Global Issues

Vulnerabilities Journal: June 13, 2009

By Justin Long ⋅ June 13, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Each month we keep an eye on 11 major issues and here link to articles on major events in each category.

1. Famine / Drought

• ReliefWeb: Southern Africa: Main harvest period improves regional food security
• Reuters: Yemen staring at famine next year
• World Bank: West Bank in Acute Humanitarian Crisis, World Bank Water Report Says
• China: Drought eases in China’s major grain production base – Xinhua
• Horn of Africa facing another year of hunger as millions battle for survival
• KENYA: Amos Lerasia, "Now the drought comes almost every year" – IRINnews.org…: millions of Kenyans face hunger due to a prolonged drought and successive failed rains.
• In pictures: Flood plight in Bangladesh.
• UN: S Asia hunger ‘at 40-year high’ due to food and fuel price rises.
• Afghanistan: Bumper wheat harvest to reduce food insecurity? Partly a result of efforts against the opium crop, but also due to snowfall and rainfall.
• Globe & Mail: Global hunger on the rise again: over a billion hungry in the world.

2. War & Unrest

New anti-weapon ban network: Cluster munitions ban expected to come into force in 2010

Pakistan

• Reuters: Swat’s main town of Mingora almost secured by Pakistan army
• Australian: Fighting nears end in Swat Valley as Pakistan hunts top Taliban commanders
• ReliefWeb: Pakistan: Angry villagers fight, surround Taliban after the bombing of a mosque shifted public opinion against the Taliban.
• June 1: Update From Swat: fighting continues, with more than 2 million displaced (World Vision Radio)
• Pakistan: UNICEF still needs $40.5 mln for antenatal, postnatal care in camps
• Swat fight ‘may take two months’ more.
• Aid crisis leaves people of Swat facing humanitarian meltdown: efforts to help more than 1 million victims of the fighting are in jeopardy, with agencies facing a cash shortfall of more than £26m million.
• Indian troops to pull out of Kashmir: removing one of the biggest flashpoints in its tense relationship with Pakistan (The Australian)

Somalia

• Reuters: Somalia ‘taken hostage’ by continuing fighting – UN envoy
• Christian Science Monitor: Pirates, Inc.: Inside the booming Somali business
• BBC: Rejecting piracy. Are young Somalis starting to seek a different future?
• BBC: Somali pirates ‘expanding reach’ far beyond the East African coast, US Navy warns
• BBC: Inside story of pirate attack
• Oxfam: Somalia crisis ‘Africa’s worst’
• A bit about Somaliland: In Somalia’s break-away corner, an oasis of stability

Sri Lanka

• Sri Lanka: Food aid reached 280,000 last month following end of conflict

Sudan

• Sudan: Fear of rebel attacks and insecurity in troubled south

China’s Tiananmen Anniversary

• In China, a New Breed of Dissidents: 20 years after Tiananmen, Beijing tolerates a ‘safer’ wave of protest.

North Korea’s cry for attention

• Pyongyang ‘to test most advanced missile’: potentially able to reach Alaska.

Yemen

• Southern yemen is an impoverished hotbed of unrest

3. Ecclesiastical crime—which robs the church of finances and mars its image.

• Popping the fraud bubble: more churches seeking protection as scams continue to unfold, reaching an estimated $27 billion per annum.

4. Lack of successful youth outreach—which robs the church of its future

• Can Marketing Save Denominations? How denominations in America are striving to reach the under-35 generation. What do people in places where the church is growing fastest do?

5. Crime—structures of sin, formenting addictions, church disruption, martyrs

• The evolution of organized crime (in Canada): an insightful look at the wealth, sophistication, and international connections of organized crime.
• Europe: Global Arms Spending Up, Study Shows: governments spent $1,460 billion ($1.4 trillion) on upgrading their armed forces last year, despite the economic downturn.
• Bahrain Reconsiders the Wages of Sin: Bahrain’s tourism industry thrives as a freewheeling oasis offering movie theaters, alcohol and commercial sex just a short drive from major Saudi cities. Now Bahraini legislators are threatening a near-total prohibition. “Bahrain has become the brothel of the Gulf, and our people are very upset about it.”
• Corruption in Guatemala: one woman’s fight and fear. Believers in corrupt societies will have to deal with many similar issues.
• Drones vs. Drugs: US government begins flying drones against drug runners. Also: Drug runners stepping up mini-sub use. Drug trade impacts several countries in the 10/40 Window and unreached peoples.
• Battle to Halt Graft Scourge in Africa Ebbs: fear major setbacks in anticorruption efforts in Africa’s most pivotal nations.
• UN: Financial crisis could push more girls into child labour, UN agency warns
• An up-front look at crime in Johannesburg, South Africa: WITNESS: Third time lucky in crime-ridden Johannesburg
• SIERRA LEONE: Drug fight advances but risks remain: trafficking coupled with employment and corruption remain one of the most destabilizing forces in the country
•  North Korea’s Labor Camps Examined: NPR features Chuck Downs, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea.

6. Sex & Demography—debates, scandals, human trafficking, prostitution

• Poland becomes transit, destination country for human trafficking
• Constant Rape in Chad and Darfur: women are the most at risk
• US abortion doctor shot dead in Church: the battle over abortion heats up as Dr Tiller was killed by an anti-abortion activist and everyone struggles to choose a side.
• Fewer than 200,000 babies born in 2008 in Taiwan: a new low. The average age of women having first babies rose to 28.9.
• iPorn Launches New iPhone Friendly Site, Throws a Sexy Post-WWDC Party: (safe blog entry): it’s a sad truth “adult” fare drives a lot of tech, and I’ve read anecdotally that the porn industry has a lot of influence on what tech survives (e.g. the VHS vs Beta wars)
• INDONESIA: Trafficking fuels commercial sex work in Dolly, Surabaya, Indonesia’s second largest city. Statistics suggest 80,000 to 100,000 women and children are victims of sexual exploitation yearly, and an estimated 30% of all sex workers are younger than 18—some as young as 10.
•  CAMEROON: Bringing rape out of the shadows: an estimated 432,000 women and girls have been raped in the past 20 years.
• Zimbabwe girls trade sex for food: girls as young as 12 are turning to prostitution to survive (BBC).
• Ukraine’s other crisis: Weak currency, cheap flights spur ’sex tourism’ (CSM)
• COTE D’IVOIRE: Children exchange sex for money (some as young as 10) (IRIN)

7. Nominalism/Apathy

• Seth Godin: “Q. While getting people to support causes (sign petitions, join a group, etc.) on social networking sites like Facebook has been done very successfully, getting them to donate time and money to the same causes has not. Why do you think this is so? A. I’m not sure that signing petitions does a thing. I think that easy in/easy out is an axiom, and if you want to make change you need to ask people to do more than just nod at you.” (You asked Seth, TED.com…)

8. Persecution, Restrictions, Martyrdom

• Cardinal of Hong Kong: Beijing still controls Chinese [Catholic] Church.

9. Poverty—

• Globe & Mail: Where are the world’s poor finding home? In the informal economy.
• Time: Why Wealthy Nations are Stiffing Africa, likely to deliver less than half of the promised $21 billion. CNN: Bill Gates: Don’t cut aid due to recession. Guardian: Campaigners warn on G8 Africa promise has a longer analysis.
• Globe & Mail: How the financial crisis is pounding Mongolia. Call it the cashmere effect

10. Disasters & Disease—

• More than 1 million people in Bangladesh face a humanitarian crisis after Cyclone Aila slammed into the south of the country earlier this week: a lack of clean drinking water is emerging as the biggest problem. (ReliefWeb) See also new map of damage information.
• Malaria Vaccine Tested in Africa: clinical trials of what could become the world’s first vaccine against malaria. Important because resistance to malaria drug is growing.
• GUINEA: Black market medicines re-emerge
• New map from ReliefWeb of H1N1 cases: as pandemics go, this one remains small.
• BBC: HIV in South Africa ‘levels off’, rate of infection in children and teenagers is falling.
• Xinhua: a “garbage crisis” expected in Beijing in the next four to five years, when all of its 13 landfills are full (ZGBriefs)

11. Postmodernity—

• No notes this time.

12. Women & Children–

• GAMBIA: Street children persist despite crackdown
• NIGERIA: Childbirth still deadly
• GLOBAL: Financial crisis could force more girls into work

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