and training included:

Cuts to income support such as Ontario Works, ODSP and the national child benefit.

Ineligibility for benefits such as prescription drugs and dental care.

Eviction notices or rent hikes for public housing.

Reduced eligibility for services such as subsidized child care.

Reduced eligibility for OSAP (student assistance).

Single mom Toby Rowe, 27, was determined to crawl out of poverty last winter by taking a part-time job at a fast-food restaurant to supplement her $939 welfare cheque. Her goal was to work in the afternoons while her children, then aged 4 and 6, were both in school. But the restaurant, which paid her $8 an hour, insisted she work weekends too, forcing Rowe to hire a babysitter, which cost $6 an hour.

"I did it for three months and had no more money in my pocket to show for it," Rowe says. "Welfare took 50 cents of every dollar I made and the babysitter took the rest. It actually cost me to work. "

Rowe, who has been completing high school one credit at a time while raising her children, hopes to complete her diploma and enrol in some form of post-secondary education or job training after her daughter starts Gr.ade 1 next year.

"I know I need more training because I'll never get ahead working (for) minimum wage. But it's hard."

Ultimately, Ontario's social safety net needs to be more focused on the person seeking help, rather than on so-called "service silos."

But in the short term, Ontario could ease the transition into self-reliance from social assistance by granting moratoriums – what Stapleton calls "time outs" – on public-housing rent hikes, welfare and child-benefit clawbacks, and cuts to child-care subsidies.

When it comes to disadvantaged youth turning 18, he calls for a grace period of up to four years for those in school so they can prepare themselves for adulthood without triggering financial hardship.

End Rural Poverty by Privatising Communal Land

from All Africa

New Era (Windhoek)

By Wezi Tjaronda
Windhoek

A consultant has recommended that communal land should have an economic value attached to it in order to improve the living standards of people living in communal areas.

He considered the low value and insecure tenure of communal land at present as a missed opportunity for rural areas to develop.

There should be a focus on the value of land and its ownership, Dr John Mendelsohn of Research and Information Services of Namibia (RAISON) said in a presentation to the Annual General Meeting of the Namibia Professional Hunters Association last week.

Mendelsohn said there is an assumption that people in rural areas are just fine the way they are, yet communal areas have poor land tenure security and land has no value as collateral value while being vulnerable to land grabs by the po-werful and wealthy.

In addition, Mendelsohn said people are unable to develop and own land as a capital asset. They have little incentive to invest in, or care for, land because it has no commercial value.

Although most people in rural areas depend on livestock and small-scale farming, deriving a livelihood from these is not viable because of high population densities, low rainfall, poor soil and labour constraints.

Even if they have surpluses to sell, farmers face limited markets because of the size of the population and long distances to bigger markets.

More than 60 percent of the country's population, or 1.3 million people live in rural areas.

He felt that there were double standards applied between urban and communal land dwellers because of the lack of commercial value attached to communal land.

"Communal land is a poverty trap," he said, adding that people should own the land to be able to earn an income from it, and develop and value the land as a capital asset.

He suggested that communal land should be divided and given to people to sell if they want to leave the rural areas. In addition, people could use the land as collateral for loans they may want from financial institutions.

He said if people owned the land they would also look after it properly.

At present, people in rural areas are denied access to economic development options that urban areas take for granted, by for instance, making improvements to their homes as a capital asset, he said.

Urban populations are growing due to people migrating in search of better living standards, which Mendelsohn said should be encouraged in the absence of good options available to inhabitants of rural areas.

Statistics quoted in the presentation indicate that urban areas are growing at five percent per year compared to two percent for rural areas.

Life in most rural areas is hard, especially if it depends on traditional farming and limited harvests. Livelihoods dependent on agriculture generally require big areas if they are to generate decent incomes and standards of living.

For a decent life, he added, other sources of income are needed, especially as a source of cash for modern necessities.

He suggested that the Government should focus on policies and ways of developing agricultural and other natural resources that really yield incomes - that add value to natural resources and tourism.

Villagers debunk claims about poverty reduction

from the Pakistan Dawn

By Masood Haider

NEW YORK, Villagers in Punjab have criticised President Pervez Musharraf’s government in interviews with the international news media, saying that prices of essential food items soared during his tenure.

“God knows who will be the leader after Musharraf,” a shop owner in a destitute village of 2,000 families was quoted as saying. “Each leader is worse than its predecessor.”

President Musharraf had challenged western journalists in an interview with the New York Times to journey to the villages of Pakistan and gauge public opinion.

President Musharraf had recommended them to take a trip to Punjab, the province that holds 55 per cent of the country’s population.

Westerners overestimate the popularity of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, he claimed, because they only met “human rights activists” in cities.

But the villagers said in interviews that Musharraf’s government had supported feudal landlords who rule the rural areas, where 5 per cent of the population controls 66 per cent of the land.

“Musharraf has announced he will end poverty,” Hussain, a villager, said. “It seems he will end the poor.”

The Times noted that “while city-dwellers complained that Musharraf’s dismissal of the Supreme Court, suspension of the Constitution and shutting of independent media were illegal, villagers complained that they had driven up prices.”

“Since the Nov 3 emergency, the price of wheat has risen by 25 per cent, from $7.50 for 40kg or 88 pounds, to $10,” villagers said.

Rice rose by 25 per cent, mustard oil by 75 per cent, from $1.33 a kilogram to $2.33. Even before the emergency, they said, prices had been rising over the last several years.

“Here, a poor person earns 100 rupees a day,” said Shahed Imran, a 22-year-old tea stall owner. “How can he support his family?”

The report pointed out that “Pakistani and international economists agreed that the inflation rate was 10 per cent last year…While the economy has boomed under Musharraf, with 6 per cent growth a year on average, nearly all growth has come in the urban service sector in areas such as banking, construction and stock trading. Farming has remained stagnant.”

Villagers said some aspects of rural life have improved under Musharraf. More families have televisions sets. New Chinese-made motorbikes speed down the village’s rutted, one-lane road. And new generators and concrete lining have been added to the local irrigation system, they said.

But, they said, the improvements had aided only wealthy landowners. Fifty per cent of village residents who were landless continue to struggle, they said.

Most villagers vote for whomever their landlords tell them to, they said.

Villagers said the crackdown on independent news stations had had no impact in rural areas since only the state-controlled television could be seen in the countryside.

Those who read the papers said Musharraf had declared the emergency to retain his hold on power, not to deter terrorism.