Extreme Poverty Up in Poorest Nations

[Judi Lynn]

Extreme Poverty Up in Poorest Nations
By EDITH M. LEDERER , 09.18.2006, 11:26 PM

Many of the world's poorest countries lamented at a U.N. ministerial meeting Monday that some of the least developed nations are experiencing increases in extreme poverty.

A day before world leaders gather for their annual meeting, the U.N. General Assembly held a high-level session to focus on progress toward implementing a 10-year action plan for the least developed countries adopted in 2001.

"The list of the least developed countries keeps growing," said President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom of the Maldives. "With the high speed of globalization, the gap between the north and the south is ever increasing. Can the rich afford to help the poor?"

General Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa urged stepped up efforts to help elevate the status of the 600 million people living in the 50 most vulnerable countries in the world.

"The least developed countries remain marginalized in the world economy and continue to suffer from extreme poverty, child mortality and HIV/AIDS," she said. "In many instances development is being set back by civil conflict, and the cost required to rebuild every day life."
(snip/...)

http://www.forbes.com/business/commerce/feeds/ap/2006/09/18/ap3026297.html

[UrbScotty]

1. 'What you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me'

-Matthew 25:45

[mom cat]

4. If only people would follow what Jeses said to do instead of

"being Christian".

[1932]

2. I read Jeffrey Sachs's End of Poverty, which I found annoying

I applaud Sachs for the work he and Bono do, but (and I'm not an economist, so my judgment might be worth nothing) my sense from his book was that he was a little too much of an apologist for neoliberalism. He said that it was wrong that there is as much poverty as there is in the world, but that neoliberalism (which isn't exactly how he phrased it) was actually lifting a lot of people out of poverty. He never addressed extreme polarizations of wealth between the west and developing countries and within developing countries, He seemed pretty content that the scraps the poor got were pretty good, and that poverty reduction didn't need to address those macro-structural political and economic issues. I wonder what Sachs thinks of the issues raised in this story.



Globalization and its Discontents by Joe Stieglitz is a much more interesting book on the same issues, by the way.

[Bhaisahab]

3. K&R n/t