Poor nations vow low-carbon path, By Richard Black, November 11, 2009, BBC News: “Poor countries considered vulnerable to climate change have pledged to embark on moves to a low-carbon future, and challenge richer states to match them. The declaration from the first meeting of a new 11-nation forum calls on rich countries to give 1.5% of their GDP for climate action in the developing world. It also calls for much tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The forum was established by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed to highlight the climate ‘threat’ to poor nations. The declaration contends that man-made climate change poses an ‘existential threat to our nations, our cultures and to our way of life, and thereby undermines the internationally protected human rights of our people…’”

• Poor nutrition ’stunting growth’, By Nick Triggle, November 11, 2009, BBC News: “Poor child nutrition still causes major problems in the developing world - despite some progress, experts say. A third of deaths in children under five in those countries are linked to poor diet, a report by Unicef suggests. It also reveals 195m children - one in three - have stunted growth, even though rates have fallen since 1990. Unicef said the number of underweight children also remained high, with many countries struggling to hit official targets to halve the figures. An estimated 129m children are underweight…”
• 200 million children under age 5 are starving, By Ariel David and Maria Cheng (AP), November 12, 2009, Halifax Chronicle Herald: “Nearly 200 million children in poor countries have stunted growth because of insufficient nutrition, according to a new report published by UNICEF Wednesday before a three-day international summit on the problem of world hunger. The head of a UN food agency called on the world to join him in a day of fasting ahead of the summit to highlight the plight of a billion hungry people. Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said he hoped the fast would encourage action by world leaders who will take part in the meeting at his agency’s headquarters starting Monday. The UN Children’s Fund published a report saying that nearly 200 million children under five in poor countries were stunted by a lack of nutrients in their food…”

Aid freeze in post-coup Honduras hurting poor, By Robin Emmott, November 12, 2009, Washington Post: “Poor Hondurans are going hungry and their sick children cannot obtain medicines as donors cut aid to the country following a June coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, doctors and aid workers say. Soup kitchens have closed, medicines have become scarce, foreign doctors have canceled trips to Honduras and funding for the poor to run small businesses have dried up, increasing unemployment. With Honduras already suffering from the global economic crisis, international development banks, the European Union and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close Zelaya ally, froze donor programs after the army-backed coup on June 28…”

• Persistent poverty in Northern Ireland ‘twice that of Great Britain’, November 12, 2009, Belfast Telegraph: “The level of persistent poverty in Northern Ireland children is more than double that of those in Great Britain, it was revealed today. High levels of unemployment, disability, lower wages and poor quality part-time jobs were to blame, a study for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) discovered. A fifth of families in Northern Ireland experienced persistent poverty compared to a tenth in Great Britain in recent years. Julia Unwin, chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, called for action by the Assembly…”
• NI has worst child poverty in UK, November 12, 2009, BBC News: “The level of persistent child poverty in Northern Ireland is more than double that of the rest of the United Kingdom, new research has found. The study, by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, found that high levels of unemployment, disability and poor quality part-time jobs were to blame. The charity defines poverty as the experience of a family with an income which is 60% below the UK average…”

• Unemployment tops 10 percent again _ and it’s tougher off the job than a generation ago, By Jeannine Aversa (AP), November 7, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “It hurts more to be unemployed now than the last time the jobless rate hit 10 percent. Americans have more than triple the debt they had in 1982, and less than half the savings. They spend 10 weeks longer off the job. And a bigger share of them have no health insurance, leaving them one medical emergency away from financial ruin. For these reasons, the unemployed are more vulnerable today to foreclosure and bankruptcy than they were a generation ago…”
• Debt levels leave low paid at risk of homelessness, By Nick Mathiason, November 11, 2009, The Guardian: “Britain’s 14.3 million low earners are in danger of being sucked into a whirlpool of poverty as official figures are expected to show today that the number of unemployed has passed through 2.5 million for the first time in 15 years. Research by the insurance tycoon Clive Cowdery’s thinktank, Resolution Foundation, shows low-income households - with an average of £15,800 at their disposal - are walking an increasingly precarious financial tightrope. It has found that 24% of low-wage households spend more than a quarter of their monthly income on debt - twice the number from three years ago. The study shows nearly a third of low-income households have high loan-to-value mortgages and are in negative equity, making them vulnerable to homelessness if they lose their job…”

Children slipping back into poverty, By Rachel Williams, November 3, 2009, The Guardian: “Children in affluent areas are sinking into poverty after a third of the gains made over the last eleven years in getting families into work were wiped out in just 12 months, a new study warned today. One in five - two million - British children now live in households where neither parent has a job, a rise of 170,000 since 2008, the Campaign to End Child Poverty said. If unemployment continued to rise as forecast, the number could return to levels of a decade ago, when Tony Blair made his flagship pledge to eradicate child poverty by 2020 and halve it by 2010. The number of children in jobless households, two thirds of whom face poverty, had fallen by a half a million - nearly a quarter - between 1997 and 2008…”

• Report: 1 in 4 Israelis poor, By Yael Branovsky, November 2, 2009, Ynetnews: “The beginning of the financial crisis did not affect the figures of poverty in Israel, which remained almost unchanged last year, according to the National Insurance Institute’s Poverty Report for 2008. Nonetheless, the data published Monday point to an extremely grim picture: There are 1,651,300 needy people living in Israel, including 783,600 children. The percentage of poor people in Israel dropped slightly to 23.7%. In other words, one in four Israelis is defined as needy. According to NII officials, the financial crisis’ influence, which was partly seen in the second half of 2008, compensated for the rise in income in the first half of the year. The results of the crisis erased the improvement in the dimensions of poverty among families and children. However, many families are now above the poverty line, thanks to allowances they are receiving…”
• Number of working poor grows, By Shay Niv, November 2, 2009, Globes: “The beginnings of a fall in the rate of poverty in Israel seen in the second half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 were wiped out in the second half of 2008, because of the economic crisis. This emerges from the 2008 Poverty Report, released by the National Insurance Institute of Israel today. The dimensions of poverty in 2008 were the same as in 2007, placing Israel at the head of the ladder of developed countries with especially high rates of poverty, alongside the US and Mexico. According to the data, 420,000 Israeli families lived in poverty in 2008. Poverty affected 1.65 million people, 783,000 of them children. In other words, one in every three Israeli children is poor…”

• Ethiopia appeals for international aid 25 years on, By Tom Pettifor, October 23, 2009, The Mirror: “It’s been a quarter of a century since the Ethiopian famine which shocked the world - and history could be about to repeat itself. The government of Ethiopia, a country in the grip of a five-year drought, yesterday asked the international community for emergency aid to feed 6.2 million. The request came at a meeting of donors to discuss the impact of the drought, affecting parts of East Africa. The UN’s World Food Programme said £173million will be needed in the next six months and some aid officials say the numbers of hungry could rise. But an Oxfam report to mark the 25th anniversary of the 1984 famine - Band Aids and Beyond - warns that drought will be the norm there for the next 25 years. And it called for a new approach to tackling the risk of disaster in the country…”
• Is U.S. food aid contributing to Africa’s hunger?, By Dana Hughes, October 29, 2009, ABC News: “Drought-stricken Ethiopia is pleading for food aid again to stave off starvation, but some critics are complaining that the policies of the country’s most generous donor, the United States, is exacerbating the cycle of starvation. A hungry Ethiopia gets 70 percent of its aid from the U.S., but according to a new report by the aid organization Oxfam International, that help comes at a cost. U.S. law requires that food aid money be spent on food grown in the U.S., at least half of it must be packed in the U.S. and most of it must be transported in U.S. ships. The Oxfam report, ‘Band Aids and Beyond,’ claims that is far more expensive and time consuming than buying food in the region…”
• Oxfam says Band-Aids insufficient, By Peter Goodspeed, October 23, 2009, National Post: “Twenty-five years after Ethiopia suffered a staggering famine that killed more than one million people, the world has done little to prevent a recurrence of the tragedy. A new report by the international aid group Oxfam claims ‘the humanitarian response to drought and other disasters is still dominated by ‘Band-Aids,’ ‘ instead of finding ways to reduce the risks of recurring crisis…”

• Sweden does most to help world’s poor: study, By David Landes, October 22, 2009, The Local: “Sweden has the best foreign aid policies among the world’s wealthy countries, according to a new ranking. Sweden edged out Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway to claim the top spot in the 2009 Commitment to Development Index (CDI), an annual ranking compiled by the Center for Global Development (CGD), a Washington, DC-based think tank…”
• Ireland ranked sixth in helping poor countries, By Kitty Holland, October 23, 2009, Irish Times: “Ireland has been ranked sixth out of 22 rich countries for its record on helping poor and developing countries by a Washington-based think-tank. The Irish State was, however, criticised by the Centre for Global Development (CGD) for the barriers it puts up to trade in agricultural products from poor countries and its record on investment in technological creation…”
• Canada 11th of 22 in battling poverty, By Olivia Ward, October 23, 2009, Toronto Star: “When it comes to battling world poverty, some of the wealthiest countries, including Canada, are punching below their weight, says a new report from an international think-tank. In the Commitment to Development Index released this week by the Center for Global Development, Canada rates 11th of the 22 richest countries. But the Washington-based organization found that ‘among the G7 countries - those that matter most by dint of their economic power - only Canada squeezes into the top half.’ The index is an important reality check, the group says, because it tallies a wide range of policies that affect the daily lives of poor people in developing countries, going beyond handouts of money or goods…”

• Fuel poverty ‘continues to rise’, October 21, 2009, BBC News: “Up to 4.6 million households in England could be in fuel poverty in 2009, new figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show. The government has vowed to end fuel poverty in England by 2016. Fuel poverty is defined as those who spend more than 10% of their household income on heating their homes. The projection comes within data that reveals the number fuel-poor households in the UK rose from 3.5 million in 2006 to four million in 2007. The data, based on the latest figures for England and Scotland along with extrapolated estimates for Wales and Northern Ireland, suggest that 16% of all UK households were in fuel poverty in 2007…”
• Households in fuel poverty to hit 4.6m, By Sandra Haurant, October 21, 2009, The Guardian: “The number of households living in fuel poverty in England is likely to reach 4.6 million by the end of the year, figures published by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) showed today. A household is said to be “fuel poor” when more than 10% of its income is spent on fuel to maintain an “adequate level of warmth” - usually 21C in the living area and 18C in other rooms. The latest figures show that 3.25 million households in the UK lived in fuel poverty in 2007, an increase of half a million compared with 2006. In England 2.8 million households were fuel poor in 2007, up from 2.4 million in 2006. The DECC said the jump in fuel poverty was caused by an increase in fuel prices, which continued to soar in 2008…”

• Global hunger worsening, warns UN, October 14, 2009, BBC News: “Targets to cut the number of hungry people in the world will not be met without greater international effort, UN food agencies have warned. The UN’s annual report on global food security confirms that more than one billion people - a sixth of the world’s population - are undernourished. It says the number of hungry people was growing before the economic crisis, which has made the situation worse. The report comes ahead of World Food Day on Friday…”
• Feeding the world in years to come, By Nancy Greenleese, October 15, 2009, Deutche Welle: “By the year 2050, world population is likely to soar by more than 30 percent mainly in the developing world. There will be more mouths to feed but fewer farmers to grow the crops due to a mass exodus to urban areas. Those farmers are facing a bounty harvest of challenges: climate change, disappearing natural resources, spikes in food and energy prices. Putting foods in bowls, banana leafs or tin cups will therefore require ingenuity and support. As part of that quest, experts gathered in Rome earlier this week to brainstorm ways to feed the world in the next four decades…”
• UN: Record 1 billion go hungry, By Ariel David (AP), October 14, 2009, New York Times: “Parents in some of Africa’s poorest countries are cutting back on school, clothes and basic medical care just to give their children a meal once a day, experts say. Still, it is not enough. A record 1 billion people worldwide are hungry and a new report says the number will increase if governments do not spend more on agriculture. According to the U.N. food agency, which issued the report, 30 countries now require emergency aid, including 20 in Africa. The trend continues despite a goal set by world leaders nine years ago to cut the number of hungry people in half by 2015…”

• In rural Africa, a fertile market for mobile phones, By Sarah Arnquist, October 5, 2009, New York Times: “Laban Rutagumirwa charges his mobile phone with a car battery because his dirt-floor home deep in the remote, banana-covered hills of western Uganda does not have electricity. When the battery dies, Mr. Rutagumirwa, a 50-year-old farmer, walks just over four miles to charge it so he can maintain his position as communication hub and banana-disease tracker for his rural neighbors…”

• Special report on telecoms in emerging markets, By Tom Standage, September 24, 2009, The Economist:
  • Mobile marvels: “Bouncing a great-grandchild on her knee in her house in Bukaweka, a village in eastern Uganda, Mary Wokhwale gestures at her surroundings. ‘My mobile phone has been my livelihood,’ she says. In 2003 Ms Wokhwale was one of the first 15 women in Uganda to become ‘village phone’ operators. Thanks to a microfinance loan, she was able to buy a basic handset and a roof-mounted antenna to ensure a reliable signal…”
  • Eureka moments: “How did a device that just a few years ago was regarded as a yuppie plaything become, in the words of Jeffrey Sachs, a development guru at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, ‘the single most transformative tool for development’? A number of things came together to make mobile phones more accessible to poorer people and trigger the rapid growth of the past few years. The spread of mobile phones in the developed world, together with the emergence of two main technology standards, led to economies of scale in both network equipment and handsets…”
  • The mother of invention: “Providing mobile services in a developing country is very different from doing the same thing in the developed world. For a start, there may not be a reliable electrical grid, or indeed any grid at all, to power the network’s base stations, which may therefore need to run on diesel for some or all of the time. That in turn means they must be regularly resupplied with fuel, which can be tricky in remote areas. Then there is the challenge of running the network profitably…”
  • Up, up and Huawei: “In the 1960s, when Japan emerged as a manufacturing exporter, it soon became a byword for low cost and low quality. Much fun was made of unreliable Japanese watches and cheap Japanese cars. But quality improved and Japan became a powerful force in electronics, carmaking and other industries. Today Toyota is held up as a model of efficient manufacturing, and Japanese firms lead the world in clean technology, carmaking and consumer electronics. China hopes to make a similar transition…”
  • Beyond voice: “In a field just outside the village of Bumwambu in eastern Uganda, surrounded by banana trees and cassava, with chickens running between the mud-brick houses, Frederick Makawa is thinking about tomatoes. It is late June and the rainy season is coming to an end. Tomatoes are a valuable cash crop during the coming dry season and Mr Makawa wants to plant his seedlings as soon as possible. But Uganda’s traditional growing seasons are shifting, so he is worried about droughts or flash floods that could destroy his crop. Michael Gizamba, a local village-phone operator, offers to help using Farmer’s Friend, an agricultural-information service. He sends a text message to ask for a seasonal weather forecast for the region. Before long a reply arrives to say that normal, moderate rainfall is expected during July. Mr Makawa decides to plant his tomatoes…”
  • Finishing the job: “How long will it be before everyone on Earth has a mobile phone? ‘It looks highly likely that global mobile cellular teledensity will surpass 100% within the next decade, and probably earlier,’ says Hamadoun Touré, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, a body set up in 1865 to regulate international telecoms. Mobile teledensity (the number of phones per 100 people) went above 100% in western Europe in 2007, and many developing countries have since followed suit. South Africa passed the 100% mark in January, and Ghana reached 98% in the same month. Kenya and Tanzania are expected to get to 100% by 2013…”

• 40% of Israeli children at poverty risk, September 22, 2009, Ynetnews.com: “More and more Israelis are poor, hungry, and abstain from seeking medical attention for themselves. This is the bottom line of the report published Monday afternoon by the Central Bureau of Statistics in honor of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The report shows that 40% of children in Israel in 2007 were at poverty risk, as opposed to just 33% in 2001. Risk of poverty is defined as belonging to a household with a disposable income per capita less than 60% of the national median equalized disposable income…”
• Recession increasing gaps between rich and poor, By Ruth Eglash, September 22, 2009, Jerusalem Post: “The gaps between Israel’s rich and poor continued to grow throughout 2007, with more people than ever falling into poverty, a report published Monday by the Central Bureau of Statistics revealed. Released ahead of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which takes place on October 17, the report shows that some 40 percent of the country’s children were subjected to poverty-like conditions in 2007, and the socioeconomic gaps between Jewish and Arab populations and between the religious and secular have sharply increased in recent years…”

• A bad climate for development, September 17, 2009, The Economist: “In late April Mostafa Rokonuzzaman, a farmer in south-western Bangladesh, gave an impassioned speech at a public meeting in his village, complaining that climate change, freakish hot spells and failed rains were ruining his vegetables. He didn’t know the half of it. A month later Mr Rokonuzzaman was chest-deep in a flood that had swept away his house, farm and even the village where the meeting took place. Cyclone Aila (its effects pictured above) which caused the storm surge that breached the village’s flood barriers, was itself a plausible example of how climate change is wreaking devastation in poor countries. Most people in the West know that the poor world contributes to climate change, though the scale of its contribution still comes as a surprise. Poor and middle-income countries already account for just over half of total carbon emissions (see chart 1); Brazil produces more CO2 per head than Germany. The lifetime emissions from these countries’ planned power stations would match the world’s entire industrial pollution since 1850. Less often realised, though, is that global warming does far more damage to poor countries than they do to the climate…”
• 4.5 M kids worldwide in danger of dying, By Ellalyn De Vera, September 18, 2009, Manila Bulletin: “At least 4.5 million children worldwide are in danger of dying from the impacts of climate change unless world leaders agree to increase funds that will mitigate the effects of climate change, non-government aid agency Oxfam International said. Oxfam issued the statement during the launch of its report titled ‘Beyond Aid’ released Wednesday, in time for the United Nations Climate Summit in New York on Sept. 22. The meeting will be followed by the G20 Summit on Sept. 24, where climate finance will be high on the agenda…”

• Cash incentive program for poor families is renewed, By Julie Bosman, September 20, 2009, New York Times: “An experimental antipoverty program that pays poor families up to $5,000 a year for going to regular medical checkups, attending school and keeping jobs has been extended for a third year. Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, said she was encouraged by some early results in the education component of the program that showed students improved their attendance and passed more exams when they were rewarded with cash…”
• Latin America makes a dent in poverty with ‘conditional cash’ programs, By Tyler Bridges, September 21, 2009, Christian Science Monitor: “Denise de Oliveira lost her job as a janitor in June when she had to stay home to care for her 13-year-old son, who had pneumonia. The 45-year-old single mother of four has kept food on the table, however, thanks to a government program that pays her family $70 per month. ‘It doesn’t give you enough to buy everything you want, but it sure helps,’ said de Oliveira, who lives on a dirt street in this impoverished town on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Unlike traditional government handouts, however, this popular anti-poverty program, which has spread throughout Latin America and even to New York City, requires that de Oliveira’s children stay in school. The children also must have twice-a-year health exams and be vaccinated against diseases. The program goes by different names - Bolsa Familia (Family Fund) in Brazil and Oportunidades (Opportunities) in Mexico, the most populous countries it’s in - and has slightly different rules depending on the country. Analysts say it’s become the most successful anti-poverty program in years because it requires the poor to do something meaningful and measurable in exchange for government charity…”

• Global poverty rolls projected to surge, By Annys Shin, September 17, 2009, Washington Post: “The global recession is expected to push 89 million more people into extreme poverty by the end of 2010, the World Bank said Wednesday as it called on the leaders of the 20 largest economies to engage in ‘responsible globalization.’ Although economic data show that the worst recession of the post-World War II era might have ended in the United States, and global trade has begun to pick up, low-income countries are still reeling from the effects of a financial crisis created by their wealthier counterparts…”
• World Bank says don’t forget poor amid crisis, By Tom Barkley, September 17, 2009, Wall Street Journal: “Group of 20 nations emerging from recession shouldn’t forget poorer countries, which face funding needs of $11.6 billion just to maintain spending on basic services like health and education, the World Bank said Wednesday. In a report prepared for G-20 leaders meeting in Pittsburgh next week, the bank warned that the global crisis is poised to push an additional 89 million people into extreme poverty by the end of next year if additional help isn’t provided. ‘The poorest countries may not be well represented on the G-20, but we cannot ignore the long-term costs of the global downturn on their people’s health and education,’ World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a statement…”

High jobless rates could last years, O.E.C.D. warns, By Matthew Saltmarsh, September 16, 2009, New York Times: “Unless government programs for the unemployed are refined, there is a danger that high jobless rates will persist beyond 2010 in advanced economies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned on Wednesday. ‘A recovery may be in sight,’ the group said in its annual employment outlook, referring to economic output. ‘But the short-term employment outlook is grim.’ The international organization said that unemployment among its 30 member nations would rise to nearly 10 percent by the end of 2010, above its previous post-1970 peak of 7.5 percent during the second quarter of 1993. Disadvantaged groups, like youths and immigrants as well as low-skilled and temporary workers, will bear the brunt of the increase…”

E. Timor aid _ where did billions go?, By Anthony Deutsch (AP), September 7, 2009, Washington Post: “A decade after tiny East Timor broke from Indonesia and prompted one of the most expensive U.N.-led nation-building projects in history, there is little to show for the billions spent. The world has given more than $8.8 billion in assistance to East Timor since the vote for independence in 1999, according to figures compiled by The Associated Press from the U.N. and 46 donor countries and agencies. That works out to $8,000 for each of East Timor’s 1.1 million people, one of the highest per person rates of international aid. But little of the money, perhaps no more than a dollar of every 10, appears to have made it into East Timor’s economy. Instead, it goes toward foreign security forces, consultants and administration, among other things. In the meantime, data from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Food Program, U.N. Development Program and others show the money has done little to help the poor. In fact, poverty has increased. Roads are in disrepair, there is little access to clean water or health services, and the capital is littered with abandoned, burned-out buildings where the homeless squat…”

Japan’s economic downturn pushes more onto streets, By Peter Ford, September 3, 2009, Christian Science Monitor: “By the time the police arrived at 7 a.m. last Monday to move him on from the Ikebukuro subway station where he had spent the night, Isao Ito had been awake for some time. He had been poring over the jobs section of a magazine, and he hadn’t slept well anyway. Newly arrived in the capital in search of work, he said, ‘I haven’t eaten or slept for three days. I’m alone, and I’m nervous about sleeping rough.’ Welcome to the global recession, Japanese style. As Mr. Ito has just found, perhaps nowhere else in the industrialized world is it so easy to slip from just getting by to utter destitution. Some 460,000 people have lost their jobs in Japan since the ‘Lehman shokku,’ as people here call it - the day last September when the collapse of Lehman Bros. bank triggered a worldwide financial crisis. Half of them, like Ito, were on temporary or part-time contracts that gave them no unemployment or other social security insurance…”

Fighting blindness may prevent deaths in Ethiopia, By Carla K. Johnson (AP), September 1, 2009, Washington Post: “An antibiotic widely used in Africa to treat eyesight-robbing infections seems to help prevent Ethiopian children from dying of other diseases. A study in Wednesday’s Journal of the American Medical Association suggests an unintended benefit from efforts to wipe out trachoma, the world’s leading preventable cause of blindness. The World Health Organization has set 2020 as the target for eliminating trachoma. The United States has been free of the disease since the 1970s, but it persists in 48 countries. In Ethiopia, a hotbed, 40 percent of children under 10 show signs of active trachoma…”

• Child welfare: The nanny state, September 3, 2009, The Economist: “When the poet William Wordsworth declared that ‘the Child is father of the Man’, he meant that the gifts of childhood endow adults with some of their finest qualities. And many governments, these days, feel that the path to happiness for society as a whole lies through spending on the welfare of its youngest members: their health, education and general well-being. A report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a rich-country think-tank, scrutinises these efforts and asks if the aim is being achieved. With its stress on quantifiable facts, the spirit of the OECD report differs from one by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, in 2007 which made waves by saying children in Britain did badly. UNICEF relied too much on asking youngsters how they felt (did they have ‘kind and helpful’ schoolmates?); the new study stresses meatier things like vaccination and test scores…”
• Spending levels on single-parent benefits criticised, By Carl O’Brien, September 2, 2009, Irish Times: “The government has been criticised for spending considerable amounts on single-parent welfare benefits with little evidence that they influence the wellbeing of children. In a report comparing child welfare in 30 developed countries, the Paris-based International Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) said Ireland, along with a handful of other countries, was spending significant sums on lone parent benefits that last until children are well into their teens…”

• US fares poorly in OECD survey of childhood welfare, despite above-average spending, By Greg Keller (AP), September 1, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “America has some of the industrial world’s worst rates of infant mortality, teenage pregnancy and child poverty, even though it spends more per child than better-performing countries such as Switzerland, Japan and the Netherlands, a new survey indicates. The OECD, a Paris-based watchdog of industrialized nations, urged the United States to shift more of its public spending to its youngest children, under the age of six, to improve their health and educational performance. The report released Tuesday, ‘Doing Better for Children,’ marks the first time the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has reported on child well-being within its 30 member countries…”
• High spending fails to improve child welfare, says OECD report, By Owen Bowcott, September 1, 2009, The Guardian: “High public spending in the UK on child welfare and education is failing to deliver results, an international comparative study warns today. The report, by the Paris-based International Organisation for Economic Development (OECD), points out that Britain, although moderately well placed in the rankings, has relatively high rates of teenage pregnancy, drunkenness and young people not in education, employment or training (neets). The survey, entitled Doing Better for Children, suggests that globally girls do better than boys and that, while bullying is on the decline, children are smoking and drinking more…”

Some fear profit motive to trump poverty efforts in microfinance, By Matthew Saltmarsh and Cat Contiguglia, August 28, 2009, New York Times: “From a warehouse in this scruffy suburb outside Paris, Jacques Attali has been building what he calls the ‘McKinsey’ of the microfinance world, a one-stop consulting shop for the sector. A consummate French insider, Mr. Attali, a former banker and presidential advisor, has recruited big names as board members and advisors, including Bernard Kouchner, co-founder of the Nobel prize-winning Médecins Sans Frontières, now the French foreign minister; and Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel-winning founder of Grameen Bank, a pioneer in the field of microfinance. He has attracted a host of corporate partners, like SAP, the German software company, and BNP Paribas, the largest bank in France. The result - PlaNet Finance - now has a staff of 700, about 10 percent based in Saint-Ouen, active in more than 60 countries. Since 1998, it says it has provided help to 140,000 entrepreneurs and set up $80 million in financing. It also has an investment arm and offers technical assistance to donors and recipients. Some services, like ratings, have become benchmarks; others, like insurance, are less successful. The expansion illustrates just how microfinance - the providing of small business loans to individuals, usually in developing countries - has become big business. Companies like PlaNet Finance and BlueOrchard, based in Geneva, attract not only public investors, but private ones seeking a “double bottom line” of socially responsible returns…”

Millions in Nepal facing hunger as climate changes, By Binaj Gurubacharya (AP), August 28, 2009, Bradenton Herald: ” Millions of people in Nepal face severe food shortages because global climate change has disrupted weather patterns and slashed crop yields in the Himalayan nation, an international aid agency warned Friday. Changing weather patterns have dramatically affected crop production in Nepal, leaving farmers unable to properly feed themselves and pushing them into debt, Oxfam International said in a report released in Katmandu…”

• A national shame, August 27, 2009, The Economist: “It is hardly one of Latin America’s poorest countries, but according to Unicef almost half of Guatemala’s children are chronically malnourished-the sixth-worst performance in the world. In parts of rural Guatemala, where the population is overwhelmingly of Mayan descent, the incidence of child malnutrition reaches 80%. A diet of little more than tortillas does permanent damage. This chronic problem has become acute. Higher world prices for food have coincided with a recession-induced fall in money sent back from Guatemalans working in the United States (remittances equal 12% of Guatemala’s GDP). Drought in eastern Guatemala has made things worse still. Many families can scarcely afford beans, an important source of protein, and must sell eggs from their hens rather than feed them to their children…”
• Hungry in Guatemala, By Samuel Loewenberg, August 26, 2009, The Atlantic: “At the G8 meeting in Italy last month, the world’s richest countries agreed to devote $20 billion to food security and agricultural development. President Barack Obama declared that the ‘purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it’s no longer needed, to help people become self-sufficient, provide for their families and lift their standards of living.’ The initiative was primarily spurred by concerns about the effects on struggling populations of global warming and the economic downturn. But it is also perhaps a reflection of Obama’s stated intent to put a greater emphasis on what his administration calls ’smart power’ - diplomacy and development, as opposed to primarily defense - in his approach to foreign policy. Here’s an unlikely candidate to be the poster child for the new program: Guatemala. The Central American nation has the sixth-worst rate of chronic malnutrition in the world, despite being what might be described as a relatively well-off lower-middle class country…”

Philippine workers abroad: The boon has a price, By John M. Glionna, August 26, 2009, Los Angeles Times: “Looking down the main drag of this farm town, Police Chief Eric Noble marvels at the modern conveniences — byproducts of the fierce ties binding Philippine families. Sturdy houses with concrete foundations now replace the thatched huts of a generation ago. There are new cars, washing machines, children attending private schools and former sharecroppers who have purchased the farms where they once worked as lowly laborers. Such economic progress has come from remittances, the staggering $1 billion sent to families nationwide each month by Filipinos working overseas in an attempt to overcome extreme poverty and joblessness in their native land…”

Two million children now in homes with no working adult, By Katie Allen, August 26, 2009, The Guardian: “Almost 2 million children now live in households where there is no working adult, according to official figures released today that lay bare the social effects of the recession. The Office for National Statistics said the number of children in workless households rose by 170,000 to 1.9 million in April-June of this year, compared with the same period last year. One in six children now live in homes where there is no adult in employment. In addition, the number of children in homes with both working and workless adults over 16, also rose, up 45,000 to 3.6 million. That number includes students, retired people or those looking after the home…”

ADB says poverty elimination curtailed by crisis, Associated Press, August 26, 2009, Jakarta Globe: “Large pockets of extreme poverty and hunger persist in Asia, where the global downturn makes it more difficult to achieve UN goals to reduce the ranks of the poor, the Asian Development Bank said on Wednesday. Supporting smaller businesses, where most Asians are employed, is key to fueling domestic demand and growth, the Manila-based lender said in a report on key economic indicators. In 19 Asian economies, including the most populous China and India, more than 10 percent of people live on less than $1.25 a day and more than 10 percent are malnourished. This is despite the region’s success over the last 15 years in cutting the number of poor from one in two to around one in four, the report said…”

Poverty line fluctuates with conflicting data, By Priyadarshi Siddhanta, August 20, 2009, Indian Express: “The issue of poverty estimation seems to be getting more complicated as a government-sponsored panel has now said that about 38 per cent Indians are poor - 10 percentage points higher than a previous estimate. The states are already opposed to the Centre’s calculations on poverty estimation. In an interim finding, former chief of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council Suresh Tendulkar has estimated that 38 per cent of India’s population (comprising 8.32 crore families) is poor…”

Iraqi immigrants face lonely struggle in U.S., By Kirk Semple, August 12, 2009, New York Times: “Not long after the Iraq war began in 2003, Uday Hattem al-Ghanimi was accosted by several men outside the American military base where he managed a convenience store. They accused him of abetting the Americans, and one fired a pistol at his head. Now, after 24 operations, Mr. Ghanimi has a reconstructed face as well as political asylum in the United States. On July 4, his wife and three youngest children joined him in New York after a three-year separation. But the euphoria of their reunion quickly dissipated as the family began to reckon with the colder realities of their new life. Mr. Ghanimi, 50, who has not been able to work because of lingering pain, is supporting his family on a monthly disability check of $761, food stamps and handouts from friends. They are crammed into one room they rent in a two-bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in a city whose small Iraqi population is scattered. And Mr. Ghanimi’s wife and children do not speak English, deepening their sense of isolation…”

More pupils can claim free meals, August 11, 2009, BBC News: “The number of children eligible for free school meals in England has risen by 21,410 - the first annual increase in three years, official figures show. The 2009 school census reveals a rise from 15.5% to 15.9% in primary schools and from 13.1% to 13.4% in secondary. The increase has been blamed on job losses in the recession. This annual profile of the school population also shows that almost one in four primary pupils is now from an ethnic minority. The census, based on school rolls in January, also shows a further increase in the number of pupils with English as a second language…”

• No more opium, no more money for Afghan villagers, By Rukmini Callimachi (AP), August 3, 2009, Washington Post: “For as long as anyone can remember, there was no need for paper money in this remote corner of the Hindu Kush. The common currency was what grew in everyone’s backyard - opium. When children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father’s fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf. Their mothers collected it in plastic bags, trading 18 grams for a meter of fabric or two liters of cooking oil. Even a visit to the barbershop could be settled in opium. But the economy of this village sputtered to a halt last year when the government began aggressively enforcing a ban on opium production. Villagers were not allowed to plant their only cash crop. Now shops are empty and farmers are in debt, as entire communities spiral into poverty…”
• Opium takes over entire Afghan families, villages, By Rukmini Callimachi (AP), August 10, 2009, Washington Post: “Open the door to Islam Beg’s house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It’s just past 8 a.m. and the family of six - including a 1-year-old baby boy - is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe. Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby’s tiny mouth. The baby’s eyes roll back into his head. Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell. In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families - from toddlers to old men - are addicts. Cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams, the addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts…”

Little keeps Nigeria from a crisis of hunger, By David Hecht, August 2, 2009, Washington Post: “The nation blessed with Africa’s largest oil reserves and some of its most fertile lands has a problem. It cannot feed its 140 million people, and relatively minor reductions in rainfall could set off a regional food catastrophe, experts say. Nigeria was a major agricultural exporter before oil was discovered off its coast in the 1970s. But as it developed into the world’s eighth-largest oil producing country, its big farms and plantations were neglected. Today, about 90 percent of Nigeria’s agricultural output comes from inefficient small farms, according to the World Bank, and most farmers have little or no access to fertilizers, irrigation or other modern inputs. Most do not even grow enough food to feed their own families…”

Report highlights hunger in India, July 31, 2009, BBC News: “India is emerging as the world centre of hunger and malnutrition, a report by Indian campaign group, the Navdanya Trust, says. The trust says that there are more than 200 million people - or one-in-four Indians - going without enough to eat. The prominent environmentalist Vandana Shiva, who runs the trust, said there were now more hungry people in India than in sub-Saharan Africa…”

One in 20 Italians lives in absolute poverty, By Daniel Flynn, July 30, 2009, New York Times: “One in seven Italians scrapes by on less than 1,000 euros (£853) a month and roughly one in 20 lives in absolute poverty, unable to maintain a minimum standard of living, the national statistics agency said Thursday…”

• Benefits system has failed poor pensioners, say MPs, By Phillip Inman, July 30, 2009, The Guardian: “Means-tested benefits have failed to lift more than two million pensioners out of poverty, according to a group of MPs who are calling on the government to make a bigger effort to increase the incomes of poor people in retirement. A further one million pensioners live on less than 50% of average incomes, the report found, highlighting the increasing divide between those over-65s without private savings and workers in generous final salary pensions who can enjoy incomes equal to 80% to 90% of their pre-retirement salary when state benefits are included…”
• Pensioner poverty ‘unacceptable’, July 29, 2009, BBC News: “It is “unacceptable” that two million pensioners in the UK are still living in poverty, a group of MPs says. The Work and Pensions Committee says the figure is a third lower than it was in 1997, but wants ministers to commit to ending pensioner poverty altogether. It is also calling for the benefits system to be simplified for older people and the compulsory retirement age of 65 to be scrapped…”

Once a dream, U.S. life is hard reality for Iraqis, By Kristin Collins, July 26, 2009, Charlotte Observer: “It was the hope of America that sustained them through Iraq’s long years of war. First, they believed the United States’ promises that their country would be free after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Then, as the fighting continued, they were thankful for the good-paying jobs the U.S. military provided. And finally, their lives in peril, they traded their homeland for a new start in North Carolina.  About 200 Iraqis have moved to this state since 2007, officials say. They are part of a wave of more than 20,000 who have come to the U.S. after being targeted by terrorists in Iraq or working for the U.S. government there. But as they arrive in the midst of a recession, their expansive hopes are being replaced by a struggle with poverty and social isolation…”

Report: Insecurity in Arab world hinders its progress, By Edith M. Lederer (AP), July 22, 2009, Seattle Times: “A new report by over 100 independent intellectuals and scholars from Arab countries blames political, economic, social and environmental problems for undermining the lives and freedom of Arabs - coupled with the region’s vulnerability to outside intervention.  According to the Arab Human Development Report 2009 released Tuesday, what’s missing in the Arab world is ‘human security - the kind of material and moral foundation that secures lives, livelihoods and an acceptable quality of life for the majority’…”

With USA in a recession, rural Mexico feels the pain, By Chris Hawley, July 9, 2009, USA Today: “Not long ago, this remote Mexican mountain town was in the middle of a construction boom — as families proudly built their American-style dream homes, using cash sent home by relatives working in the USA.  Work on those houses has stopped, leaving shiny steel rebar jutting awkwardly out of concrete walls all over this town of 4,500. Meanwhile, residents have been forced to cut back on staples such as rice and corn. Eggs, meat and milk are now out of reach for many families…”

• Obama enlists major powers to aid poor farmers with $15 billion, By Peter Baker and Celia W. Dugger, July 8, 2009, New York Times: “President Obama has enlisted the world’s leading powers to contribute $15 billion to help millions of the world’s poorest farmers grow enough food to feed themselves, American officials said Wednesday.  If the assistance is delivered and is in fact mostly new money, it will constitute the largest international effort in decades to combat hunger by investing in the fundamentals of an agricultural economy, including seed, fertilizer, grain storage and research into new plant varieties…”
• Leaders of rich and poor countries launch new approach to world hunger, promise $20 billion, By Alessandra Rizzo (AP), July 10, 2009, Chicago Tribune: “Leaders of rich and developing countries launched a new approach to global hunger Friday, saying they wanted to spend $20 billion on seeds, fertilizers, tools and other aid for small farmers over the next three years so poor nations could feed themselves.   The initiative announced at the end of a Group of Eight summit marked a new emphasis on helping farmers in the developing world boost production over the long term, moving away from an emphasis on emergency food aid for people suffering from drought and famine…”

• Homelessness surges as rents soars, By Stephen Lunn, July 9, 2009, The Australian: “More families are being squeezed into homelessness by the high costs of private rental, but better support services have led to fewer teenagers on the streets.  A new report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare into Australia’s homeless finds numbers were on the march in Australia even before the global financial crisis hit home…”
• More sleeping rough in capitals, July 9, 2009, News.com.au: “The number of people sleeping rough on the streets of capital cities was on the rise before the financial crisis hit, a new report shows.  The number of homeless older Australians has also been increasing, new analysis by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows…”
• Govt pours money into help for homeless, By Susanna Dunkerley, July 7, 2009, Brisbane Times: “The Rudd government has poured millions of dollars into its plan to combat homelessness, amid criticism from the sector it had put it on the backburner.  The ambitious $800 million state and federal plan to halve homeless rates by 2020 was due to get off the ground last week…”

• Climate change shifting seasons is causing widespread hunger, By Louise Gray, July 6, 2009, The Telegraph: “The regular arrival of the rains or a dry period to harvest staple crops ensures the majority of people around the world can grow enough food to eat. But a new report by Oxfam has found that poor farmers in developing countries are increasingly finding the growing season is changing as a consequence of climate change…”
• Third World hardest hit by climate change, report finds, By Sue Bailey, July 6, 2009, The Globe and Mail: “The globe’s richest powerhouses must get serious about how First World pollution is spreading disease and hunger in the poorest countries, a new report says. Oxfam International is calling for drastic action on global warming as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other Group of Eight leaders gather tomorow in Italy…”

Pakistan’s kiln workers bricked in by debt, By Pamela Constable, July 3, 2009, Washington Post: “At the end of a village road, behind a grassy bluff, lies a hidden valley carpeted with thick red dust and canyoned with craggy mounds of earth. At the bottom, clay-colored figures squat barefoot all day, shaping balls of mud into bricks. In the distance, a dozen scattered chimneys spew clouds of black smoke, which trail off prettily across the horizon…”

Constant fear and mob rule in South Africa slum, By Barry Bearak, June 29, 2009, New York Times: “The two robbery suspects had already been viciously beaten, their swollen faces stained with rivulets of red. One of them could no longer sit up, and only the need to moan seemed to revive him into consciousness. The other, Moses Tjiwa, occasionally stared into the taunting crowd and muttered, ‘I didn’t do anything’…”

• Costs hit low income households, By Steve Schifferes, June 30, 2009, BBC News: “The cost of living for those living on minimum household budgets is rising faster than inflation, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has calculated.  It says that the costs for a single household on its low-income budget were up 5.3% this year, with rises of 5% for pensioners and couples with children…”
• Rising cost of basic essentials ‘hitting poorest hardest,’ By Mary O’Hara, July 1, 2009, The Guardian: “The rising cost of everyday staples such as food and public transport during the recession has hit the poorest hardest, a study reveals today.  The latest Minimum Income Standard (MIS) report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) concludes that the basic amount an individual needs to earn to have an acceptable standard of living has gone up by twice the rate of inflation, leaving more people struggling…”