poverty

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May 9, 2012 | 10:36 AM | By

Will new, positive findings allow Jeffrey Sachs to stop shouting back at the critics?

Columbia University

Jeff Sachs

The renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs, now director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, seems to irritate people — which also seems to prompt his critics to engage in vitriolic attacks of his efforts to combat global poverty and inequity.

The debates centered around Sachs remind me of some of the people I’d meet as a boy attending church, those folks who would argue angrily, endlessly and insultingly over fundamental disagreements about how best to love thy neighbor.

Whatever one may think about Sachs’ methodology or personality, can’t we all at least agree he has done a lot to promote the causes of global health, social justice and equity? For one, Sachs helped craft the Millennium Development Goals — which, if imperfect, gave the world a strategy for improving global health, reducing poverty and improving the lives of the poor worldwide.

One of Sachs’ biggest projects today is known as the Millennium Villages Project. Not surprisingly, it has been pilloried by many aid experts who say there is no evidence the project does any good.

Well, according to The Guardian, there is now evidence of good from Sachs’ Millennium Villages Project:

Death rates among children under five at the Millennium Villages – set up in Africa to demonstrate what is possible if health, education, agriculture and other development needs are tackled simultaneously – have fallen by a third in three years compared with similar communities, according to the project’s first results.

Sachs, in characteristic form, explodes all over the media with these positive findings to announce a breakthrough in the Huffington Post and to suggest, for CNN, that these results show that we can finally achieve “the dream of health for all, even the poorest of the poor… (This) can become a reality because of recent breakthroughs in technology and health systems.”

A bit over the top, yes, but that’s just the way Jeff likes to talk. You need to keep in mind he started on his campaign against poverty and the diseases of poverty back in the days when, well, hardly anybody gave a damn. He had to shout. And he’s still shouting.

So now, finally, he has some data to back his claims up and can maybe stop shouting.

Or maybe not. As Nature News notes, the findings aren’t likely to stop the critics:

“The core of the problem is lack of transparency and careful, independent analysis,” says Michael Clemens, a migration and development researcher at the Center for Global Development, an independent research institution in Washington DC.

The aid blogger Roving Bandit notes that even if child mortality declined in the Millennium Villages, the project itself found no statistical impr0vements in poverty, nutrition, education or other child health indices.

So I guess, no, the answer appears to be the shouting is likely to continue.

FILED UNDER: Basics, child mortality, Jeffrey Sachs, millennium development goals, poverty
November 21, 2011 | 9:30 AM | By

10 reasons why Rwanda can’t be described in a sound-bite

I’ve just returned from a whirlwind fact-finding tour of Rwanda with the International Reporting Project. I can now report with great confidence that these Rwandan school children are enjoying themselves:

Beyond that, I have to admit I am still trying to process the experience. Rwanda is a tough country to get a handle on. Here are some reasons why:

1. Rwanda has been ranked by the World Bank as one of the best countries in Africa, or anywhere, for doing business.

2. Rwanda has been ranked by Reporters Without Borders as one of the worst countries in the world for free speech and media independence.

3. Transparency International has ranked Rwanda as having low rates of corruption and one of the best records in East Africa specifically for cracking down on bribery.

4. Rwanda’s political system is frequently ranked as not free and de facto one-party rule. As the U.S. State Department notes, President Paul Kagame won 93 percent of the 2010 vote in a “peaceful and orderly election” — preceded by assassinations, terror attacks, closure of two newspapers and the disqualification of opposition candidates.

5. Rwanda has seen some of the most consistent economic growth anywhere in the world, averaging a 7 percent annual increase in GDP since 2005. Here’s a chart.

6. Poverty rates are high in Rwanda, with nearly half the population living in extreme poverty, according to the United Nations Development Program.

7. The government of Rwanda wants to transform this tiny nation into the Singapore of East Africa, a knowledge-based economy and financial hub for the region. Yet nine out of ten Rwandans are subsistence farmers, many of them semi-literate or with only primary school level education. Many depend upon foreign food aid, according to USAID.

8. Rwanda today has the highest percentage of women, a majority, holding elected office of any country in the world. In the 1994 genocide, sexual violence was at an all-time high with an estimated 250,000 women raped (and often murdered).

9. Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Sub-Saharan Africa but most of the 11 million people live in rural areas and the country, whether seen up close or from space, is still very green.

10. Because of the 1994 genocide, it is against the law in Rwanda to identify yourself as an ethnic Tutsi or Hutu. Yet the (Tutsi-dominated) government recently required that the tragedy be described as the “genocide of the Tutsis.”

FILED UNDER: Basics, economy, freedom, media, poverty, Rwanda
September 21, 2011 | 4:37 AM | By

Paul Farmer explains why global health has to first focus on poverty

I caught up with physician-activist Paul Farmer at the Clinton Global Initiative, the other big meeting in New York full of heads of state, celebs and bigwigs.

Farmer, the inspiring and controversial cyclist-celeb Lance Armstrong and others have joined in the clarion call to expand the global health agenda to include all the big killers (as per the UN meeting on chronic disease). Here’s more on Armstrong’s pitch.

I asked Farmer why he thought it necessary for his organization, Partners in Health, to emphasize that the UN focus not just on disease, but on diseases of poverty:

 

 

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Lance Armstrong, Paul Farmer, poverty, UN Week
August 11, 2011 | 10:36 AM | By

Millions still facing starvation in Horn of Africa, some blame U.N.

By Oxfam East Africa, Wikimedia Creative Commons photo

Women and children refugees of the famine waiting to enter Dadaab camp in Kenya.

Today, relief agencies are saying there are some 12 million people in the Horn of Africa in danger of starving as a result of drought, exacerbated by conflict in Somalia.

As the famine crisis continues to worsen, it’s hard to know where to begin with its story. The U.S. today announced $17 million in new U.S. aid for the region, over 1,000 Somali refugees per day continue to arrive at Kenya camps, piracy is hampering delivery of relief supplies to Somalia and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon talked with rock star Bono about the need for increased aid efforts.

Another interesting, and revealing, story angle comes from the Inter Press Service News Agency, pointing much of the blame for the famine at the United Nations for not putting more effort into long-term development programs across the region.

Gustavo Capdevila, writing for IPS, described a bleak situation:

(See ways to donate at end of this story.)

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Politics, Africa, aid, famine, poverty, Somalia, United Nations
July 12, 2011 | 9:56 AM | By

Good news: 28 countries escape poverty trap

Flickr, Stuck in Customs

Progress is like a river

The Guardian reports on new data indicating we are making progress against poverty:

Remember the poverty trap? Countries stuck in destitution because of weak institutions put in place by colonial overlords, or becausse of climates that foster disease, or geographies that limit access to global markets, or simply by the fact that poverty is overwhelmingly self-perpetuating. Apparently the trap can be escaped.

Zambia and Ghana are specifically celebrated in the article as having risen rapidly from “low-income” toward “middle-income” status, according to new World Bank country classifications.

Low-income means countries in which people make less than $1,005 per year (why that extra $5?). Lower middle-income countries where people make between $1,006 and $3,975 per year and upper middle-income countries are those where people make $3,976 and $12,275 annually.

So what’s the behind this rapid progress? The authors provide three key perspectives:

1. Foreign aid, public and private investments to poor countries actually work.

2. The World Bank country criteria may not be measuring poverty accurately since many of those people living in poverty live in middle-income countries.

3. Fighting poverty is becoming increasingly a matter of domestic politics, a recognition of and public intolerance for inequity.

 

FILED UNDER: Basics, Ghana, low-income countries, poverty, World Bank, Zambia
June 15, 2011 | 10:00 AM | By

Growing the ONE Campaign in Seattle

What happens when you mix a world-famous rock band, a couple of billionaire philanthropists with millions of people around the world willing to hit the streets, swarm social media sites and lobby politicians to do the right thing?

You get the ONE Campaign.

ONE Campaign Seattle

Members of ONE on the streets of Seattle, taking names and fighting poverty

Earlier this week, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others celebrated a big victory in the effort to combat one of the world’s greatest inequities — millions of child deaths in poor countries every year due to vaccine-preventable diseases like pneumonia and severe diarrhea.

An initiative originally launched a decade ago out of Seattle by the Gates Foundation, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, GAVI, received $4.3 billion from governments and donors to expand its mission of vaccinating children in poor communities.

This was more than was requested ($3.7 billion) and translates into vaccinating 250 million children over the next four years, which experts say will prevent four million child deaths. GAVI’s work so far is estimated to have already saved 5 million lives.

How was this accomplished?

How were governments, under pressure right now to cut back on foreign aid due to the economic downturn, convinced to so strongly support this initiative that has much lower “brand” recognition than, say, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria or the latest natural disaster?

Bill Gates likely had some influence, sure. He’s long been a big proponent of vaccines. But even the Microsoft billionaire can’t always get governments to do what he wants.

That’s where his friend Bono and the ONE Campaign come in.

Gates Foundation

Bono on a recent tour of the new Gates Foundation campus, flanked by Melinda Gates and U2 lead guitarist Edge. Bill's in the back, pointing

The ONE Campaign is primarily Bono’s creation. It’s a grassroots and advocacy lobbying organization that was launched by Bono and others, with funding from the Gates Foundation, to support efforts aimed at fighting poverty — and diseases of poverty — in Africa and other poor countries. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Basics, Politics, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bono, foreign aid, GAVI, ONE Campaign, poverty, vaccines
May 20, 2011 | 8:30 AM | By

The good news and bad news on global poverty

The Brookings Institution could do with a web make-over. This report “Two Trends in Global Poverty” looks pretty academic and dull, but I think it is well worth reading.

It starts with the good news:

We are living through a period of rapid global poverty reduction. According to recent estimates, high, sustained growth across most of the developing world has helped nearly half a billion people escape $1.25-a-day poverty between 2005 and 2010. Never before have so many people been lifted out of poverty over such a brief period.

Flickr, Vit Hassan

More poor amid plenty

At the same time, say authors Laurence Chandy and Geoffrey Gertz, the proportion of poor people living in middle-income countries and “fragile states” is increasing.

Both trends – and their intersection – present important new questions for how the international community tackles global poverty reduction.

Basically, say the Brookings analysts, the poverty landscape is changing and is more complex than it might appear. Even as more countries become middle-income, they say, more of these same countries — like Nigeria, Pakistan — are also becoming increasingly unstable and inequitable within their borders.

Efforts to reduce poverty must take this new reality into account, say Chandy and Gertz, moving away from designing poverty reduction efforts based on “poor countries” and focusing more on how to attack poverty within unstable middle-income states. This, they say, will require political solutions as well as technical solutions.

FILED UNDER: Basics, Brookings Institution, middle-income countries, poverty