Archive Posts

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) will move a step closer to the realisation of its poll promise to promulgate a food security law if the Planning Commission, as is expected, conditionally approves the findings of the poverty panel report estimating the number of poor in the country at its meeting on Saturday.In preparation, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia met senior government officials and some members of the Planning Commission on Friday.

"It was a fruitful meeting and we will meet again on Tuesday (April 20),” Ahluwalia said. “We will give the empowered group of ministers (eGoM) some options to chose from and then we will also be doing costing associated with different options.”.

According to a person familiar with the development, but who did not wish to be identified, the Planning Commission will only conditionally accept the Tendulkar report. That is, the estimates for poverty can be used for the food security bill, but will not be employed while effecting government spending on anti-poverty programmes. “In effect this means there will be two estimates of poverty,” the same person said.

Read the complete story

That 22 percent increase in the number of Minnesota's homeless counted by Wilder Research and reported last week is disturbing, haunting even. Consider: the spike occurred in only three years and likely will be adjusted upwards. Thinking about that, I remembered a group I'd heard of but knew little about called A Minnesota Without Poverty.

Turns out that the group started in a church pew. Now it's what director Nancy Maeker calls a "movement" making waves in the Legislature. It was also the impetus for the bipartisan Legislative Commission to End Poverty in Minnesota by 2020.

The state's highest concentration of children living in poverty reside in Southern Colorado. According to the 2010 Kids Count study released Tuesday by the Colorado Children's Campaign, a swath of childhood poverty cuts from the San Luis Valley to the Kansas line, bordered to the north by Pueblo County.

In that poverty patch, between 31 and 44 percent of children live in poverty in six counties. In seven more counties, including Pueblo, between 20 and 30 percent of the children live in poverty.   Statewide, the rate of children being reared in poverty is rising. The rate is growing most rapidly in the Denver suburbs.

Since 2000, the number of children living in poverty  with household incomes around $22,000 for families of four  has grown faster in Colorado than in any other state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of children living under those circumstances in Colorado grew by 72 percent — or 75,000 children — between 2000 and 2008.

Read the complete story

Poverty compelled parents to leave a year and half old female child in the local hospital of Karachi that was taken to Edhi Center.

"We received the report that in Sindh government hospital situated in Korangi no: 5, a year and half old female child was left by unknown person.

I went to the hospital and took possession of the child," told Abdul Sattar Edhi, head of Edhi Foundation. He said that now female child was.

In Edhi Center along with other children. Poverty has made it difficult for the poor people to make both ends meet easily.

Oppressed by war and poverty for generations, the Sudanese have struggled with terrible hardships. But the people of this vast country have a narrow window of hope to achieve progress by ridding both their nation and the world of a horrible disease forever.

With support from The Carter Center and others in one small targeted area where cases remain, Sudan - the last stand for Guinea worm disease - could quickly eliminate this parasitic infection contracted from contaminated drinking water.

Guinea worm victims endure the horror of a thin worm, up to 3 feet (1 meter) long, emerging slowly through a burning blister in their skin over the course of about a month after the parasite has incubated inside them for a year. This can be stopped by educating people to filter all drinking water and to stay out of water sources when they have a worm emerging to keep it from discharging new larvae back into the water.

The United Nations Children’s Fund says 78 percent of Zimbabweans are “absolutely poor” and 55 percent of the population lives under the food poverty line. A UNICEF report entitled “Child-Sensitive Social Protection in Zimbabwe” said at least 6.6 million Zimbabweans cannot meet their basic needs and some 3.5 million children are chronically hungry. UNICEF Communications Chief Micaela Marques De Sousa said the report indicates widespread poverty in the country despite the gains achieved since the inclusive government was formed in 2009.

De Sousa told VOA Studio 7 reporter Gibbs Dube that there is urgent need for international organizations to pool resources to help Zimbabweans. “Relief agencies need to work closely with the government to tackle these high poverty levels,” she said. World Vision Zimbabwe Director Ellen Tagwireyi said the UNICEF report is on the mark as the country has an unemployment rate of at least 70 percent.

Baku, Fineko/abc.az. Today in Baku the World Bank has conducted public presentation of the report on assessment of living conditions in Azerbaijan. At the presentation Bank’s senior economist Lire Ersado claimed that when making the report it was estimated how earnings received by Azerbaijan in the process of development have impact on personal income and living conditions; portrait of poverty in the country; goals and efficiency of state social policy.

The main result of the overview was understanding that 2.5 million people were raised over poverty against the background of improvement of the quality of life,” Ersado said. The survey was conducted in 2008 by the Bank and the State Statistics Committee on the basis of a poll of private households.

Read the complete story

More than a third of Afghans are living in abject poverty, as those in power are more concerned about addressing their vested interests rather than the basic needs of the population, a United Nations report said Tuesday.

"Abuse of power is a key driver of poverty in Afghanistan. Vested interests frequently shape the public agenda, whether in relation to the law, policy or the allocation of resources," said the report compiled by the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In the scathing report, the office said that the government is "often unable to deliver basic services such as security, food or shelter" and that rampant corruption added a further challenge to overcoming poverty in the country.

Read the complete story

The Haiti earthquake offers an opportunity to improve the protection of children in a country where they have been routinely abandoned, trafficked and exploited, a senior United Nations official said this week. Susan Bissell, head of child protection at UN children's fund UNICEF said increased attention and funding for Haiti could help transform a troubling landscape for children in the impoverished country.

She pointed to the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia's Aceh province as evidence that an emergency can be used as a launch pad for a better child protection system. "We've seen systems strengthened in countries where they were weak before," Bissell said in an interview. "I think it is possible (in Haiti)."

Read the complete story

Pledges worth $5.3 billion were promised Wednesday during an international donors conference held at the United Nations, surpassing expectations, which had hoped for $4 billion. The $5.3 billion will cover reconstruction activities for the next two years in Haiti. The international community pledged a total of $9.9 billion, and the remaining $4.6 billion will come into play after the first reconstruction phase ends. Ban Ki-Moon, head of the United Nations, applauded the donations at a closing press conference, saying.

"The international community has acted unanimously and for the long term. This is the down payment Haiti needs for its wholesale national renewal. It is the way to building back better." Speaking at the fund raising conference Wednesday, Haiti's President Rene Preval appealed to the world saying     "Let us dream of a new Haiti whose fate lies in a new project for a society without exclusion, which has overcome hunger, in which all have access to secure shelter ... (and their) health needs provided."

Haiti aims to become an "emerging country" by 2030, and the IMF seems to think this is possible. The IMF said that Haiti's economy could grow at a decent annual rate, with help from the world. The damage, said Haiti in its reconstruction plan, is colossal.

Read the complete story