worldproblems

Human Rights Abuses Imagine coming home from school one day to discover a home in shambles – the carpet and floor destroyed books off the shelves, and windows broken. Your mother greets your arrival with tears of fear and anger; someone searched the house and arrested your father, the charges…ownership of a fax machine. The authorities set no bail, and tell your family that your father will be jailed until further notice. This scene, along with many others, occur all over the world, in fact, the United States is only thirty five years removed from a string of vicious human rights abuses against African-Americans in states like Mississippi and Alabama. Human rights abuses take on many forms; however, there are many patterns evident in their occurrence. Usually, rights abuses take place against groups protesting a corrupt or unjust government. In 1989, the communist Chinese government slaughtered hundreds, if not thousands of civilians clamoring for a more democratic state. The Chinese government, threatened by a strong public display of dissent, cracked down on the protestors, thus showing the world on of the worst cases of human rights abuses in the last 15 years. Another example of rights abuses against people clamoring for democracy took place in Myanmar in 1991. Myanmar’s military government reluctantly allowed democratic elections, when the elections began to show signs of a military defeat, the military cancelled the elections, jailed and tortured democratic party members, and put a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate on house arrest. To this day, Myanmar continues to lead the world in rights abuses. Internal ethnic clashes also result in human rights abuses. The ongoing dispute between ethnic Turks and the minority Kurds, in Turkey, has been one of the bloodiest examples of human rights abuses over the last 50 years. Ethnic Kurds in eastern Turkey believe they have the right to a certain amount of autonomy, and routinely discourage the use of Kurdish dialects, newspapers, or radio stations. Without a political voice in Turkey, ethnic Kurds are amongst the poorest, least educated, and impoverished people on the planet. Africa, primarily sub-Saharan Africa also suffers from horrendous internal ethnic clashes and rights abuses. When Europe colonized Africa in the late 1800’s, mapmakers created nations along geographic, not ethnic lines, thus fencing in thousands of tribes, none of which speak the same languages, practice the same religions, or enjoy similar customs. These borders gave rise to some of the most brutal rights abuses in world history, in nations like Uganda, Sudan, the former Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda. One of the worst cases of humans rights abuses today is in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in Africa. The Unite Nations, and organizations like Amnesty International, attempt to intervene before abuses become large-scale tragedies. These organizations keep tabs on political prisoners, the plight of minority religious groups, and national elections. In fact, former United States President Jimmy Carter has become an advocate for free and efficient elections on every world continent. Sovereign nations like the United States, and political alliances like the United Nations and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), also help prevent rights abuses.. Without help from the world community, rights abuses will continue, affecting families, communities, and nations alike.

Water Crisis

Fresh or salt, tap or bottled. For those of us who are used to unwinding in a warm tub and choosing from countless brands of designer drinks, the impending global water crisis might not seem so urgent. But those that think that the right to water is up there with the right to breather are living a fool’s oasis. In the Middle East, tensions over water rights may destabilize the region’s already trouble political situation. Throughout history, shortages of fresh water have troubled people. Today, they trouble people more than ever because the demand for water is growing rapidly. The story of man could be told in terms of his struggle for water and his use of it. The first great civilizations arose in the valleys of great rivers–the Nile Valley of Egypt, the Tigris-Euphrates Valley of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley of Pakistan and the Hwang Ho Valley of China. Major cities of the world were all developed according to their access to water. Today, many people fear the world does not have enough water to meet all our needs. Yet the world has–and always will have–the same amount of water it has always had. All the water we use passes through the great water cycle and can be used again and again. The total amount of water on earth is enough for all our needs. However, the earth’s water is distributed unevenly. Some regions suffer a constant drought (lack of water). Other regions generally have plenty of water, but they may be struck by drought at times. In addition, people have created many water problems by mismanaging the supply. The earth has an enormous amount of water—about 326 million cubic miles of it. However, 97 percent of this water is in the salty oceans and more than 2% is in glaciers and icecaps. The rest totals less than 1%. Most of this water is underground and the remainder includes the water in lakes, rivers, springs, pools and ponds. The earth receives plentiful rain. If this rain fell evenly, all the land would receive 34 inches a year. But the rain is uneven. For examples, over 400 inches drenches northeastern India every year, but northern Chile may not get rain for years. Over 135 inches soaks parts of western Washington each year, but Nevada averages only 9 inches. The industrial world has come to look upon water as an eternal resource, always abundant and always flowing—and to use it so carelessly that there is less and less of it each year, and in some places it is running out altogether. It takes 10,000 gallons to produce a car. Industrial society produces 50 million cars every year. A nuclear reactor needs 1.0 cubic miles of water a year, and together all U.S. reactors use up the equivalent of one and a third Lake Eries each year. The average person in the industrial world uses approximately 1,800 gallons every day, 657,000 gallons a year and Americans use one-third of all the flowing water in the country every singles day. The Mississippi is losing flow; the Colorado is being depleted yearly, the Ogallala aquifer, the basic water source for the entire grain belt from Texas to Minnesota, has been used so extensively that it is now running dry in many places. The industrial world, far from taking special care of this resource, contaminates it in vast quantities. They pour into pure drinking water, the toxic fertilizers from fields, the toxic acids from factories, toxic potions from offices, toxic wastes from cities. So even though most industrialized countries should have enough water to sustain themselves, they are fast depleting a major resource.

Homeless/Refugees Manfred, a 26 year old German, is not sure what hit him. A year ago he was running his own company but now he sleeps on a park bench in Cologne, Germany. He lost his business to bankruptcy, and collects unemployment benefits. Yetta Adams slept in the door way of the Washington D.C. bus station, using a tattered blanket to keep her warm and a crumpled paper bag as a pillow. The next morning, after the temperature dropped down in the low 30’s, Yetta was found dead. At a refugee camp in Zaire, outside a relief tent a child died, his gaze suddenly turning to glass. Moments later another stricken refugee died, and then a third. By the next day there were bodies everywhere, and scores of corpses were being flung into trucks for mass burial. A little boy wandered by, crying. His father said the boy’s mother had died from cholera the day before. A baby was strapped onto the father’s back. It was dead, too. No place on earth can one escape witnessing an increase in homelessness. This is a global problem. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates in that there aee 100 million homeless people on Earth. An additional 600 million live in shelters of some type. These people are homeless for many reasons. Sometimes disasters like earthquakes or floods destroy homes. Sometimes, like what is happening in Rwanda, wars cause people to flee their homes. The civil war between the two warring tribes (Hutus and Tutsis) in Rwanda have caused the mass exodus of minority tribesmen (Hutus) to flee to Zaire to seek a safe haven. By the end of July, 1994 over 2 million people had left Rwanda and equal amounts were refugees in their own borders. After fleeing into Zaire, they set up tent cities without adequate sanitary conditions, food or health services. Cholera, starvation, and dehydration are killing them by the thousands. Today in the U.S., it is estimated that as many as 3 million Americans are homeless on any given night. And the number of homeless shelters—temporary emergency housing run by cities, states and private groups—has soared from 600 in 1980 to 1,500 today. The causes of America’s homelessness are complex and varied. In recent years, for example, many mental institutions have shut down and thrown their patients into the streets. Drug and alcohol addiction have sent others there to join them. Recession and unemployment have added still others to the homeless population, as have cutbacks in the government programs for the poor. The recession will force 1.5 million more people into homelessness over the next two years, according to estimates by The National Alliance to End Homelessness. In a 2008 report, the U.S. Conference of Mayors cited a major increase in the number of homeless in 19 out of the 25 cities surveyed. On average, cities reported a 12 percent increase of homelessness since 2007. Yet, even as the numbers have grown, so has the American public frustration with the homeless. Major cities are sweeping the homeless out of subway systems onto the streets—even our own liberal San Francisco, has passed legislation barring sleeping on sidewalls or in parks, and “aggressive” begging. Experts in the U.S. agree that there needs to be an aggressive attempt to alleviate the problem of homelessness. Short term fixes don’t work. The nation needs more job training programs because the issue is not really about housing but increasing the ability op people to earn a decent living, therefore, allowing them the capability of attaining adequate housing. The worldwide problem of homelessness varies from country to country and the United Nations is working to create stable, working governments and economies so that all people will have the opportunity to work consequently, have the capability of obtaining housing.

Environmental Crisis

In the last 100 years of technological growth, much as happened to destroy world’s natural balance. A ruinous cycle of consumption, waste, and pollution has spread over not only this country, but much of the world, putting the health of the entire planet at risk. The range of environmental threats we face—toxic waste, global warming, ozone depletion, overpopulation—is large and ever increasing. The worse abuses continue to pose serious danger to our future. The problem exists with people. Coal-burning power plants, hazardous chemicals, and other man-made pollutants are blamed by many environment experts for a warming of our planet. Most alarming were reports of a growing hole in the ozone layer. This layer of gas protects earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. Experts say the ozone layer is being destroyed by gases called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). These are used in refrigerators, air conditioners, and other products. Scientists say the increase in ultraviolet rays will increase skin cancer and have a host of other effects, including damage to crops and sea life. Clearly, environmental protection is no longer a matter of cleaning up dirty lakes or waste dumps. It has become a medical, cultural and economic issue of vital importance to people in every part of the world. Some of the more prevalent problems are air pollutants and acid rain. Despite the reduction of air pollutants in the U.S. since the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act, urban areas remain plagued by noxious smog especially during the summer months. The U.S. is attempting to control this problem with little success while developing nations are increasing the world’s air pollution. To add to this, acid rain compounds the problem. Here air pollutants are washed to earth by rain, snow and fog and then there is a rise in the acidity of the soil and bodies of water where they fall, killing trees, land vegetation, as well as fish in affected lakes. Another major aspect of the environment crisis is the destruction of wastes—both human and nuclear. Americans are throwing away more trash than local facilities can accommodate. Landfills are nearing capacity, while modern incinerators and recycling programs remain controversial. Also, many chemicals are seeping from storage containers contaminating underground water supplies. Moreover, wastes from nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons factories are highly toxic and present a problem of disposal and safety. In other words, they are a matter of life and death. Amid the worries, however, there is a ray of hope. It comes from the growing awareness that environmental issues affect all nations and that they require international solutions. Many countries agreed to end the use of CFCs during the Kyoto meetings, which were adopted in 1997 and entered into force in Feb. 2005. As of 2009, over 187 states have signed and ratified what is now known as the “Kyoto Protocol”. Interestingly, the US is not one of these countries. President Bush and the US Senate opted out in fear of “serious harm to the economy of the US”. More recently, a second summit was held in Copenhagen where talks broke down between developed nations and developing nations. Members were able to “recognize the scientific case for keeping temperature rises to no more than 2 degrees C,” but it did not contain commitments to emission reductions to achieve the goal. China and the United States continue to blame each other for the break down of tougher controls. The next climate meeting will be held in Cancun this summer with the hope of signing a binding agreement on reducing the levels of CFC emissions.

Energy Crisis

Gas shortages, OPEC’s price control of oil, troubles in Iran, pollution problems with the atmosphere, land and oceans, nuclear problems at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl have finally convinced the world that we are experiencing an energy crisis. Energy use creates serious problems wit depletion of fuel reserves and effects on the environment. People have rapidly used up sources of energy that accumulated for millions of years. The period of greatest fossil-fuel formation began about 360 millions years ago. For about 40 million years, huge quantities of dead trees and other plants were buried in the earth through natural processes. The formation of fossil fuels is still going on but people burn the fuels thousands of times faster than they form. The rapid growth of energy use threatens to exhaust the world’s supply. Petroleum may become the first fuel to give out growing scarce by the mid-2000. According to Colin Campbell (founder of the London based Oil Depletion Analysis Centre) reckons global peak production of conventional oil - the kind associated with gushing oil wells - is approaching fast, perhaps even next year. If he is correct, then global oil production can be expected to decline steadily at about 2-3% a year, the cost of everything from travel, heating, agriculture, trade, and anything made of plastic rises. And the scramble to control oil resources intensifies. As one US analyst said this week: "Just kiss your lifestyle goodbye." But the Campbell analysis is way off the much more optimistic official figures. The US Geological Survey (USGS) states that reserves in 2000 (its latest figures) of recoverable oil were about three trillion barrels and that peak production will not come for about 30 years. In the wake of the Iraq war, the rapid economic rise of China, global warming and recent record oil prices, the debate has shifted from "if" there is a global peak to "when". Natural gas is also being used up quickly. At present rates of consumption, natural gas may last only slightly longer than petroleum. When people have removed all the oil and natural gas from the earth, they will have used up the “easy energy” supplied by nature. After that, they will have to use such solid fuels as coal and oil shale. Coal, the most plentiful fossil fuel, will last more than 200 years. The production, transportation and use of fossil fuels all affect environment. The drilling of offshore oil fields and the shipment of petroleum by tanker sometimes results in oil spills that pollute the ocean, contaminate beaches and kill wildlife. To date, the BP Gulf Coast Oil spill in 2010 is the largest oil spill in US History with almost 62,300 barrels spewing into the water a day. In total, over 3 million barrels of oil have been spilled, enough to fill 126 Olympic size pools. Also affecting the environment is underground coalmines which can cave in and release the dangerous gases. Strip mining has exposed large areas of land to erosion. The burning of coal and oil pollutes the air with nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide. These substances can react with moisture in the air and fall to earth as acid rain. All other sources of energy also have environmental effects. Nuclear power plants create thermal pollution and radioactive wastes. The construction of large dams changes river conditions. Electric power lines produce electromagnetic fields that may create a health hazard. Any use of energy, no matter how clean the source, gives off waste heat. If the use of energy continues to grow, the heat released could alter the environment. The challenges presented by the earth’s diminishing energy supply include (1) developing new energy sources: (2) improving the efficiency of energy production, transportation and use; and (3) conserving energy.

Hunger/Starvation

Once more, pictures of famine shock the world. This year, the images come from nations such as the Sudan and Rwanda: withered children clinging to empty bowls, toothpick-legged babies with flies in their eyes shriveled bodies piled up in pickup trucks. These are not the only countries whose people are starving. Famine has also struck Mozambique and Somalia. And it lurks around the corner in nearly a dozen more countries. World hunger is rapidly increasing, even in wealthier countries. In the U.S., 30 million people never get enough to eat, a chilling 50% increase since the mid-1980. The problem is the same or worse in 40 countries. An estimated 786 million people never have enough to eat. About 60,000, three-quarters of them children, die of hunger and related diseases every day. The number of malnourished children in the developing world increased from 188 million to 205 million. And experts predict that the situation will only get worse as food production in the poorest countries continues to decline. In Africa, record droughts have produced record crop failure. But drought alone does not cause famine. IN the US, we have had droughts before that have been more severe than those in Africa. However, in the African countries threatened by drought civil war and ragged economies make crop failure impossible to overcome, thereby causing famine. Deforestation, desertification and soil erosion also have devastating effects on food production. Where forests are cut down, the soil are washed or blown away, where land is planted too often or grazed too long, it can no longer support crops or cattle. The U.S. is a different story. It produces more food per person than any country and has never endured a larger-scale famine. But, according to the major relief agencies, some of the causes of hunger in Africa and the U.S. are the same. As in Africa, lack of food is not the problem—it’s how food is distributed. Many have more than they need to support life, and many do not have enough to sustain life. One recent study reported that as many as 1 in 5 children in the US do not get enough food to eat. These economic and political reasons for hunger have experts calling it ”an entirely man-made disaster.” As tragic as that may be, it is also good news. If people cause hunger, people can end it.

Illiteracy

If you are reading this paper and you understand it, then you’re basically literate. The United Nations has defined literacy as “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials…” It means you can understand what you read. Sadly, today, close to 20% of the world’s population is not literate, meaning illiterate. That amounts to over 800 million people. Since the US has a high literacy rate (99%), we often forget that it is real problem for many other parts of the world. In 2000, about 70 per cent of the world’s illiterate adults lived in three regions: Sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia, and the Arab States and North Africa. East Asia and the Pacific reported an overall literacy rate of 86 per cent with an estimated total illiterate population of 185 million. The Latin America and Caribbean region has an illiterate population of 39 million, or 11 per cent of the total adult population. There are many obstacles to overcoming illiteracy. A few examples are wars and natural disasters (hurricanes, earth quakes). Experts also connect illiteracy with poverty. The less affluent (rich) regions of the world, like those listed above, have lower literacy rates. Why? Primarily because there is little money for schools and other educational resources. While literacy is often related to one’s income level, it is also determined by one’s gender. Women account for two out of three illiterate adults in the world. In 2000, there were 236 million more illiterate women than men and it is projected in 2015 the difference will be 215 million. Governments and outside organizations must take an active role in increasing the literacy rate in the world. Without a government led, organized effort at ending illiteracy the problem will not go away. Two recent examples of successful government literacy campaigns are those of Cuba and Nicaragua. When Fidel Castro and fellow communists took over Cuba in 1959, the literacy rate was a shocking 25%. Castro directed many resources toward helping all people, especially the majority poor, learn to read. The effort paid off. Today Cuba’s literacy rate (99.8%) is higher than that of the United States. Similarly, Nicaragua experienced an incredibly successful campaign when its government increased the literacy rate from 50% to 65% in just one year. Sadly, today Nicaragua’s literacy rate hasn’t changed much. The ability of a nations population to read and write is important because it increases its ability to solve problems that hurt its people.

Ethnic Conflict

The history of ethnic conflict has been in great part the history of mixing peoples. Modern communication and transport accelerate mass migrations from one continent to another. Ethnic and racial diversity is more than ever a salient fact of the age. But what happens when people of different origins, speaking different languages and believing different religions, inhabit the same locality and live under the same political sovereignty? Ethnic and racial conflict—far from ideological conflict—is the explosive problem of our times. The world seems to be entering—or re-entering—an extremely dangerous era of ethnic and racial tensions. There is a need to promote a culture if peace among and between human communities—a culture of tolerance, of ethnic coexistence that fosters pluralism and open societies within human rights, and fundamental freedoms and democracy’s can flourish, the example of Yugoslavia is a sad reminder of what can happen when long—suppressed yearnings are not recognized in time. During the 90’s Ethnic conflict exploded into war in the former Yugoslavia, Croatians, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims shared the region known as Bosnia with relative peace for decades. However, the bloody civil war of the early 90’s divided that country along ethnic lines, redrawing boundaries, at the expense of thousands of lives. More recently, the Yugoslav region of Kosovo made of up 90% ethnic Albanians, wanted to break away from the Serb-controlled Yugoslavia. The Serb military refused to give up Kosovo and what followed was a NATO intervention to expel the Serbs from the region. While the Serbian military has withdrawn, the region of Kosovo remains war-torn, and Serbs and the ethnic Albanians can no longer peacefully co-exist. Ethnic tension is breaking up countries elsewhere, The Sudan (you may have heard of Darfur), India, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, are all in crisis. Ethnic tensions disturb and divide Sri Lanka, Burma, Indonesia, Iraq, Cyprus, Nigeria, Angola, Lebanon, Guyana, Trinidad—you name it. Even nations as stable and civilized as Britain and France, Belgium, and Spain, face growing ethnic troubles. Is there any multiethnic state that can be made work? The U.S. has, until recently, been one nation that has survived with a highly pluralistic, multi-ethnic society. But with the troubles in Los Angeles in the past decade, as well as the recent violence against Jewish communities, even our ability to peacefully co-exist is being questioned. In the past, the iron control of communism kept the minorities in the different countries quiet under their total control. But with the waning of their control, the long suppressed minorities wishes and desires have surfaced and created waning of their control, the long suppressed minority’s wishes and desires with separatist desires in the regions of Chechnya and more recently in Dagistan. The Middle East still remains a hot bed of ethnic conflict. Even though there has been an agreement between Israel and the PLO, much attention has been focused terrorist bombings in an attempt to undermine the agreement. Meanwhile. War with Kurdish populations in Turkey, Iraq, and Iran have left many thousands dead and rate of fatalities and continues to exceed that in Israel and Lebanon. No continent is spared. As more nationalities attempt to become independent, the role the US must play becomes a hot issue. Is armed intervention sometimes necessary? If so, when is such action justified? The situation in Kosovo will surely not be the last time the US will have decided whether or not an armed response is called for.

OVERPOPULATION

The world’s population, now approaching 7 billion, is increasing by three people every second—about a quarter of a million every day. Between 90 and 100 million people—roughly equivalent to the population of Eastern Europe or Central America—is added every year. At least 95% of the global population growth over the next 35 years will be in developing countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. By and large, the increases will be in the poorest countries—those by definition least equipped to meet the needs of the new arrivals and invest in the future. By the end of this century, a number of countries will face severe problems if populations grow as projected. Nigeria could have some 500 million citizens—as many as the whole African continent had in 1982. This would more than 10 people for every hectare (2.45 acres) of arable land. Modern France with better soils and less erosion, has only 3 people per hectare. Developing countries as a whole have suffered a serious decline in food self-sufficiency. The deficits, so far, have been met by industrialized countries (especially North America) but this is shaky because portions of North America are suffering under the effects of regional droughts and their cereal stocks have dropped. The world produces enough food to feed everyone today—yet malnutrition affects as many as 500 million people. The problem is poverty and the ability to earn a livelihood that produces money and resources to buy food. The labor force in developing countries will grow from around 1.8 billion today to more than 3.1 billion in 2025. Every 38 million new jobs will be needed, without counting jobs required to wipe out existing underemployment, estimated at 40% in many developing countries. Complicating this issue will be the spread of new, labor saving technologies. Education is the immediate goal. It gives one a sense of control over personal destiny and the possibility of choices. For women (2/3 of illiterate people in developing countries are women), it offers a view of sources beyond childbearing. Because of this, education has a strong impact on the health of the family and its chosen size. Women are in charge of nutrition, hygiene, food and water. As a result the effect of women’s education on child survival is very marked. Also women with seven or more years of education tend to marry an average of almost 4 years later and consequently, put off childbearing the same. Family planning is crucial part of this education. But there are barriers to this. Political support from the countries government is essential. People must have the medical supplies readily available, with money to purchase them. Also many cultures oppose family planning.