Introduction

The Industry of Poverty has many faces, as it manifests itself in every society on this globe, its effects are similarly devastating for the poor. What constitutes poverty? When is a person considered poor or low income? Is a person poor when he/she has to live off of less than one (1) USD a day? Is a person poor when she/he has only one meal per day? Is a person poor when she/he has no access to the internet, social media, newspapers and an occasional holiday? Or is a person poor because he cannot afford designer clothes?

Theory I: Poverty is in my opinion a state of being determined by objective criteria, more specific the Maslow Pyramid: food, shelter are among others, considered the most vital elements of survival. Higher up in the Maslow pyramid, the needs of the individual are apparently less physiological, more psychological and sociological, in other words less objectifiable, more part of the subjective, the self.

How does one achieve ones goals? What is self-efficacy and what does it attenuate to? Is it self-respect or the respect of others? What is confidence? Is it the precursor for leadership, aspiration and ambition? And what happens if a person lacks respect, confidence and self-efficacy? Is that person considered a poor person as well? Theory II: Poverty thus is also a state of being that is determined by subjective criteria’ in other words poverty is in the eye of the (subjective) beholder.

The two theories are positioned as antimonies, thesis and anti-thesis, in an attempt to demonstrate that poverty is a universalistic conception, determined by local circumstances. The idea is also that by positioning poverty in a thetical-antithetical model, it becomes easier to build an empirical framework to demonstrate that poverty is oftentimes perpetuated because certain businesses profit from the poor and poverty. The thetical-antithetical goes against the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs theory, based on the argumentation that apart from the most basic of needs, needs are not hierarchically ordered. Instead this theory argues that needs are randomly ordered variables,not tied to certain geographical spaces and places, but determined by the individuals needs, wants and socio-economic status in a given society. Of course certain needs are not recognized as important by certain societies, which is presumably why the Maslow theory became outdated. The importance of Maslow’s hierarchy is its physiological premise, in other words, the functioning of humans as living systems, the primary driving force is the considered the basis of human need. The idea that the struggle for live is present in all human beings negates the notion that poverty is the problem of the individual, that the solution to ending is poverty hinges on the individual itself. This blog discusses so called programs and plans to eradicate poverty at micro level, thus from the perspective of the individual and macro level, from the perspective of the state. The majority of these plans are based on the notion that hard work and diligence will end poverty.

Micro-financing in Poor and Rich Countries

Micro-credit programs are excellent exemplifications of what I call the industry of poverty. Micro credit programs are so called small size loans, granted to people with no collateral to back-up the loan. The loan is granted to help poor finance their small businesses, typically home-based enterprises. Micro-finance is typically designed to empower people, in most instances women, in the developing world. Striking feature of micro credits is that it in fact finances and encourages the informal economy, and that it does not incentivize these small scale business to go beyond the informal, to improve and innovate and grow into a full-scale industry that provides work for other people. Micro credits do not come cheap, steep interest rates up to 50% are the norm, and lenders are typically required to become members of a so called “co-operative’ to become eligible for a loan. Being part of the so called co-operation allows lenders to control the borrowers, to ensure repayment. Let me put it boldly, micro-financing will not eradicate poverty, on the contrary; micro-finance only makes it easy for women to continue working from the home, keep the roof over their head and pay school fees for their children. Micro-credit makes life easier, makes it easier to take living beyond the level of subsisting.

Micro-finance will not push the informal economic sector out of obscurity,or help to formalize the informal economy and set the groundwork for sustainable development. Micro financing in fact sustains the structural character of that what poverty factually attenuates to, which is lack of disposition of capital. Feiner & Barker (2006) correctly observe that micro credits do not help elevate poverty, they merely help ease some of its aberrations.

In the western world, micro financing comes in a gamut short term  and small loan schemes, ranging from  pay -day loans and the pawing of possessions to high APR credit cards. Comparable to micro credit in the developing world are the pay-day loans; small short term, high interest loans with ones pay check as collateral. Borrowers are typically low income workers that become chronic borrowers as the interest rate and repayments accrues and income as a result declines. Pay -day borrowers end up in deep trouble, specifically in cases were the total income is used to pay of a loan.  In 2003, Tom Lehman defiantly cautioned government not to intervene in the market, by implementing socialism, because it was not “chronic borrowers that we should fear but chronic government coercion that present the greatest threat to economic efficiency, private property and individual liberty……..A more recent article in the Guardian writes about the effects of pay-day lending schemes on people, the wantonness of spending, consumerism, responsibility and  the lack of regulation by the British government.  What are the long-term effects of these types of financial products on society? Who will pay for the devastation on the individual and on society? What will happen if the individuals cannot repay the loans and finds him/herself on the street? Will society pay the costs of this devastation? Will the person than pawn off all his possessions only to keep on making ends meet? The answer to all these questions is that in recent years, the obscurity of poverty and its aberrations, led to world economic crises, because who knew that poor people were used as cash cows by the banking industry? The problem is that chronic debt burdens society, it fosters greed and economic stagnation.

The Changing World Order: Changing Ideas on Aid and Assistance?

Poverty as an intellectual conception is very hard to qualify. John Kenneth Galbraith tried to define and qualify poverty but ended arguing that the phenomenon of poverty should be approached holistically. Like other scholars after him, Galbraith connected poverty with underdevelopment and latitude, the Southern hemisphere where almost all poor countries were located, were the hardest hit by poverty and economic stagnation.  The rise of the Asian tigers as emerging economies in the 1980s, and, consecutive, the rise of India, China and Brasil as economic powers in the late 1990s have yet to transform intellectual notions on this new global reality. One would presume that the changing world order would usher in a shift in the academic and bureaucratic approach of poverty and underdevelopment.

The challenges that come with change and transformation reverberate in the way aid and assistance is provided. Aid is no longer the summation of East-West dichotomies, no longer is ideology the determining factor for aid and assistance. The problem is that aid and assistance programs do not work, they still fail to elevate poverty and /or generate economic take off. The question is, is do underdeveloped nations actually need assisting and aid? Aid typically comes packed as highly paid technical expertise, brought in by the donating country. Experts from the west fly in to tell the locals how they should run things, and than they fly off again. In Suriname for example, the bureaucracy that oversaw the projects and administered the funding cost more than the myriad of projects proposed between 1960-1980 (Adama 2006). The records demonstrate furthermore that between 1975 and 1980 the only funding approved by the Dutch government was for traveling, negotiating and payment for technical expertise. During that same period not one project proposal became approved and the projects completed were suffering major set-backs! The expectation that Suriname would serve as a petri dish for development is not only thwarted by reality but also by the archives that are littered with plans and ideas that never came to fruition. Neighboring Guyana is another example of a society that was given boatloads of money to fight a proxy Cold War. But president Burnham strategically played the USA and Russia against each other, preaching socialism while appeasing the Americans to get large quantities of aid and assistance to stay in office as a dictator. The same can be argued about president Mobutu of former Zaire, a man who could remain in power because of the aid and assistance from France, Belgium and the USA. There are many more dictators in the Southern hemisphere that during the 1970s and 1980s stayed in power financed by either the USA or the Soviet Union. Many scholars argued that the Cold War impeded South-South solidarity and fostered imperialism and expansive behavior of both super powers.

Today the experiences teach that shifting of wealth from the western world to Asia and Latin America did not increase South-South solidarity, on the contrary. For example, China is not interested in eradicating poverty of the lesser developed nations, China is only interested in gaining control over natural resources and minerals to advance its own domestic economy. China currently has all the hallmarks of a predator hegemon, self-serving and expansionary, and not geared to proliferate its wealth and  knowledge to other societies to in the wording of Robert Gilpin achieve an efficient economy of scale. Indeed the problem of every hegemon is the spread of industrialization, a problem that is closely connected with protectionism at domestic level and the functioning of the international economic order.

Today many western development organizations typically operate at grass roots level; assistance today consists of small scale aid and assistance, such as building houses after disaster, running orphanages, subsidizing NGO’s and support informal sectors of the economy. These activities too are part of industry of poverty, creating a situation of dependency. Again in these cases the sustenance of the informal economy too is cause for concern, because it does not contribute to the eradication of poverty. Problematic is also that foreign aid dispels failure of the state to take care of its citizens, to design a program for poverty, housing and gender policy.

Conclusion

The Industry of poverty is an expansive and prolific phenomenon, that takes on different shapes and formats according to the society. In western societies, pay day loans, high interest and prepaid credit cards, and collection agencies keep poor people in their state of poverty. The industry of poverty in the western world floats on cut-throat interest rates charged to low income people struggling to make ends meet. In the developing world, poor people with no collateral are confronted with the same high interest rates, as they take on a small loan to keep their home-based businesses afloat. The difference between both categories is the latitude, and perhaps preferences of certain goods. Both categories want a better life, roof over their head, food on the table and a steady job.

The aspect of latitude corroborates that poverty indeed should be intellectually objectified, based on the argument of universality, all humans need the same elements to function and stay alive. The subjectivity of poverty is grounded on the forces that drive the individual to take its needs beyond the basics, to work, study and aspire a career as a singer, to become middle class or become a millionaire. The drive to escape poverty is intrinsically humane and humanistic, present in every society.

The rich-poor divide plays out more clearly at macro or state level. Latitude determines the face of the international world order. Western societies have always dictated the terms and conditions of development, sponsoring regimes to strengthened either the western or eastern block during the Cold War. The purpose of aid and assistance was to either contain or spread either capitalism or communism. The reality is that said proxy war did not bring prosperity to the developing world, on the contrary! There is in my opinion no need to for development aid and assistance, specifically in the cases that local expertise and experts will be cast aside, or if it means that receiving countries are required to adopt foreign modus operandi to get funding. Supported by extensive empirical evidence I want to conclude that development aid in its current format does not work and that it only kept an extensive industry of poverty intact that fostered more dependency instead.

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

Optimism reverberates as the so called Main Street individuals count their blessings; They are happy, the new president, said during his campaign that he would take care of them, the MOFINA (Surinamese: the poor), unlike the incumbency (Venetiaan Administration) who for fifteen years, did nothing to help out the poor. People hoped that the new government would work on the redistribution of land, do great things for the country, such as for example, build extensive infrastructures (a road all the way to Brasil).

They decried the fact that President Venetiaan had turned its back, and failed to communicate, failed to tell the people about the challenges they had to deal with, the possible difficulties. These people felt left-out, divorced from mainstream society, and the traditional ethnic parties had failed to see that ethnicity no longer determined the primary political cleavages, class, the divide between the haves and the have-nots had become the primary cleavage during the 2010 elections.

On social media this footage brought on feelings of repulsion and disgust. People wrote that they did not understand why ‘these people’ supported and venerated Mr Bouterse.  Many people on social media belong to the upper and middle classes, and have little in common with the man in the street, the so called hosselaars, the poor street vendors and small scale gold traders (Sranan; English: Hustlers), most often young urban poor, with limited education and/or skills. The people on FACEBOOK have a different reference cadre, they are part of the so called global village, modernity, Europe, American, Latin American and Asian. Urban poor youth on the other hand feeds from a different culture, Sranan-style, Black American, African and Anglo Caribbean. The cultural gap echoes the deep social and economic divide of a struggling, juxtaposing society in the permanent throes of transition and in constant search for its identity.  

The people in the street strongly expressed their need for autonomy, for freedom to make choices, to have a future, to simply become part of society. One of the interviewees remarks: “What I want is a  permit to sell my goods on the street (…)” ,another one: I want a piece of land to build a house”. They all believed that Suriname would be better off after Five years of penury and disenfranchisement. 

The sad story is that behind these verbalized desires lies a gamut of lies, told by a presidential candidate driven by political opportunism and greed. Today, as the people continue to hold on to their dream, that Suriname will become ‘Nirvana-upon-Suriname’, the new president is turning the country into a undemocratic society, governed by paramilitary and tugs.

For example, on this date, June 19, 2012, a local newspaper writes that profits from gold-mining amasses $1 billion. International credit rating agencies esteemed Suriname’s macro-economic position as sound (BB-rating). But who will benefit? The Mofina, the backbone of the president or his inner circle?  Non of the things promised to the mofina came through,  non of the plans, set out during hour long speeches by the president have materialized. But the president and his cabinet are not to blame, so they say; both avid supporters and the presidential PR machinery are quick to point their fingers at ‘others’, dissidents in the coalition and a disobedient opposition. Is it indeed plausible that government is crossed and obstructed by parliamentary and outer-parliamentary oppositions? Is it plausible that Mr Bouterse is marred by infighting and side-stepped by his opponents?

It is for the sake of discourse interesting to find out if the current government is indeed impeded by obstruction and an ill-willed opposition. But the reality tells a different tale: given the parliamentary majority, obstruction by the opposition is highly unlikely. Party discipline and strict control prevent dissidence within the ranks of the coalition. In other words, government and parliament have free reign, as the amnesty law exemplifies.The manner in which it became enacted, a shift blitz-krieg type of action executed by the most fateful and most loyal MP’s of the Nationale Democratische Partij is illustrative of their numerical superiority. The opposition could do nothing more than watch, hands tied, unable to block this controversial proposal. But the clamorous Mofina feel that the government can do no wrong, for them the president is a Messianic figure who will eventually liberate them from poverty and mayhem.

The irony is that these fateful and loyal followers, are the first victims of bad government, repression, injustice and discrimination. Double digit inflation made life and living harder for the poor. Permits to sell goods on the street never came, and acquiring a piece of land will not happen under this administration. The current government also pays little attention to the needs poor. The socio-economic disparities in Suriname have become more significant. Lack of entrepreneurial opportunities, and joblessness disproportionately affect the young urban poor. Many young poor and jobless individuals become petty criminals to make end meet. But as the rising criminality have been reeking havoc in and around town since the 1970s and disgruntled citizens have been calling for action for the longest time. Those who can afford it have been using private security to protect their belongings since the late 1990s. But criminality seems to have reached unprecedented highs. The new justice minister indeed came with a crime plan, approved by the president. But the patience of the public was running out and the heist in jewelry shop in one of the Malls,was the last drop, and government had to do something to restore calm and order. 

Police started a frenzied manhunt….. or so it seemed. They said they did everything in their power to capture and apprehend the perpetrators and they were killed by the police while running from the law…or so it appeared. The story of anonymous posted in online on www.Mamjo.com put a different light on the story of the Chief of Police and the Attorney General, it explains the bullet ridden car and the massive front torso trauma of the death victims (I have see footage of the bodies) . Let me say that the story of this source is not corroborated by hard evidence. Its fact-value is based on what was revealed by other sources and what is logical based on the evidence of the car and the bodies.

1. There is evidence that small scale gold miners are evicted from their concessions, chased away by Dino Bouterse and his group. This story was revealed by Apinti TV in 2011. There is also evidence linking Dino Bouterse to the under world, with narco-trafficking and arms trading (see previous postings). And all these stories correspond with the information provided by an anonymous source that the gunning down was carried out by a death squat led by Dino Bouterse, the presidents son. 

Dino Bouterse beheerst momenteel samen met enkele handlangers grote delen van de Surinaamse onderwereld. Vrijwel alle grote berovingen worden vanuit dit clubje gecoordineert en uitgevoerd. Soms door zijn eigen mannetjes (met een militaire achtergrond) of door andere rovers die samen met hem werken. Vrijwel alle grote berovingen van de afgelopen 2 jaren komen uit deze hoek. Aangezien men via de CIVD mensen kan afluisteren en tracen komt men aan veel gevoelige financiele informatie. (English translation: Dino Bouterse, together with a few cronies rules the Surinamese under world. Since two years the bulk of all big heists are coordinated and carried out by them, sometimes by his own people (former military) and sometimes by professional tugs who work with him. Through the state they can get their hands on classified financial information.

2.  Today, the online Magazine Obsession published the story of the families of two of the men that were killed by a special police (military) squat last week. According them, their relatives were gunned down, one of the wives, recalled that she saw the riddled car passing her by, while speaking to her husband on the phone. Another relative describes her son as a rehabilitated petty criminal who had turned his live around. This story corresponds with the version of the anonymous source that ‘they’ contacted so called rehabilitated criminals and one of them is confirmed to have been a small scale gold trader:

Er werd contact gemaakt met deze 4 oudbekenden van de politie die lange tijd niks meer hadden gedaan. Maar als je eenmaal in de onderwereld zit dan heb je bepaalde contacten. Er werd aan ze gevraagd of ze geen goud wilden kopen en er werd een afspraak gemaakt om elkaar op een bepaalde locatie te ontmoeten. Daar aangekomen werden ze gelijk doodgeschoten en aan ons werd verteld dat de daders van de beroving in de Mall waren aangehouden. (English translation: They contacted four former [rehabilitated] criminals asking them if they wanted to buy gold and they set up an appointment to meet at a certain hour and at a certain location. Upon arrival they were immediately gunned down)

Conclusion

Last week, human rights organizations filed charges against the state of Suriname, alleging that the four men were killed in an act of police violence. The Attorney General Mr. Punwasi recanted on his original stance in support of the police chiefs’ rendition of events and announced further investigation of the killings. The Attorney General, whose name is mentioned by the anonymous as an accomplice, in 2001 refused to grant a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Bouterse, a suspect in the killing of 15 political adversaries. This latest affair involving the police chief and other members of the prosecution’s office raises new questions on the corruptibility of the Surinamese Justice system. Because as it stands, everybody runs the risk of falling prey to the arbitrariness of Surinamese police and justice system. 

The political ramifications are however massive and irreversible, because inundation of the justice system by the under world seriously undermines democracy. I predict that the political consequences will have a greater impact than one can possibly phantom at this particular moment. There is at this point in time, no clear evidence that the traditional parties are in sync with reality. Many people continue to see the protest vote of the Mofina as something stupid, something irrational.  People on social media blame the Mofina for the crisis, instead of accepting the fact that this specific category of people sent out a powerful message to the nomenclature that they wanted and want change. Suriname is in that sense not unique, everywhere in the world the gap between the haves and the have-nots had widened and continues to widen under the pressures of merit-based social structures and technological advancement. All these developments bring about a slew of unwanted and unwelcome byproducts, such as the rise of the extreme right in Europe and socio-economic marginalization of the poor in the USA. The difference between Suriname and the aforementioned societies is that Suriname is an electoral democracy while the rest are considered polyarchies.

AUTHOR: Natascha Adama
URL: http://natascha23.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: nataliapestova23 [@] yahoo.com

The 'Separation Wall' cutting through Abu Dis. The Wall is one of the factors that is in the way of a proper functioning Palestinian economy.

Around 25.8% of Palestinians suffered from poverty in the Palestinian Territory in 2011, said a report by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) on Monday. It showed that slightly more than one out of four individuals was living below the poverty line in 2011, 17.8% in the West Bank and 38.8% in Gaza Strip. Similarly about 12.9% of individuals were living below the deep poverty line in 2011, 7.8% in the West Bank and 21.1% in Gaza Strip.

In 2011, the poverty line and deep poverty line for the reference household (two adults and three children) stood at 2,293 Israeli shekels ($637) per month and 1,832 shekels ($509) respectively. (The criteria were the amount that a family of five was able to spend on food, housing and clothing as is clarified in an earlier report of the PCBS from 1998.

A report released last May by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI ) put the number of Palestinians in East Jerusalem living below the poverty line even much higher: at no less than 78%. For children the number is even 84%. And it is on the increase: in 2006 the numbers for adults and children were 64% and 73% respectively.

Reasons are the neglect of the Arabic part of the city, with shortages of – for instance – 1000 classrooms, and of 50 kilometer of sewage pipes. Another is ‘the Wall’ which divides the main body of the city from many of its outskirts. ACRI mentions that since 1999 more than 5000 firms in Arabic East Jerusalem have closed their doors. As one of the consequences an estimated 40% of the male workforce does not participate in the job market and of the women some 85% is thought to be jobless. What may play a role as well, particularly in the case of the women, is the extreme shortage of kindergarten facilities. For some 15.000 children in the age of 3-4 years there are no more than 433 places available in a creche or pre-school.

As for the poverty in the West Bank and Gaza, also the occupation plays the biggest role, according to the World Bank.  In Gaza it is the the almost complete isolation from the rest of the world and the Israeli siege of the Strip. In the West Bank it is the Wall, the checkpoints and the many restrictions on the movement of people and goods.

AUTHOR: Martin Hijmans
URL: http://the-pessoptimist.blogspot.com/
E-MAIL: m.hijmans [at] planet.nl

The path-breaking announcement has come after a year long advocacy effort of showcasing gains of a Women and Land Rights Facilitation Centre (WLRFC) in Khallikote Tehsil of the district. It has been an exciting and painstaking evolution for the lone centre that came up last year on the International Women’s Day, as a joint collaboration between Rural Development Institute – part of international advocacy group, Landesa, and the district administration. It started just with an idea of creating a sustainable and structured process to reach some of the most vulnerable women in the rural communities. Being marginalised within the family the women are deprived of entitlement schemes and social security benefits.

In the past decade or so, the number of women-headed households in rural India has been on the rise, especially in areas with high poverty, with men being forced to migrate in search of livelihood. Government estimates that close to 35 per cent households in India are now women headed.

Over 80 per cent women in rural India are dependent on agriculture for livelihood, yet less than 10 per cent of all women in India own land; and to make this inequality worse women rarely inherit or own even the land that they live on.

But when you add to this picture, the tremendous change a woman can bring in household income, productivity and improved access to education for children, when they own land, the rationale for her unmediated control of land becomes all the more stronger.

Being marginalised within the family the women are deprived of entitlement schemes and social security benefits.

Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) report, Women in Agriculture: Closing the Gender Gap for Development, highlights that given the same access as men; women could increase production in developing countries by 20 to 30 per cent.

This could raise total agricultural production in developing countries by 2.5 to 4 per cent, which could in turn reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 per cent, or 100 to 150 million people. An estimated 925 million people in the world were undernourished in 2010, of which 906 million live in developing countries.

Many firsts

The decision to set up WLRFCs across the district has many firsts to it in terms of planning. There are specific processes laid out for addressing the challenges that create barriers for women in accessing land.
The revenue system dominated by the male staff rarely has any contact with women, as the land is seen as only men’s domain. To bridge this gap, the centres will have dedicated women revenue inspectors for each centre.

Over 80 per cent women in rural India are dependent on agriculture for livelihood, yet less than 10 per cent of all women in India own land; and to make this inequality worse women rarely inherit or own even the land that they live on.

The Anganwadi workers in each village will identify women who are in need and are eligible to receive benefits of the homestead land schemes. Through this the issue of marginalisation that leads to almost non-existent demand for such schemes will be addressed.

Homestead land ownership is often the key piece for accessing several other entitlements for the poor. Keeping this in view, the centre will also enable these women to get caste, residence and income certificates, along with accessing schemes like the pension for widow.

The program will be monitored directly by district team at collector’s office that will also include civil society organisations.

The programme that will be rolled out by the district administration in collaboration with RDI and ActionAid is expected to provide land ownership titles to 10,000 single and vulnerable women in the next one year.

AUTHOR: Parvinder Singh
URL: http://www.cellimages.blogspot.com
E-MAIL: info [at] www.NL-Aid.org

In its resolution, the General Assembly also noted that the family-related provisions of the outcomes of the major United Nations conferences and summits of the 1990s and their follow-up processes continue to provide policy guidance on ways to strengthen family-centred components of policies and programmes as part of an integrated comprehensive approach to development.  Therefore following the resolution the year 1994 was proclaimed by the United Nations as the International Year of Families.  This was a response to changing social and economic structures, which have affected and still affect the structure and stability of family units in many regions of the globe. The International Day of Families has been held globally every year since 1995.

The 2012 Theme is, “Ensuring work family balance”, which places special focus on the growing demographic and socio-economic trends that continue to create changes in work and family life dynamics and balance.  Such changes have led to a higher number of working mothers, smaller families,  rapid urbanization, all which have weakened the role of the extended family, which has traditionally provided networks support in the care of both children and elderly family members.

In his message for the launch of 2012′s International Day of Families, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, stated;

“This year’s International Day of Families highlights the need for work-family balance. The aim is to help workers everywhere provide for their families financially and emotionally, while also contributing to the socio-economic development of their societies.”

The role of the family plays great importance in more than our economic stability and balance, but it also plays a role in our peace and security, including the exploitation of minors and adults.   In order for the global society to see a sustainable future the role of the family must be placed as a priority on all agendas.   Therefore governments must make a commitment to see that policies and services address the shift from traditional families.  Work-family balance policies must also demonstrate not only the well-being of families and employers’ social responsibility to support families, but also seek to increase successful labour relations, employee health and well-being, promote gender equality and ensure and protect child welfare.  Many workers in informal labor sectors face not only family-unfriendly work environments, but work daily in dangerous environments that place the entire family unit in jeopardy.  Therefore the day also highlights the importance to seek global employment protection to secure better working conditions and eliminate exploitation, especially for poor working families.

As a global community it is vital that family-friendly policies are enacted that support a healthy and sustainable work-family balance, in order to ensure that individuals and families are able to provide both economically and emotionally for their dependents and members.  However while progress has been made in much of the developing world to address the importance of work-family balance, in many developing countries work and family policies are in direct conflict with a majority of development priorities.  Therefore special consideration must be made by governments and development agencies to address this gap in a manner that will continue to preserve family values and traditions, while addressing socio-economic shifts.

Families are the core of our global stability and provide the foundation for a child’s development…the stability and harmony of families across the globe is the key to a peaceful, prosperous and sustainable future for all of  our children.  Please take a moment today to remember the importance of family and appreciate the families you have been given!  Use this day to sit down with your family and see how you can better your work-family balance.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

It is an especially important factor in determining whether a state is fragile or not. As I argued in Fixing Fragile States:

Two factors above all others decide how a country’s political, economic, and societal life evolves: a population’s capacity to cooperate (which depends, for the most part, on the level of social cohesion) and its ability to take advantage of a set of shared, productive institutions (especially informal institutions at the crucial early stages of development when formal institutions are usually feeble and ineffectual). . . . These two ingredients shape how a government interacts with its citizens; how officials, politicians, and businesspeople behave; and how effective foreign efforts to upgrade governance will be. Together with the set of policies adopted by the government, they make up the three major determinants of a country’s capacity to advance.

Fragile states are deficient in both these areas. And the combination of political identity fragmentation and weak national institutions works in a vicious cycle that severely undermines the legitimacy of the state, leading to political orders that are highly unstable and hard to reform.

But social cohesion has rarely attracted the attention it deserves from the development community. Dependent on sociopolitical factors that are hard to measure, analyze, and understand, it holds no prominent place in any international agency’s programming. Like almost everything related to the “software” of how states work, it is all too easily ignored.

This may be changing at least at the margins—in conferences and reports. The World Bank, for instance, is using it to discuss jobs in its forthcoming World Development Report. And the OECD recently published Perspectives on Global Development 2012: Social Cohesion in a Shifting World.

This is progress of a sort, but these conferences and reports are missing something important. Instead of seeing social cohesion as a “complex cultural, psychological and social phenomenon,” as Duncan Green put it on his blog earlier this year, they look at economic issues and technocratic solutions. The OECD report, for instance, promotes redistribution via progressive tax reform and increased and more pro-poor public spending; investment in education; protecting poor people against volatility via social protection and improved labor market institutions such as the minimum wage.

There is nothing particularly wrong with most of this agenda, but it does not get to the heart of the matter. A country with high levels of social cohesion would likely have a leadership with an interest in introducing programs that helped the poor. A country that had little social cohesion would likely have a leadership that had little interest in helping the poor. These proposals matter far less than trying to figure out what affects elite attitudes and what might be done to make elites feel that the poor is “one of us.”

What the development community fails to understand is that there are two distinct types of social cohesion, and it only focuses on one.

“Vertical social cohesion” looks at levels of inequity on the assumption that substantial differences in income are both inherently unfair and damaging to the wellbeing of societies.

“Horizontal social cohesion,” on the other hands, looks at how strong is the “social glue” that ties people to each other on the assumption that feelings of togetherness matter more both to the wellbeing of individuals and to the long-term health of a society.

The development field has no way to grasp the importance of the latter because it does not fit within the paradigm of how development is supposed to work as understood by donors. It has nothing to do with economics, technical training, and governance indicators. It cannot be improved with vaccines, a school building program, or investments in agriculture. And it certainly cannot be measured and tracked over time.

Vertical social cohesion fits nicely with the liberal ethos that most people in the field know. Horizontal social cohesion is much more likely to matter to conservatives, but few of these play an active role in any part of the aid industry. As a result, many things that matter to making states work better—including nation building, religion, and informal institutions—gets short shrift.

But these things are tremendously important, especially in the early stages of development when formal state institutions are weak, and unable to play an important role in economic and political governance.

The countries most successful at promoting development and reducing poverty have been horizontally social cohesive, not vertically so, because of how important this is when governments do not work well. Places like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the rest of East Asia have improved the lives of over a billion poor people over the past two generations not because they had “good governance,” progressive taxes, or followed a certain policy playbook, but because they had the social glue that lubricated business and encouraged leaders to focus on inclusive development.

Donors have often been befuddled by fragile states, with some even calling them a wicked problem. These difficulties, however, say more about donors than they do about fragile states.

Understanding these places requires understanding their software. The problems they face are more fundamental than other countries—something is wrong with their basic operating system—something than the standard aid tools cannot fix. It requires great creativity in programming to address the structural, psychological, and institutional issues that have produced societies divided against themselves.

Such programming is not easy for organizations that would rather focus on problems at the individual level (the MDGs) and show results within a short timeframe. It requires much more knowledge about societies and patience with long payback periods than donors have, especially today.

Given the growing importance of fragile states, is it not about time the development community focused on the social cohesion that matters most?

AUTHOR: Seth Kaplan
URL: http://www.fragilestates.org
E-MAIL: seth [at] sethkaplan.org

About one month ago I wrote in my blog about the 60,000 indigenous Palestinians who live under the harsh conditions of the Israeli occupation in the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea area. Israel prohibits the Palestinians from using 94% of their land. Supported by Israel, 9,500 settlers have developed profitable agricultural businesses in the occupied Jordan Valley – in contravention of international law. The impact of Israel’s policies on Palestinian children becomes painfully clear in a video produced by Maan Development Center. In addition, Maan wrote a fact sheet that I received prior to publication.

Being forced to let him work makes me feel sick in my stomach, says a boy’s father

Sixteen-year-old Mohammed lives in Fasayil in the Jordan Valley. The story of Mohammed and his family is exemplary of the impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian life.

“I want to become a mechanic, but we don’t have enough money for that. So instead I work in the settlements, which is hard work. I have to move heavy boxes of vegetables, which I cannot really do, but I’m forced to,” he says in the video.

His father explains that the family has only five dunums of land (1 dunum is 1,000 square meters). To cultivate one dunum costs 2000 NIS (around US$ 530). “What can five dunums do for a big family? And you know, we are under occupation. We cannot export or obtain good prices in our markets. And when the prices improve, Israeli produce floods our markets. When checkpoints are closed, our products are damaged. So these are the reasons why my son Mohammed is forced to leave school and work in the settlements.”

The son of Mahmoud Zbeidat also works for Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley. He says in the video, “I want my son Ismail to become a doctor. I hope that all my children are happy in their lives. Any father would want their kids to become successful and better their lives. They don’t want to see their kids working for settlers. When I see my child going to the settlement at 6 am and wasting his life, in order to make money so that we can eat, I feel sick in my stomach about it, I’m forced to let him work.”

Child labor in the illegal settlements in the Jordan Valley

Deep poverty and a poor education system push children to work in the agricultural settlements of the Jordan Valley.

A report (in Arabic) published by Maan reveals that between 500 and 1,000 Palestinian children work for Israeli settlers in the Jordan Valley – some as young as 13. Many of the children are from the Jordan Valley – others come from different parts of the occupied West Bank. They pick, clean and package fruit and vegetables. The children have to work in the simmering summer heat of 50 degrees Celsius and also in the cold of winter when the temperature drops to 0 degrees Celsius. They start work as early as 5.30 in the morning and continue until two o’clock in the afternoon. They drop out of school because the work hours overlap with school hours.

According to Maan, most child laborers are informally employed and therefore receive no benefits. They “earn” 50-60 NIS (US$ 13-15) per day. Their wages are less than the wages of Palestinian adult males, who earn 60-100 NIS (US$16-25) a day, about one-third of the official Israeli minimum wage.

Rights of the child

Israel has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child which states that a child – a person under the age of 18 – should be brought up in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity. Instead, Israel’s illegal occupation has created a disastrous situation for Palestinian families. The poor economic situation drives Palestinian parents and their children to accept work in Israel’s agricultural settlements in the Jordan Valley. Children accept work that they have to perform under difficult conditions for a very low wage. They work in an informal sector without benefits or protection of labor laws. Some drop out of school to contribute to the family income.

“As official policy, children working in the settlements is forbidden. But there are agreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel which prevents us from interfering with this,” Amjad Jaber, spokesperson for the Ministry of Labor in Jericho, makes this shocling statement in Maan’s video. He is wrong. Israel, the Palestinian Authority and the international community have the duty to protect the rights of children.

First published at The Electronic Intifada.

AUTHOR: Adri Nieuwhof
URL: http://www.samora.org
E-MAIL: a.nieuwhof [at] samora.org

The Act now looks more in paper than in the field. The 100 day guarantee could only be recorded up to 50-58 days, while the benefit/security lands in the pockets of the administrators and politicos.   It is now said that the guarantee could only do good in digging and filling the pot holes because it lacks in generating rural ‘employment’ in real sense to the poor. The major flaws in the Act (implementation) as pointed out by the people, think tanks and researchers are related to poor implementation of programme due to the authoritarian attitude of district administrations involved and corruption in the payment process. This, they say, defeated the purpose of guaranteeing employment to the rural poor and ultimately gratified the corrupt administrators. In big Indian states like Uttar Pradesh, most of the jobs are done by contractors through JCBs (earth moving machines rather human being), and the job-cards are used to siphon the money.

A new, enthusiastic and active rural development minister is leading the scene, and it is perceived that he is on his way to reforming the whole scenario of MNREGA  and many such rural development programmes including rural drinking water and sanitation. The idea of digging holes and filling them up will now require a re-look into the aspects of agriculture, watershed management, horticulture, agro-forestry, various livelihood options (like fishery, poultry, craft making, etc.) etc. also, which in real sense will help the people in getting the guaranteed employment in a sustainable manner.

The amendments will take effect from 1 April 2012. May be it’s pure coincidence but this day is known as fool’s day.

Altogether the Water Resources Ministry of Government of India is revising its ‘water policy’ (since 2002) while the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation is looking seriously into its drinking water supply monitoring and quality systems and the ‘Total Sanitation Campaign’ (TSC; a sanitation drive of government of India) in its newer version with school sanitation as priority. On the water policy draft the government of India also asked for suggestions from people, where questions are being raised regarding the deliberate inclusion of ‘business’ of water in the policy; given that water has two dimensions in India – the first one it’s a state subject and the other one has been declared as basic ‘right’. Doubts have been raised about the intention of government (policy makers and agencies) in the provision of water for industrial operations, hydropower projects and water businesses, and its judicious allocation in agriculture and drinking purposes.

While the present draft water policy document contains some inclusive provisions, there are speculations related to the implementation, monitoring and coordinated efforts in the direction of laid down provisions. On rural sanitation front where India could hardly reach to a figure of 40 percent coverage, the responsible ministry is in a mood to increase the provisions of subsidy and removing the divide of APL (Above Poverty Line) and BPL (Below Poverty Line), and village as a unit to have full sanitation coverage by 2022. There are issues related to actual coverage and about the fate of Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP: a token of monitory appreciation to a Gram Panchayat or village Government by the Government of India annually) awardee Panchayat’s include some Panchyayats who are still are practicing open defecation, and households despite already getting subsidy. How good the provisions of increased subsidy will work by including other provisions needs to be seen closely. The scenario now (in most) is such that in case an agency or monitor wants to visit an NGP Panchayat (which already got a prize) to see the status of sanitation, that Panchayat needs a managed show to show everything is alright.

It has also been learnt that after 60 years of independence and huge financing in water and sanitation sector by Government of India and outside agencies there are no adequate and systematic provisions for process, progress and post project monitoring for the water and sanitation infrastructure as such. In a scenario where the Government of India has many vertically running ministries and departments, there are a number projects and programmes running parallel in villages (supported by government and external agencies), leading to a disorder in terms of institutional functioning (governance), financial management and monitoring provisions.

As far as coordinated or integrated approach by the Rural Development Minister is concerned, he needs to consider that almost 20 years back the Planning commission of India clearly advised the government to restrict the numbers of programme to improve the quality of programme implementation and reduce fund mismanagement. That’s clearly remained the crux of the problem till now.

The disconnect and linkages between major rural development programmes, like MNREGA, SSA (Sarva Siksha Abhiyan- Education for All Programme), NRHM (National Rural Health Mission), National Rural Livelihood Mission, Indira Aawas Yojana (Rural Housing Scheme), TSC (Total Sanitation Campaign), Rural Water Supply Programme, Integrated Child Development Scheme, Land Reform programme, Horticulture Mission, etc. are among the few those certainly need a serious thought on three important premises of Institutional Coordination, Financing and Monitoring. If required the programmes could be reduced or merged together for better results. The provisions of dummy committees and monitoring bodies under the administrative control (of state and district authorities) need to be removed as many committees and monitoring bodies formed at the state and district levels don’t have adequate powers and control on the ongoing programmes.

If at all, these committees and bodies should function in transparent manner while giving sufficient importance to a practical and robust ‘social audit’ system at village level. To develop a programme /project or do a social audit in a rural development programme there should be adequate provisions for open discussion and debate, after which only the approval could be sent to the district or state level bodies for their action (mainly for technical support and release funds).  Minimum powers should be given to the block or district administration, which has already been proved one of the main channels of siphoning money from rural development programme and also responsible for poor implementation.

Therefore, while devising new policies or revising the existing policies and plans, the poor and marginalized rural people of India want the reassured guarantee that they at first hand are involved in the process and discourse of development. This applies to all major sectors like water, agriculture, education, sanitation, land development, forest, livelihood, and housing, among others. The bureaucratic system that still enjoys (and deliberately wants) the top-down approach needs a serious push in terms of giving more powers at the bottom of the pyramid (to the people) in planning, managing and auditing their progress in a systematic and planned way. And this systematization and planning can only come when we empower and develop their (people’s) capacity at a level, where they could lead the scene. In this way not only government agencies, we need to also consider the institutional functioning of businesses, civil society groups and international agencies working in India in rural development sector all across.

Therefore, simply the revisions in policies will do nothing. What are required are efforts in institutional reform and giving importance to social auditing by giving more powers to the people and local representatives.

AUTHOR: K. N. Vajpai
URL: http://vajpai.org and http://chimalaya.org
E-MAIL: knvajpai [at] climatehimalaya.net

Every year, the world’s urban population increases by about 60 million.  Over half the global population, including more than a billion children, currently reside in urban areas, and by 2050, 7 in 10 people will live in cities and towns.  The State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an Urban World therefore calls for greater emphasis on identifying and meeting the needs of urban children.

Children in urban areas are more likely to survive their early years and, on average, benefit from better health and education, than their rural counterparts. However, according to UNICEF, the gap between the rich and the poor is often more pronounced in cities, creating a greater disparity in basic needs and rights.  According to UNICEF, while many children are able to enjoy the advantages of urban life, including access to education, medical and recreational facilities, far too many are not.  Many children are denied basic essentials such as clean water, electricity and health care, despite their proximity to these services. Too many are forced into dangerous and exploitative work instead of being able to attend school. And too many face a constant threat of eviction, although they already live under the most challenging conditions – in ramshackle dwellings and overcrowded settlements that are highly vulnerable to disease and disaster.  According to UNICEF, one in three city dwellers lives in slums, while in Africa the proportion increases to six in ten.

Challenges Faced by Urban Children:

• Insufficient access to water and sanitation (mostly due to the rising cost of water in slums)
• Growing hunger and malnutrition rates
• Heightened risk of road traffic injuries
• Inadequate shelter (homes made from flimsy materials and unsanitary conditions)
• Mounting risks of respiratory illness, asthma and lead poisoning
• Risk child trafficking for sex and labor and becoming victims of violence

Birth Registration

In addition to all of these challenges, UNICEF asserts that many children living in urban poverty aren’t registered at birth, making them virtually invisible to lawmakers, which only compounds the above-listed risks and limits their access to aid and resources.  Without birth registration, children are not recognized by the state and are without an official identity- in legal terms they do not exist. Without document to provide proof of their age or who they are, children are likely to be discriminated against and denied access to basic services such as health and education.  Children without birth registration are also at an even greater risk for exploitation and trafficking. According to UNICEF, over one-third of children in urban slum areas are unregistered at birth. This number rises to half of all children in urban parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

Sanitation and Nutrition

The State of the World’s Children 2012 report highlights that while children are growing up in close proximity to modern facilities and basic services, many remain without access to electricity and clean water. They are also at high risk of contracting diseases due to unsanitary conditions, as well as suffering from malnutrition, all of which impede children’s full development.  Overcrowding and unsanitary conditions facilitate transmission of diseases, most notably pneumonia and diarrhea, the two leading killers of children under the age of five worldwide. According to the report, “outbreaks of measles, tuberculosis and other vaccine-preventable diseases are also more frequent in these areas, where population density is high and immunization levels are low.”  While global vaccine coverage continues to increase, the report warns that it remains low in areas such as slums and informal settlements.

The report also states that children who live in slums face hunger and malnutrition. Poor nutrition is responsible for more than a third of deaths globally for children under the age of five.  “Those children who receive the sufficient calories for their daily activities are also at great risk and can suffer the ‘hidden hunger’ of micronutrient malnutrition,” the report warns.  As I wrote in the recent post, 500 Million Children at Risk of Malnutrition, often families are uneducated on the effects of nutrition as a whole and issues such as exclusive breast feeding for the first six months and feeding their children from the basic food groups. Children are not always undernourished due to extreme poverty; how often or how much they are fed also plays a significant factor.

Disparities in Education

It is true that cities on the average provide better schools and those children in urban areas have better educational opportunities than those in rural areas.  However, urban areas are also prone to some of the greatest disparities; children in slums and informal settlements, migrant children and children working on the streets are  rarely placed into school or given a quality education.

The education gap in urban areas is often equal or greater than that  in rural areas. For example, Benin and Venezuela have a 20% higher gap in education between the richest and poorest in urban over rural areas, according to the report, which based its findings on the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education analysis in the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report.  “ Especially in slums, where public education options are scarce, families face a choice between paying for their children to attend overcrowded private schools of poor quality or withdrawing their children from school altogether.“ Even when schooling is free, ancillary expenses – uniforms, classroom supplies or exam fees, for example – are often high enough to prevent children from attending school.  Excluding children in slums not only robs them of the chance to reach their full potential, it robs their societies of the economic benefits of having a well-educated, healthy urban population”, said UNICEF’s executive director, Anthony Lake.

Without education, many children go on to work in the streets or join criminal gangs, which offer the promise of financial rewards and a sense of belonging, the report states.

Key Recommendations of the Report
According to UNICEF, as the numbers of children growing up in urban areas continues to rise, we must ensure that they have access to the rights and opportunities they need to realize their  potential. Urgent action must be taken to:

• Better understand the scale and nature of poverty and exclusion affecting children in urban areas
• Identify and remove the barriers to inclusion
• Ensure that urban planning, infrastructure development, service delivery and broader efforts to reduce poverty and inequality meet the particular needs and priorities of children
• Promote partnership between all levels of government and the urban poor – especially children and young people
• Pool the resources and energies of international, national, municipal and community actors in support of efforts to ensure that marginalized and impoverished children enjoy their full rights

As urbanization continues to grow we must invest in children residing in urban areas, especially those in slum dwellings, to ensure their fundamental rights and respond to their basic needs.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org

In a year of record high global food prices, child malnutrition has only increased and could hurt the progress made in recent years towards reducing the number of nutrition-related child deaths.   According to Save the Children chief executive Justin Forsyth, ”the world has made dramatic progress in reducing child deaths, down from 12 to 7.6 million, but this momentum will stall if we fail to tackle malnutrition” (BBC).  A 2008 series of reports by The Lancet: Maternal and Child Undernutrition, showed that over 1/3rd of childhood deaths, and 11% of diseases worldwide, are directly caused by maternal and child malnutrition.   Therefore it is clear that the global community and individual states must act to see that the needs of 500 million children are met, and end this crisis before the lives of more children are lost and the stability of future communities further declines.

In order to end undernourishment in children, we must also focus heavily on prenatal and postnatal care and nutrition for mothers, as this is the starting point for a lifetime of undernourishment and disease or a lifetime of health and prosperity. Often mothers are unaware of how their nutrition and health can affect the life of their unborn child thus prenatal education and nutrition programs are a major key to continued progress.   However, nutritional education cannot end there. Often families are uneducated on the effects of nutrition as a whole and issues such as exclusive breast feeding for the first six months and feeding their children from the basic food. Children are not always undernourished due to extreme poverty; how often or much they are fed also plays a significant factor.  In a recent report on Madagascar, the country’s high rates of stunting were shown to have been heavily impacted by harmful feeding practices.  The  2008-09 Madagascar Demographic Health Survey found that half of all Malagasy children under five are stunted, the sixth highest rate of stunting in the world, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).   “We found that the highest occurrence of stunting is not among the very poor, as they eat the vegetables that they grow instead of selling them, and these are rich in nutrients. The worst cases are those who can afford white rice,” said UNICEF nutrition expert Amal Bennaim (IRIN).   However, rice-based diets were often accompanied by other harmful feeding practices such as supplementing breast milk with tea or coffee and a failure to feed children enough, or often enough, during the course of the day, as well as ensuring they are drinking adequate amounts of clean water.

Country specific plans to educate, prevent and treat undernourishment and all malnutrition related issues must be put into place. Nonetheless the fight to end hunger is not one based merely on food, it is one based on sustainability and nutrition, and therefore we cannot merely send food aid in an effort to solve this problem. While food aid is seen as an immediate need, it cannot be the end of the solution if we are to find sustainable ways out of poverty. Thus feeding programs alone are not enough, political will combined with agricultural investments, community education and training programs must follow, especially in regards to small scale farming programs, if we are to see a significant drop in malnutrition in these countries.

AUTHOR: Cassandra Clifford
URL: www.bridgetofreedomfoundation.org and http://children.foreignpolicyblogs.com
E-MAIL: Cassandra [at] btff.org