Indonesian officials arrested for taking money from anti-poverty fund

Officials in Indonesia has been arrested after being accused of taking money from an anti-poverty fund.

From the Jakarta Post, writers Indra Harsaputra and Achmad Faisal tell us about the latest arrest in the corruption investigation.

Prosecutors in East Java arrested Tuesday former provincial legislative council speaker Fathorrasjid for allegedly embezzling a Rp 13 billion from a poverty eradication fund.

Fathorrasjid is believed to have misused the fund allotted by the East Java administration for the People's Socio-Economic Empowerment Program (P2SEM), said provincial chief prosecutor Zul-karnaen.

He added Fathorrasjid was now being held at Medaeng Penitentiary.

"We questioned him for about two hours to seek information about the case," Zulkarnaen said in a press conference at his office in Surabaya.

"Based on Article 31 of the corruption law, and evidence we found during the investigation, we decided to arrest Fathorrasjid as a suspect."

He said investigators were now focussing on digging up more information in the case, to see how many more people are involved.

"We've also received information from 10 other local prosecutor's offices in East Java that say they have also found other cases where P2SEM funds have been embezzled," Zulkarnaen said.

Comments on U.S. aid delivery

There has long been talk about changing the delivery of U. S. aid to foreign nations. Now that President Barack Obama wants to see changes the talk has become more serious. A majority of the U.S. aid money goes to U.S. organizations, corporations or farmers. Instead of the organizations or farmers of the under-developed world, even President Obama admits this.

From the magazine Foreign Policy, we found a couple of great comments on the subject. One from Paul O'Brien of Oxfam America and another from Andrew M. Mwenda editor of Ugandan newspaper The Independent. The comments come from a recent roundtable discussion the magazine held on U. S. aid, the previous link contains a few more.

Paul O'Brien, Oxfam America

What do we know [about foreign aid] that actually works? For Oxfam that is about [local] ownership. Why do we care about ownership? Because all the aid in the world is not going to get the bottom billion out of poverty. We all know it. If we want sustainable solutions, it's about [local states and citizens] working together in a political and economic compact where states actually care about having legitimacy from their citizens.

Right now if you're a USAID professional on the ground and you're trying to build local country capacity, essentially, you have to use U.S. contractors and even [U.S.] NGOs, because they're the only ones who understand the complexities of the Washington bureaucratic system. People aren't getting the contracts because they're the most capable at leaving sustainable capacity behind. We've got to fix that.

Andrew M. Mwenda, The Independent (Uganda)

In their search for revenues to sustain themselves in power, Africa's rulers do not find it in their own interest to build productive and profitable arrangements with their own citizens. Governments in Africa find it much more productive to enter negotiations with the international community for aid. If governments had to depend on their own citizens for revenues, they would be driven -- by self-interest -- to listen to their citizens about the policies and institutions necessary for economic growth.
Comments on U. S. Aid
The result of aid is actually to disarticulate the state from the citizen. The citizen in Africa does not look at the state as an institution that is supposed to serve the common good. Instead, they begin looking at the state as a patron who gives gifts that fall from heaven like manna. In this case they fall from the Western world in the form of aid.

Aid should be aimed at promoting innovation, not at rewarding failure. Currently, aid goes to countries that have failed, and therefore, aid tends to be a reward for failure. Even in dysfunctional states, you may find pockets of efficiency -- some public institutions that perform a very good function. I think those should be supported. Uganda has a very incompetent and corrupt state, so my view is that you should not give money to the state of Uganda. But the state of Uganda is not homogeneous. There are pockets of efficiency in that ocean of incompetence.

Of all Western governments, I find the U.S. government to have the most corrupt and patronage-ridden political system. If the U.S. president says, "I am putting up $15 billion for XYZ," that money must be appropriated by Congress. The moment Congress sits to discuss that money, lobbyists arrive. By the time Congress appropriates that money, for every dollar, 80 cents has been chopped off to U.S. companies. So American aid is not about the recipient; it is about American companies. How then do you change that? It is up to you Americans. American aid is the most inefficient type of aid I have looked at.

500,000 Ghanaians could fall into poverty by 2010

Ghana is used an African success story and for good reason. The country had a great reduction in poverty from 1999 to 2006. The percentage of those in poverty in Ghana was at 36 percent but is now at 29 percent.

Now the World Bank predicts that 500,000 Ghanaians could fall back under the poverty line by 2010. In fact, the bank admits a policy that the bank persuaded the Ghanaian government to follow could contribute to the increase. The bank hopes that could turn around in the long term.

From Modern Ghana, this Stateman article quotes a World Bank report on the situatiuon.

Explaining what may give rise to an increase in income poverty for the next two years, the World Bank refers to the tight fiscal policy it has persuaded the Mills government to implement. It says, poverty will rise further “because the planned macroeconomic adjustment entails increased cost recovery in the energy sector and increased taxation, staff forecasts aggregate per capita private consumption growth to fall, which will result in income poverty rising by as much as 2 percentage points between 2008 and 2010 (an additional 500,000 people below the poverty line at US$1.25 a day) assuming unchanged income distribution.”

Meanwhile, under the New Patriotic Party , the World Bank admits that “all major regions recorded reductions in poverty,” with some achieving them much more rapidly than others.

Unfortunately, the bulk of poverty has become concentrated in the three northern regions which now comprise about 80 percent of the poor.

Efforts to address the special needs of these lagging regions had been initiated in the recent past, and there are “ongoing efforts to amplify them in the context of an ambitious Savanna Accelerated Development initiative which is supported by several Development Partners (DPs) including the Bank,” the report adds.

Though the NPP has been portrayed by its political opponents as anti-poor, the World Bank admits that when “the domestic price of food rose substantially against that of non food items between November 2007 and July 2008,” the Kufuor administration, went ahead to protect the purchasing power of the poor with “ tax exemptions on fuel and food instituted in 2008 and still operational, and by a scaling up of safety nets (including additional health and educational benefits, a new program of direct transfers to the ultra-poor, and subsidies for fertilizers in food insecure regions).”

A look at the new museum at Heifer International

Heifer International's new museum showcases the work it does for those in poverty around the world. The museum at Heifer's headquarters in Little Rock Arkansas, attempts to show solutions at solving poverty instead of just showing the problems.

From The News Leader of Springfield Missouri, Associated Press writer Chuck Bartels visited the museum.

The museum, called Heifer Village, opened in June and will add an important element to Heifer educational programs, which demonstrate the charity's mission to provide animals and training so the world's poor can have sustainable nutrition.

Narrative elements run through the museum's exhibits, showing the effects that fair trade, clean water or mosquito netting can have. Under a ceiling of rich, amber-stained wood, natural light falls on the exhibits as the building itself demonstrates sustainability strategies.

In a section focusing on education, a visitor can sit at a desk equipped with a touch-screen computer to go through a variety of scenarios. The visitor picks from four children who live in different parts of the world, each of them poor. Going from screen to screen, the user makes choices that the child might have to make, for instance, about whether to ask for more food or to see a doctor.

There are no right or wrong answers, but the user learns more about the situations faced by poor families and how one decision leads to making another.

"Each scenario would lead you on a different path," Heifer Village operations manager Kent Modlin said.

FRIEND's in Fiji

The Foundation for Rural Integrated Enterprise N Development or FRIEND is a NGO from Fiji that we were introduced this morning. FRIEND sells homemade jams pickles and crafts made by those in poverty to help them climb out of it.

From this profile in the Fiji Times, we learn more about organization that started in 2001.

The aim was to link the use of natural resources and skills to alleviate poverty.

The vision was to create a base where communities with no outreach opportunities could come together within different programs such as income generation, a saving scheme and educational workshops to create an environment of self reliant people.

Ms Kiran moved to Lautoka to start the organisation although this was challenging.

She said initially not many people were willing to come on board but now there are many strong partnerships. Three volunteers started working with her seven years ago, two of whom are still with FRIEND as full-time staff.

"Although we were complemented for being a breakthrough NGO, we've also been accused of being a social enterprise and business oriented but we have shown we're here to stay," Ms Kiran said. "It's not a simple task marrying the natural resources and skills it is also about community building."

Apart from food products, art and hand-crafted cards available in up market outlets around Fiji, FRIEND's products include recycled paper frames, paintings and stone paper weights.

An attempt to make India slum-free

India's government wants to try to eliminate the slums around it's major cities. The head of Housing and Urban Development is asking her department to give more rights to the slum dwellers. She also wants to begin building infrastructure in the slums and provide it's dwellers with affordable housing.

From Headlines India, writer Kavita Bajeli-Datt tells us more about the plan.

In an effort to make India slum-free in five years, Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja has urged state chief ministers to prepare an "inclusive master plan" that addresses the concerns of the urban poor.

In her letter she asked state governments to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework that accords property rights to urban slum dwellers and gives them a life of dignity.

Noting that master plans have excluded the poor from urban development, thus driving them to illegal settlements, Selja said: "There is need to develop an urban land policy and a legal framework for according security of property right to the slum dwellers and the urban poor."

She said the states could consider amending town planning, urban area development and municipal laws to reserve land to build affordable housing that has basic amenities.

The minister also wrote that the states should prepare and implement "inclusive" master plans by following a participatory process and ensure that the concerns of the urban poor, especially slum-dwellers, are adequately addressed in the process of urban planning and development.

Organ trafficking in Egypt

Egypt is one of five international hot spots for organ trafficking. The practice of selling one's organs for a large sum on money. Some who are desperate to get out of debt or poverty will sell off parts of their own bodies for money.

The practice is also widespread in the countries of China, Pakistan, the Philippines and Colombia according to the World Health Organization

One of the reasons that organ harvesting is prevalent in Egypt is because taking organ's from cadavers or those who just died is against the law in the country.

From this article from IPS, reporter Cam McGrath talks to an Washington based NGO, the Coalition for Organ-Failure Solutions about the situation in Egypt.

Experts say the absence of legislation regulating human organ transplants has made Egypt an international "hotspot" for kidney trafficking. Up to 95 percent of the 3,000 legal kidney transplants per year, and hundreds of illegal ones, involve a commercial transaction.

A nationwide ban on organ transplants from cadavers means all kidneys must be harvested from live donors. Most are sourced from destitute young Egyptians, who are coerced into selling their kidney to pay off debts or meet rising living costs.

"They call them 'commercial living donors', but the name is misleading as really they are more victims than donors," says Kabir Karim, COFS's Egypt programme director.

A kidney can be purchased for as low as 15,000 dollars on Cairo's black market, though the donor only receives about 2,500 dollars of this. The rest goes to hospitals, laboratories and agents.

Brokers lurk in the coffee shops of Cairo slums, targeting the poor. "Over 90 percent of donors don't have a regular job, and are either in debt because of their circumstances, or have gotten married and can't pay the rent," says Amr Mostafa, a field researcher for COFS. "Brokers approach them and promise a way out of debt, if they agree to donate their kidney."

The donors are misled about the risks and talked into taking examinations at hospitals and private labs. The results are used to match donors to clients, often wealthy Gulf Arabs, who use forged documents to circumvent a ban on transplants to unrelated or non-Egyptian recipients.

"If a hospital has its paperwork in order including signed donor consent forms, it can pretty much operate with impunity," a clinic doctor told IPS. Only if a patient dies does it become felony.

About 80 percent of donors suffer deterioration of health after surgery, according to a COFS study. "Most of the time people complain of tiredness," says Karim. "A lot of these donors have a job that requires physical labour, but (after the operation) they get tired quickly and can't do their work. That of course affects their job, and they soon get fired.

"It's a vicious circle for them," he says. "They sell a kidney because they are in debt and spend the money within about six months. They are still in debt, but now they are less capable of working than before, so they are in a worse situation."

Studying microcredit effectiveness

If you could find a problem with microcredit it might be that it is hard to measure if it actually moves people out of poverty. Most studies have compared borrowers to non-borrowers. Researchers have found it difficult to measure what would happen to a microcredit borrower if he did not take the loan.

From this article that we found at The Economist, we take this look at recent research into microcredit.

The pervasiveness of these self-selection issues has led researchers to devise experiments that allow them to ensure that participation in a programme is determined essentially by chance. Two new papers* apply this idea to measure the effect of access to microcredit. Researchers from the Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) worked with an Indian microfinance firm to ensure that 52 randomly chosen slums in the city of Hyderabad were given access to microfinance, while 52 other slums, which were equally suitable and where the lender was also keen to expand, were denied it. This allowed the researchers to see clearly the effect of microcredit on an entire community. Dean Karlan of Yale University and Jonathan Zinman of Dartmouth College carried out a similar exercise in the Philippines, this time at the level of the individual borrower. They tweaked the credit-scoring software of a microfinance firm so that only a random subset of people with marginal credit histories were accepted as clients. These clients could then be compared with those who sought credit but were denied it.

Broadly speaking, neither study found that microcredit reduced poverty. There was no effect on average household consumption, at least within a year to 18 months of the experiment. The study in the Philippines also measured the probability of being under the poverty line and the quality of food that people ate, and again found no effects. Microcredit may not even be the most useful financial service for the majority of poor people. Only one in five loans in the Hyderabad study actually led to the creation of a new business. Providing people with safe places to store their (small) savings may help them more in the long run.
Small and perfectly formed?

That said, microcredit did have discernible effects. In India, people in the slums that had access to microcredit were more likely to cut down on things like tobacco and alcohol in favour of durable goods (particularly items such as pushcarts or cooking pans that are used heavily by traders and food-stall owners). One reason average consumption failed to increase may therefore be that more people were diverting some of their own income into starting or expanding their businesses. Microcredit clearly allowed more people to overcome the barrier posed by start-up costs. The MIT researchers found that as many as one-third more businesses had opened in slums which had a microcredit branch. This may mean that even though there was no measurable impact on poverty during the study period, there may well be some over a longer time-frame as these businesses prosper.

Tiny loans are unlikely to be enough to allow these businesses to grow to an efficient scale, of course. But the role of microcredit in allowing people to signal their creditworthiness is valuable, especially if their success makes banks more willing to lend them larger sums and leads to even more economic activity. By being willing to take a risk on entrepreneurial sorts who lack any other way to start a business, microcredit may help reduce poverty in the long run, even if its short-run effects are negligible.

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Technology increases use of food stamps in farmers markets

Access to healthy food for the poor in the U.S. has been made a little easier. Instead of the paper coupons, food stamps are now issued as debit cards, and card terminals have been provided to some farmers markets. Not only has food stamp use increased, but markets with the terminals have also seen more purchases by regular credit and debit cards.

From the New York Times, writer Katie Zezima reports on the changes.

The use of food stamps at farmers’ markets has been authorized for some time. But the program has been limited because the federal government in 2004 replaced the traditional paper food stamp coupons with debit cards that were processed through electronic benefit transfer terminals. The system is expensive, costing about $1,100 for each terminal, plus monthly fees; furthermore, the majority of farmers’ markets operate outdoors, with no means to accept the debit card.

“There’s a large expense associated with putting a terminal in each farmer’s hand,” said Jeff Cole, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Farmers’ Markets.

Over the past five years, though, states and the federal government, with help from nonprofit organizations, have made hundreds of thousands of terminals available at farmers’ markets. Two years ago, Montana started a program to introduce terminals at 42 farmers’ markets; in Iowa, the state gives wireless machines to farmers and pays all monthly fees associated with them. New Jersey started giving the machines to farmers this month.

“It opens up the market to a whole new clientele, and it allows the recipients better access to better foods and fresh foods,” said Jane Aiudi, director of the market and production development division of the Maine Agriculture Department.

As of the end of the 2008 fiscal year, 753 farmers’ markets nationwide had accepted food stamp benefits, a 34 percent increase over the previous year, according to the federal Agriculture Department. Sales to customers using food stamps at the markets totaled $2.7 million in the 2008 fiscal year, the most recent period for which records are available.

Those who advocate expanding the program say that doing so is crucial to encouraging the purchase of healthy food.

Somali street gangs in Minnesota

Over 32,000 ex-Somalis have settled into the state of Minnesota. While many flourish with their new lives in America, some young Somali have formed street gangs. The violence amongst the street gangs is on the rise, and has drawn some attention in the national press with the gang killing of Ahmednur Ali who was a student and youth volunteer.

From this Associated Press story that we found at CBS News, a Somali community organizer reacts to the crime.

"It was all gang activity, totally, 100 percent," said Shukri Adan, a former Somali community organizer who estimated in a 2007 report for the city that between 400 and 500 young Somalis were active in gangs. "The police don't want to say that but everybody else knows that."

Despite anger and despair over the killings in Minnesota's Somali community - the nation's largest - police and prosecutors have struggled to catch and try the killers. Few witnesses have stepped forward because of a fear of reprisal and deep-rooted distrust of authority. More than half of Minnesota's Somalis are living in poverty, according to state statistics, and many complain that authorities are biased against Somalis because of their Islamic faith.

Last month, prosecutors dropped the murder charge against the teenage boy in Ali's case after one witness backed out and another apparently fled the state.

Gangs like the Somali Hot Boyz, the Somali Mafia and Madhibaan with Attitude have grown more active in recent years, said Jeanine Brudenell, the Minneapolis Police Department's Somali liaison officer.

The recent spate of killings started in December 2007, when two Somali men, ages 27 and 25, were found shot to death at a south Minneapolis home. No arrests have been made in that case.

They culminated last September, when a man was fatally shot outside of the Village Market Mall, a cluster of Somali-owned businesses and a popular destination for local Somalis. Investigators believe the shooter was retaliating for the death of his cousin, one of the other slain Somalis. The mall shooting was the only of the seven slayings for which anyone was convicted - 23-year-old Hassan Mohamed Abdillahi.
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A gang expert in California said economic and social factors are more likely to blame for the spike in gang activity than any spillover of violence from war-ravaged Somalia.

"When there's unemployment and poverty and lack of external support, there's gangs," said Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor at the University of California Los Angeles and former gang adviser to the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department.

Baby Harvesting

An especially disturbing form of human trafficking called "Baby Harvesting" is taking place in Nigeria. However we learned about it today from a story in Ghana, as officials there want to make sure it does not occur in their own country.

From Joy Online, writer Ebenezer Hanson recieved a description of the practice.

Baby Harvesting is the act of luring teenage girls who are economically challenged to cities in the name of adoption according to Mr. Eric Boakye Peasah, the Counter-trafficking Field Manager of the International Organization for Migration (I0M).

Mr. Peasah explained that these unsuspecting girls are usually kept in homes where men are arranged to have sexual intercourse repeatedly with them until they get pregnant. He explained further that the girls are usually provided with antenatal care until they give birth after which the babies are plucked from these unfortunate girls who are then paid off.

"It has not yet occurred in Ghana but once it is happening in Nigeria we must all take steps to forestall it in this country," he told stakeholders at the launching of a Legal Resources Centre (LRC) capacity building for law enforcement officers and victim service providers in Trafficking in Persons in Accra.

He revealed that a group of swindlers has been busted in Nigeria for engaging in 'Baby Harvesting' which must serve as warning signs to Ghanaians.

Also happening in Nigeria, Mr. Peasah further disclosed, is the mind boggling act known as 'Touching'. With these adults without any modicum of conscience turn themselves into 'gynaecologists' and examine the private parts of girls. Those who are found with 'suitable' genitals are adopted and when they grow to become teenagers, they are pushed into prostitution.

The growing problem of illegal gambling in Myanmar

Myanmar is having a growing problem with illegal gambling in the country. People who are earning only 1 to 3 US dollars a day are spending large portions of their money on the illegal numbers games. Many of the poor are lured into the gambling with dreams of big winnings and a way out of their lives in poverty.

Prosecution of the gambling is difficult because most police in Myanmar can be bought off with a bribe, some receive a cut of the money if the winner is from their patrol.

From IRIN, we learn more about the gambling from NGO's who are witnessing the problem.

On the streets of Yangon, the former capital, the so-called "two digits" illegal lottery is so popular that development workers call it one of the most serious problems facing the children of poor families. It is especially popular among the poorest, who can least afford to lose their daily wages of US$1-$3.

Agents willing to take bets are everywhere - in cities, market towns and rural areas across Southeast Asia's second-largest nation of 58 million. But there is no social safety net, nothing to stop a family from going under when the betting losses add up.

"They bet because they think they'll get a big win, and then their troubles will be over," said a Burmese community worker, who runs self-help groups for poor women living in temporary shelters around Yangon.

''When they've lost everything they must give up their house, take their children out of school and send them to work. Often they will end up begging.''

Myanmar's citizens are no better off now than 20 years ago, and most subsist on an average annual income of less than $200 per capita, the US State Department reports.

According to a 2005 UN Development Programme (UNDP) household survey, one-third of Myanmar's population lives below the poverty line.

Inflation is adding to the economic burden, with the price of rice, for example, up by 30 percent over the past year alone.

In an extensive survey by an international NGO, Myanmar children cited gambling as one of their biggest problems.

This story hits home for me, because we just decided to stop playing the legal lottery here in our home state of Michigan. Even those of us who are not poor will dream of having more. But those "dreams" seem pretty selfish in comparison to those who only earn a dollar a day.

A new World Bank loan for Mozambique

Mozambique has just signed on to a new batch of loans from the World Bank. The loan should help to develop information technology and health services in the country.

From News 24, we get more details on what the loans will go for.

The agreements which were signed by World Bank interim representative, Luiz Tavares and Cuereneia consisted of a $75.6m agreement to fund health and information technology from the World Bank and another one of $15.6m from the Canadian government, $4.3m from the Swedish government and $7.9m from the Russian government.

Cuereneia said projects run by the ministries of science and technology, health and transport and communications would benefit from the loans.

Tavares said the amount destined for the health sector would seek to reduce high mortality rates in children and women caused by malaria, tuberculosis, HIV/Aids and pregnancy complications.

It would also fund the construction of 25 health centres in three poor northern provinces.

Anti-homeless laws make some cities "mean"

A national law advocacy group has put a mid-sized Michigan city into the list of the meanest cities for homeless people. The study ranks the top ten cities that are unfriendly to the homeless, Kalamazoo, Michigan joins Los Angeles, Orlando, Atlanta and others.

The law center that complied the reports says some loitering laws Kalamazoo have are anti-homeless. From this story in the Kalamazoo Gazette, reporter Kathy Jessup explains.

The report, issued by the National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, put Kalamazoo in the top 10 alongside larger cities such as San Francisco, Atlanta and Orlando, Fla. Los Angeles was No. 1 in the ranking.

The groups said the rankings are based on factors that include "the number of anti-homeless laws in the city, the enforcement of those laws, the general political climate toward homeless people in the city and the city's history of criminalization measures."

According to the report, Kalamazoo's designation is based largely on a 2007 controversy over a city ordinance prohibiting overnight sleeping in public parks and on rules passed in 2008 for downtown's Kalamazoo Transportation Center that addressed loitering, panhandling and illegal substances.

The report says information on Kalamazoo's ordinances and arrests was provided by Michigan People's Action, formerly known as the Kalamazoo Homeless Action Network.

KHAN has been a longtime advocate for local homeless people and an outspoken critic of Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety enforcement practices. The network participated in 2007 talks that shaped the city's park-use, panhandling and loitering ordinances.
The report says dozens of homeless people were arrested in Kalamazoo in 2007 and 2008 for alleged violations in parks and at the transportation center.

Michael Evans, who was the lead organizer of KHAN and one of the people arrested, said most of the charges were eventually dropped after the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty provided legal assistance.

The MDG progress report for 2009

Yesterday the United Nations released their annual report on the progress the world has made in meeting the Millennium Development Goals. The report says that the global recession has slowed progress in meeting the goals, and in some cases, has even reversed any gains made since the year 2000.

This summary of the report from Mail and Guardian, Faranaaz Parker gives us some statistics found in the report. More from the U.N. after the jump.

The report showed that the proportion of employed people living on less than $1,25 a day (about R10) had returned to 64%. This is a drop of 6% since last year. The figure is now the same as it was ten years ago. In addition, the number of people suffering from hunger increased last year due to escalating food prices -- 29% of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa is undernourished.
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The MDG on which the least progress has been made over the years is maternal health. The UN says 536 000 women die during pregnancy, in childbirth or of labour-related complications, and 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. With 900 deaths per 100 000 live births, Sub-Saharan Africa is lagging far behind the rest of the world in maternal health.

Here is a summary of the report from the U.N.'s press release. You can click here to download the entire report.

Gains in the eradication of hunger since the early 1990s—when the proportion of hungry people decreased from 20 per cent in 1990-92 to 16 per cent in 2004-06—were reversed in 2008, largely due to higher food prices. A decrease in international food prices in the second half of 2008 has since failed to translate into more affordable food for most people around the world.

• In the period 1990 to 2005, the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day decreased from 1.8 billion to 1.4 billion (prior to the economic crisis and higher food prices). But major gains in the fight against extreme poverty are likely to stall, indicators show, although data are not yet available to reveal the full impact of the recent economic downturn. In 2009, an estimated 55 million to 90 million more people will be living in extreme poverty than anticipated before the crisis.

• More than one-quarter of children in developing regions are underweight for their age, and the meagre progress on child nutrition from 1990 to 2007 is insufficient to meet the 2015 target. This will likely be eroded further by high food prices and economic turmoil.

• Global unemployment in 2009 could reach 6.1 to 7.0 per cent for men and 6.5 to 7.4 per cent for women, many of whom remain trapped in insecure – often unpaid– jobs, holding back progress towards gender equality.

Furthermore, the report suggests that many global gains were due to a dramatic fall in poverty rates in East Asia. Elsewhere, progress has been slower. Sub-Saharan Africa counted 100 million more extremely poor people in 2005 than in 1990, and the poverty rate remained above 50 per cent.

Malnutrition emergency in Kenya

Malnutrition levels for children in Northern Kenya have risen above emergency levels. The lack of food is due to extended droughts in the already arid climate that has little farm land.

From this IRIN story that we found at Reuters, we learn more about the dangerous situation in Kenya.

"Poor rains in April, May and June worsened food insecurity in the region, where 74 percent of the population [estimated at 550,000] already depends on food aid," Vincent Kahi, the health coordinator for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), said on 15 July at a press briefing in Nairobi.

He said at least 50 percent of child deaths in the region were due to malnutrition or had malnutrition as an underlying cause of death.

Turkana is a mostly arid region, with little agriculture. Most of the population depends on livestock, but the viability of pastoralism is being undermined by recurrent and increasingly unpredictable droughts and armed conflict with groups from neighbouring regions or countries.

Across the country, "food security prospects for the coming months are dismal", according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

"In [the north-central] Samburu district, the percentage of children under-five considered at risk of malnutrition increased to 29.4 from 21.8 last month. In Moyale [in the northeast], the nutrition status of children below five years declined, with the percentage of children rated at risk of malnutrition rising to 35 percent from 30.6 in April," OCHA warned in a weekly bulletin.

"The decline was attributed to higher food prices and reduced availability of food," it added.

"Given the very poor outcomes of the long rains, the situation is expected to seriously deteriorate, especially in districts receiving no or limited support, if nutrition interventions do not maintain higher levels of coverage in some districts e.g. Kajiado, Kinango, Marsabit, Wajir, Turkana, West Pokot, and do not scale-up in others i.e. Isiolo, Samburu, Baringo," the report warned.

The Speedboats of Albania

Albania has a huge human trafficking problem, where woman are lied to or sold to men who take them to other parts of Europe to work as sex slaves. Experts fear that a recient change in laws could make the problem grow. It's a law involving speedboats.

From this New York Times article, Dan Bilefsky examines the problem. We would highly recommend hitting our link to the full article, that gives more about the history of history of human trafficking in Albania, as well as a harrowing tale from one of it's victims.

So many women, men and children had been trafficked abroad to work as prostitutes, forced laborers or beggars that the Albanian government three years ago barred all Albanian citizens from using speedboats, the favored transportation used by traffickers to get people out of the country.

This drastic measure, coupled with stricter border controls and revenge killings of traffickers by victims’ families, had a significant effect, reducing trafficking by more than half and all but ending Albania’s role as a major transit point for people trafficked to Western Europe from eastern and southern parts of the Continent, say experts who follow trafficking.

But the ban prompted loud protests from fishermen and people in the tourism industry, and in May it was reversed. Law enforcement and human rights officials are concerned that as a result, human trafficking may explode anew — at an especially difficult time.

The financial crisis, many experts said, could increase human trafficking around the world. A United States State Department report in June warned of the potential risk, saying that the crisis is causing “a shrinking demand for labor and a growing supply of workers willing to take ever greater risks for economic opportunities.”

In the case of Albania, a poor, southern Balkan country that joined NATO in April and seeks to join the European Union, the government’s ability to fight trafficking is viewed as a critical test.
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At the height of the trafficking, experts estimate, thousands of women, men and children were taken to nearby Greece and Italy and elsewhere for sexual exploitation or forced labor.

The United Nations estimates that 12.3 million people globally are employed in sexual servitude or forced labor. Many are lured by fake engagements, real marriages or false job offers. In some cases, victims have been sold by their families. Others go voluntarily.

A young woman who does a missions trip every summer

An article in today's Naperville Sun introduces us to a young volunteer who goes to on a mission trip every year, and plans to do more. In the past, Allie Griffin has gone to help victims of Hurricane Katrina and worked at a Native American Reservation. After watching a documentary about the war in Uganda, she began to look for a trip to Africa.

From this story from reporter Angela Bender, we are introduced to Griffin and her mission trip for this summer.

The trip took Griffin to Kampala, Uganda, with about 20 other volunteers from the United States and Canada ranging in age from 18 to 70. For two weeks, the missionaries provided medical clinics and worked in orphanages. Afterward, Griffin didn't think twice about signing up to go on another trip this summer.

This year the trip took place in June. After two days of travel to get to Africa, the missionaries stayed in a guesthouse with "running water, a nice bed and good cooking," but were put right to work.

This year Griffin did triage at medical clinics -- taking blood pressure, temperatures and working with sick children, as well as adults. The clinics run all day, with many people coming to see a doctor even if they are not sick, just because they have the opportunity to do so.

"It's exhausting," Griffin said. "And the line just gets longer and longer. When you come home every day, you need to take a shower and go to sleep. It's a good feeling though."

Griffin has seen how people in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the United States live, but still was not prepared for some of what she witnessed in Africa. With no bathrooms or electricity, but plenty of bugs and stench, Griffin couldn't believe some of the conditions in Kampala.

"The city is more of a slum and that is really sad," Griffin said. "It takes your breath away."

More on the farming success of Malawi

Malawi is one of the good news countries in Africa in regards to food production. Thanks to fertilizer, seeds and irrigation Malawi is now a food exporter.

The government of Malawi conducts a subsidy program for farmers. The government helps with the costs of inputs to help increase farmers yields. The subsidy program takes up 15 percent of Malawi's national budget. Meanwhile, the percentage of those in poverty in the country has fallen to 40 percent from 52 percent.

From this Bloomberg story, writers Frank Jomo and Brian Latham give us more of the good news.

Once the victim of intermittent famines that left 40 percent of the population dependent on international aid just four years ago, Malawi has become a food exporter. Farmers credit a government program of subsidizing fertilizers for the turnaround.

“The world faces massive food shortages, but we have a lesson we can offer to the world,” President Bingu wa Mutharika, who was re-elected in May, told reporters this week. “Our subsidy program is a success and we want other countries to learn from us.”

Other African countries may now get the funds to follow Malawi: The Group of Eight nations on July 10 approved $20 billion in aid over three years to help poor farmers worldwide, mostly through cheaper access to fertilizers and seed.

Neighboring Tanzania began a fertilizer-subsidy program last December. Kenya had already announced plans for a subsidy system to turn it into a net food exporter by 2012, while Uganda increased agricultural spending by 47 percent in the budget announced on June 11.

“Before the subsidies came in during 2005, our crops were poor because we couldn’t afford fertilizer,” said Luckmore Banda, looking out over 5-foot-high corn stalks sprouting from every square inch of available land at his homestead outside Malawi’s commercial capital, Blantyre. “Now, things are on the up and up. Our production is rising and our income is rising.”

Banda, 62, says the subsidies helped lift his income to $5 a day from less than $1 four years ago. About 7.2 million small- scale farmers in a country of 14.3 million have received the subsidies over four years, Treasury Secretary Randson Mwadiwa said in an interview.

Malawi expects to produce an estimated 3.7 million metric tons of corn this year, up 36 percent from 2008 and exceeding the 2.4 million tons needed for self-sufficiency, Finance Minister Ken Kandodo Banda said in a July 3 interview.