Reflections through Cyberspace

This seminar looks very interesting. Might attend especially since it is very much related to Public Policy. I encourage those who can make it to attend.

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty has been observed every year since 1993, when the General Assembly, designated this day to promote awareness of the need to eradicate poverty and destitution in all countries, particularly in developing countries - a need that has become a development priority.

At the Millennium Summit world leaders committed themselves to cutting by half, by the year 2015, the number of people living in extreme poverty - people whose income is less than one dollar a day but participate actively..

The theme for this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty — “Working together out of poverty” — highlights the need for a truly global anti-poverty alliance, one in which both developed and developing countries work together to end poverty.

What does poverty mean?

Poverty is understood in many ways. The main understanding of the term includes:

• Deprivation of social relationships, including social exclusion, dependency, and the ability to participate in society. This would include education and information.
• Necesessities, typically including the necessities of daily living (food, clothing, shelter, and health care). Poverty in this sense may be understood as a condition in which a person or community is deprived of, and/or lacks the essentials for a minimum standard of well-being and life. These essentials may be material resources such as food, safe drinking water and shelter, or they may be social resources such as access to education, health care, social status, political power, or the opportunity to develop meaningful connections with other people in society.
• Describing a (persistent) lack of income and wealth. The World Bank, for example, uses a global indicator of incomes of $1 or $2 a day. In relative terms disparities in income or wealth income disparities are seen as an indicator of poverty and the condition of poverty is linked to questions of scarcity and distribution of resources and power.

Causes:

* Natural factors such as the climate change
* Geographic factors – for example access to fertile land, fresh water, minerals, energy etc.
* Inadequate nutrition in childhood in poor nations may lead to physical and mental stunting that may lead to economic problems.
* Diseases, specifically diseases of poverty: AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis
* Lacking rule of law
* Lacking democracy
* Lacking infrastructure
* Lacking health care
* Lacking equitably available education
* Government corruption
* Historical factors, for example imperialism and colonialism
* Lacking fair trade rules for all. In particular, the very high subsidies to and protective tariffs for agriculture in the developed world. For example, almost half of the budget of the European Union goes to agricultural subsidies, mainly to large farmers and agri-businesses, which form a powerful lobby.
* Discrimination of various kinds, such as age discrimination, stereotyping, gender discrimination, racial discrimination etc.

Effects and facts

* Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day

* Hunger and starvation - more than 840 million people in the world are malnourished - 799 million of them live in the developing world; Six million children under the age of 5 die every year as a result of hunger, that means 16 000 children a day
* Low literacy - Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names
* Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen
* 20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s goods
* A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people
* Health - Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific
* Water and sanitation - Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation