Taking in orphaned relatives too much for one couple

After parents die of AIDS someone has to take care of the newly orphaned children. For many in Africa, they are unable to earn enough to feed their own children let alone any relatives they take on. For one couple in South Africa the extra burden broke their marriage apart.

From the Christian Science Monitor, writer Scott Baldauf gives us one family's heartbreaking story.

There are days when Olga Thimbela thinks it was a mistake to take in the orphaned children of her sister and her aunt. Life before the arrival of these six children – whose mothers both died of AIDS – was not easy. But after their arrival, Olga says, her life became impossible.

Today, her marriage is on the rocks, her health is suffering, her own biological children get only a fraction of her time, and her relatives all think she is rich because of the $90-per-month foster-care grants she receives for each of her schoolgoing foster children.

The strain of looking after nine children – three of her own, six of her extended family – and fending off greedy relatives has finally brought Olga to the breaking point.

“Sometimes I feel like I made a mistake to take these children,” says Olga, standing in her neat shack, her 6-month-old infant girl, Hlumelo, tied to her back with a blanket. Olga is in tears. “I think, maybe if I didn’t take these children, I could take care of my own kids. Everything is destroyed in my life. My family. My marriage. Everything.”

If Olga were the only South African woman looking after other people’s children, her story would be a mere individual tragedy. But Olga Thimbela is just one of hundreds of thousands of South Africans who are looking after the estimated 1.4 million children who have lost one or both parents because of AIDS. The majority of AIDS orphans are looked after by members of their own extended families, an extraordinary cultural generosity that many South Africans say is rooted in the philosophy of ubuntu, where individual happiness takes a back seat to collective well-being. But in a country where 43 percent of the population live below the poverty line, ubuntu means that families who are already desperately poor and barely able to feed themselves must stretch their resources even further to take in others.

When we first met Olga Thimbela and her husband, Pontsho Monamodi, in early 2007, they were a happy couple making the best they could of a difficult situation. Olga was still taking jobs as a housekeeper. Pontsho, a former South African Army reserve soldier, found unsteady employment as a security guard. Older children like 24-year-old Elizabeth and 18-year-old Thabang helped to look after younger children, and 13-year-old Bulelwa would help the children with their schoolwork.

But then, Olga says, the government grants that were intended to help Olga and Pontsho pay for the upkeep of her relatives’ children, became a source of friction in Olga’s family. In the times when Pontsho and Olga were both working, extended family members would demand their share – based on the notion that those doing well should look after those who are poorer. And when Olga or Pontsho would be temporarily out of work, Olga says, her relatives would come by and criticize them for “eating the children’s money.”

Afghanistan, running on drugs and corruption

From IRIN, the sad story of the drug trade and corruption in Afghanistan, and how that effects humanitarian efforts.

It is well known that the Taliban, local criminals and international drug cartels profit enormously from the drug trade; that corruption is rife; and that huge amounts of aid money are pouring into Afghanistan. Less clear is the effect of all this on government power and the rule of law on which humanitarian aid organizations depend to carry out their mandate.

The drugs trade and corruption generate more money than lawful economic activities in Afghanistan. Opium sales generated an estimated US$2.8 billion in 2009, while in the same year Afghans paid $2.5 billion in bribes to government officials, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The drug-cum-corruption economy of $5.3 billion in 2009 is more than the $4.4 billion earmarked in 2010 for running the government and financing the development budget.

The overwhelming victims of corruption and drug-induced insecurity are ordinary Afghans, according to the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics (MCN).

“It is almost impossible to obtain a public service in Afghanistan without greasing a palm: bribing the authorities is part of everyday life,” said a UNODC survey, which described corruption as “the biggest problem” in the eyes of Afghans. “Bribery not only robs the poor and causes misallocation of resources, it destroys trust in government.”

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, UNODC’s country representative, was skeptical of the notion of linking drug money with corruption “yet nobody can argue that drug money and corruption are one unholy alliance sharing the same sick bed,” he told IRIN.

International mafia to blame?

MCN officials blame a powerful international mafia for the drugs trade.

“The mafia kills our counter-narcotics forces, abuses our institutions and even threatens the minister of counter-narcotics,” said Zalmai Afzali, MCN’s spokesman.

Hamidullah Farooqi, a former minister and economist, said drug money had deep roots and involved powerful circles both within and outside government.

“Whether Afghans or foreign mafia are nurturing the drug trade is less important than why the problem is not being effectively addressed,” Farooqi told IRIN, adding that there was a lack of commitment in government to tackle the booming illegal economy.

Afghanistan is the world’s top opium producer, according to UNODC, and its government is the most corrupt in the world after Somalia, according to Transparency International.
The opium trade employs about 1.6 million people (6.4 percent of the population), according to the World Bank.

Backed by donors, the government has tried several counter-narcotics and anti-corruption strategies and approaches over the past eight years.

Too powerful

Tackling drugs and corruption, however, is risky as law enforcement institutions are weak and those with vested interests in the illicit economy powerful.

“The so-called elite that thrives on the illegal economy is so powerful that it can destabilize the country if revolutionary steps are taken to change the status quo,” said Saifuddin Saihoon, a professor of political economy at Kabul University.

“Corruption and drugs undermine the rule of law, erode peoples’ confidence in the government, fuel insecurity, contribute to poverty and derail development efforts,” said former minister Farooqi.

“We all eat corruption and drug money, albeit in different quantities,” said an official in the Finance Ministry who preferred anonymity.

Aid-dependent

At the same time, Afghanistan’s high level of foreign aid dependency could also be undermining government power: A $2 billion development budget is largely funded by donors, officials at the Finance Ministry said.

Several years ago both the development and the “ordinary” budget were mainly donor-funded. Over the past four years the government has increasingly contributed (via domestic revenue) to its “ordinary” budget, but its contribution was still only 60 percent of the $2.4 billion total in 2010.

Many Afghans say foreign assistance is not indefinite and the post-Taliban donor-driven development process will fall away soon after NATO withdraws its troops.

“A sudden discontinuation of foreign assistance will have grave consequences for Afghanistan,” said Naveed Bakhshi, a Finance Ministry official.

A huge illicit economy and unending dependence on foreign generosity is unsustainable, experts say.

“Our achievements in health, education and other sectors are so fragile that without donors’ constant financing everything will fall like dominos,” said Shukria Barakzai, a member of parliament.

“Take drug money and foreign aid away and you would find Afghanistan collapsing in extreme destitution,” said Saihoon of Kabul University.

Meanwhile, UNODC’s Lemahieu says corruption and drugs will be a tough nut to crack: The illicit economy trusts “that lawlessness and crime are its best partners, not transparency and accountability", he said, adding that these problems would fade away with state growth.

However, building a viable state and implementing the rule of law cannot be achieved without bringing the informal economy to heel and ending criminal activities - an impossible Catch-22 situation, experts say.

How India's caste system keeps people poor

India's caste system is slowly becoming a thing of the past. The economic growth that India has seen over the last couple of decades helped to begin to do away with casts. During the I.T. revolution in India people from all castes could get good jobs and improved livelihoods.

This is the first year that India's census will have no questions on which caste one belongs to. However, some aspects of the caste system still reside in the rural areas. People of a lower caste still will not receive any services from government if the officials are from a higher caste. The only way to get help is through bribes.

From part of their series for the Canadian Press Craig & Marc Kielburger of Save The Children explain how the caste keeps some people in poverty by introducing us to the situation of 57 year old grandmother Babu Dhula. Our snippet was grabbed from the Vancouver Sun.

"What happens when there is a lack of identity is that people are not able to verify who they are," said Nandan Nilekani, Chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India, during the launch of the UIDAI project. "Because they cannot verify who they are, they cannot ... get on a BPL list. If they are not on a BPL list, they are not able to access the ration card."

The issuing of identity cards -- complete with photographs, fingerprints and iris scans -- is a valiant effort. But while it may help alleviate poverty in urban areas, it misses a key aspect of Dhula's identity that is still very much alive in the country.

Dhula is gayri -- a member of a low-ranking caste in India's officially abolished yet existent social system. The system, which has roots in Hinduism, defines people based on occupation, culture and socioeconomic status. Castes have virtually died out in the cities. In Gayriawas, it's still very much a part of Dhula's life.

Here, the official in charge of BPL cards is part of a higher caste. In this position of power, he may still demand a bribe, with or without Dhula's identification.

The census is rightly attempting to move toward a casteless society. And advances in technology have helped: "Technology has gone from being seen as something forbidding to something that is empowering," Nilekani said.

By rejecting the caste system, the government is sending an important message that discrimination has no place in India's future.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/business/India+caste+system+keeps+millions+grip+poverty/3008169/story.html#ixzz0nX0m5FIJ

The US supplemental poverty line

The U.S. government is about to make a big step in updating the country's poverty figures. The official poverty measurement has been outdated for a long time, but it will not be replaced just yet. The Obama Administration is going to have the government begin measuring poverty by a new method that will supplement the outdated one.

From the Columbus Dispatch, writer Rita Price explains the differences between the two methods.

The supplemental measure won't replace the official one, which still will be used to determine state funding and program eligibility. But supporters hail the new measure as an important step away from an antiquated formula that ignores far more information than it considers.

"We don't live in Mayberry anymore," said Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, executive director of the Ohio Association of Second Harvest Foodbanks. "It's about time that Congress and the government put their noses to the grindstone to see what poverty looks like, and to see what it takes to lift more Americans into the middle class."

The current poverty measure is based on a low-cost food budget from the 1960s that assumes that a family spent about one-third of its income on meals. For nearly a half-century, the formula has been adjusted for inflation but nothing else.

That means family income is calculated without counting the value of now-widespread benefits such as food stamps, housing assistance and the Earned Income Tax Credit.

On the flip side, significant expenses such as child care, housing and out-of-pocket medical costs also aren't considered.

The new measure aims to take it all into consideration.

"People can argue around the edges, but I've never found anyone who thinks the old one is better," said Robert Michael, a professor at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago.

Golfing in Sudan

A new golf course has opened up in the most unlikely place... Sudan. The golf course is placed in a country with poverty stricken slums, and a bloody conflict in Darfur. It raises some ethical questions of use of water and inequality. But the people who built it say it's another score for development in Sudan.

From CNN, we are introduced the course developer and hear both sides of the debate.

Soba is the latest creation from Swiss architect Peter Harradine and his company Harradine Golf, an organization started by Harradine's grandfather in 1929.

Since taking the reins, he has been responsible for building golf courses in some of the most dangerous locations on the planet. It seems, after a war ends and a cease fire is announced, local developers reach for his number.

"I get contacted by all sorts of different people," he told CNN. "I am based in Dubai, as are a lot of investors who use Dubai as a hub. So I have had calls from [places like] Georgia, Tunisia and, of course, Sudan, but I'm not consciously waiting for wars to end!"
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Yet it is his course in Sudan that has been the most surprising, not to mention controversial. Harradine was contracted by a local conglomerate to satisfy the demand created by Sudan's booming, oil-fueled economy.

According to the IMF, Sudan's GDP grew an average of eight percent year-on-year between 2004 and 2008. "There are a lot of rich people in Khartoum," Harradine told CNN.

But not everyone is happy with the global spread of golf. According to some, the building of golf courses in some parts of the world, especially in areas where clean drinking water is at a premium, raises some huge ethical issues.

UNESCO's first World Water Development Report said an 18-hole golf course can use as much as 2.3 million liters of water every day. The UK-based NGO Water Aid estimates that 66 percent of Sudanese, more than 25 million people, do not have access to clean water.

"We are not here to tell the Sudanese they can or cannot have a golf course but I'd be very surprised if the economic benefits will help the communities that live cheek by jowl with it," explained Water Aid's Oliver Cumming.
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But Harradine sees the golf course as a chance to spread the game he loves whilst boosting the local economy at the same time. "I never go into politics, but I love golf and everyone should play golf," he said.

"I've never had any problem moving around Sudan. We had more problems finding the right sand for the root mixture and the right raw material. It's the technical issues, especially when there's an embargo, like bringing in brand new Caterpillars, but we got them. You read a lot in the papers that is bull***t. Who's right, who's wrong?

"During the construction we employed 200 people from the neighboring shacks," he continued. "They all had work, plus the security. A lot of people are learning how to maintain a golf course and each player has a local caddie. So these guys will all become players. In the beginning the richer clients profit, but in the end it trickles down to the normal guy."

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Drip Irrigation farming in Africa

While another drought grips a part of Africa, we find this story of a technology that can help food harvests. Drip irrigation is an Israeli farming method that is being introduced to a few in Africa.

Instead of continuously providing food to the starving year after year, donors are looking at farming methods such as drip irrigation to instead improve agriculture. But getting the African farmers to think more like businessmen who want to improve yields not only for themselves but for their own self-interest will take years of changing mindsets.

From Reuters, writer David Lewis tells us of one such farmer who has been successful with drip irrigation.

"With the watering cans, we couldn't do more than one harvest per year. With this innovation, we can do as many as three, so our earnings are multiplied by three," said Yamar Diop, a 73-year-old father of ten.

During a visit to the region last week, U.N. aid chief John Holmes appealed not just for the tens of millions of dollars needed to keep people alive, but for more action to address the root causes of the recurrent food crises.

Farmers like Diop say they are doing just that. He is one of about 2,500 farmers across the Sahel who, over the last few years, have taken part in the African Market Garden, an Israeli initiative to use low pressure drip irrigation to break dependence on rain and boost crops, nutrition and incomes.

Diop's harvests will earn him 800,000 CFA francs ($1,624) over the year, while the U.N. will spend $190 million over the same period to get through the food crisis, prompting calls for the donorsto invest more on long term projects.

"Niger is going to have a big problem this year," said Dov Pasternak, the head of the Sahel programme at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), referring to the rush to bring aid into the land-locked nation.

"This will cost millions but how much is being spent on agriculture? I have a gut feeling the ratio is huge in favour of food relief," he said. "It is the poverty that we have to deal with, rather than providing food security."

ICRISAT says the African Market Garden irrigation system means returns on land, water and labour are multiplied by two, four and six, respectively, when compared with traditional vegetable production systems on the continent.

That could allow places like Niger to shift from perennial sites of hunger into producers of food for the regional market of around 250 million people, Pasternak said.

Contrary to the area's drought-ridden image, Pasternak says water is available. Most obvious are the billions of litres that flow down Niger's eponymous river. But, with technology and investment, shallow underground bodies called dallos, or deeper regional aquifers, offer trillions of litres of potential water.

What is different about the current famine in Niger

Niger has really suffered from food shortages and droughts repeatedly for many years. A similar famine caused the last overthrow of government in 1974. Since then, the government would only respond angrily to the cries of it's people and humanitarians. This year it is different, as the government is distributing food and asking for international help.

From the New York Times, writer Adam Nossiter gives us this background on the Niger famine.

Once again Niger is facing a food crisis, a grimly familiar predicament in a vast desert country with an explosive birthrate and rudimentary agriculture. Rains and crops failed last year — rainfall was about 70 percent below normal in the region — and now half the population of 15 million faces food shortages, officials say. Thus it was in 2005, 1985 and 1974.

But there is a big difference this year: the new military government here is acknowledging serious hunger, trying to do something about it — and asking for help.

Before the country’s autocratic president, Mamadou Tandja, was overthrown in February, the state warehouses remained stocked, despite the people’s need for help. Now they are largely empty of grain, a sign of how much has been distributed in recent weeks.

The new prime minister travels the suffering countryside, asking about the food shortage. Before, Mr. Tandja would fly into a rage at the very mention of the word famine, according to officials and newspapers here.

And when John Holmes, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, flew in last week, his extensive caravan received a military and police escort. Though Mr. Holmes was inquiring about what had been one of Niger’s most politically delicate topics, chronic hunger, government ministers with retinues of functionaries barreled into the dusty villages with him, and everywhere he went he was treated like a visiting head of state.

In the 2005 famine, by contrast, United Nations agencies were accused by Mr. Tandja of collaborating with the opposition to discredit him.

“Before, we didn’t speak about famine; it was forbidden,” said Idrissa Kouboukoye, head of the Niger Foodstuffs Agency office at the edge of town here. He chuckled softly, noting that this year, sacks of grain started to be dispensed from the massive concrete warehouses behind him on March 1, less than two weeks after Mr. Tandja was deposed.

“When people who don’t have enough to eat have to say that everything is fine, this is a problem,” Mr. Kouboukoye said of the previous government.

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Half of Djibouti's rural population need emergency food aid

From IRIN, half of Djibouti's rural population will need emergency food assistance.

About half of Djibouti’s rural population will need emergency food assistance this year due to the combined effects of drought, livestock losses, unfavourable livestock-to-cereal terms of trade and high staple food prices, according to an assessment by the government and UN agencies.

“Most pastoralists had lost a considerable proportion of their livestock [70-80 percent] over the last five years and they suffered from diminished sources of food and income and had exhausted their coping strategies,” Peter Smerdon, spokesperson for the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Nairobi, said.

“The assessment estimated global acute malnutrition among children under five [in rural areas] at 20 percent - above the emergency threshold of 15 percent.”

The assessment followed an alert issued in January by the Famine Early Warning System (FEWS NET). It found that up to 120,000 people - half the rural population - would require humanitarian assistance until December, including food aid and livelihood support, nutrition interventions, water supply, and health assistance. Restocking and asset building programmes are also needed in the medium term.

“The assessment recommended increasing the number of people receiving food assistance,” Smerdon told IRIN on 5 May. “Therefore from April, WFP increased the number of people receiving food through general food distributions from 26,000 to 48,500. Nonetheless, this quick response is neither sufficient nor sustainable and WFP faces a break in its food supplies in August unless new contributions are urgently received.”

FEWS NET said most poor pastoral households were highly food insecure. The food security situation was expected to worsen in the northwest and southeast border pastoral livelihood zones due to insufficient natural resources and inadequate food assistance, in the next six months.

“Poor urban households will likely face extreme food insecurity as the lean period (June-August) approaches,” it noted in a 22 April brief. It attributed the situation to high unemployment, a decline in petty trade activities, above average staple food prices, increased rural-urban migration, and closure of schools. Water shortages in Djibouti city would also worsen in the coming months.

Separately, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said the favourable rains could mitigate the situation. In February, unseasonable rains together with an early onset of the rainy season led to some recovery of pasture, browse and water, especially in pastoral coastal areas, but this could not guarantee the full recovery of the livestock sector, FAO said on 13 April.

Two-thirds of Djibouti's estimated 800,000 people live below the poverty line - 10 percent in extreme poverty - according to Health Ministry statistics. Most of the population lives in urban areas, but 60 percent are unemployed.

The country also hosts 12,900 refugees, an increase of 1,902 on the 2009 numbers due to new arrivals from Eritrea and conflict-ridden south-central Somalia, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs sub-regional office in Nairobi said on 30 April.

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A call to cooperate on African food security

The president of Malawi is pledging to put together a regional advisory council on food security. He plans on inviting other African heads of state to foster more cooperation on improving agriculture. President Bingu wa Mutharika leads a very successful program for his own country, and hopes to use that program as a blueprint.

From the Guardian, writer Liz Ford relayed the interview with Mutharika.

Speaking ahead of the World Economic Forum on Africa, which begins in Tanzania tomorrow, Bingu wa Mutharika said he planned to work with other African leaders to devise a programme on food security that was sustainable "regardless of who is looking at it", and set up what he called an African compact on food security to act as an independent advisory body to the African Union (AU) on agriculture and food issues.

In an interview with Dr Lindiwe Majele Sibanda, CEO of the Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) and chairman of the Farming First coalition, Mutharika said he would chair the compact for the next five years.

"I'll invite about eight, nine heads of states that are committed to this [food security] programme and I'll invite international organisations, the Africa Development Bank, the World Bank, the European Union... and some of the countries in the G8, and say here's a programme, here's what we want to do, and sustain this within the context of the African green revolution," said the president.
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Five years ago Malawi took steps to improve the livelihoods of its farmers through a Farm Input Subsidy Programme. Under the programme farmers were given seeds, fertiliser and advice on sowing techniques. Within two years the country went from being reliant on food aid to becoming a net exporter of maize. Although not without its critics, the programme won praise from the international community.

"We fed Malawi in less than two years," said Mutharika.

He added: "In many African countries we are being fed by very small, small farmers.... An then the question was how do we get these farmers to produce beyond subsistence and what are the challenges?"

He believes a package of "inputs" - improved seed varieties, fertilizers, access to extension services and markets – was required. "Indeed we did that five years ago and found the response to be absolutely tremendous. We were able to get people who previously could only produce three or four bags of maize or about 50kg a year, for instance, are now able to produce 15, 20, 25 [bags]. These people can go beyond subsistence, can feed themselves and also feed the nation."

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A Grandmothers' summit in Swaziland

Grandmothers from across Africa are organizing to call attention to their unique plight. Grandmothers are often the ones to care for their grandchildren after the parents die from AIDS. These Grandmothers are often in ill health themselves or have to keep working to support the children even at an old age.

From the Guardian, writer David Smith attended the Grandmother's summit.

"It's a lost group, a lost voice," said Philile Mlotshwa of Swapol (Swaziland Positive Living), which is organising the event in partnership with the Canadian-based Stephen Lewis Foundation . "They are the heroes yet no one has gone to them to say we recognise your efforts."

The organisers say it is time to heed the "indomitable and indefatigable" grandmothers who step forward to care for children, sometimes as many as 10 to 15 in one household. "They are holding together the social fabric of communities across the continent."

Mlotshwa continued: "Grandparents have always played an important role in solving disputes and as a source of knowledge. But now the younger generation is not there: people aged 29 to 49 are dying from HIV-Aids We are seeing a demographic of the elderly and the very young who've lost their parents."

She added: "Grandmothers are at the frontline of the HIV-Aids impact. They have to pick up the pieces and move on. They don't have time to grieve because the children need to be looked after. They are doing this without any income.

"They are not healthy people: they are sick with diabetes and high blood pressure. We are seeing women who are carrying on in spite of the challenges and the fear of what will happen to these grandchildren if they die."

Mlotshwa said she hoped the gathering would raise awareness of grandmothers' needs. "Various responses to HIV-Aids have been designed but not yet targeted at them."

The grandmothers are likely to seek international support for grief counselling, access to healthcare for themselves and children in their care, safe and adequate housing, economic security, safety from gender-based violence, raising community awareness and breaking stigma, support in raising grief-stricken grandchildren and access to education for children.

Grandmothers from Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe will be represented.

Anti-trafficking laws not sufficient in Egypt

From IRIN, the rise of human trafficking for sex in Egypt, and the lack of laws on the practice.

In the dock stood her parents, a lawyer and a broker, a woman who earned a living marrying underage Egyptian girls to wealthy old men from the Gulf. They pleaded not guilty to trafficking charges at their first court hearing on 20 April.

“If it were me, I’d never put you in jail,” the girl, 14, tearfully told her parents. The girl had been forced to marry a Saudi man, 50 years her senior; her father was paid 10,000 Egyptian pounds (about US$1,881) in return.

A few days later, however, the girl telephoned her father and said she would commit suicide if he did not help her escape her Saudi husband. She said the man did “weird” things to her and later, doctors said she had been abused.

Similar cases have made headlines in the local media, highlighting the issue of sex tourism.

Her parents’ lawyers said hundreds of rich Arabs came to Egypt for a temporary marriage. Some parents, particularly in the poor countryside and the slums of Cairo, marry off their underage daughters to rich men - usually 30 or 40 years older - for money. The marriage lasts a few months and costs an Arab tourist $3,000 at most.

Marrying off their daughters for money is a temporary respite from poverty in a country where more than 23 percent of the 80 million population live below the poverty line, according to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics.

“Extreme poverty stands behind the rise in this phenomenon,” said Ahmed Seif el-Islam, a lawyer and a human rights advocate. “These parents need money and they view their daughters as a deal that can bring them money.”

Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, the UN special rapporteur on trafficking in persons, who visited the country on 21 April, called on the government to take tougher action to combat what she called “a list of social ills”.

“There’s a growing trend of sexual and economic exploitation of underage girls through seasonal/temporary marriage, domestic servitude, other forms of sexual exploitation and prostitution,” Ezeilo said.

“Instead of offering protection to their daughters, parents force them to get married this way,” said Farkhunda Hassan, head of Egypt’s National Women’s Council, a government-affiliated agency. “They’re paid to do this and this is the crux of human trafficking,” she said at a recent conference in Cairo.

Egypt is a source, transit and destination country for women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and sexual exploitation, according to the 2009 Trafficking in Persons Report by the US State Department.

“Culture to blame”

The new anti-trafficking law, which was approved by the Upper House of the Egyptian Parliament on 24 April and the Lower House on 2 May, states that individuals or groups who commit human trafficking crimes will be given life sentences and fined between 50,000 ($9,090) and 200,000 Egyptian pounds ($36,363).

The government is responsible for protecting survivors and offering the necessary medical, education, and social assistance so that they can be part of society again, according to the new law. A special fund will be created to offer the necessary financial assistance to victims of human trafficking.

But some rights activists were not convinced. “Laws alone can’t bring a social ailment like this one to an end,” Seif el-Islam said. “This is a matter of culture and social habits. We must address the root causes of the problem in order to solve it,” he said.

"More crop per drop"

Speaking at an international water conference, the CEO of the Gates Foundation called for water efficiency while improving agriculture yields. Jeff Raikes of the Gates Foundation talked about the science breakthroughs in modified seeds that produce more food with less water.

Ralkes also showed slides of dried up lakes and rivers in Asia and Africa and how this will cause conflicts in the future.

From KOMO news, AP writer Eric Olson recieved a bunch of quotes from the Gates Foundation CEO.

"I see the linkage of the water crisis and the future of global poverty," he said, "yet I don't see the general awareness of this issue. I don't hear the talk of securing water for food.

"We worry about terrorism, yet do we understand that the battles over resources are the most devastating?"

Raikes echoed the notion that many of the 20th century's conflicts were based on oil, and many of this century's conflicts will be over water.
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Without better farming practices and water management in impoverished areas, the amount of water required to meet global demand for food will almost double by 2050, Raikes said.

"We have to get more food on the same land with the same or less amount of water," Raikes said.

The world population is projected to grow from 6 billion to 9 billion over the next 40 years, with the biggest increase in developing nations. Improving diets in developing nations such as India and China will further increase food demand, he said.

Meanwhile, the development of biofuels is cutting into water and land use for food crops, Raikes said, and there is increasing demand for water by industry

The root causes of Niger's food shortage

For years, Niger has been at the bottom of the United Nations Development Index. The food shortage it is experiencing now has actually been a continuing problem for the country. The lack of agricultural policies and infrastructure has led to year after year of small harvests, leading up to the failed harvest of last year.

From Reuters Alert Net, George Fominyen looks into how extreme poverty has helped to contribute to the problem.

About 80 percent of Niger's population lives in rural areas, depends on subsistence agriculture and breeding livestock and faces high levels of poverty, with little access to food, water, healthcare and education, according to the U.N.

"Such poverty among people whose incomes don't permit them to afford their food needs in the case of sudden shocks - including droughts, locust attacks, floods - is the other most important cause of the food crises in the country," Alpha Gado told AlertNet in Niger.

"This means that 2 years in every 5 there is a food crisis and this will become even more recurrent due to degrading climatic and environmental conditions," he added.

International aid groups operating in Niger say that although this year there is a deficit of 400,000 metric tonnes of cereals and crops failed in remote villages, accessibility rather than availability is the major concern and has always been the problem.

"Basically the population is not able or does not have the financial capacity to purchase this food which is largely available in the market in many parts of the country coming from within and from the coastal parts of West Africa," Malik Allaouna, the regional emergency manager for the U.K.-based relief group Save the Children told Alertnet.

"We think cash programmes, social safety programmes should be prioritised at this stage (of the unfolding crisis)," he added.

Some Nigerien experts are advocating that these so called safety net projects such as "cash-for-food" and "cash for work schemes" used in emergency situations to provide financial support to people going through a shock should become permanent in Niger.

"We should not wait to set up these programmes during the lean season (in April or May) when hunger is at its peak, they should run from January to December," Alpha Gado said.

The challenge of getting people to use mosquito nets

With the recent observance of World Malaria Day, a commentary today reminds us of one big challenge with mosquito nets.

The anti-malarial nets have been widely distributed in areas prone to the disease. Yet, the challenge is getting Africans to use the nets. Nearly half of all Africans do not use the nets or their intended purpose of sleeping.

From this commentary found in the Los Angeles Times, author Sonia Shah talks about the problem. Shaha is about to publish a book on malaria titled, "The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years."

Why that is gets to the heart of the trouble with our efforts to dislodge the diseases of the very poor. When scientists first developed the treated nets in the late 1990s, they were hailed by international donors and aid agencies as a magic bullet for malaria. Unlike nearly everything else that combats the disease, including better housing and drainage, anti-malarial drugs and insecticidal spray campaigns, the insecticide-doused nets are cheap and easy to use. Equally important, they require little infrastructure on the ground. A single volunteer on a motorcycle can distribute hundreds of nets a day, in even the most remote locales. There is no need for cold storage to keep drugs and vaccines refrigerated, nor for expert clinicians to oversee proper dosage.

To date, millions of dollars from international agencies, NGOs and USAID have been spent to get treated nets into the hands of impoverished, sub-Saharan Africans. The inter-agency Roll Back Malaria Partnership is calling for 730 million more.

But, as even the staunchest advocate will admit, the treated nets were not designed with the cultural preferences of the rural African villager in mind. Among other design flaws, their tight mesh blocks ventilation, a serious problem in the hot, humid places where malaria roosts. Minor discomfort might be tolerable in rural African communities desperate for anti-malarial prevention. But, as medical anthropologists have consistently found, because malaria is so common in much of sub-Saharan Africa, and because the overwhelming majority of cases go away on their own, most rural Africans consider malaria a minor ailment, the way that Westerners might think of the cold or flu. Many rural people also believe that malaria is caused not just by mosquitoes but also by other factors such as mangoes, or hard work.

As a result, while we see the treated nets as a lifesaving gift, they see them as a discomfort that provides only partial protection against a trivial illness. Is it any wonder that many use their nets to catch fish or as wedding veils or room dividers — all documented uses of insecticide-treated bed nets? If that sounds ungrateful, think about what would happen if public health officials, concerned about the 41,000 lives that Americans lose every year due to flu, blanketed the United States with anti-viral face masks to be worn during the winter flu season. Donning masks would be a simple, safe and effective measure that could save thousands of lives. But would people wear them?

The cheese tariffs of India

One of the important free trade talks going on now is between the European Union and India. Both countries are negotiating to remove 90 percent of all tariffs they apply to trades. The possible removal of one such tariff has anti-poverty advocates worried.

The worrisome tariff is the one for India's milk and dairy products. Dairy employs 90 million Indians, a great percentage of those are female. Anit-poverty activists fear European cheese flooding the market and hurting the fortunes of the many Indians who work in dairy.

From the IPS, writer David Cronin explains the trade talks.

While India's dairy sector is of critical importance in providing work and income to farmers, particularly those who do not own land, Europe's cheese- makers have been adamant that protections offered to India's poor should be dismantled.

In 2007 -- the year that talks aimed at reaching an EU-India free trade agreement were launched -- the European Dairy Association contended that the taxes levied by the Delhi authorities on imported food were "unrealistically high." But critics of the EU's trade strategies argue that scrapping such tariffs would leave India's farmers unable to withstand competition from European imports. Often those imports have been highly subsidised and can be sold at lower prices than domestically produced food.

"The EU is pushing very aggressively to open up some of the key sectors in India that support huge numbers of producers and workers," said Sophie Powell from the fair trade organisation Traidcraft. "For example, the dairy sector is one of the most pro-poor sectors in India as it provides income for millions of rural families, most of whom are landless or marginal farmers."

Both the EU and India have set themselves an objective of removing 90 percent of the tariffs they apply to trade in goods between them in an eventual agreement. Negotiators are seeking to have this accord completed in time for a high-level EU-India meeting in October.
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Sandeep Chachra, director of ActionAid in India, commented: "Over 80 percent of the Indian peasantry are small and marginal farmers. For their livelihoods and survival, millions from this group depend on the dairy sector to supplement their meagre incomes. This sector cannot be opened up without adequate protection to face the EU's highly subsidised and protected dairy sector. That would be a highly uneven competition on unequal terms, disruptive to the lives and livelihoods of small and marginal Indian farmers."

1 billion hungry, only tells part of the story

We are told that there are over a billion hungry people in the world, but that may not tell the whole story.

The figures compiled by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization are conservative so they don't get accused of overstating the problem. The 1.02 billion people only tells us how many are undernourished, it says nothing about the millions of people who are "malnourished;" those who do eat, but not have a full diet.

From the IPS, writer Paul Virgo tells us more about how the FAO compiles their statistics.

The first major problem is that the estimates for the food needed for minimum energy needs are based on the requirements for a 'sedentary lifestyle'. This suggests that many people are not counted as undernourished even though they are not getting enough calories to sustain a healthy, active working lifestyle.

"FAO's estimates are conservative in the sense that if we used higher energy requirements, more people would be counted as undernourished," David Dawe, a senior economist at the FAO told IPS.

Perhaps an even bigger issue is that, even if one accepts that the FAO's figure tells us how many people are 'undernourished', it still does not say how many poor people are 'malnourished' because they cannot afford an adequate diet.

The saying 'man cannot live by bread alone' is literally, as well as figuratively, true. A person might be able to meet their energy needs by filling up on staples such as rice or potatoes, but if they cannot afford to have any variety in their diet, they will not get key micronutrients such as iron, iodine, vitamin A and zinc, with dramatic effects for their health and ability to function.

The reference here is specifically to poverty-induced malnutrition. People in developing countries who eat so many calories that they are obese are also considered malnourished, as are people with illnesses that stop their bodies obtaining adequate nutrition from food, even if their food intake is satisfactory -- but these groups are not part of this analysis.

Figures released by UNICEF last year suggest that poverty-induced malnutrition, which is sometimes called 'hidden hunger' and can have irremediable consequences, especially for under-twos and the unborn children of pregnant sufferers, is an enormous problem. The U.N. children's agency says 129 million under-fives in developing countries are underweight and therefore undernourished. But the number of under-fives who are stunted because of inadequate diets, and therefore malnourished, is over 50 percent higher at 195 million.

"The estimated numbers of people who are iron or iodine deficient are actually much larger than the number of 'undernourished' in the sense of dietary energy deficiency," food security and nutrition specialist Doris Wiesmann told IPS.