Tag Archives: Poverty

Fire destroys shelters for internally displaced Muslims in Myanmar

Boys stand among debris after fire destroyed shelters at a camp for internally displaced Rohingya Muslims in the western Rakhine State near Sittwe

YANGON (Reuters) – A fire broke out on Tuesday in a camp for internally displaced Muslims in Myanmar’s Rakhine State, destroying shelters where about 2,000 people had lived and injuring about 14 of them, the United Nations said.

Camps in the area largely house members of the marginalized Rohingya Muslim minority, who were displaced by fighting between Buddhists and Muslims in 2012.

The fire at the Baw Du Pha 2 camp near the state capital of Sittwe started in the morning. Authorities were investigating the cause but initial reports indicated it was an accident from a cooking fire, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

“Based on the current information available, at least 14 people were injured by the fire. There are unconfirmed reports of fatalities but this has not been verified,” it said.

The fire destroyed about 44 “long houses” and damaged up to nine, affecting 440 households, or about 2,00 people, it said.

Authorities in the area were not immediately available for comment.

Myanmar’s Rohingya population is stateless and thousands of them have fled persecution and poverty, often by boat to other parts of Southeast Asia.

Some 125,000 Rohingya remain displaced and face severe travel restrictions while living in camps.

(Reporting by Timothy Mclaughlin; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Canada sounds alarm over aboriginal teenage suicide epidemic

File photo of a tattered Canadian flag flying over a teepee in Attawapiskat Ontario

By Rod Nickel

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) – Canada’s parliament will meet in emergency session on Tuesday night over a rash of suicide attempts by aboriginal teenagers in a remote, poverty-stricken community whose people feel isolated from the rest of the world.

Over the past weekend alone, 11 people of the Attawapiskat First Nation in Ontario tried to kill themselves, then a second group was brought to hospital Monday night after suicide attempts, prompting Chief Bruce Shisheesh to declare a state of emergency.

An 11-year-old child was in each of the groups treated over the past few days and the attempts follow a total of 28 attempted suicides in the month of March, some of them adults, health officials said.

The reasons for people trying to end their lives are varied but Attawapiskat leaders point to an underlying despondency and pessimism among their people as well as an increasing number of prescription drug overdoses since December.

Living in isolated communities with chronic unemployment and crowded housing, some young aboriginals lack clean water but have easy Internet access, giving them a glimpse of affluence in the rest of Canada.

“We feel isolated – we don’t feel part of the rest of the world,” said Grand Chief Sheila North Wilson of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak, who represents 30 aboriginal communities. “The basic needs are astronomical.”

Canada’s 1.4 million aboriginals, who make up about four percent of the population, have a lower life expectancy than other Canadians and are more often victims of violent crime. The problems plaguing aboriginals gained prominence in January when a gunman killed four people in La Loche, Saskatchewan.

Since December, Attawapiskat has seen a rash of prescription drug overdoses sending youth to hospital in “a fairly new phenomenon,” said Deborah Hill, vice-president of patient care at Weeneebayko Area Health Authority, whose region includes the community. Seven youth overdosed together on Saturday.

“An individual attempt at suicide is bad enough itself, but if there seems to be a group thing, it’s even more cause for alarm,” said National Chief Perry Bellegarde of the Assembly of First Nations, Canada’s main aboriginal political group.

In Attawapiskat, a community of 2,000 people located near a diamond mine, this weekend’s state of emergency was the fifth since 2006. The community has previously sounded the alarm over flooding and raw sewage issues, poor drinking water and a housing crisis.

Resident Jackie Hookimaw-Witt, whose teenage niece committed suicide last autumn, said it was the third attempt for one 13-year-old girl who survived on Saturday. She said the girl had been challenged to kill herself on social media.

The emergency parliamentary session was requested by New Democrat legislator Charlie Angus whose constituency includes Attawapiskat. Angus is demanding Ottawa do more “to end this cycle of crisis and death among young people”.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who called this weekend’s suicide attempts “heartbreaking”, took power last year promising to tackle high levels of poverty, bad housing and poor health among aboriginal residents and promised a new “nation-to-nation relationship”.

Last month, Canada said it would spend an extra C$8.37 billion over five years to help the aboriginal population deal with dire living conditions.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Sharp and Ethan Lou in Toronto and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; editing by Amran Abocar and Grant McCool)

World Bank says Russia crisis to send poverty to highest in decade

Russian Money in Register

By Alexander Winning

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian poverty rates will return to 2007 levels this year as the economy continues to contract and inflation reduces people’s purchasing power, the World Bank said on Wednesday.

The international lender’s comments add to the view that it is ordinary Russians who have borne the brunt of the country’s economic crisis, as the blow for many firms has been cushioned by the weaker rouble and state aid.

The number of poor people in Russia will rise to more than 20 million out of a population of over 140 million, the World Bank said, the largest increase in poverty since the 1998-99 crisis that included a sovereign debt default.

Birgit Hansl, lead Russia economist for the World Bank, said the government would find it difficult to combat rising poverty because of a sharp fall in budget revenues stemming from the oil price collapse. Global prices for oil, Russia’s main export, have fallen to under $40 per barrel from over $115 in June 2014, while the economy has also been hit by Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s role in the Ukraine crisis.

“It’s clear the fiscal space is very small to continue with social expenditure increases,” Hansl told a news conference.

Among ways to help ease poverty, she said social expenditure could be better targeted, including by means testing.

Mikhail Matytsin, a World Bank poverty economist, said the crisis had also driven a dramatic shift in consumption patterns.

The World Bank sees private consumption falling by 3 percent in 2016 in Russia after a decline of over 9 percent in 2015, a far sharper slump than during the 2008-09 global financial crisis.

“This is a new adjustment to the (economic) shock,” Matytsin said, saying households had cut back most on durable goods such as cars and domestic appliances.

The World Bank now sees private consumption recovering only very modestly and stabilizing at growth levels of around 2 percent from 2018. Before the latest economic downturn, private consumption in Russia had been rising at around 6 percent each year, Hansl said.

In its latest Russia economic report, the World Bank downgraded its growth forecasts to a contraction in gross domestic product of 1.9 percent this year and tepid growth of 1.1 percent in 2017.

It previously saw a contraction of 0.7 percent in 2016 and growth of 1.3 percent in 2017. It said its weaker forecasts reflected its new assumption that the oil price would average $37 a barrel in 2016, rather than the $49 forecast previously.

The World Bank said serious structural reforms, which it has long said are needed to ensure sustainable economic growth in Russia, were not likely before the 2018 presidential election.

(Editing by Jason Bush and Catherine Evans)

Threat Posed to Food Supplies in Future According to World Bank

As many as 100 million people could slide into extreme poverty because of rising temperatures, which are caused by greenhouse gas emissions, the World Bank report said. The bank’s most recent estimate puts the number of people living in extreme poverty this year at 702 million, or 9.6% of the world’s population.

The report “Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty”  shows that climate change is an acute threat to poorer people across the world, with the power to push more than 100 million people back into poverty over the next fifteen years.   It also reports that the poorest regions of the world such as the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia will be hardest hit and could push more than 100 million people into extreme poverty by 2030 by disrupting agriculture and fueling the spread of malaria and other diseases.

Despite pledges to rein in emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming gases, climate change isn’t likely to stop anytime soon. Carbon emissions are expected to rise for many years as China, India and other developing countries expand the use of fossil fuels to power their economies.

The report points a way out by stressing that the world needs to take targeting action to help people cope with climate shocks, issue warning systems and flood protection and introduce heat-resistant crops.  

This year, a series of high-profile meetings took place, creating a sense of gathering cooperation around the battle against global warming. A vital step was the adoption of the global goals, which set a 2030 deadline for the eradication of poverty in all its forms and sought to galvanise action to combat climate change and its impacts at the UN general assembly in September.

More Children in Poverty Now Than During Recession

A new report shows that more than one in five American children were living in poverty in 2013, the last year that complete data is available.

The number of children in poverty, 22%, is higher than in September 2010 when the New York Times said the Great Recession had brought poverty rates in the U.S. to their highest level in 15 years and greater than the 18% child poverty rate recorded in 2008.

The report also says that almost one-third of American children in 2013 lived in a home where no parent held a steady, full-time job.

The report says with only a “few exceptions”,  “nearly all of the measures that [it] track[s], African-American, American Indian and Latino children continued to experience negative outcomes at rates that were higher than the national average. Overall unemployment rates have fallen, but the unemployment rate for African-Americans is currently 11 percent — 2.4 percentage points higher than where it was prior to the economic crisis. Nearly 40 percent of African-American children live in poverty, compared to 14 percent of white children.”

“The fact that it’s happening is disturbing on lots of levels,” said Laura Speer, the associate director for policy reform and advocacy at the Casey Foundation, told USA Today. “Those kids often don’t have the access to the things they need to thrive.” The foundation says its mission is to help low-income children in the U.S. by providing grants and advocating for policies that promote economic opportunity.”

Speer added their is hope for 2014 because the decline in the unemployment rate means more children in a home with at least one adult having stable employment.

300 Million Barefoot Children To Benefit From Latest Invention

The latest in footwear isn’t about style, but about longevity.

Inventor, Kenton Lee, has created a new shoe called Shoe That Grows, a shoe that can adjust its size as the wearer grows. The shoe can adjust both it’s length and width, giving it a size range from 5-12. It also lasts for at least five years.

The idea for the Shoe That Grows came to Lee when he noticed a small Kenyan girl with shoes that were too small.

According to the Shoe That Grows website, approximately 300 million children around the world are without shoes. They also state that 2 million people suffer from soil transmitted diseases.

The World Health Organization (WHO) reports that the most common infections are caused by different species of parasitic worms that live in the soil and affect the most deprived communities.

Because International, the company behind Shoe That Grows, is currently distributing the adjustable shoes around the world with the help of partner organizations.

Children In Poverty In Baltimore Worse Off Than Third World Children

A provocative new study shows that teenagers living in East Baltimore face many of the same living conditions as children living in third world countries.

The “WAVE” study, a global research project examining the well-being of children between 15 and 19-years-old, focuses on what is considered “vulnerable” environments around the world.  The study looked at Ibadan, Nigeria; Johannesburg, South Africa; New Delhi, India; Shanghai, China and Baltimore Maryland.

Factors studied included physical environment,  social cohesion and how often they are exposed to violence in their community.

The study showed that in all five cities the teens were exposed to unsanitary conditions such as trash piled in the street, abandoned buildings infested with rats and used drug paraphernalia in fields and yards.

However, teens in Baltimore and Johannesburg, which are considered “wealthy” cities, consider their living conditions to be negative and had worse outcomes when it came to health issues.

Baltimore was worst in the list of cities when it came to social cohesion and was not best rated in any category.

48 Million Americans In Poverty

The U.S. Census Bureau released a report Thursday showing that 48 million Americans are living in poverty.

The report says that despite government programs that help the poor, even 16% of children are still living in poverty.

The report from the Census Bureau is different than the standard report because it takes into account living conditions when considering who is in poverty.  So while the official national poverty line is $23,283 for a family of four, in major cities the measure could be $30,000 or more.

California’s poverty rate under the new stat review is 23.4%, meaning almost 1 in 4 Californians can’t afford to live in that state’s high costs of living.  New York, Florida and 10 other states had increases in their poverty numbers with the new measure.

The biggest factor putting people into poverty is medical bills according to the report.

President Obama To Meet With Pope Francis

The White House has announced the President Obama will hold his first meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican in March.

The President is conducting a trip to Europe in late March and will meet with the Pope on March 27th.

“The President looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality,” the White House statement said.

The President quoted the Pope during speeches speaking about the income equality problems in the United States.

Red Cross Makes Public Appeal For Spain As IMF Reports Dire Financial News

The Red Cross is making an appeal across Spain to help families who have been devastated by the economic crisis. The Red Cross mainly helped immigrants until this year but because one in four adults are unable to find jobs many Spanish families are now relying on food handouts.

The Spanish Red Cross is also claiming the dire economic situation is causing rising levels of inequality that will lead to social unrest. Continue reading →