Argentina’s former secretary of domestic trade this week publicly expressed doubt over the validity of the 32 percent poverty rate released last fall by the government’s statistics agency.
A lack of information on the experiences of women and girls is one of the greatest barriers to addressing their needs, particularly in the developing world. A new report seeks to fill that gap by demonstrating how “big data” can provide critical information on health, social status and other experiences of women in countries where data is most lacking.
Poverty is back in the headlines thanks to a pair of public figures. The comments illustrate divergent views, and only one is correct. “Americans have choices. And they’ve got to make a choice,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CNN. “So maybe, rather than getting that new iPhone that they just love and they want to go spend hundreds of dollars on, maybe they should invest that in health care. They’ve got to make those decisions themselves.”
How does a country with the lowest birth rate in the world and a dramatically slowing economy encourage women to have more babies and work? South Korea is facing this question once again after a young mother’s sudden death from overwork recently captured headlines.
As the U.K. prepares to leave the European Union it is reworking trade deals to try to ensure a smooth transition. On the sidelines are developing countries putting some $395 million in annual trade at risk, according to the Overseas Development Institute (ODI). The London-based think tank warned that neglecting the preferential deals could hurt the countries that rely on the U.K. as a trading partner.
More than 10,000 people fled western Mosul in the past week as Iraqi military forces continue their effort to recapture the city from the Islamic State, according to the International Organization for Migration. More are trying to leave. Another 6,000 people are waiting to pass through checkpoints to leave and as many as 4,000 are internally displaced.
Millions of people in Chile’s capital city lost access to running water over the weekend, sparking a sanitation emergency and highlighting mounting critiques of the city’s privatized water supply.
The amount of money sent home by migrants and refugees from developing countries exceeds foreign aid – making migration a powerful anti-poverty, too. Despite this overwhelming evidence, countries are shutting their doors to foreigners. The effort by Western governments to limit the entry of migrants and refugees is fueled by nationalism and rising inequality … and a fair amount of misinformation.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo vowed to fight inequality as his top priority for 2017. But Widodo has a massive gap to close, according to a new report by Oxfam today: Just four men own more wealth than the poorest 40 percent of the country – about 100 million people.
Online schools in the U.S. may still be struggling to assert their legitimacy, but elsewhere, they’re being harnessed to provide access to quality education for the most vulnerable. The U.N. awarded two organizations yesterday for doing just that. One of those was JAAGO Foundation in Bangladesh, which brings qualified teachers to online and tradition classrooms in slums and remote areas.