Human Rights Facts (49): Poverty Trap

(source)
A poverty trap occurs when poverty has effects which act as causes of poverty, creating a vicious circle in which poverty engenders more poverty, a circle of cumulative causation leading to a downward spiral of ever more extreme poverty.
Poverty traps or poverty circles can be of different kinds: individual, social, national, international…
1. Individual poverty traps
A [...]

Human Rights Facts (38): Millennium Development Goals

I’ve mentioned the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before. This post gives some more data.
The United Nations agreed the 8 MDGs in 2000, to be reached in 2015. Now, half-way to that deadline, there is progress, but not all regions in the world are doing equally well. However, even in the poorest region - sub-Saharan Africa [...]

Human Rights Poem (33): Hunger Camp at Jaslo

Hunger Camp at Jaslo, Wislawa Szymborska
Write it. Write. In ordinary ink
on ordinary paper: they were given no food,
they all died of hunger. “All. How many?
It’s a big meadow. How much grass
for each one?” Write: I don’t know.
History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (74): Bio-Fuel

Three very similar cartoons about bio-fuels and food prices:

Very funny, but it’s a bit simplistic to blame the food shortages around the world on the increase in food prices “fueled” by the use of raw food materials for petrol alternatives. First of all, the rising costs of food transportation due to rising energy costs also [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (69): Health

Bad health and suffering create the same problems as poverty. You have to be healthy and without pain, in order to have a cultural and political life and to be able to use freedom rights and political rights. A sick, suffering or toiling person is thrown back upon himself and unable to relate to the [...]

Human Rights Cartoon (66): Hunger and Oppression

The choice is not one between hunger and oppression or between starving liberals and well-fed slaves. On the contrary, hunger and oppression often go together.
The real choice is one between hunger and freedom. The end of oppression ultimately means the end of hunger and vice versa (because freedom promotes development and because well-fed people will [...]