GAP BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE WORLD

GAP BETWEEN NORTH AND SOUTH OF THE WORLD: AN EVIL SPIRAL


Europe - Italy and that is part of it - makes its presence felt beyond its borders.
The oil produced outside Europe affects the European economy, the demand for high-quality wood by Europeans profound impact on the balance of Africa, conflicts and insufficient development of many African and Asian countries are the source of a continuous emigration in Europe, the weapons produced in Europe lead to political changes around the world.
One of the reasons why the South fails to develop properly is that it has created ways of development suited to their needs and to their own environmental and social conditions.
The external debt of the countries of the "third world" can have an impact on the environment in two modi.Da one hand, there is undue to carry out projects from the ruinous ecological point of view, on the other hand, to repay the debt, start projects as ruinous over-exploitation of natural resources.
75% of the funds provided by the World Bank have been directed to four areas: dams, roads, tourism and mining.
Brazil is one of many countries that were conditional loans to large public works, for example the large dighe.Le large dams, in addition to being less effective and more expensive than a series of small dams, created secondary problems not indifferenti.La adjustment river flow prevents the output from their beds of water and silt, thus reducing fertility in valle.La creation of vast reservoirs causes the flooding of vast aree.si thus lose agricultural land or expanses of tropical forests.
8% of loans from the World Bank focused on farming in Africa, where the latter has led to serious environmental consequences of overcrowding pastures, desertification and reduction of animals selvatici.Una good part of the increase livestock is stimulated by the EC, which absorbs a guaranteed share of the market at higher prices mondiale.Infatti, the surplus of grain-fed beef cattle of Ce is accompanied by a shortage of meat from animals fed with grass.
Even in Central America, the subsidies have covered the farm and its pastures to meet the demand for beef in the United States, clearing 30-60 per cent of its forests.


THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC SITUATION
GIANCARLO Costadoni
INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC COOPERATION

The new international economic order, with its capital movement and the liberalization of world trade, creates a severe marginalization of the Third World.
Large multinational companies can marginalize the role of the workforce in the global economy.
Lately, a considerable number of countries are lagging behind: they were increasingly marginalized from the mainstream of the world economy and are left on the sidelines of the negotiations. The small size gives small countries a rank marginal in terms of the attention paid to the different countries in the market for news (80% of them come from the U.S., Britain and France) or aid granted by international bodies.
The poor are having to contend with the middle and upper classes the use of scarce resources.
In the Third world's three out of four individuals die before reaching age 50. The lack of basic services such as drinking water in homes or medical care, causes a third of the people living in the poorest countries have a life expectancy of just 40 years.
In the world one in five deaths reported in children who have not attained the age of 5. In the poorest countries, infant mortality, in fact disappeared from industrialized countries, even today due to four deaths out of ten. In many African countries is still very high. Although persistent regional disparities are being reduced, at least in some countries. Several countries, including the poorest, however, have not achieved good progress and still showed a 20% mortality under five years.
The maternal mortality rate (per pregnancy and childbirth) kills a million women a year, of which 99% in the Third World.
800 million people worldwide do not have a decent home. In many large cities the majority living in slums: Calcutta more than 600,000 people sleep on the sidewalks.
There is much talk of globalization of markets, the economy, communications. But he can not escape that we live in a world where more than half of the population has never made a phone call and where a billion people can neither read nor write: a planet where they still pose problems for many basic access to any information .
There are nearly one billion illiterate people, most of whom are women. About a hundred million people of school age, they do not have access to primary education. The richest fifth of the world population enjoys 33% of the expenditure on education and the poorest 13%. The Third World already owns 90% of toxic waste exported. For Western countries, where there are strict controls on this matter, it is easier and less expensive to bring their waste to countries where they are added to an already degraded environment.
The marginalization forced migrants in the most degraded parts of the western metropolis, promoting prejudice, conflict between ethnic groups, increased aggression and lack of prospects. The repressive policies against emigration undermine the rule of law in their host countries by encouraging the spread of racism. The most fanatical movements calling for the expulsion of ethnic minorities. The result is that you are putting up the dual society in Europe invented for the colonies, with all its evils. The worst of all is racism. Member States are increasingly considering the refugees and IDPs as economic migrants so as to assoggettargli immigration rules rather than those on asylum, which allows them to reject or expel the newcomers.




DECLARATION OF Cocoyoc
We must not build things, but the conditions of man. Humans have basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, health, education. Any process of growth that does not lead to their fulfillment ... it is a travesty of the idea of ​​development. We are still in a stage where the most significant commitment of the development in the level of satisfaction of the basic needs of the poorest groups of the population. The main purpose of economic growth should be to ensure the improvement of the conditions of these groups.
A process of growth that will benefit only a minority of the richest and maintains or even increases inequality between countries and within each of them is not development, but exploitation.

The great mobility and freedom of capital, legal and illegal, does not produce investment in Third World countries, but tends to be concentrated in the more industrialized countries. International trade, research and financial flows are concentrated in the United States, Japan and Western Europe.
These three poles exert a strong control by imposing their rationality to most of the planet. The imbalances become conspicuous when the contradiction between them escalates.
This model, called << >> globalization, has resulted in the most obvious and deleterious systemic concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. This happens in Third World countries but also in industrialized countries, increasing at an alarming rate band of people without any protection from the state capital.
If this is the framework for the strongest countries of the third world, such as Brazil and India, it is to find forms of a model of endogenous development as much as possible, away from economic international subordinate. For countries with lower population density and inferior technology, it is necessary to try to create regional blocks and turn in a self-managed interchange.
For the peoples of the European Union opens up a valuable opportunity to fight together in search of a future with a better distribution of their great wealth.

What can we do?

Faced with this situation, we often think, wrongly, that they are powerless. Governments, multinational corporations, international agencies make us feel incapable of decisive action but no power standing alone. We are the feet of power and enough that we learn to say no << >> collaborate to bring it down.
There are some gestures of our daily lives that support the power. Ie: voting, employment, consumption, savings, payment of taxes. There are parallel in many ways to change the reality:
1. We are citizens and towns. When they call us to vote, let's go! And in making the choice of which party to vote, we think about the world, what kind of foreign policy the government parties and the opposition want to carry on and also choose on the basis of this criterion.
2. Are we or are we working men and women. We do not think just to make a career or find a safe place. Also ask ourselves how we can be helpful to the next (society as a whole and individuals) in the selection of our future work and rifiutiamoci to be jointly responsible for harmful actions or dishonest.
3. We are consumers and consumers. We put in place a critical consumption. It 'an attitude that is to buy not only on the basis of price and quality but also the history of the product and the conduct of the manufacturer. The critical consumption is possible and does not require sacrifices, but consistency and information (secrecy is very strong in the world of production). Its cornerstone is the policy of the boycott, which is organized and temporary interruption of the purchase of one or more products to encourage producers to different behaviors. After being criticized by unions and groups in defense of the rights of children, some manufacturers of sports equipment (including Nike, Reebok and Adidas) have decided to adopt a code that will eliminate the use of child labor in their factories. Consumers in rich countries are increasingly active against those industries that Third World sweatshops employing children or paying starvation wages and the workers doing work in deplorable conditions.
4. We are savers and savers. In the choice of our bank, do not limit ourselves to seek the best possible conditions for our savings, but we demand to know how our funds are used by the bank. If our bank is financing the arms trade, let's change it. We adhere to the Bank's ethics or ethical finance other projects.
5. We taxpayers. Paying taxes is right and it is a duty of the good citizens and towns, because they serve to organize public services. The objection tax, in extremely serious cases, however, can be a tool to exert pressure on the government to make him abandon a policy openly unjust.




UNICEF EMERGENCY INTERVENTION

The United Nations Fund for Children is stepping up emergency response in southern Africa, where several countries are on the brink of a humanitarian crisis of alarming proportions.
UNICEF interventions in the affected countries (Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe) aim to ensure that women and children the nutrition level is essential to survival. The action UNICEF also includes a number of other interventions in the health field, for supplies of drinking water and the provision of basic sanitation, education and violence, kidnapping, sexual abuse and other forms of exploitation that threaten the weak and defenseless, that is, once again the children.
During times of famine the endemic problems that plague many of the countries in southern Africa become even more pressing:
· Life-threatening diseases such as measles, cholera, pneumonia spread more rapidly putting at risk the lives of millions of children in response UNICEF is expanding programs of prevention and vaccination coverage in order to oppose and contain the consequences caused from diseases that are often fatal.
· UNICEF also believes that helping families and keep their children in school is a matter of vital importance. To help the children not to be excluded from the school system has a particular value, since the school lunch programs are one of the main channels through which the'' UNICEF provides nutritional levels for children.
· HIV / AIDS makes it much more formidable difficulties that children face in resisting the hardships and other problems caused by famine. Poor diet weakens or kills those affected by HIV / AIDS, often forcing the children to devote the care and treatment of the sick. Sexual exploitation, then, is likely to increase, since many will be forced sexual services in exchange for food. Among the countries that are facing the crisis, Zimbabwe is pouring in the worst conditions. The Malawi and Zambia have been hit hard. In addition, hundreds of thousands of people in need of humanitarian assistance in Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique.


Counterfeit drugs in developing countries

Deadly Medicine

Under-dosed, expired or no active ingredients, which are sold on the black market in nylon bags, fake medicines rampant in poor countries. And cause thousands of deaths. Here's how a billion-dollar business.

In the spring of 1996, 72 children died in Haiti after ingesting paracetamol syrup (the most widely used medicine for diseases of childhood, arguably innocuous ed.)
After an investigation it was discovered that the drug contained diethylene glycol, a toxic anti-freeze, in place of polypropylene glycol, an ingredient normally present in the syrup.
Already in Nigeria in 1990 as a result of an error in the printed labels on the spot, he found the same antifreeze in a cough syrup. Budget: at least one hundred dead children.

In countries where 30-40% of medicines containing nothing but water, sugar or starch, pharmaceutical counterfeiting has become today one of the most profitable activities of organized crime.
This traffic, estimated at 3600 billion lire, spread with great speed.
In just one decade, the annual reported cases of deaths have increased from a dozen to more than 200.
It 'difficult to measure the exact width of the traffic, but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least 7% of medicines sold each year on the planet are "fake", a rate that can reach 60% in some countries Africans.

They hide behind this word, however, very different realities. The medicine can be sottodosato not contain active ingredients, be filled with unidentified substances and impurities, or even be replaced by a toxic substance. Very often the pills or syrups - which would normally give relief-totaled several of these anomalies.

False labels

There are traffickers who use means less hazardous to realize substantial profits: for example, a very low purchase price of the stocks of medicines expire, then, comfortably installed in a free zone, stick new labels by changing the expiry date so that the drugs can be taken safely the way of the third world.

These politrafficanti << - as he calls them Koutouzis Michel, a researcher Geopolitical Drug Observatory of Paris - are very difficult to fit because they are more specialized, such as a time, in a specific area. They are experts in all the illegal trafficking. Before the forgery is discovered, have already converted in drug trafficking or protected animals. >>

How to explain this boom in counterfeit medicines? In a manner similar to that concern jeans or video games, you take advantage of the globalization and liberalization of international trade on which it came to engage the degradation of the economic situation of some African countries, in particular on the occasion of the devaluation of the CFA franc in Sahel, in 1994. Moreover, African pharmacies were often modeled on those of Europe, and they do not sell drugs dissolved, but in jars and packages often too expensive for the African patient.
Result: people who have a weak purchasing power of their supplies on the black market.



Drugs "do-it-yourself"

But those who make the "fake" medicines? "The tracks are innumerable-Ten Ham says Martin, director of" drug safety "WHO-ranging from small manufacturer" do-it-yourselfers "who will prepare the tablets in his kitchen to large factories that are more convenient to halve the active ingredients. " As for commodities is difficult to trace the responsibility, because they pass through numerous molds of different companies. Thus, the syrup murderess of Haiti had been manufactured by local workshops, starting from contaminated glycerin imported from Germany by a Dutch company, which in turn owns a conglomerate of Sino-German, for which the basic product came from China.
Pharmaceutical laboratories for their part are reluctant to give information or lodge a complaint even in the case of the discovery of counterfeits. Very often prefer to be directed to discrete agencies, private detectives.

Prices impossible

So what to do to combat this scourge of public health? First of all, better organized and seriously controlling the importation and distribution of medicines.
In Guinea, for example, the famous chemist "hawkers", widespread in Africa, have been banned.
"The quality is not controlled, it produces," said Jean-Ives Videau, head of the CHMP (Central Medical Humanitarian Farmacetique) French, so it is important to know the origin of the raw materials that go into the production of active ingredients.
Another way to go is to inform people about the risks they face. But it should also be able to provide them with good medicines at affordable prices. This is one of the fundamental problems returned to the fore just after the devaluation of the African franc, which has meant a dramatic surge in prices. One possible solution would be to manufacture the medicines on the spot, but it is still too rarely implemented sub-Saharan Africa.
Lower the prices of medicines sold in third world countries is not the intent of the great laboratories who believe that these medicines would then reverse the path-South-East-with prices that can defy all competition. "In an economic logic where laboratories should think to invest and innovate in order to survive, creating a system of dual prices march is very delicate," says Jacques Pinel, director of logistics department of Doctors Without Borders, a track that could however, be explored thus far, do a different labeling of medicines according to their destination, similar to what happens for example in the domain of publishing with paperback books in paperback.
These medicines "in economic version" could be sold four times less expensive.
And 'then the whole economy of drug that should be reviewed, starting with the licenses up
placing on the market.

Nigeria
Vaccines bathwater
In 1995, at the height of epidemic meningitis, Nigeria, Niger offers a batch of 88,000 doses of vaccine. Nurses Doctors Without Borders who use them find them strange. The product is diluted evil and contains strange filaments blacks. After investigation, it appears that they are copies of vaccines Pasteur-Merieux and Smithkline that contain nothing but colored water, without any active principle. The packaging and bottles are perfectly imitated. Pasteur-Merieux filed a lawsuit. Nigeria has never responded to requests for cooperation of French justice. It is estimated that 60% of the drugs available in this country are counterfeit. With only a real pharmacy to 20,000 inhabitants, this country is populated twice as Italy is a land of choice for traffickers of all kinds.
Worse than the disease
In West Africa, treating a child suffering from a bout of malaria can cost up to three weeks of salary of an employee. The majority of people-for example, up to two-thirds of the population in Benin-recourse then to medicines "in the unitè", ie buy individual pads instead of the entire pack, resorting to the black market smuggling.
Tablets that at best do not care and at worst kill. Result: people poison themselves gradually and are often suffering from kidney failure since the fake medicines affecting mainly the kidney, the organ of the strainer body. The antibiotics, in particular, are manufactured with expensive raw materials, which induces some producers to reduce the doses. And antibiotics are medicines used most copied and worse (OTC, prescription inadequate); hence the emergence of resistance becoming more frequent.




Poverty and child labor


Children mined

Illiteracy in life.
Health mined.
Narain Singh Rao, Indian activist for the rights of the child: "If I had thirty years that I started to work at 8, I'd be reduced as my childhood friends who have done it.
I would be hunched and tired, perhaps with TB; approximately 80% of TB patients in hospitals Indians were child laborers.
Continuous exposure to dust, chemicals, high temperatures and even in low light (or too much) damage respiratory organs, eyes, liver, kidneys. "
Lead weights or forced postures for a long time can affect bone development and growth. The excessive noise causing partial deafness.
The absence of play and rest, any separation from family entail adverse consequences on the psyche of children. Devastating and no return is then the physical and psychological effects of child prostitution.



Threat for adults

Without children available for plantations and factories, the work should be given to adults who would be able to claim a higher wage and social.
No coincidence that child labor is especially prevalent in those communities where adults are able to work only occasionally or with wages below the minimum wage.

Company impoverished forever

The equation "child-like arms to work," encourages many births renewing the cycle of poverty.
The nations will inherit another generation of low-income workers without specific skills, illiterate, maybe even debilitated or disabled.
Other than alleviate poverty.

What are the benefits for the family?

A study by UNICEF in Latin America shows that thanks to the work of young children, the power to order to the family increases to a maximum of 10-20%, which remains in poverty.

Poverty without social status

Only the children of working poor families in situations devoid of social safeguards.
Since the first election in 1957 until a short time ago, the Kerala government had a "special", sensitive to social issues and committed to ensure that all the basic needs.
Realizing the agrarian reform, increasing the minimum wage and investing in compulsory education and health care, has led to a situation encouraging.
Even the example of Cuba is indicative: despite the difficult economic conditions, the social gains were maintained and there children do not work.
Child exploitation is in correlation with the distributive injustices and increases when people are left alone to deal with his poverty.
Without education and healthcare free of charge, without social security, to meet the basic needs of families should ask all the components work hard to survive.
When economic situation is deteriorating and unemployment increases adult, comes to the rescue the income from child labor.
It also happens in European countries and is happening in Iraq, where the embargo child labor is doubled.

The spring of profit

Companies prefer children because they can make better.
Governments are often complicit direct or indirect: it is their responsibility, if adult workers receive wages insufficient to support his family.
Some Third World governments argue that child labor is a childhood disease of poor societies and believe that Western countries have become rich thanks to this exploitation, it is rather the opposite is true.

International mechanisms

The external debt of major culprit. To all the subject peoples of South indebted governments asking to work a lot, sell and consume very little, in order to accumulate a large surplus necessary to repay the debt.
This means an increase in the levels of exploitation of workers and the land, to produce at lower costs in pursuit of international markets. It also means a cut in social spending that would allow those families to survive even with a limited income.




Multinationals on the skin (also) Children

The bible of international competitiveness is based on the relocation (new phenomenon in the struggle of capital against labor).
If you save on costs businesses in some areas replace workers with machines, in other productions is cheaper to move production where workers are less demanding and governments more amenable.
Multinational companies prefer those who agree to work for 80 hours a week and a handful of cents per hour.
And then they spend enormous sums on advertising to compete for a limited market of consumers for certain products because the image is to sell more of the low price.
In addition to tropical products, the industries most simple take flight, leaving empty European factories to relocate to countries in Asia, Latin America and North Africa.
The tools are different: and it is in this chain that lurks child labor.



"Glimpses of children caught in the nightmare. Without rice in the throat, without hummed songs without rest. Nothing. Only blood that beats at the temples. To bring the body that remains. Lift weights, cut the skins, sawing metal, glassblowing, spinning the rug, man-age and sleep. (...) For the misery of a family, the demands of criminals a local moneylender, the cruelty of a powerful village, the cowardice of a subordinate, the complicity of an official, the indifference of a road, the silence of a state , the tyranny of a foreign debt ...
A childhood immersed in the coal, dust, splinters of glass ... "

(Sorj Chalandon, from the book "Enfants de l'ombre", 1993)


NIKE - What shoes in indonesia

The European consumer pays a $ 100 pair of Nike shoes

The sports star Michael Jordan has received $ 20 million from Nike to make promotion service

With 15% of what Nike spends on advertising, you could double the wages of its Indonesian workers



Why the poor need of children

Why the poor need of children? In the Third World children who manage to survive are a treasure, and economic. This table shows how the boys and girls of a village near Java, Indonesia, represent a source of income for their families at the age of 6 years.

At 13 years old cultivate the land
At 12 years working under a boss, behind a pay
11 years old transplanted rice
At 10 years old grow rice
A 9 year old take away the undergrowth
At 8 years old look after the cattle
A 6 year treating younger children

A study by UNICEF


Beautiful silk. Now comes in our stores at bargain prices. What is the secret? The secret is called Biren, 8 years old, who like so many other kids for a few rupees Indian works works from 7 am to 9 pm to boil the poor live silkworms to spin silk. Biren burns often. Thirst is not suited to his arms, so rough and damaged.



                         INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
international organizations active in the world are different, both for purposes of both the number of participating countries: military alliances such as NATO and the ARAB LEAGUE, or political-economic such as the EU (European Union), which can not be open to all states.
International organizations are open to all countries are the United Nations and the specialized agencies related to it such as the FAO, UNESCO, WHO,.

The UN was officially born with the San Francisco Conference of April 25, 1945 in order to safeguard peace and security and to promote cooperation among nations. International cooperation in the field of economic, social, cultural and humanitarian is entrusted to the Economic and Social Council with the High Commissioner for Refugees and other specialized institutions.
The FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) works to solve the problems of world hunger, increasing food production, established in 1945, is headquartered in Rome.
The WHO (World Health Organization) has as its purpose the protection of public health through the study, prevention and treatment of diseases, established in 1948 with headquarters in Geneva.
The UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) promotes cultural co-operation among States, based in Paris since 1946.
UNICEF (United Nations Fund for Children) deals with the protection of children in the world with headquarters in New York