Globally, many human rights NGOs seek to expose the dire situations where children work at a young age, often under exploitative conditions and without adequate compensation. According to the International Labour Organization, child labour occurs most frequently in Sub-Saharan Africa — 28 percent of all 5-14 year-olds are engaged in paid and unpaid work across the continent, compared to 14 percent in Asia and 9 percent for Latin America. The author argues that what’s often missing from these official statistics, however, are routine household work activities that are less visible than those in the industrial sector. These less conspicuous types of labour are varied and, despite the potential for violations to go unseen, can sometimes be part of a healthy childhood. The distinction between ‘child work’ (less harmful work that may have beneficial impacts on a child’s development) and ‘child labour’ (blatantly hazardous forms of work that disrupt the healthy development of a child), can therefore be a helpful one to make.
Poverty and health
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque, has warned that the sanitation target set by the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is today the most off-track of all, leaving around one billion people still practicing open defecation on a daily basis, and one-third of the world’s population ‘without access to improved sanitation.’ The human rights expert hailed the UN General Assembly’s decision declaring 19th of November as UN World Toilet Day. “I hope this declaration galvanises national and international action to reach the billions of people who still do not benefit from this basic human right,” the Special Rapporteur said.
By 2023 the number of food-insecure people is likely to increase by nearly 23 percent to 868 million (at a slightly faster rate than projected population growth of 16 percent). Despite improvements over the years, sub-Saharan Africa is projected to remain the most food-insecure region in the world. In the past decade global food aid, including the amount making its way to sub-Saharan Africa, has been on a downward trend. Only 2.5 million tons reached sub-Saharan Africa in 2011, whereas during the decade as a whole it ranged from just under three million tons to just over 5 million tons, according to World Food Programme (WFP) data. In this article IRIN presents views of some of the world’s leading experts on the future of food aid.
The International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants, known as UPOV 91 is argued by the author to be dangerous to African farmers. It will force farmers to buy patented corporate seeds and agrochemicals from the same corporations. The ETC Group, the Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration has released the report: ‘Putting the Cartel Before the Horse …and Farm, Seeds, Soil, Peasants, etc. Who Will Control Agricultural Inputs, 2013?’ The report details how the agribusiness giants have gobbled up most of the seed and agrochemical companies and control most of the agriculture in the US and Europe and are now aiming to take over the agriculture of the global south, particularly Africa. Peasant farmers, who feed at least 70 percent of the world’s population – are not tied to the corporate seed chain. The agribusiness giants want to tie them in. They are focusing on ‘education’ which seeks primarily to stop farmers from saving seeds.
This compendium of Population Stabilisation Reports was an outcome of the research work done by different authors from the nine countries namely Bangladesh, India (Bihar), Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Uganda and Zimbabwe. The reports focus on the demographic realities that take into consideration the age structure, sex ratios, migrations, population projections as well as adolescent pregnancy, fertility and mortality. The historical, religious, cultural, political, resource and environmental considerations are reviewed in the reports. The underlying principals of poverty eradication, sustainable growth, universal education, with a focus on girls, gender equality and empowerment, food security, access to primary health services and a rights-based approach to sexual and reproductive health, are fundamental to the principals and practices that are prescribed within the framework of the reports. The edited book provides an integrated approach to changing
population stabilisation strategies, including attention to sustainable development and gender equity, with case studies from African countries.
This paper explores the double burden of malnutrition in rural South Africa, to understand the profiles of malnutrition among children and adolescents in a poor, high HIV prevalent context. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2007 of 4,000 children and adolescents aged 1–20 years. The study found stunting at an early age and adolescent obesity, particularly among girls, co-existing in the same socio-geographic population. HIV is a risk factor for poor nutritional outcomes. Significant predictors of undernutrition at an early age include child's HIV status, age and birth weight, maternal age, age of household head, and area of residence. Significant predictors of overweight/obesity and risk for metabolic disease during adolescence include child's age, sex, and pubertal development, household-level food security, socio-economic status, and household head's highest education level. The combination of early stunting and adolescent obesity raises concerns as paediatric obesity and adult short stature are risk factors for metabolic syndrome and metabolic diseases in adulthood.
The Cost of Hunger in Africa (COHA) study links the role of child nutrition and human development to Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP). This plan, that projects a sustained GDP growth of 11% to 15% from 2010 to 2015, represents the national strategy of Ethiopia towards poverty eradication. The results of the study strongly suggest that in order for the country to achieve sustainable human and economic growth, special attention must be given to the early stages of life as the foundation of human capital. The results of the study are supported by a strong evidenced base, and a model of analysis specially adapted for Africa, which demonstrates the depth of the consequences of child undernutrition in health education and labour productivity. This paper further quantifies the potential gains of addressing child undernutrition as a priority. Now, stakeholders have not only the ethical imperative to address child nutrition as a main concern, but a strong economic rationale to position stunting in the centre of the development agenda, the paper concludes.
In 2009, European Union (EU) governments committed to sourcing 10% of transport energy from renewable sources by 2020: they are set to meet this target almost exclusively using biofuels made from food crops. This decision has several important implications for developing countries, according to this report. Land grabs are occurring in developing countries with poor protection of land rights – most of which are to grow crops that can be used for biofuels – which means that many land deals for biofuel production are concluded without the consent of affected communities. Affected countries in Africa include Mozambique, Kenya and Ethiopia. In terms of production, if the land used to produce biofuels for the EU in 2008 had been used to produce wheat and maize instead, it could have fed 127 million people for the entire year. On top of this, biofuel mandates are an incredible inelastic source of demand for food crops; by 2020, EU biofuel mandates alone could push up the price of some foods by as much as 36%. Biofuel mandates are not even a solution to climate change; modeling shows that plowing up carbon sinks to meet EU biofuel mandates could be as bad for the environment as putting an extra 26 million cars on Europe’s roads. Oxfam concludes by calling on EU governments to scrap EU biofuel mandates.
The Sixth Africa Agriculture Science Week was held in Accra from 15-20 July 2013. However, the authors of this article express their concern that the current scientific approach to improve agricultural productivity, and food nutrition of small-scale farmers in particular, is being heavily distorted and influenced by well-funded information campaigns of the big agro-chemical companies. These agribusinesses, and their allies aim to increase their profits by selling chemicals and inputs and one of their key objectives is to introduce patented genetically engineered seed into Ghana and other African countries. The authors argue that genetic engineering (GE) is not about science, it is about money. They point out there is very little record of success in developing countries in helping small scale farmers to improve productivity and adapt to climate change. GE seed is also more expensive for farmers than saving seed for the next planting. The authors argue that small scale Ghanaian farmers need research and extension in support of agro-ecological farming, and this includes access to markets, infrastructure, good roads and transportation, and protection from landgrabs.
The author of this paper identifies two main concerns with regard to biofuel policies: one involves the likely consequences of biofuels for greenhouse gas emissions because of the ploughing up of forests and grasslands and their release of carbon, while the other involves the consequences for hunger and poverty. What is not broadly understood is that the two consequences closely and inversely relate: the less farmers plough up forest and grassland, the greater the impacts on hunger; but the lower the impacts on hunger, the more farmers emit greenhouse gases from land use change. Much of the uncertainty about the consequences of biofuels relate to how much of which undesirable response the world will get. When biofuels divert crops from food there are three basic alternative responses: (1) the crops are not replaced; (2) crops are replaced by land use change; and (3) crops are replaced by boosting production on existing agricultural land. The author argues that the evidence indicates that biofuels are fuelling hunger, land grabs and climate change.