Tag Archives: Pakistan

Pakistani Earthquake Used as Opportunity to Steal Property from Widowed Women

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According to the United Nations’ Integrated Regional Information Networks, the earthquake in Pakistan at the end of last year was used as an opportunity to steal land and other property from unmarried women.

Typical of such victims is Zumera Bibi. The IRIN report describes how Zumera and her four daughters left their house temporarily after the quake. While she was gone, her dead husband’s nephews seized the property and claimed it as theirs. According to the IRIN story,

Zumera has no sons, and as tradition dictates she and her daughters have no right to the property, which would revert back to the brothers of her husband on his death. Even though, under the law, her daughters should get at least a share in the inheritance, this is frequently denied to women.

Well there’s a shock from a part of the world where women can be raped as a method of tribal revenge.

The IRIN story goes on to say that,

In some cases, the claims of the women to hte property have been challenged, and according to reports received by NGOs active in quake-hit areas of North West Frontier Province (NWFP), women without mail family members have been forced to vacate homes or else hand them over to male relatives in the hope that, in return, they will help care for them and their children.

With apparently no credible system of property rights, it is easy to understand why Pakistan’s per capita GDP sits at a pathetic $2,400. In the process of impoverishing women like Zumera, Pakistan is impoverishing the entire nation.

Source:

Pakistan: Female quake survivors losing property. Integrated Regional Information Networks, January 3, 2006.

South Asian Nations Sign Free Trade Pact

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In January, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka signed a free trade zone agreement that will start to bring trade barriers between those countries down beginning in 2006.

The agreement calls on the most developed of these countries — Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka — to virtually eliminate tariffs with the other countries by 2013, but gives the other countries until 2016 to lower their tariffs. There is, however, a provision that allows countries to maintain a list of “sensitive” products on which tariffs can be maintained.

Beyond advancing the cause of free trade, the real importance of this pat is the shot in the arm it could give to trade between Pakistan and India. Currently, trade between the two rivals is estimated at about $1.5 billion. That could double under the free trade regimen. And, of course, the more the two countries become economically intertwined, the higher the cost (and hence, the lower the risk) of war between them.

According to the BBC, there are now more than 200 regional free trade agreements.

Sources:

South Asia ‘agrees to free trade’. The BBC, January 2, 2004.

South Asia signs free trade pact. Reuters, January 6, 2004.

Polio Cases Increase Thanks Largely to Indian Outbreak

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in April that cases of polio worldwide increased four-fold in 2002 due largely to an outbreak of the disease in India.

In 2001 there were only 483 confirmed cases of polio which shot up to 1,920 confirmed cases in polio after an outbreak in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. That was the single worst outbreak of the disease since the World Health Organization began its campaign to eradicate polio in 1988. Cases from the Indian outbreak constituted 71 percent of all polio cases in 2002.

Afghanistan, Egypt, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Somalia also reported cases of polio in 2002.

Source:

Polio cases on the increase. The BBC, April 25, 2003.

Wacky Proposal for a Rice Cartel

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Sometimes there are stories which are so self-refuting that it’s hard to provide further commentary. Such is the announcement that China, India, Pakistan, Thailand and Vietnam are investigating ways to cartelize world rice markets. They want to do for rice what OPEC has done for oil.

Rice prices have been in free fall since 1997, losing more than a third of their value in just 5 years. World projections show rice production continuing to increase, so the price of rice is likely to fall even further over the next few years while global consumption is projected to decline.

Under those conditions a cartel is a great idea for producers, but how do they ever expect to enforce cartel agreements? OPEC has had a nightmare enforcing its cartel agreements on oil which is a relatively easy commodity to track and exclude potential competitors (not to mention monitor violators). Since rice can be grown throughout most of the world, there is almost no way cartel efforts can succeed.

Ironically, each of the governments involved has had disastrous experience with state subsidies and internal control of food markets. Apparently they believe that if they simply try the same failed policies on a bigger scale that they might finally work. Don’t bet on it.

Source:

Rice producers in ‘cartel’ talks. The BBC, October 9, 2002.