The pandemic has scuttled Zambia’s efforts to combat child labor and keep kids in school. The result is a generational cycle of poverty.
Tag: poverty
New Zealand politics professor Richard Shaw comes to terms with how his family’s silences finds roots in the historical amnesia surrounding the acquisition of lands by Irish settlers in Taranaki, a region in the south west of the Aotearoa’s North Island.
Given the opportunity to flee an economic and political crisis in Haiti, some business owners opt to stay.
Because of climate change induced heat waves, India is increasingly — and alarmingly — resembling Kim Stanley Robinson’s climate-fiction book The Ministry of the Future, but nothing seems to be done to change its dramatic ending.
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A Cave Of One’s Own
“Who am I to be horrified by poverty while I have no means to offer relief, no alternative to show these people?”
After a break in late March, small protests have broken out all over Iran over wages and pensions. A higher cost of living caused by the war in Ukraine may be the final straw for exasperated Iranians.
Western freedoms in Russia are only partially appealing, since historically, Russians never had them. Instead, the Russian people are patient, stoic and often irrationally devoted to their cruel motherland.
The pandemic has exposed longstanding inequalities and brought more people into a cycle of hunger and precariousness,
It took firefighters nearly three days to extinguish the blaze at the historic building in Cape Town, and the damage will persist as South Africans try to figure out how this happened, and what it says about the country’s struggle to reinforce its young democracy.
Prices have tripled on the staple product, as farmers and the government blame each other while ordinary Algerians struggle to put food on the table. It’s yet another crisis between economics and politics in the troubled North African nation.
Residents of the state’s ‘bastis’ get free rations and state-provided services on the back of ID documents with proof of address. But their homes are also subject to frequent demolition on the grounds that they are illegal encroachment.
In one of the world’s poorest countries, cheese is still a niche market. And yet, little by little, even the working class are starting to getting a taste.
Rafaela Dutra was working in Rio de Janeiro’s tourism industry and studying to become a nurse when the coronavirus arrived. A resident of the sprawling low-income favelas in the city’s Zona Norte, she had worked in one of Copacabana’s shiny, high-rise hotels, earning up to twice the region’s minimum monthly wage of 1,200 reais ($220). […]
Like so many before him, João took a bus to Rio de Janeiro in search of the kind of hope and economic opportunity that only big cities promise. “I came looking for something better, then the worst happened,” he told a Globo TV crew. The worst was COVID-19. As deaths skyrocketed in the city and […]
A closer reading of the Pope’s recent treatise that challenges the way contemporary culture sees poverty in society.
Economist Abhijit Banerjee’s win is a non-cricketing triumph on the global stage. So why aren’t Indians more excited?
Yes, to have fun and relax — at least sometimes —should be considered a human right. Especially for children. UNICEF France and One Shot put the concept together in a single image. Enjoy! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/TEEL7GoPex4 expand=1] UNICEF For Summer Holidays 2019 ©UNICEF/Brian Sokol OneShot is a new digital format to tell the story of a single photograph in an immersive one-minute video. Follow OneShot:
The trend of what the French dubbed décroissance (degrowth) overlooks how progress and technology are bound to improve our lives.
First adopted in 1989, the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child is “the most complete statement of children’s rights ever produced.” Since then, 196 countries and non-state entities have signed it, making it the most widely-ratified international human rights treaty in history. Unfortunately, the rights of children continue to be violated every day around the world. In 2019, for example, an estimated 10% of children around the world work, undermining their education and/or damaging their health. It is a chilling reminder of the Convention’s Article 32: “States Parties recognize the right of the child to be protected […]
As India votes in national elections, manual scavengers are trying to overcome caste stigma and prejudice.
The 1948 neo-realist cinematic masterpiece can be a key to understand Italian society today. With a digital twist.
India’s politicians have to understand that people are earning something to survive, but a survival strategy does not count as employment.
A report turns much-needed attention to a dark and long-ignored chapter in Swiss history.
With drought comes malnutrition and a run to the slums, where fatty foods, sugar, and obesity await.
The survival of more than 7 million people, 60% of the population, depends on international humanitarian aid.
Often accused of sympathizing with the left, Pope Francis has a simpler ‘apolitical’ view of politics and public office: it should be at the service of the disadvantaged.
The South American country’s economic and political crises have helped usher in the return of a once eradicated illness, researchers report.
It’s high-time for an economic model that curbs waste while boosting productivity. But don’t expect market forces alone to bring about the necessary shift.
-Analysis- PARIS — Did they really have to set France on fire for just a few cents? More than eight weeks after it began, the revolt of the “yellow vests’ still seems hard to grasp. For extremists on all sides who happily fanned the flames, it looked like the much-awaited beginning of the great revolution, […]
The ‘yellow vest’ uprising is about more than Macron’s ill-conceived fuel tax. It’s symptomatic of a system-wide failure that must be fixed before it’s too late.
Even in economically powerful Germany, poverty threatens the social fabric. And neither the left or right has any real solutions — except to play to fears.
A case study of Angul in Odisha highlights just how much urban centers rely on lower castes when it comes to sanitation.
The leftist president-elect has an opportunity to end shoddy political practices and turn the county — finally — into a lawful, thriving democracy.
The bulk of Mexico’s 122 million people remain mired in poverty, and with little chance to escape it. Even the middle classes struggle to be upwardly mobile. Food for thought, for incoming Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
-Analysis- BEIJING — The “invisible poor” has become a new online — and ironic — moniker in China. It describes young people who earn more than 10,000 RMB ($1,570) a month, a considerable income for most Chinese, but who are also big spenders. They wear $500 suits, get regular facials, drink top-class Chilean wine, and […]
More and more young and not-so-young people are returning home to live with their parents. A phenomenon which is hard on their aging parents.
Young, poor Moroccans, desperate for a fleeting sense of power and control are turning to a nasty chemical cocktail called ‘karkoubi.’
You just walked past a homeless man on the street, but you may try to help him if you see his story on social media.
-OpEd- BOGOTÁ — In August 1894, while traveling to Venezuela, the Colombian poet José Asunción Silva spent time in Cartagena de Indias, the colonial port on Colombia“s Caribbean coast. He wrote about his impressions of the city to his mother and sister. He had taken a liking to the locals, who were cheerful and informal, […]