ROME, Jan 14 2017 (IPS) – Not at all. Or at least not necessarily. The fact is that cash transfer programmes –regular money payments to poor households—are meant to reduce poverty, promote sustainable livelihoods and increase production in the developing world. One in four countries on Earth are applying them. But are they effective?
.
Zambia’s Social Cash Transfer Programme is implemented by the Ministry of Community Development, Mother and Child Health and has been operating since 2003. As of December 2014, it reached 150,000 households and there are concrete plans to scale it up nation-wide in the near future. Photo: FAO
That depends. In some countries, like Brazil, the so-called Bolsa Família is cited as one of the key factors behind the positive social outcomes this Latin American giant has achieved in recent years.
The programme is an innovative social initiative taken by the Brazilian Government, says the World Bank (WB), which has provided technical and financial support to it.
As the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of its work for the world’s most vulnerable children, the agency on 9 December 2016 issued a stark warning that despite significant progress, too many children are still being left behind, with nearly 535 million of them living in harsh conditions, lacking access to decent health, education and protection services.
.
In Jérémie, Haiti, children play at the Église Chrétienne Nan Lindy. Hundreds of people have sought temporary shelter at the church after countless homes were destroyed by Hurricane Matthew. Photo: UNICEF/UN035877/LeMoyne
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 29 2016 (IPS) – Despite being locked up in an Australian detention centre on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, Kurdish-Iranian journalist Behrouz Boochani has continued reporting – gaining bylines and media attention around the world.
Journalist and asylum seeker Behrouz Boochani is detained indefinitely by the Australian government on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Credit: Supplied.
Journalism is the reason Boochani was forced to flee his home country of Iran, and – like the other 900 men detained indefinitely on Manus Island – seek refuge in Australia.
“When the Australian government exiled me to Manus Island I found out that they are basing their policy on secrecy and dishonesty,” Boochani told IPS.
26 December 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service– To understand something we often compare it with something else.
Johan Galtung
A recent Harvard study found 26.7% of world car production in China and 13.3% in USA; US economy bigger but China leading in export with 8 of the 12 biggest harbors; USA end 2016 fighting 7 wars with bases all over and China with no wars or bases, investing, building the New Silk Road-Lane, the Economic Belt. How successfully, it is to be seen.
But these are global power relations. That the West is going down, the Rest is coming up, the USA is a major part of the West and China of the Rest, are decades-old truths. And the EU is also part of the West.
What does domestic China remind us of, historically, structurally? Not USA, a state since 1776, 1812. Let us compare China with present border and context to Europe from the Atlantic to–whatever the border.
One conclusion can be foretold: only recently are both of them becoming cohesive, as super-states and as super-nations. Why, and how?
24 December 2016 (WSWS)* – On Friday [24/12/2016], the United Nations Security Council passed a toothless resolution censuring Israel’s expansion of settlements. The vote followed a decision by the Obama administration to abstain, rather than exercising its veto power.
**Photo: “Gas the Arabs” painted on the gate outside a Palestinian home in Hebron by Israeli settlers. It is signed “JDL” (Jewish Defence League). | Author: Magne Hagesæter | Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
A vote on the resolution was postponed on Thursday by its initial sponsor, Egypt, following the intervention of US president-elect Donald Trump. It was reintroduced on Friday with new sponsors New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal.
Photos by Muse Mohammed, Brendan Bannon and Ashley McLaughlin*
The Voices of Displacement in South Sudan
15 December 2016 (IOM)* – “Let peace come,” says John from his small shop in a displacement site in South Sudan’s Malakal town. “Let people go back to their houses and live in harmony.
.
On 15 December 2016, South Sudan’s brutal crisis entered its fourth year. Since a struggle between political rivals plunged South Sudan into a devastating conflict in 2013, an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 people have died* and more than 3 million have fled from their homes.
22 December 2016 – The United Nations Peacebuilding Fund is set to allocate $3 million on a pilot project that will provide peacebuilding and professional skills to Somali refugees volunteering to return from Kenya to Somalia.
Temporary homes are pouring into the overflow area of the Ifo Extension camp in Dadaab, Kenya. Photo: UN OCHA
Announcing the pilot project on Tuesday, the Fund said it will also help refugees settle down, and begin reintegration process into a community.
UN Peacebuilding notes that the project is unique as it reaches across borders and targets the same population, first in asylum in Dadaab, Kenya, and then upon return to Baidoa, Somalia.
21 December 2016 – World Meteorological Organization (WMO)*– The year 2016 remains on track to be the hottest year on record, with average global temperatures set to break even the records of 2015, according to data covering the first eleven months of the year.
19 December 2016 – TRANSCEND Media Service– If the English poet, John William Burgon, called Petra ‘half as old as time,’ Aleppo is a lot older. One of the world’s earliest cities, it ended the bronze age by discovering iron ore. A centre of Christianity almost two-thousand years ago, Aleppo sent evangelists as far afield as the western shores of India.
**Throne Hall of the Citadel of Aleppo, Syria | Author: Bernard Gagnon | This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, 2.5 Generic, 2.0 Generic and 1.0 Generic license.
Commerce was the life-blood of the city, and almost till the Suez Canal was built, it was the entrepôt that supplied the riches of the Orient to Europe.
Countries in the Horn of Africa are likely to see a rise in hunger and further decline of local livelihoods in the coming months, as farming families struggle with the knock-on effects of multiple droughts that hit the region this year, the UN Food and Agriculture OrganisationFAO on 20 December 2016 warned.
Farmers in the Horn of Africa need urgent support to recover from consecutive lost harvests and to keep their breeding livestock healthy and productive at a time that pastures are the driest in years. | FAO
Growing numbers of refugees in East Africa, meanwhile, are expected to place even more burden on already strained food and nutrition security.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 