Botswana Demonstrate Just How Democratic It Is
Botswana is generally considered one of the more democratic African nations. Now if you’re a generally democratic nation how do you go about demonstrating your devotion to democratic principles? Well, of course you try to deport a college professor critical of your country.
In February, Botswana President Festus Mogae declared University of Botswana lecturer Kenneth Good to be an “prohibited immigrant” and ordered him deported to his native Australia. Good is being allowed to remain in Botswana while he appeals the deportation order.
The irony here is what Good said that set Mogae off. Good gave a lecture in which he claimed that rather than being democratic, Botswana is run by a secret elite with a few people making all of the decisions. Specifically, he alleged that presidential succession in Botswana is managed by backdoor wheeling and dealing. Obviously having the president initiate a deportation order against Good really disproved that!
Good, for his part, has a habit of being booted out of African countries. According to Reuters, the minority white government of what was then called Rhodesia also deported him in 1973 after he criticized government policies.
Sources:
Prof. Good Allowed to Stay in Botswana Until Deportation Case is Discussed. Network for Education and Academic Rights, March 7, 2005.
Botswana lecturer wins reprieve. The BBC, February 28, 2005.
Tags: Botswana, Free Speech
UNICEF Report Says 211 Million Children Worldwide Work Full-Time
In February, UNICEF UK released a report on the current status of child labor across the globe. According to the UNICEF report, worldwide about 211 million children ages 5-14 work full-time. UNICEF estimates that 1 in 12 children work in an industry that is hazardous to their health.
Not surprisingly, the area with the highest rate of childhood labor is Africa, where 41 percent of children aged 5 to 14 work. That compares to just 21 percent of 5 to 14-year olds working in Asia and 17 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean. Due to the difference in total population however, 60 percent of all child laborers are working in Asia.
Worldwide UNICEF estimates that eight million children work in what the International Labor Organization terms “unconditional worst forms” of labor — six million bonded labor (essentially slaves); about 300,000 as soldiers in various armed conflicts around the world; and 1.8 million in the sex industry as prostitutes or the production of pornography.
Most child labor occurs in developing countries, but UNICEF estimates that about 2.4 million children 5 to 14-years old work full-time in the developed world. For example, in the United States anywhere between 300,000 to 800,000 children of Spanish-speaking immigrants are believed to work full-time in farm-related occupations. Similarly in Portugal UNICEF estimates that up to 47,000 school-aged children work full-time in industries such as shoe production rather than attend school.
Sources:
UN urges action on child labor. The BBC, February 21, 2005.
End Child Exploitation: Child Labour Today. (PDF) UNICEF, 2005.
Tags: Portugal, UNICEF, United States
Worldwide Demand Sends Iron Ore, Steel Prices Upward
Worldwide demand for steel is driving iron ore and steel prices to new heights.
China’s economic expansion, which has helped drive oil upward, has also put strains on worldwide supplies of iron ore and steel sending prices through the roof. According to the BBC, for example, the cost of steel jumped 8 percent in January 2005 alone and in China the price of steel jumped 24 percent in the same month.
The demand for steel has led iron ore producers to boost their prices. In February, for example, mining companies Rio Tinot and Cia. Vale Do Rio Dolce reached an agreement with Japanese steelmaker Nippon that raised the price Nippon paid for iron ore by 72 percent. Other iron ore producers are expected to seek similar increases.
Steelmakers, meanwhile, have to pass on those costs to someone and the result is companies looking to boost steel prices 20 to 30 percent, which in turn would cause a ripple effect of price increases in goods that use steel (and/or encourage exploration and use of steel alternatives).
Sources:
Ore costs hit global steel firms. The BBC, February 23, 2005.
European can makers fear knock-on effect of steel prices. FoodProductionDaily.Com, October 14, 2004.
Latest UN Projections: World Population Will Reach 9.1 Billion By 2050
In February the United Nations Population Division released the 2004 revisions to its World Population Prospects publication, projecting how much further world population is likely to grow.
Under the UN’s medium variant scenario, world population will reach 9.1 billion in 2050. This represents a slight upward revision from more recent estimates that had world population reaching just 8.9 billion in 2050.
Almost all of that growth will occur in the developing world. Ninety-five percent of all population growth today is occurring in the developing world compared to just 5 percent in the developed world according to the UN Population Division. Of that estimated 9.1 billion, only slightly over 1.2 billion will live in countries that are currently designated as developed — about what the population of the developed world is today.
The medium variant assumes that the total fertility for women worldwide is going to drop from its current level of 2.6 to just slightly over 2 by 2050. If the worldwide TFR average were to only decline slightly to just over 2.5 — the high variant scenario — world population would reach 10.6 billion by 2050. If it were to decline faster, however, and fall to about 1.5 — the low variant — world population would reach just 7.6 billion in 2050.
Global life expectancy continues to rise. The Population Division reports that global life expectancy rose from an estimated 47 years in 1950-1955 to 65 years in 2000-2005. By 2045-50, global life expectancy is expected to rise to 75 years. In developed countries, where life expectancy averages 76 years today, it is expected to reach 82 years by 2045-50.
Those life expectancy projections assume that the developing world will be able to implement effective programs and policies to halt excess mortality due to HIV/AIDS. Whether or not this happens remains to be seen. As the Population Division reports, HIV/AIDS has taken a serious toll on life expectancy in some parts of Africa. In Southern Africa, for example, life expectancy fell from 62 years in 1990-1995 to just 48 years in 2000-2005, and is expected to drop even further to just 43 years over the next decade. The Population Division projects that 43 will represent a bottoming out of the crisis and that life expectancy in Southern Africa will then slowly begin to rise again.
One of the main effects of the worldwide decline in total fertility rates will be an aging of the population that is unprecedented in human history. According to the Population Division, the number of people over the age of 60 is expected to triple from an estimated 672 million in 2005 to a whopping 1.9 billion by 2050. There will also be a 4.5-fold increase in the number of people over the age of 80, from an estimated 86 million today to 394 million in 2050.
Source:
World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision. (PDF) United Nations Population Division, February 2005.
Tags: AIDS/HIV, Life Expectancy, Total Fertility Rates, United Nations Population Division
Is Arab World Ignoring HIV/AIDS Risk to Women?
At a UNAids meeting held in Amman, Jordan, UNAids Associate Director Dr. Suman Mehta warned that Middle Eastern and North African countries are not doing enough to address HIV/AIDS among girls and women.
Mehta charged that Middle Eastern nations are not accurately disclosing the extent of HIV/AIDS infection in their countries. According to Mehta,
It is not a question of resources and funds, it is a political and social problem … officials are not revealing the extent of the problem, and the community does not talk openly about it.
. . .
Low prevalence in the region should not be an excuse for inaction… all countries start with a low prevalence but then it grows out of proportion.
There are currently an estimated 540,000 people infected with HIV/AIDS in the Middle East and North Africa, but Mehta noted there is still a strong social stigma to HIV/AIDS infection,
[That] not a single one [girl or woman] is coming forward to say ‘I am HIV-positive’ says something about the fear, the scare, the discrimination and stigma attached to AIDS.
Dr. Hind Khattab, an Egyptian public health specialist, echoed Mehta’s words, telling the BBC,
The most important thing to do is not to wait until we are in a dangerous situation and then do something. This is the right time and we have to say that our women are vulnerable — not only those who [behave riskily] or those who are the spouses of men who have risky behavior, but we are in a situation where many of our countries are [at] war or are being attacked and the women are really at risk.
Sources:
Aids threat grows for Arab women. Dale Gavlak, The BBC, February 23, 2005.
Meeting addresses social attitudes to HIV/AIDS. Jordan Information Center, February 2005
Drug Resistant Strain of HIV Reported in U.S.
As if the worldwide HIV/AIDS epidemic isn’t bad enough, New York health officials reported in February that they had discovered what appears to be a quick progressing, drug-resistant strain of HIV dubbed 3-DCR HIV.
Drug resistant strains of HIV has become increasingly common in people with HIV as the disease adapts to various treatment therapies over time. But in this case the disease was drug resistant in a newly diagnosed individual, and the disease progressed to full-blown AIDS much faster than normal — taking only 2 to 20 months to progress to AIDS rather than the typical average of 10 years. According to news reports, the strain of HIV was resistant to 19 of 20 antiretrovirals used to treat AIDS.
On obvious possibility is that the man contracted this especially virulent form of HIV from unprotected sex with another HIV positive individual who has been undergoing anti-AIDS treatment. Or it could represent a spontaneous mutation of the disease that only this particular patient contracted.
Or, as infectious disease expert Dr. Craig Pringle speculated,
The extensive use of anti-retroviral drugs in the community may have selected this unwelcome triple drug-resistant variant. . . [And a possible] outbreak of HIV not amenable to treatment with currently available drugs is in the offing.
Such a possible outbreak would be devastating, especially if it made its way to the developing nations already plagued by the less virulent forms of HIV.
Sources:
Drug-resistant HIV strain found. The BBC, February 12, 2005.
Multi-drug-resistant HIV strain raises alarm. Shaoni Bhattacharya, NewScientist.Com, February 14, 2005.
Tags: AIDS/HIV, United States
China Launches Another Crackdown on Internet Cafes
Toward the end of 2004, China launched another crackdown against Internet cafes in that country, closing almost 13,000 of them that were operating “illegally.”
China sets out strict guidelines for Internet cafes, limiting the types of computer games and content that can be accessed, and requiring strict identity checks and the keeping of automated logs to track the activities of people while they are accessing the Internet at one of the cafes. Those log files are then sent to China’s Public Security Bureau.
This latest crackdown was apparently motivated by concerns that children were spending time playing violent videogames rather than attending class, but it also has the added effect of furthering the Chinese governments control over its citizens access to information the government does not approve of.
Sources:
China net cafe culture crackdown. The BBC, February 14, 2005.
‘Wangba’ crusade. Red Herring, February 17, 2005.
Tags: China, Free Speech, Internet
More Overwrought Hype About the Birth Dearth
Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New American Foundation, is the latest to jump on the “we’re not having enough babies” bandwagon with a book published last year, The Empty Cradle and an extended essay presenting his views on Foreign Affairs, “The Global Baby Bust.”
Longman repeats the litany of facts that most readers of this site are already familiar with. Worldwide total fertility rates are plunging, and the end of this century is likely to see a relatively old population with fewer young people as a percentage of the population than at anytime in human history. He writes,
In the United States, the direct cost of raising a middle-class child born this year through age 18, according to the Department of Agriculture, exceeds $200,000 — not including college. And the cost in forgone wages can easily exceed $1 million, even for families with modest earning power. Meanwhile, although Social Security and private pension plans depend critically on the human capital created by parents, they offer the same benefits, and often more, to those who avoid the burdens of raising a family.
The claims about the cost of raising children are, in my opinion, simply nonsense. First of all, the USDA did not measure what it costs to raise a child, but rather what parents of differing income levels actually spend. There is an important difference between the two.
Second, the methodology behind the USDA, is goofy, as even its own study notes. For example, the largest part of the “cost” of raising children in that $200,000 estimate is more than $53,000 for housing costs. How did the USDA arrive at that figure? It simply assumes that if a couple has two children and a house valued at $200,000, then each family member incurs $50,000 in housing costs,
Unlike food and health care, no research base exists for allocating estimated household expenditures on housing, transportation, and other miscellaneous goods and services among family members. USDA uses the per capita method in allocating these expenses; the per capita method allocates expenses among household members in equal proportions. A marginal cost method, which assumes that expenditures on children may be measured as the difference in
total expenses between couples with children and equivalent childless couples, was not used
because of limitations with this approach.
Since there’s no agreed upon methodology, the USDA simply went with one that will produce the highest possible housing costs value. Children certainly incur large costs, but the USDA figures are used inappropriately by Longman to exaggerate just how large the economic burden of children is to a typical family.
Longman goes on to argue that people in modern industrialized societies are essentially living in environments which promote childlessness,
Some biologists now speculate that modern humans have created an environment in which the “fittest,” or most successful, individuals are those who have few, if any, children. As more and more people find themselves living under urban conditions in which children no longer provide economic benefit to their parents, but rather are costly impediments to material success, people who are well adapted to this new environment will tend not to reproduce themselves. And many others who are not so successful will imitate them.
. . .
. . . Once, demographers believed that some law of human nature would prevent fertility rates from remaining below replacement level within any healthy population for more than brief periods. After all, don’t we all carry the genes of our Neolithic ancestors, who one way or another managed to produce enough babies to sustain the race? Today, however, it has become clear that no law of nature ensure that human beings, living in free, developed societies, will create enough children to reproduce themselves.
It’d be nice if Longman didn’t use weasel phrases like “some biologists” (really, which ones?), but clearly the economic advantages of having children have been largely wiped out in the developed countries, leaving the urge to reproduce to compete with the urge to enjoy the material trappings of life.
But I’m still not convinced of all the dire horrors that are supposed to result from this. Yes, issues of how to create innovation and deal with medical costs 50 years down the road look immense, but then back in the 1970s the question of how to deal with the 14 billion people in the world by the end of the 21st century also looked immense and all but unsolvable. Nobody on either side of this argument gives much credit to the driving force that got us into and out of all sorts of problems, the unique human ability to respond and change in dramatic ways to circumstance.
Like the overpopulation doomsayers in the 1970s, Longman proposes any number of government meddling to produce the fertility rates he think would be optimum.
These include:
- exempting parents from having to pay into social security systems (since they already contribute so much simply by having children)
- changing the structure of education so young people are busy procreating rather than studying (“education should be a lifetime pursuit, rather than crammed into one’s prime reproductive years”)
- use legislation to make it more expensive to smoke, be fat, or sedentary (to reduce the alleged social medical costs of such activities later in life)
These are, at best, ineffective half measures that won’t work even if you agree with Longman about the nature of the problem.
Let me propose a measure that might work, if enacted widely enough — ban contraception and abortion. After all, the last time I check the problem is not that college students are not engaging in enough procreative activities, but rather that they have at their disposal any number of means to prevent procreation itself.
Of course the odds of something like that happening are about the same as the odds of adopting Paul Ehrlich’s recent recommendations to screw the developing world by abandoning free trade and liberal immigration policies. So we’ll muddle along as we always have, finding solutions to problems spontaneously, while those on the sidelines fret and worry about the next terrible crisis to face humanity.
Sources:
The Global Baby Bust. Phillip Longman, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004.
Tags: Phillip Longman, Underpopulation, United States
Conference Hears Testimony of Forced Abortion In North Korea
The 6th International Conference on North Korean Human Rights and Refugees heard testimony in February about alleged forced abortions and infanticide in North Korean prison camps.
Using the alias Park Sun-ja, a 28-year-old defector from North Korea testified that she witnessed both infanticide and forced abortion at Shinuiju Provincial Detention Camp where she had been held for two months in 2000 after having been caught after having crossed into China.
Sun-ja testified that,
I heard the cries of both mother and child through the curtain (at a hospital). And through the partially open curtain, I witnessed the nurse covering the infant’s face with a wet towel on a table, suffocating it. The baby stopped crying about ten minutes later.
Sun-ja testifed that injections to induce miscarriage among pregnant women at the camp were routine.
She also testified to being abused and witnessing abuse by guards at the camp, including,
Severe beatings through the use of sticks, fists (punching), and feet (kicking) were standard practice. Cells were infested with insects, fleas, lice, and other parasites. It was disgusting.
Sun-ja’s testimony obviously needs to be taken with some bit of skepticism given that it was given pseudonymously, but given the immense secrecy in North Korea and other atrocities committed by the regime that we do know about, what she describe is certainly plausible.
Source:
N.K. defector claimed forced abortions. The Korea Herald, February 7, 2005.
Tags: Abortion, Korea, North
Kyoto Protocol Goes Into Effect Without United States
The Kyoto Protocol went into effect on February 16, without the world’s largest generator of greenhouse gases, the United States. In addition, the protocol exempts large greenhouse gas generating countries such as China and India from its requirements.
Under the terms of the treaty, it would be ratified once countries representing 55 percent of greenhouse gas emissions had signed it. That point was reach when Russia ratified the treaty in November 2004.
The United States has rejected the treaty arguing that it would be too expensive too implement controls on greenhouse gases, and that it would put the U.S. at an unfair economic disadvantage to make such changes given that China, India and other countries will not be forced to make the same cuts.
President Bill Clinton signed the treaty in 1999, but the Senate has refused to ratify it ever since, and is unlikely to do so in the forseeable future.
Even among those countries which did ratify the treaty, reducing emissions is likely to turn into an accounting game with high-emissions countries trading emissions rights with low-emissions countries without making much of a dent in emissions. This is one of the reasons Russia changed course and finally ratified the treaty since it will likely benefit economically from such emissions trading. As the Washington Post summed it up,
Moreover, they [the United States and Australia] say, many countries, including Japan and several in the European Union, are unlikely to meet their emission-control targets and will have to buy “credits” — most likely from Russia, which will have plenty to sell because many of its industrial plants shut down during the economic meltdown in the 1990s.
“They are going to take credit for sagging economies and flat populations,” said James L. Connaughton, chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Bush’s proposals for voluntary emission controls and incentives to develop clean technologies would have as much impact on American emissions as Europe would achieve under Kyoto, he said.
Critics counter that binding emissions quotas are needed to create the changes necessary to reduce the threat of global warming, but its difficult to see how a shell game in which major CO2 producers are exempt altogether will accomplish anything beyond symbolic.
Source:
Kyoto Treaty Takes Effect Today. Shankar Vedantam, The Washington Post, February 16, 2005.
Kyoto Protocol comes into force. The BBC, February 16, 2005.
Tags: Australia, China, Global Warming, India, United States