Bangladesh
Anne Castronovo, Emma Kast Claire McQuillen and Matt Miller
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| Photo Credit: Claire McQuillen |
Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan through one of the most violent conflicts of the 20th Century in 1971. More than 3 million people were killed, over 200,000 women were raped, and it is estimated that 10 million people were displaced (Belt 2011). The war turned into genocide when the Pakistani army began killing intellectuals and university students to keep Bangladesh, then named East Pakistan, from developing. On December 3, 1971 India intervened and helped East Pakistan establish itself as the independent country of Bangladesh. Bangladesh suffered major problems after the genocide and had to start its independence without a majority of its educated population. This led to years of political strife and an inability to develop infrastructure at a productive pace. Today, Bangladesh continues to be hit with major floods and cyclones regularly, making the already difficult task of getting out of crushing poverty seems near impossible.
Currently Bangladesh faces problems due to its massive and rapidly growing population. The most densely populated country, with 164 million people in an area the size of Iowa, is causing strains on many aspects of life (Belt 2011). Roads, buildings and the rest of Bangladesh's already aging infrastructure are straining to keep up with the booming population. Bangladesh has fifty times the amount of inhabitants of Iowa, though it is roughly the same size. It is physically and mathematically impossible for a person to be alone.
The future of Bangladesh looks gloomy, if Bangladesh's population does not slow down soon the population could explode to 220 million people by the year 2050 (Belt 2011). At that point Dhaka, the capital, would be an extremely crowded city with little to no breathing room. To make matters worse, climate change will cause a rise in sea levels, submerging more of the lowlands to a point where they are no longer usable for farming or housing. This will force a migration northward, compacting the population on a landmass that already is straining under the burden of its massive population. Daily thousands of people migrate to Dhaka to flee from floods in the north and cyclones in the south (Belt 2011). About 45 percent of Bangladeshis are dependent on poorly developed agriculture; climate change is not doing this facet of the country any justice.
If Bangladesh and the global community do not come together to fix Bangladesh’s looming catastrophes the metrics that make up the MDGs will be going in the wrong direction for this country.
Brazil
Alexa Coleman
Brazil has become one of the most dominant economies in the world today. This improvement, from an underdeveloped and corrupt nation to a world superpower in a single decade has a lot to do with their domestic progress with social programs. Brazil has embraced the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and has already achieved five out of the eight total goals. The goals they have achieved have been some of the seemingly impossible goals including eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, as well as achieving universal primary education. Although Brazil still faces many challenges, their progress has caught the attention of the international community.
Over the past decade Brazil has emerged as a unique regional powerhouse. Brazil’s two-term president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva became Brazil’s first working class President in 2002. His election broke a trend of wealthy, powerful leadership. Lula was born in the poverty-struck northeast into a large family raised by a single mother. When Lula was seven years old his family was forced to move towards a city in search for better jobs. His family settled in a favela outside of Sao Paulo. He was forced to work odd jobs in factories and shops to help provide for his family, causing him to quit school at about a fifth grade level (Fields, O’Neil, Share, 2013, p. 579). His first wife died during childbirth because they could not afford adequate health care and he joined a union movement calling for the end of the military government. He raised the political ladder, running for office three times before successfully winning Brazil’s presidential election in 2002. Lula’s lifelong struggles are what drove his politics. Upon entering office he promised that every Brazilian got one plate of food a day. During his two terms as president he pursued policies that greatly reduced poverty and inequality, while presiding over an economic boom and the emergence of Brazil as a global economic and political force. He was reelected in 2006 and upon his exit in 2010 he had historically high popularity ratings (Fields, O’Neil, Share, 2013, 579).
After the fall of the military government in 1985, the Brazilian economy was able to grow. Fernando Collor de Mello (1989-1992) began to move away from statist policies and curtailed protective tariffs. Fernando Henrique Cardoso’s two terms (1995-2002) privatized state assets, ending a monopoly in a number of key economic sectors. Cardoso and two predecessors (Lula and Rouseff) continued with market friendly policies. The Brazilians have also become a more assertive voice for the emerging markets in international affairs (Fields, O’Neil, Share, 2013, 579). They rallied the major developing nations to challenge the rich world's agricultural subsidies, forming a group now known as the G5. With Brazil leading the group, ambassadors of Brazil, China, India and Russia now meet monthly in Washington to coordinate a common BRIC policy strategy, often to counter U.S. positions. Pushing its "south-south" agenda, the Lula government has opened 35 embassies since taking office in 2003, most of them in Africa and the Caribbean. Brazil also leads a widely acclaimed peacekeeping mission in Haiti. Their revolutionary foreign policy position has allowed them to save on military spending and defense budgeting (Rapoza, 2013). Brazil was able to capitalize on their natural resources when they opened their economy and have turned their nature resources into value-added goods.
The Lula administration committed itself fiscal conservatism, by rejecting tax increases and improving tax collection in order to pay off its foreign debt. He focused on paying back a structural adjustment loan from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as fast as possible. Meanwhile, he was hugely successful at implementing effective social programs. He was able to revolutionize the social welfare system despite a debt burden (Fields, O’Neil, Share, 2013, 579).
He launched his social welfare reform in 2002, by establishing a conditional cash transfer program known as Bolsa Familia. In order for families to join the program and be granted state money, they are required to adhere to rules and conditions. Children of these families need to be in school, get vaccinations from diseases and the parents had to at least be looking for a job. The money averages at a little under a hundred dollars a month. With these grants families were able to buy food and necessities for their families. The program to date has lifted a staggering 22 million people out of poverty, without bankrupting the nation’s budget (UNDP, 2012).
Lula committed himself to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, even holding an annual award ceremony in Brazil, recognizing programs and initiatives while aid in achieving success in development. There have been emerging innovative initiatives led by municipalities and civil society organizations across the country that have been helping improve lives of some of the country’s most disadvantaged communities. In 2013, the ceremony included hundreds of government representatives, civil society organizations, and ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean and Africa, UN Development Program (UNDP) Administrator Helen Clark and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in launching the fourth edition of the prize.
“By recognizing and rewarding the initiative and creativity of those making a difference at the local level, awards like these can spur innovation, shift attitudes, engage citizens, and establish new partnerships,” Clark said. “At the forthcoming Rio + 20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development here in Brazil, all who convene here can be inspired by the achievement of so many communities and nations which are not only lifting human development, but also are determined to do so within planetary boundaries” (UNDP, 2012).
The Bolsa Familia program has been widely acclaimed for their huge successes. The program’s principals rest on three main pillars, which are the cash transfer, the conditions and the complementary actions to be a beneficiary in the Bolsa Familia program; families must register at the Cadastro Unico (“Single Registry”), which identifies who will be eligible to receive the benefit. Families must meet the criterion of a monthly income of R$70 to R$140 per person when they have children between the ages of 0 to 17 years old. Or a monthly income of up to R$70 per person regardless the age of all members. The specific conditions they must comply with are school enrollment and a minimum attendance record of 85% for children and teenagers between the ages 6 to 15 years old and a minimum attendance record of 75% for teenagers between the ages of 16 to 17 years old, the fulfillment of the complete immunization requirement for children under the age of 7 years old, prenatal care for pregnant women and postnatal care for women as long as they are breast-feeding (Lee, 2011).
The main strategies used for a successful implementation of the program were:
• “Formalization of the shared management with states and municipalities;
• Improvement of the Single Registry and the benefit management: qualification of the registry data and improvement of the mechanisms for control and focalization;
• Utilization of the Single Registry by other government policies;
• Management of conditions: monitoring of the conditions in integration with the Ministries of Health and Education;
• Social control and inspection;
• Integration with other government policies/ actions for the development of the family capacity: complementary actions;
• Creation of financial incentives for the decentralized management” (Lee, 2011).
The achievements that Brazil has made to improve their country are remarkable. If Brazil hopes to keep its conditional cash transfer program working properly, many more schools and health clinics are needed. The commitment Brazil has made to improve their country from the inside out, while managing to maintain a growing economy and declining foreign debt is what makes Brazil such a fascinating case study.
Ecuador
Jerry Carter, Lauren Cosgrove, Andrew Driscoll and Alyssa Malone
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| Photo Credit: Hannah Lynch |
A microcosm of South America, Ecuador is a nation as diverse as the larger continent in which it lies. Its rich history, influenced by both Spanish and indigenous culture, creates a unique dynamic that comes through in all aspects of life from the food, to the dress, and to the politics of the region.
An overwhelming Catholic nation of 15.439 million people with a few million abroad, Ecuador boasts a large indigenous population-- just under three and a half million or about twenty-five percent of the total population (World Factbook 2013). This indigenous population played a crucial role in bringing current President Rafael Vicente Correa Delgado into power (U.S. Department of State 2013). Ecuador is a democratic republic, with a president that is elected every four years. Although several periods of instability have marked Ecuador’s history, the government has managed to remain legitimate in the eyes of its diverse population. This legitimacy has been reaffirmed several times through the democratic process in recent years, including the narrowly passed constitutional referendums, which significantly increased President Correa’s power in the spring of 2011 (Economist 2011).
Since achieving independence in 1830, Ecuador has had twenty different constitutions. The constant upheaval of state law has created an anything but stable base for democracy to grow. It wasn’t until 1979 that democracy as now perceived in Ecuador was fully achieved. Over the next twenty years, this fragile democracy was continually tested. This unrest, along with the several coup ’d’états, has created a political climate that is marred by corruption and the incompetence of a faulty bureaucratic structure. Despite these inherent issues, the election of President Correa running on a populist platform that reinvigorated the population marked the return of legitimacy to Ecuadorian government. This legitimacy lasted for a short while as recent protests and an attempted coup’ d’états in November of 2010 demonstrate, not all are happy with the current administration. The passage of the constitutional referendum mentioned above along with a similar one passed in 2008 however, shows that President Correa and his administration still hold a majority of support from the Ecuadorian people (BBC News 2011).
In 2008, President Correa led change in passing a new constitution. This progressive document was the first in the world to acknowledge the unalienable rights of nature. In article 71, it ensures that, “Nature, or Pacha Mama, where life is reproduced and occurs, has the right to integral respect for its existence and for the maintenance and regeneration of its life cycles, structure, functions and evolutionary processes” (Political Database of the Americas 2008). This declaration was momentous to Ecuador, a country that is extremely rich in biological diversity.
Ecuador exports gold, bananas, plantains, prawns, cocoa, shrimp and flowers but the economy is largely based around petroleum (U.S. Department of State 2013). It is a country blessed and cursed, as it is situated atop one of the largest oil deposits in the world, and has an abundance of gold and silver. Unfortunately, these precious resources lie below perhaps the most biological diverse region in the world, the Amazon Rainforest. Like so many other resource rich countries, Ecuador has repeatedly been taken advantage of by Western interests beginning with the arrival of the conquistadors and their violent quest for gold in 1834 (U.S. Department of State 2013). Still exploiting Ecuador for its natural resources, this involvement has most recently manifested in the oil and mineral extractive industry.
Palestine
Kate Bailey, Alexsis Regan and Trish Siplon
When the UN passed resolution 181 recognizing the state of Israel and the state of Palestine in 1948, immediate war broke out between the newly formed Jewish nation and its’ surrounding Arab neighbors. The Israeli army seized Palestinian towns causing tens of thousands of Palestinians to flee. By the end of 1948, Israel had taken of all of Palestine. In 1949, Israel signed armistice agreements with Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. Within these agreements, control of Gaza and the West Bank was granted to Egypt and Jordan, respectively.
The armistice agreements, however, did not bring to peace to the region. After years of back and forth and UN ceasefires, Egypt moved 100,000 soldiers to its’ border with Israel, prompting Israel to attack. Within six days, Israel had taken the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Despite a ceasefire, Israel began its ongoing military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- the two areas that constitute what is today referred to as the occupied Palestinian Territories (oPT) or simply Palestine.
The military occupation of Palestine, with its population of approximately 3.8 million people, creates unique challenges for development. First, its’ governing body, the Palestine National Authority (PNA), is technically an interim administration created in 1994 by the Oslo Accords, and will only become a government when a peace agreement is signed. Second, the PNA’s budget is heavily reliant on foreign assistance. Third, the PNA has little to no control over its natural resources, including water. Clearly, achieving the MDGs within an occupied environment poses enormous difficulties, a theme that is illustrated repeatedly in this case study.
Rwanda
Jason DePecol, Siham Elhamoumi, Kate Mooney, Kelsey Morse and Amanda Rohdenburg
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| Photo Credit: Jason De Pecol |
The Belgians colonized Rwanda in 1916 (CIA World Fact book 2013). It is a landlocked country located in the Great Lakes region of Africa with population of 12,012,589 people as of 2013 (CIA World Fact book 2013). It borders Democratic
Republic of the Congo on the west, Tanzania on the east, Uganda on the North, and Burundi situated to the South. The country has four provinces in addition to the capital city of Kigali that make up its 10,168 square miles (UNDP 2013). Kinyarwanda is the only indigenous language and English and French are the national languages. Ninety-four percent of Rwandans are Christian, 4.6 percent are Muslim and 0.01 follow native beliefs. The population is made up of three ethnic groups; Hutu (84%), Tutsi (15%) and Twa (1%). These ethnic groupings have played a key role in the history of Rwanda and the country’s development progress.
The Belgians instituted reforms in the 1950s that encouraged the growth of democratic political institutions. The changes in policy met resistance by the Tutsi conservatives who saw them as a threat to Tutsi rule and life. With encouragement from the Belgian military, an impatient Hutu population ignited a revolt in November 1959, resulting in the overthrow of the Tutsi monarchy. After the revolt occurred, more than 160,000 Tutsis fled to neighboring countries (Prunier 1995).
The PARMEHUTU government (Party of the Hutu Emancipation Movement) that formed as a result of the September 1961 election was granted internal self-government by Belgium on January 1, 1962. In June of 1962 a UN General Assembly resolution terminated the Belgian trusteeship and granted full independence to Rwanda (Department of State 2013).
The colonial experience in Rwanda really infringed upon the country’s ability to develop. The control that Belgium had over both the people and resources of Rwanda exacerbated the problems that the country had. Post Rwanda independence, the country did not pull itself from its ethnic tensions. Instead, in 1994 close to one million people of Rwanda, mainly those who were a part of the Tutsi ethnic group were killed. The violence began to cascade following the assassination of President Habyarimana when his plane was shot down. The prominent factors that prompted the genocide included land-grabbing by powerful elites loyal to President Habyarimana, high population densities, abject poverty and unemployment, and the manipulations of merciless Hutu political leaders. It is still uncertain who shot down the plane carrying President Habyarimana (New Encyclopedia of Africa Vol. 4, 2008).
After the assassination of President Habyarimana in April 1994, Hutu extremists mobilized a nation-wide militia, the Interahamwe, to exterminate Tutsi and Hutu sympathetic toward conciliation. The anti-Tutsi propaganda that was launched by the Hutu extremists that claimed to expose the country’s “real” problem of ethnicity or the danger to return to the old order under a Tutsi aristocracy. The Hutu extremist’s used a public information system through Radio Mill Collines, a Rwandan radio station, to provoke the genocide (New Encyclopedia of Africa Vol. 4, 2008). The killing fury ended when RPF forces defeated the regular army of Rwanda in June of 1994 and about two million Hutu fled to the Democratic of the Congo, formally known as Zaire, and western Tanzania.
Post-genocide Rwanda was a much different country than that of 1994. The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) was created in 2003. It remains today the current ruling party for the country. Under the leadership of President Paul Kagame the RPF gained traction and successfully pulled the country from the long history of conflict.
Following the genocide, Rwanda maintained strong stability through the first decade of the 2000’s. They were able to centralize control by leaders over the main means of production, especially land and the power of authorities. Rwanda has imposed strong limits at the national level but gives local administration judgment on how to interpret and apply laws. Despite a long history of conflict, Rwanda has since rebuilt their country and is on a path to a more stable economy.
According to the Millennium Development Goals 2007 Status Report on Rwanda, the resulting Millennium Declaration, subsequently signed by all UN member states including Rwanda, said, “We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more than a billion of them are currently subjected. We are committed to making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the entire human race from want.” The process of developing the Millennium Development Goals Report in Rwanda (MDGR) started in June 2006. The MDGs represent a major step toward improving the effectiveness of national and international development efforts. Rwanda is largely considered to be one of Africa’s “success stories” (Goodfellow 2013, 3186). They have developed despite their history of violence and ethnic conflict. Coming together as a community has contributed greatly to the progress that Rwanda has made on the Millennium Development Goals. Some of the country’s largest success stories can be seen in the progression of women’s right, access to healthcare, and sustainable environmental development.
