Critiques of the Millennium Development Goals

With all of the news that we've had about the Millennium Development Goals lately it's time we get around to the dissenting opinion. There are many critics of the MDGs, people say they are biased against Sub-Saharan Africa, prone to data failures and more.

One of our favorite writers Katie Nguyen of Reuters Alert Net, gives us this round-up of the MDG critique.

One weakness is that, though the MDGs were established as numerical targets - for example, to reduce the number of women who die in childbirth by three-quarters between 1990 and 2015 or halt the spread of malaria by 2015 - the lack of reliable data in poor countries means progress is difficult to measure. This is especially true, aid experts say, for goals relating to maternal and child mortality as well as malaria and tuberculosis.

The problem of incomplete data has been recognised in Africa where most people are said to die or be born "without leaving a trace in any legal record or official statistics". In rural Africa, there are few hospitals, home births are common and assistance from a midwife or another health official rare.

"To have a good coverage of registration of vital events (births, deaths, marriages) you need to make sure that you have the offices of the registrar closer to the people; otherwise it will be very difficult for them. If they have to walk 15, 10 km to register their newborns they will not do that," Dimitri Sanga of the African Centre for Statistics at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) told AlertNet.
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Although set for the world as a whole, countries are being judged on their own performance against the MDGs, provoking controversy over the fairness of specific objectives, especially for sub-Saharan Africa, and whether the continent could have met them in the relatively short timespan set.

"The application to the country level was not the intention, but the fact it's being done is not necessarily a bad thing because it gets countries to aspire to things," said ODI's Steer.

A point often cited is that China had almost halved poverty (defined as income of less than $1.25 a day) from its 1990 level by the time the MDGs were set. Yet sub-Saharan Africa is on track to fall short of all the goals despite its economy growing faster than it has for a generation.
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Many development experts say the MDGs' biggest flaw is that they focus on the ends without paying enough attention to the means.

For example, the goal of universal primary school education is about "bums on seats" rather than strengthening institutions so that they are capable of providing schooling in a sustainable way.

"The institutional viability of developing country education ministries is far more important than the number of schools constructed, textbooks printed, or even children in the classroom," said Andrew Natsios, former head of U.S. development agency USAID, in a paper published in July called "The clash of the counter-bureaucracy and development".

A brighter forecast for Niger

The latest news from Niger shows some hope for easing the famine. Good rains have helped the crops that will be harvested next month. However, aid groups warn that the Sahel region of Africa will still need a couple more good harvests to fully recover from the famine.

From Reuters, writer George Fominyen gives us the latest from Niger.

Ten million people across the Sahel have been facing the threat of severe malnutrition until the new harvest in a few weeks time, with aid groups urging donors to plug shortfalls in emergency food supplies.

The WFP has estimated that Chad needs around 100,000 metric tonnes of food aid, of which it has so far received only 70,000 due to scant donor funds. More specific help is also needed to tackle child malnutrition.

The food shortfalls meant farmers had to use depleted reserve cereal stocks to feed their livestock and will now need more than just one good harvest to replenish these stocks, said Jean Francois Caremel of the Action Against Hunger charity in Chad.

Caremel added that many poor families had borrowed heavily to survive the drought. A rich cereal harvest will now lead to lower cereal prices, meaning they will need to sell more crops to make enough money to repay the debts.

"At the end of the day they would be short of food again, although the harvest could be good," Caremel said by telephone from the Chadian capital N'Djamena.

Pre-earthquake amputees in Haiti

From IRIN, a story on the needs of amputees in Haiti. People who were amputees before the earthquake are claiming to be earthquake victims to get faster prosthetic service.

A man who had a leg amputated after being shot during political unrest in 2004 recently came to an emergency clinic for earthquake victims in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, hoping to get help.

Many people with physical disabilities pre-dating the 12 January 2010 earthquake are identifying themselves as direct quake victims so they can access services, according to Kate Gerry, physical therapist with Handicap International (HI).

“He is on a waiting list,” Gerry said of the gunshot-wound amputee. “He is someone who would benefit a lot from prosthesis; we can’t just turn him away.” HI’s current official remit, however, is to help quake victims only.

Assistance to Haitians wounded and disabled by the quake has underscored the challenges of carrying out an aid response in a country where pressing socio-economic problems existed long before the quake.

Some 60 percent of Haitians lack access to basic healthcare services, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). But most aid funding is strictly for quake response.

“You need to keep the priorities as [the donors are setting out],” Faiz Rahman, HI prosthetics and orthotics project manager, told IRIN. He acknowledged there is “frustration” among people who are disabled but were not directly affected by the earthquake.

It is a delicate balance, Gerry said. “There are [funding constraints] and then there’s also the ethics - that there are people who really need [help]. Who cares how they lost their limbs?”

Local NGO J’aime Haiti estimates that just 5 percent of disabled Haitians had access to health and social services pre-earthquake. Haiti ranks 149 out of 182 countries in the UN’s latest Human Development Index.

A paper by Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) sets out the context of the quake response, noting that most Haitians survive in the informal sector, with no guarantee of income or access to capital.

“In a place like Haiti, where poverty was extreme even before the earthquake, aid agencies are unable to meet all the needs of the population,” Sarah Wilson with Christian Aid’s Haiti emergency assessment team told IRIN. “But our development work does not stop because of the earthquake; the emergency relief continues alongside the development work.”

New amputees

The earthquake added 3,000 to 4,000 amputees to Haiti’s disabled population of about 800,000 (out of a population of 10 million), according to the Haitian secretariat for the integration of disabled people. It also destroyed most facilities dedicated to services for the disabled community.

HI has its main clinic in Port-au-Prince where earthquake survivors can be fitted with prostheses and orthoses, and can get physical therapy and psychosocial support. HI also has people stationed in camps for displaced people - in Port-au-Prince, Petit-Goave and Gonaives - to facilitate access to services. Given the level of destruction, mobile clinics and accessible services are essential, HI says.

“The thing we can’t simulate here [at the clinic] is that when you go into the community… some people are living in tents on steep hills with rubble all around,” said HI’s Gerry, adding that disabled people not only have to adjust to a new prosthetic limb, but also have to learn to navigate Port-au-Prince’s chaotic traffic and rubble-strewn streets.

Hopes for the future

The disaster worsened conditions for the disabled but at the same time brought international attention to the disabled community’s situation, said Gerard Oriol, founder of J’aime Haiti.

The attention on Haiti is a chance to highlight how stigma attached to physical disability has long hampered disabled people’s development, he said.

“Generally one thinks of a handicap as a medical problem, but in fact it’s more of a social problem. If we could eliminate the social and cultural barriers, there’s no reason a handicapped person couldn’t integrate into society.”

Oriol sees the earthquake as opening a door to better services, which he said had already begun to improve in recent years with the 2006 creation of the secretariat for the integration of disabled people, and laws affirming the rights of people with disabilities.

Another report says that Vietnam has met MDG #1

We are seeing a lot of reports and studies being issued now just before next week's United Nations Millennium Development Goal conference. International aid organizations, charities and more are giving the heads of state some data before the summit to hopefully guide them into action.

The next report we would like to mention comes from a British think-tank. The Overseas Development Institute says that Vietnam and Ghana are leading the way in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. This echos a report we saw yesterday from Oxfam.

From this AFP article that we found at ABS-CBN news, we read more about MDG achievers.

On the positive side, Vietnam had made "unprecedented progress" in improving the lives of the poor, said the report.

The Asian country had managed to halve the proportion of underweight children and reduce the proportion of people living on less than one dollar a day from nearly two-thirds to one-fifth in 14 years, said the institute.

Ghana had reduced hunger by nearly three-quarters -- from 34 percent to nine percent between 1990 and 2004 -- an area in which it had outperformed all other countries around the world.

It is on course to achieve the Millennium goal of halving rates of poverty and hunger by 2015, said the think-tank.

Ten African countries -- including Ethiopia, Egypt and Angola -- had already halved their poverty levels, according to the ODI.

But the institute warned: "In other areas progress has been slower, or even reversed, and challenges remain in a number of countries."

It highlighted great variations in HIV infection rates across Africa and uneven progress in tackling hunger and poverty across Latin America.

African public health and lack of financing

Africa will need huge increases in funding to meet the Millennium Development Goals for health. However, the increases needed are more than many government budgets can bear, over 40 percent in some cases.

From the Inter Press Service, writer Susan Anyangu-Amu examines this problem.

Dr Thomas Kibua says even if every African states were to increase allocation to the health sector to 15 percent, none of the three health-related millennium development goals will be achieved.

"States would have to increase allocation to health care to 45 percent if they are to achieve MDGs by 2015. This is untenable because that is almost the entire national budget going towards health," he says.

Kibua directs health policy and systems research at the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) a development organisation that seeks to improve people’s access to health care.

According to the African Public Health Alliance (APHA) and 15 Percent Campaign, African countries will have to go beyond the previously-agreed percentage to health to meet international guidelines.

"Countries will have to increase their health spending per person to reach the World Health Organization-recommended $40," says Rotimi Sankore of APHA, a non-profit organisation promoting health development and financing across Africa.

And even this may not be enough: the WHO’s recommendation assumes basic levels of nutrition, and access to clean water and sanitation. "For this to be worthwhile, governments will have to make separate investments in other sectors within the economy such as human resource and infrastructure," says Sankore.

WHO releases the latest malaria report

From the Voice of America, a story on the latest report from the World Health Organization on malaria prevention efforts.

A new report by health experts at several top universities in the United States and the World Health Organization says money spent on programs to prevent malaria work and have saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in 34 African countries over the last 10 years. Details were released Tuesday.

The World Health Organization says malaria kills nearly a million people a year, mostly in Africa, where one in five childhood deaths is related to malaria.

But a new report by leading health experts says increased funding for malaria prevention has made a real difference. It says money spent on insecticide-treated bed nets, indoor spraying and preventative medicine, especially for pregnant women, saved some 736,000 children over the last 10 years. And it predicts millions more will live if funding levels remain stable or increase.

The former U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania, Mark Green, is a long-time advocate for malaria prevention.

"Where progress is made in fighting malaria, money and beds and healthcare workers are freed up to take on other challenges but it goes beyond saving healthcare resources," said Mark Green. "Studies show that scaling up malaria interventions would increase economic output in Africa by as much as $30 billion."

The report's findings are based on data gathered using a computer-based tool that tracked the impact of malaria prevention efforts on child survival from the years 2001 to 2009. Gathering this kind of data has been challenging in Africa and having it helps when fundraising in tough economic times.

"People are looking for things that work, that are measurable, that are verifiable," said Green. "People are generous, but they want to know that the resources that are being allocated are in fact making a difference. And what this report shows to me is precisely that."

The report notes that the number of rural households protected by insecticide-treated bed nets and the indoor spraying of insecticides has increased significantly, tracking alongside the rise in funding and the increased political will to fight the disease.

Dr. Halima Mwenesi is a long-time malaria field worker in Kenya. She says she's truly hopeful for the first time in years.

"We are seeing some accelerated progress now with all the resources that have come in in the last five years especially," said Dr. Mwenesi. "There is huge, huge progress."

The release of the report comes as world leaders head to the United Nations next week to review the so-called Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing global poverty by 2015. Three of the goals relate directly to malaria - reducing child mortality, maternal mortality and infectious diseases, including malaria.

Analysis: FAO report says fewer hungry than in 2009

Yesterday, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization released the latest figures on the number of hungry people in the world. Even though the number of people who are hungry is back under a billion, it is still higher than before the global recession.

From IPS, writer Paul Virgo gives this analysis of the new FAO report. Experts say that even though the there is a small improvement in the number of hungry people, it is nothing to celebrate.

The recovery and lower food prices have alleviated the situation after the effects of the credit crunch and the 2008 spike in commodity prices pushed millions into the ranks of the hungry. But hunger levels remain above pre- crisis levels and the structural problems that mean almost one billion people -- around 16 percent -- do not have enough food to meet their energy needs remain.

"It's still an enormously high figure. The worst excesses of the crisis have gone away a little, but there's no celebration,'' Alex Rees, Save the Children UK's Head of Hunger Reduction, told IPS. "There must be a great sense of urgency as the number is so high. There are still a number of emergencies in many parts of the world."

So MDG1 is still far out of reach despite ample aggregate food supplies, and poor people all over the developing world remain vulnerable to the shocks that economic fluctuations and failed crops can swiftly bring.

A recent upsurge in commodity prices that prompted Russia to extend its ban on wheat exports till 2011 has sparked speculation that prices might be on the way back to the 2008 crisis levels. The FAO and authoritative institutes such as the International Food Policy Research Institution (IFPRI) say this is not the case pointing to, among other things, positive food stock levels, while admitting that the situation is volatile.

''The food crisis has not gone away - -925 million hungry people is still a scandal,'' said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International. ''The dip in the number of hungry people has more to do with luck than judgement.

"Another global food crisis could explode at any time unless governments tackle the underlying causes of hunger, including food price volatility, decades of underinvestment in agriculture, and climate change.''

Americans jailed in Zimbabwe released on bail

Yesterday we linked to a story about Americans being arrested in Zimbabwe, for allegedly giving ARV drugs without a license. As an update to the story, a judge has ruled that the four Americans can be released on bail.

From the Washington Post, writer Chengetai Zvauya gives us this update.

A magistrate ordered the six health workers, who included a New Zealand national and a Zimbabwean, to pay a $200 bail and to reappear in court on Sept. 27. They could face a fine and deportation if convicted. The court ordered them to surrender their passports and live at their Mother of Peace Orphanage outside Harare until their trial.

The six are also accused of distributing AIDS medications without a pharmacist's supervision or a license.

U.S. embassy officials said the group pleaded innocent to the charges related to their work at two clinics, one in Harare and the other in Mutoko, 160 kilometers (100 miles) northeast of Harare.

The California church that sponsors their work says the church has been working in Zimbabwe for more than a decade and that this is the first time licensing questions have been raised.

American citizens Gloria Cox Crowell, 48, Dr. Anthony Eugene Jones, 39, Gregory Renard Miller, 64 and David Greenburg, 62, were thronged by children and family members from their Christian congregation as the left the courthouse. In emotional scenes, children ran up to hug the six health workers. Earlier inside the hearing, patients' faces were wet with tears.

The six were arrested Friday and spent three nights in notoriously cramped and filthy cells in the main Harare police station. They appeared in court Monday in the green and blue medical staff uniforms they wore on being arrested.

New stats on global hunger

A pair of new studies give us new statistics on the number of people hungry in the world and how much it costs. One study shows that there has been a decline in the amount of hungry people compared to 2009, but the number is still greater than before the global recession. Meanwhile, Action Aid has a new report that gives a dollar figure to how much hunger hurts the global economy.

From the BBC, we learn more about the two studies.

The FAO estimates there are 925 million undernourished people in 2010, compared with 1.02 billion in 2009.

But it warned that the fight to reduce hunger would face additional obstacles if food prices continue to rise.

A separate report from Action Aid estimates that hunger costs developing countries $450bn (£292m) a year.

The report says that 90% of these costs stem from lost productivity as a result of malnutrition, while the other 10% is due to higher health system costs.

Action Aid says this is more than 10 times the amount of funding needed to halve hunger by 2015. This is one of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The MDGs represent a global commitment by members of the UN to reduce poverty and improve lives by 2015.
Targets under threat

Food prices have risen sharply recently, with the price of wheat hitting a two-year high last month after a severe drought and fires in Russia devastated crops there.

Human trafficking victims shunned when returned home

From IRIN, a story about human sex trafficking victims from Myanmar who are shunned when they return home.

When Kyi Kyi Thein* and her teenage daughter took up an offer for work in neighbouring Thailand, they did not expect to be smuggled by sea and locked up in a shrimp factory.

Fortunately, they and 64 others were rescued by police in 2006. They stayed in Thailand for two more years during court proceedings against the shrimp factory and won the case, along with US$950 each in compensation.

Many Burmese, who have faced exploitation, violence, forced labour or forced prostitution abroad, return home penniless and are shunned as failures. But for Kyi Kyi Thein and her daughter, the payment helped them to rebuild their lives.

“They received compensation, and it has really helped those victims to be reintegrated into the community,” said Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw, of the UN Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking.

An estimated 32 percent of the population live below the poverty line, but of the millions of Burmese who attempt to escape poverty by working abroad, many accrue huge debts and repatriation can be difficult.

“We need to put more pressure on the destination country and the offenders there. If those at the origin [country] have to bear the burden, we feel it’s really unfair," Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw said.

Tough times abroad and at home

After arriving at the Ranya Paew shrimp factory in central Samut Sakhon Province, 50km west of Bangkok, Kyi Kyi Thein and her daughter were told that their earnings of 30 cents per kilogram of peeled shrimp would go toward a $1,000 debt for their trafficking fees.

For the next several months, they were forced to work 20-hour shifts and saw co-workers who tried to escape stripped and tortured.

One worker peeled 18-20kg per day, but did not receive any salary until her fourth month - even then, it was only $5, according to the AFL-CIO-affiliated Solidarity Center.

Back home, villagers at first did not believe their story.

“For four or five months, people discriminated against us,” Kyi Kyi Thein said during a visit to Yangon from their home in Bago Division. “They didn’t know the real story and thought we had been in prison.”

“Even if they were working as domestic workers in the other country, the community thinks the girls are coming back from brothels or were being abused or sexually exploited by their employers,” said Khin Thant, who works in the anti-trafficking in persons unit of World Vision.

“People call them bad women, and sometimes people refuse to buy the food or the things they are selling,” said Moe Moe Swe, also with World Vision’s anti-trafficking unit.

“Sometimes the families had to invest some amount of money for their trip abroad. When they come back empty-handed, the families don’t welcome them back,” Moe Moe Swe said.

Destination Thailand

The International Organization for Migration (IOM), reported that an estimated three million Burmese have migrated abroad but cited other figures suggesting that as many as five million might be living abroad, with Thailand the main destination. Myanmar has a population of around 50 million.

The Thai government, in an effort to legalize migrants, has registered more than 800,000 Burmese, but the IOM estimates there are another million undocumented labourers from the region in Thailand.

Since the 2007 establishment of the Myanmar police anti-trafficking unit, there have been more prosecutions, Ohnmar Ei Ei Chaw said.

Myanmar police tallied 1,251 traffickers and 265 smugglers arrested between 2006 and 2009. Those cases were linked to 2,000 trafficking survivors and smuggled migrants – a mere fraction of the actual numbers, experts say.

The US State Department’s 2010 Trafficking in Persons Report has placed Myanmar among 13 countries not making sufficient efforts to combat trafficking.

Vietnam has halved poverty

From IRIN, a story about a new OXFAM report that says that Vietnam has already halved poverty before the Millennium Development Goal year of 2015.

A new Oxfam report highlights Vietnam's performance in meeting the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger and reducing poverty five years ahead of the 2015 target.

"Vietnam's track record is one of the best in the world. They are absolutely a role model within East Asia and more broadly in the world," Steve Price-Thomas, Oxfam's Vietnam country director told IRIN on 14 September from Hanoi. According to Halving world Hunger: Still Possible, Vietnam has cut hunger and reduced poverty from about 58 percent of the population in 1993 to just 18 percent today. "To put this in perspective, this means that since 1993 roughly 6,000 people per day have been pulled out of hunger poverty," Price-Thomas said.

By focusing on agricultural land reform, Vietnam has made land distribution more equitable, invested heavily in irrigation and agricultural technology and maintained restrictions on rice exports until 2001, nurturing the domestic industry.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization is set to announce on 14 September that the number of hungry people worldwide has dropped, for the first time in 15 years, from 1.23 billion in 2009 to 925 million.

Putting people to jail because of tuberculosis

In an effort to stop the spread of tuberculosis, the government of Kenya puts some of the infected people in prison. The goal of this is to keep people on their medications, for stopping to take the pills could lead to drug-resistant infections of TB.

Advocates say that jailing those who are only sick is still a gross violation of human rights. Those who are in jail just to be kept on their medication regimen are in the same cell as criminals and cannot get the needed nutrition to fight TB.

From the IPS, writer Susan Anyangu-Amu takes a look at this sad practice.

Daniel Ngetich and Patrick Kipngetich are presently cooling their heels in a government of Kenya prison; unless a court orders otherwise, they will remain there for eight months until they finish their TB treatment.

Henry Ngetich, who was also arrested for defaulting on his treatment, was lucky enough to end up in hospital because he is in critical condition.

The move by the Kenyan government to arrest and incarcerate TB sufferers has been castigated by human rights organisations who term it a violation of their rights.

"Everyone has a right to quality medical care and this must be provided with dignity and respect," said Pascaline Kang’ethe the national coordinator, rights to health and HIV/AIDS at ActionAid International Kenya. "This is a case of discrimination and the move is bound to cause others in need of treatment to shy away fearing arrest."

Nelson Otwoma, the chief executive officer of Network of Persons Living with HIV/AIDS, said the two men are being held in prison in deplorable conditions and do not have access to the proper nutrition that is required for TB treatment.

"When we visited, we found them being held in the same room as other prisoners. They were not in isolation. To make matters worse they are being treated like common criminals and are handcuffed and under armed guard," Otwoma said.

Speaking to IPS, the head of the National Leprosy and TB control programme, Joseph Sitienei defended the government's action, saying they had acted to safeguard the interest of others after receiving complaints from family members.

"The public health officer in that region acted within law under the public health Act section 27 – which authorises him to take necessary action including detaining infectious patients to prevent the spread of a disease," Sitienei said.

Video: the jump in the US poverty level

From CBS News, some video on the increase in the US poverty level according to the census bureau's 2009 statistics.

4 Americans arrested in Zimbabwe over AIDS charity work

Zimbabwe has had a long history of harassing aid groups and charities. In the past, the Zimbabwean government has frozen or stolen funds from aid groups, or just kicked them out of the country.

The latest episode involves a US church mission that runs an AIDS orphanage. Six workers at the orphanage were arrested with accusations of giving out drugs without a license.

From this Associated Press article that we found at Google News, we read more details about the latest harassment.

The six — five Americans and a Zimbabwean — were arrested Friday and have been held at Harare Central police station, where conditions in the cells are notoriously grim. They will appear in court Monday on charges of operating without proper medical licenses, according to their lawyer in Zimbabwe.

Theophous Reagans, a minister at the Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, California, said by telephone Sunday the church has been working in Zimbabwe for more than a decade and that this is the first time questions over licensing have been raised. He said one of the Americans lives in Zimbabwe, while the others are among church members who visit three or four times a year, paying their own way to help at a home for AIDS orphans the congregation has adopted.

"Our prayer and our hope is that they will be released," after Monday's hearing, Reagans told The Associated Press.
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In 2008, at the height of a political crisis in Zimbabwe, the government accused independent aid groups of supporting opposition activists and barred them from distributing aid for three months.

Zimbabwe also has clashed with aid groups over funding. In 2007, Zimbabwe's central bank confiscated U.S. dollars being held in local bank accounts, including about $12 million belonging to the Global Fund, a major international supporter of programs to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. When the central bank failed to return its money, the Global Fund threatened to cut off aid. Its funds were eventually returned.

Conditions for international aid workers have eased since longtime ruler Robert Mugabe was forced into a power-sharing agreement with his opponent Morgan Tsvangirai as prime minister last year. The partnership has been strained. Mugabe's supporters continue to be accused of abusing human rights, but Tsvangirai's party has been praised for its administration of key ministries, including health, education and finance.
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The Herald, a state-run Zimbabwe newspaper, quoted police as saying the church workers were being questioned about operating an unlicensed clinic and dispensing medicine without a pharmacist's supervision.

"It is our duty to ensure that all clinics and medical institutions are registered for easy monitoring," police spokesman Augustine Zimbili told The Herald. "There is a risk of dispensation of expired drugs. When premises are not licensed, it is difficult to check if (the law) is being complied with."

Jonathan Samukange, the lawyer in Zimbabwe representing the detained church workers, said they have proper licenses and were only supervising a pharmacy that mainly gave out AIDS medications.

2009 US poverty figures to be released

2009 poverty figures for the United States will be released by the census bureau this week. The year 2009 was right in the middle of the global recession so there is expected to be a big increase in those living in poverty.

From this Associated Press article that we found at MSNBC, we read what the expected increase will look like and the political ramifications.

The anticipated poverty rate increase - from 13.2 percent to about 15 percent - would be another blow to Democrats struggling to persuade voters to keep them in power.

"The most important anti-poverty effort is growing the economy and making sure there are enough jobs out there," Obama said Friday at a White House news conference.
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Interviews with six demographers who closely track poverty trends found wide consensus that 2009 figures are likely to show a significant rate increase to the range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Blair Commission on Africa releases new report

In 2005, the Commission on Africa was formed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair to guide the G8 on African development. Today, the same commission will give a new report that shows the progress the made on the initial recommendations.

the Blair commission asked for a doubling of aid to the the African continent, but that aid has only increased by 60 percent. The commission also says that very little progress has been made on increasing African trade and health and education spending.

From the Global and Mail, writer Geoffrey York previews the commission report.

Five years later, in a report to be released on Monday, the commission says it is disappointed by the lack of progress on many fronts, even though Africa has quadrupled its level of foreign investment and trade in recent years.

The commission’s most famous recommendation in 2005 was a call for the doubling of foreign aid to Africa. It persuaded the G8 and other donors to commit themselves to debt relief for Africa and a doubling of their aid flows by 2010. Under their pledge, Africa would receive an additional $25-billion (U.S.) in aid annually by 2010 in a concerted push to reduce poverty.

But in reality, the wealthy nations fell far short of their promise. Their aid for Africa increased by just 60 per cent of the promised amount, and much of this went to high-income and middle-income countries, rather than the poorest African countries, the commission says.
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But on other issues, much less has been achieved, the commission said. There has been no improvement in higher-education funding, so Africa continues to face a shortage of doctors, teachers and other professionals. The commission had called for a 50 per cent increase in irrigated farmland by 2010, but instead it increased by just 0.9 per cent.

On trade issues, the results have been “dismal,” the commission said. “Trade is perhaps the area in which the least progress has been made in the past five years,” it said.

Despite an increase in African exports in recent years, Africa still accounts for only 3.3 per cent of global trade – “a very modest share and the smallest of any region in the world,” the commission said.

11 countries suspend adoption from Nepal, leaving children without a home

11 different countries have suspended adoption programs for Nepal. The suspension is due to allegations of corruption and not knowing where the adoption fees are spent. The suspension leaves many Nepali children without a loving home until the suspension is lifted.

From IPS, writer Bhuwan Sharma talks about the allegations that led to the suspension.

"Children will now have to remain in grim orphanages or may risk a worse fate by staying with families that don’t want them," says Philip Holmes, the adoptive father of two Nepali children and country director of Esther Benjamins Trust-Nepal, a U.K.-registered charity engaged in childcare and child protection and fighting child trafficking in Nepal.
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Problems ranging from fake documents, lack of transparency in handling funds and corruption in the adoption process, which have been reported over the years, have led to the latest round of adoption suspensions.

Following similar allegations by recipient countries, the Nepali government suspended inter-country adoptions in May 2007, before lifting the self- imposed ban in January 2009. Intra-country adoptions were allowed to continue although local response to calls for adoption had always been very poor.

Even after the 2007 suspension and its eventual lifting, adoption problems continued to plague the tiny kingdom in the eastern Himalayas. In February, The Hague Conference on Private International Law, an inter-governmental organisation, released a report roundly criticising Nepal’s adoption system, citing gross irregularities.

In 2008, Nepal came up with the "Terms and Conditions and Process for Granting Approval for Adoption of Nepali Child by an Alien." These, however, were "not adequate as a legal framework to conduct inter-country adoptions," said the Hague Report. It added that Nepal’s refurbished laws still "fall short of Hague Convention standards."

The report recommended "better regulations of children’s homes" and elimination of "financial gain from inter-country adoption."

On Aug. 6, the U.S. government slapped a ban on inter-country adoptions from Nepal, citing the need "to protect the rights and interests of certain Nepali children and their families, and of U.S. prospective adoptive parents." Ten other countries – Canada, Denmark, Germany, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and Britain – had previously taken similar actions following the release of The Hague report.

"A few bad apples are besmirching the image of the entire sector," says Sher Jung Karki, undersecretary of the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare.

Locusts could soon hurt food supply in Madagascar

From IRIN, a story about how the food supply in Madagascar could soon be compromised by locusts.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has warned of an "imminent and severe threat from the increasing number of swarms of Migratory Locusts" in Madagascar, requiring "immediate response assistance to prevent a humanitarian disaster".

The warning came at an Emergency Assistance to Locust Control meeting on 8 September in the capital, Antananarivo and a few days after USAID's Emergency Transboundary Outbreak Pest (ETOP) Situation Report for August with a Forecast till mid-October, published similar concerns.

"There is a likelihood of extensive breeding ... Should that occur, Madagascar will experience one of the most severe locust outbreaks in recent years, and will need to launch large-scale control interventions through mid-2011," ETOP said.

Dealing with the locust threat will cost about US$14.5 million; so far $4.7 million has been received from the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and $490,000 from the FAO Technical Cooperation Emergency programme.

Annie Monard, the Rome-based FAO locust officer who will be arriving in Madagascar in the next few days, told IRIN that the indicators were of "serious concern", as the locust population was "so high" that they had been able to "escape the traditional area" [in southwestern Madagascar] and swarms had been observed along the east coast and in the whole mid-west.

A four-year locust plague ended in 2000, when only the far north of the world's fourth biggest island was spared from invasion by the Malagasy Migratory Locust (Locusta migratoria capito), and even the east coast, usually considered too humid, was affected.

This insect can produce a new generation almost every two months, and consumes roughly its own weight in vegetation - about two grams - every day. Monard said that while travelling in a helicopter in 1998 she looked down on a swarm covering an area about 30 km by 70 km. "It was like a huge cloud moving over the whole plain."

Undetected

The build-up of locusts occurred undetected during the previous rainy seasons (from October to April) while the capacity of the government's Locust Control Centre (CNA) was weakened as a result of the socio-political situation in the country, said an FAO document, Emergency assistance to locust control in Madagascar.

Madagascar has been enmeshed in a political crisis since 17 March 2009, with foreign aid cut to emergency humanitarian assistance, and only if justifiable, since the "illegal" transfer of power in which President Marc Ravalomanana stepped down in favour of opposition leader Andry Rajoelina.

The current prevailing dry, cool weather is unsuitable for breeding, but with the onset of the rains and higher temperatures, rapid reproduction occurs. As population density increases, the insects undergo behavioural and physical changes from solitary to gregarious, forming swarms that devastate crops - every million locusts eats one ton of food.

"The recently reported swarms outside their outbreak area indicate a major upsurge is on the rise. Past experience demonstrates that a plague could evolve if the locust population remains unchecked at this stage. The ensuing plague would persist for many years, with devastating consequences for food security," said the FAO emergency assistance document.

"Currently immature locust swarms will mature and start breeding at the onset of the next rainy season, and concentrations of wingless young locusts (hopper bands) will develop from October to December 2010. These bands will attack primarily the eastern parts of the outbreak area, which will receive the first rains. However, they will also affect the mid-west, which has been already invaded by swarms."

Monard said surveys and preparations had been undertaken since July this year to begin a spraying campaign ahead of the onset of the rains, using "three families of pesticides" to keep the insects in check.

Three families of pesticides

Conventional pesticides will protect threatened crops, Insect Growth Regulators will control hoppers [wingless locusts], and biological pesticides will be applied in ecologically sensitive areas, such as "natural reserves, national parks and populated areas", the FAO document said.

Spraying an estimated 500,000 hectares would take place when the locust populations were most vulnerable, and they "are not yet winged and less mobile, are marching, and at their most sensitive to pesticides," Monard commented.

However, equipment had to be pre-positioned ahead of the rains, as the roads to many areas threatened by locusts would become impassable during the rainy season, the FAO said.

FAO noted in its August Locust Response report that "The livelihoods of the rural communities, already precarious especially in the Great South [of Madagascar], are under immediate locust threat." Around 70 percent of Madagascar's roughly 20 million people live below the poverty line, and 50 percent of children under the age of five are malnourished.

Up to 52 communes in the region are predicted to be food insecure by the end of 2010, and 10 of these - containing around 100,000 people - are seen as acutely food insecure, according to an evaluation by the World Food Programme in July 2010. All the food insecure communes are threatened by locust swarms.

The CNA said more than 460,000 rural households, or 2.3 million people, would be affected by locust invasions, and potential crop losses could amount to at least $135 million.

A long dry season in Zimbabwe raises concern over water supply

A very long dry season in Zimbabwe brings with it fears on how it will effect the water supply. It is already a challenge for the country to find groundwater when it has mostly rocky ground. If Zimbabwe has more very long dry seasons, it could make the challenge next to impossible.

From IPS, writer Ignatius Banda talks about how the water scarcity is effecting one school.

Headmaster Njabulo Mpofu has weathered long dry spells before, but the water troubles affecting his school in the arid Midlands region of Zimbabwe are severe.

Experts say the water table is receding in the Midlands Province, with groundwater disappearing deeper into the earth, threatening the lives of both humans and livestock.

This is where the devastating 1990s drought saw skeletal cattle roaming the scorched earth in search of water, while some villagers fled to the cities.

The continuing water scarcity, Mpofu says, has forced school children to invest time in fetching water instead of attending classes, with villagers also devoting more and more of their day to looking for water from new sources further from their homes.

Mberengwa is one of many communities in rural Zimbabwe that is feeling the impact of low rainfall in a country where the supply of clean water to both rural and urban populations remains a huge challenge.

According to a 2004 MDG assessment, access to clean and safe drinking water in Zimbabwe’s rural areas declined from 75 percent in 1999 to 68 percent in 2003.

While many in rural areas have long relied on groundwater - boreholes are a familiar part of the infrastructure for schools like Mpofu's - it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw on this vital resource amid challenges of both poor rainfall and poor groundwater exploration.
...

Sobona Mtisi, a researcher officer with the UK’s Overseas Development Institute (ODI) says what has made it difficult to harness groundwater in the arid Midlands region and other parts of Zimbabwe is that this resource is not as readily available as previously thought.

There is growing recognition of falling water table levels caused by reduced groundwater recharge from rainfall, Mtisi told IPS, but groundwater remains a practical option - where underground geology permits: "Groundwater can be harnessed from only 25 percent of the surface area in Zimbabwe as the other 75 percent is composed of hard rocks which make it difficult to extract ground water," he said.

Tax cuts for the rich could ignore problems of the poor in US

From NPR, advocates for the poor in the US fear that programs will be left to expire while the government instead focuses on tax cuts for the rich.