Social Issues
Nepal\'s Greatest Challenge
IPN Opinion article
29 May 2003 -- Today Nepal celebrates the 50th anniversary of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay\'s historic ascent of Mt. Everest. Sadly, poverty and politics in Nepal almost overshadow this impressive achievement. While the world marvels at Everest, many Nepalese wonder why they can\'t scale the heights of economic growth and development.
Africans must also commit to the war against AIDS
IPN Opinion article
Africans are ill, unable to receive medical treatment and short of food because most African governments have kept people poor, frustrated trade and interfered with markets. By increasing economic freedom and enabling the private sector to thrive, Africa will be able to create the wealth that can build health infrastructure. Bush\'s billions of dollars are crucially important, but Africans won\'t triumph over AIDS or poverty until their leaders make a true commitment their people.
African NGO Calls on G-8 Leaders to Rethink Strategy on Africa’s Poverty and Disease Predicament
IPN Press release
A Mexican Mistake?
IPN Opinion article
A year and a half ago in Doha, Qatar, long before it became the center of the Iraqi war effort, the war on AIDS was supposed to be re-charged by the World Trade Organization. At the Doha WTO Ministerial meeting an agreement was reached permitting poor countries to disregard patent protections for drugs designed to treat diseases that posed a special burden, an \"emergency\", on those impoverished societies. What the ministers had in mind in allowing the compulsory licensing of drugs was improving access to treatments for malaria and AIDS in countries like Benin and Botswana that have been hit hardest by disease epidemics. But instead the Doha declaration, as it is now known, has been used by mid-income countries such as Egypt and Peru for improving access to lifestyle drugs like Viagra.
Aids: It is now up to Africa\'s leaders
IPN Opinion article
AS THE US edges closer to war with Saddam Hussein, its global popularity seems to be ever-diminishing. And while US President George Bush\'s decision to act on the global HIV/AIDS crisis may improve his international image, its success is far from certain.
HIV infection continues to rise in Africa, while mortality from AIDS-related illnesses is increasing alarmingly. Few African governments can be proud of their response to the epidemic. Yet some have faced this catastrophe admirably.
HIV-Aids a poverty disease?
IPN Opinion article
Kenya will receive $179,4 million from the UN Global Fund to fight Aids and other diseases. The health ministry indicated that $129m of this would go to the fight against HIV-Aids, $33,6m to malaria and $11,2m to tuberculosis.
However, to check the Aids tide, Africans really need economic empowerment through trade and productivity. Countries may receive all sorts of aid packages, but as long as they subject their populations to policies that sustain them in poverty, there is a danger that disease will be turned into a tool of global politics. It may well be that the famine in southern African countries is largely attributable to the HIV-Aids scourge. With over seven million deaths among agricultural workers since 1985, crop output plummeted nearly 60%.
Aids: Economic development, not cheap drugs
IPN Opinion article
If the EU, the US and other rich nations want to tackle poverty in the developing world, including Africa, all trade barriers (tariff and non-tariff) including agricultural subsidies must be removed. In real development terms, the effects are substantial. Elimination of tariff and other non-tariff barriers could result in gains for developing countries: $182 billion in the services sector, $162 in manufacturer and $32 billion in agriculture.
Availing themselves of these, AIDS activists will have to retrace their steps, change their tactics and focus more on economic development for the poor countries. If economic growth and development is accelerated in Africa, majority of people wallowing in abject poverty will cross the poverty line. This will enable them to have access to life-saving drugs, escape early death and escape other deadly diseases. Cheap drugs will not.
New Hope for Free Markets in Africa's Most Populous Nation
IPN Opinion article
With nary an exception, countries that gained their independence from colonial powers in the 1960s turned immediately to socialist central planning. The intellectual classes were nearly unanimous in their support for socialism and thoughtful opposition was virtually nonexistent. Now, the abysmal poverty and corruption those policies produced are animating a whole new class of activists and intellectuals on behalf of free market alternatives. New think tanks springing up, like IPPA in Nigeria and IREN in Kenya, are almost all committed to thrusting a stake through the heart of the socialist idea.
Waste not, want not
IPN Opinion article
Here\'s a question for you. Say that I have an obsolete, useless Commodore computer in my garage. You offer to take it apart, recycle the electrical parts, and sell the excess metal for scrap. I gladly give you the electronic albatross, but rather than neatly recycling it, you incompetently or irresponsibly disassemble and deposit the innardsósome of which may be toxicóin your backyard. Who is responsible for the mess: you or me?
If you answered that I\'m responsible, you\'re part of an unusual international consensus that was expanded and reinforced in Geneva recently. The Parties to the 1989 Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Waste and Their Disposal met in December to expand the treaty\'s 1994 ban on movements of waste from rich to poor countries.
