CANADA MILITARY NEWS: September 2014- not a thing has changed since the 70s.... POVERTY RAGES THE PLANET- USA RUSSIA CHINA PLAY F**KING WAR MONGERING ... STILL... and our beloved troops crawl home with their victories sold by politicians 4$$$$- Muslims fix urselves/Stop having 2 many children 4 the planet/Environmentfolks- kids matter more than dogs. God bless our troops - on this day POOR MATTERS MORE THAN DUMB HATE

   

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: not one thing has changed since 60s- POVERTY IS A WOMAN'S FACE- AMERICA/RUSSIA/CHINA AND THEIR $$$WAR MACHINES- UNITED NATIONS F**KING INDIFFERENCE 2 the cruel $$$$cheating political soul stealing bullshit and beans- not one thing has changed- shame on us all... imho. muslims fix urselves/whitemen stop ur wars/destroy imf and all banking- start over - our troops are not ur throwaway toys that u destroy when they crawl home injured and healing requiredimho 

BLOGGED-

F**KING BANKS/CORPORATE/POLITICAL/UN GREED CAUSED FINANCIAL CRASH- and 2day…. we are still there and close 2 a billion are unemployed and 4.3 billion eat dirt 4 breakfast- WTF???-1.05 million Canadians/101 million Americans/8million Brits/80Million Muslims/32million europeans/14 million Africans etc.

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/07/fking-bankscorporatepoliticalun-greed.html

BLOGGED:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS- GLOBAL YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT- June/July 2014- Canada is flying high over some nations- and education does matter- and poverty in 2014 is UNITED NATIONS DISGRACE

http://nova0000scotia.wordpress.com/2014/06/23/canada-military-news-global-youth-unemployment-junejuly-2014-canada-is-flying-high-over-some-nations-and-education-does-matter-and-poverty-in-2014-is-united-nations-disgrace/

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USA- The official poverty rate has declined minimally since the late 1960s

One in seven Americans lives at or below the official federal poverty line. The rate is higher for blacks and Hispanics but has dropped appreciably for both groups since the early 1990s. However, the overall poverty rate has not changed much over this time period.

Individual poverty rate, by race

http://www.familyfacts.org/charts/320/the-official-poverty-rate-has-declined-minimally-since-the-late-1960s

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GLOBAL

Poverty Facts and Stats

Author and Page information

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Monday, January 07, 2013

• This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats.
• To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
• http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/26

1. Almost half the world — over three billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day.

At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day.^{Source 1}

2. More than 80 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where income differentials are widening.^{Source 2}
3. The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.^{Source 3}
4. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”^{Source 4}
5. Around 27-28 percent of all children in developing countries are estimated to be underweight or stunted. The two regions that account for the bulk of the deficit are South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

If current trends continue, the Millennium Development Goals target of halving the proportion of underweight children will be missed by 30 million children, largely because of slow progress in Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.^{Source 5}

6. Based on enrollment data, about 72 million children of primary school age in the developing world were not in school in 2005; 57 per cent of them were girls. And these are regarded as optimistic numbers.^{Source 6}
7. Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.^{Source 7}
8. Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn’t happen.^{Source 8}
9. Infectious diseases continue to blight the lives of the poor across the world. An estimated 40 million people are living with HIV/AIDS, with 3 million deaths in 2004. Every year there are 350–500 million cases of malaria, with 1 million fatalities: Africa accounts for 90 percent of malarial deaths and African children account for over 80 percent of malaria victims worldwide.^{Source 9}
10. Water problems affect half of humanity:
• Some 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water, and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation.
• Almost two in three people lacking access to clean water survive on less than $2 a day, with one in three living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 660 million people without sanitation live on less than $2 a day, and more than 385 million on less than $1 a day.
• Access to piped water into the household averages about 85% for the wealthiest 20% of the population, compared with 25% for the poorest 20%.
• 1.8 billion people who have access to a water source within 1 kilometre, but not in their house or yard, consume around 20 litres per day. In the United Kingdom the average person uses more than 50 litres of water a day flushing toilets (where average daily water usage is about 150 liters a day. The highest average water use in the world is in the US, at 600 liters day.)
• Some 1.8 million child deaths each year as a result of diarrhoea
• The loss of 443 million school days each year from water-related illness.
• Close to half of all people in developing countries suffering at any given time from a health problem caused by water and sanitation deficits.
• Millions of women spending several hours a day collecting water.
• To these human costs can be added the massive economic waste associated with the water and sanitation deficit.… The costs associated with health spending, productivity losses and labour diversions … are greatest in some of the poorest countries. Sub-Saharan Africa loses about 5% of GDP, or some $28.4 billion annually, a figure that exceeds total aid flows and debt relief to the region in 2003.^{Source 10}
11. Number of children in the world

2.2 billion

Number in poverty

1 billion (every second child)

Shelter, safe water and health

For the 1.9 billion children from the developing world, there are:

• 640 million without adequate shelter (1 in 3)
• 400 million with no access to safe water (1 in 5)
• 270 million with no access to health services (1 in 7)

Children out of education worldwide

121 million

Survival for children

Worldwide,

• 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 (same as children population in France, Germany, Greece and Italy)
• 1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation

Health of children

Worldwide,

• 2.2 million children die each year because they are not immunized
• 15 million children orphaned due to HIV/AIDS (similar to the total children population in Germany or United Kingdom)

^{Source 11}

12. Rural areas account for three in every four people living on less than US$1 a day and a similar share of the world population suffering from malnutrition. However, urbanization is not synonymous with human progress. Urban slum growth is outpacing urban growth by a wide margin.^{Source 12}
13. Approximately half the world’s population now live in cities and towns. In 2005, one out of three urban dwellers (approximately 1 billion people) was living in slum conditions.^{Source 13}
14. In developing countries some 2.5 billion people are forced to rely on biomass—fuelwood, charcoal and animal dung—to meet their energy needs for cooking. In sub-Saharan Africa, over 80 percent of the population depends on traditional biomass for cooking, as do over half of the populations of India and China.^{Source 14}
15. Indoor air pollution resulting from the use of solid fuels [by poorer segments of society] is a major killer. It claims the lives of 1.5 million people each year, more than half of them below the age of five: that is 4000 deaths a day. To put this number in context, it exceeds total deaths from malaria and rivals the number of deaths from tuberculosis.^{Source 15}
16. In 2005, the wealthiest 20% of the world accounted for 76.6% of total private consumption. The poorest fifth just 1.5%:

The poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption:

^{Source 16}

17. 1.6 billion people — a quarter of humanity — live without electricity:

Breaking that down further:

Number of people living without electricity
Region	Millions without electricity
South Asia	706
Sub-Saharan Africa	547
East Asia	224
Other	101

18. The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people) is less than the wealth of the world’s 7 richest people combined.^{Source 18}
19. World gross domestic product (world population approximately 6.5 billion) in 2006 was $48.2 trillion in 2006.
• The world’s wealthiest countries (approximately 1 billion people) accounted for $36.6 trillion dollars (76%).
• The world’s billionaires — just 497 people (approximately 0.000008% of the world’s population) — were worth $3.5 trillion (over 7% of world GDP).
• Low income countries (2.4 billion people) accounted for just $1.6 trillion of GDP (3.3%)
• Middle income countries (3 billion people) made up the rest of GDP at just over $10 trillion (20.7%).^{Source 19}
20. The world’s low income countries (2.4 billion people) account for just 2.4% of world exports^{Source 20}
21. The total wealth of the top 8.3 million people around the world “rose 8.2 percent to $30.8 trillion in 2004, giving them control of nearly a quarter of the world’s financial assets.”

In other words, about 0.13% of the world’s population controlled 25% of the world’s financial assets in 2004.

A conservative estimate for 2010 finds that at least a third of all private financial wealth, and nearly half of all offshore wealth, is now owned by world’s richest 91,000 people – just 0.001% of the world’s population.

The next 51 percent of all wealth is owned by the next 8.4 million — just 0.14% of the world’s population. Almost all of it has managed to avoid all income and estate taxes, either by the countries where it has been invested and or where it comes from^{Source 21}

22. For every $1 in aid a developing country receives, over $25 is spent on debt repayment.^{Source 22}
23. 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.^{Source 23}
24. The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialized nation.^{Source 24}
25. The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received any of the money.^{Source 25}
26. In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much.^{Source 26}
27. An analysis of long-term trends shows the distance between the richest and poorest countries was about:
• 3 to 1 in 1820
• 11 to 1 in 1913
• 35 to 1 in 1950
• 44 to 1 in 1973
• 72 to 1 in 1992^{Source 27}
28. “Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.”^{Source 28}
29. For economic growth and almost all of the other indicators, the last 20 years [of the current form of globalization, from 1980 - 2000] have shown a very clear decline in progress as compared with the previous two decades [1960 - 1980]. For each indicator, countries were divided into five roughly equal groups, according to what level the countries had achieved by the start of the period (1960 or 1980). Among the findings:
• Growth: The fall in economic growth rates was most pronounced and across the board for all groups or countries.
• Life Expectancy: Progress in life expectancy was also reduced for 4 out of the 5 groups of countries, with the exception of the highest group (life expectancy 69-76 years).
• Infant and Child Mortality: Progress in reducing infant mortality was also considerably slower during the period of globalization (1980-1998) than over the previous two decades.
• Education and literacy: Progress in education also slowed during the period of globalization.^{Source 29}
30. A mere 12 percent of the world’s population uses 85 percent of its water, and these 12 percent do not live in the Third World.^{Source 30}
31. Consider the global priorities in spending in 1998

Global Priority	$U.S. Billions
Cosmetics in the United States	8
Ice cream in Europe	11
Perfumes in Europe and the United States	12
Pet foods in Europe and the United States	17
Business entertainment in Japan	35
Cigarettes in Europe	50
Alcoholic drinks in Europe	105
Narcotics drugs in the world	400
Military spending in the world	780

32. And compare that to what was estimated as additional costs to achieve universal access to basic social services in all developing countries:

Global Priority	$U.S. Billions
Basic education for all	6
Water and sanitation for all	9
Reproductive health for all women	12
Basic health and nutrition	13

33. ^{Source 31}

Notes and Sources

1. Sources:
• Shaohua Chen and Martin Ravallion, The developing world is poorer than we thought, but no less successful in the fight against poverty, World Bank, August 2008
• For the 95% on $10 a day, see Martin Ravallion, Shaohua Chen and Prem Sangraula, Dollar a day revisited, World Bank, May 2008. They note that 95% of developing country population lived on less than $10 a day. Using 2005 population numbers, this is equivalent to just under 79.7% of world population, and does not include populations living on less than $10 a day from industrialized nations.

This figure is based on purchasing power parity (PPP), which basically suggests that prices of goods in countries tend to equate under floating exchange rates and therefore people would be able to purchase the same quantity of goods in any country for a given sum of money. That is, the notion that a dollar should buy the same amount in all countries. Hence if a poor person in a poor country living on a dollar a day moved to the U.S. with no changes to their income, they would still be living on a dollar a day.

The new poverty line of $1.25 a day was recently announced by the World Bank (in 2008). For many years before that it had been $1 a day. But the $1 a day used then would be $1.45 a day now if just inflation was accounted for.

The new figures from the World Bank therefore confirm concerns that poverty has not been reduced by as much as was hoped, although it certainly has dropped since 1981.

However, it appears that much of the poverty reduction in the last couple of decades almost exclusively comes from China:

• China’s poverty rate fell from 85% to 15.9%, or by over 600 million people
• China accounts for nearly all the world’s reduction in poverty
• Excluding China, poverty fell only by around 10%

The use of the poverty line of $1 a day had long come under criticism for seeming arbitrary and using poor quality and limited data thus risking an underestimate of poverty. The $1.25 a day level is accompanied with some additional explanations and reasoning, including that it is a common level found amongst the poorest countries, and that $2.50 represents a typical poverty level amongst many more developing countries.

The $10 dollar a day figure above is close to poverty levels in the US, so is provided here to give a more global perspective to these numbers, although the World Bank has felt it is not a meaningful number for the poorest because they are unfortunately unlikely to reach that level any time soon.

For further details on this (as well as some additional charts), see Poverty Around The World on this web site. back

2. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25.

back

3. Ibid

back

4. See Today, around 21,000 children died around the world from this web site. (Note that the statistic cited uses children as those under the age of five. If it was say 6, or 7, the numbers would be even higher.)

back

5. See the following:
• 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25. (The report also notes that although India is rising economically, “the bad news is that this has not been translated into accelerated progress in cutting under-nutrition. One-half of all rural children [in India] are underweight for their age—roughly the same proportion as in 1992.”)
• Millennium Development Goals Report 2007

back

6. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 . The report importantly notes that “As high as this number seems, surveys show that it underestimates the actual number of children who, though enrolled, are not attending school. Moreover, neither enrolment nor attendance figures reflect children who do not attend school regularly. To make matters worse, official data are not usually available from countries in conflict or post-conflict situations. If data from these countries were reflected in global estimates, the enrolment picture would be even less optimistic.”

back

7. The State of the World’s Children, 1999, UNICEF

back

8. State of the World, Issue 287 - Feb 1997, New Internationalist

back

9. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25.

back

10. 2006 United Nations Human Development Report, pp.6, 7, 35

back

11. State of the World’s Children, 2005, UNICEF

back

12. 2007 Human Development Report (HDR), United Nations Development Program, November 27, 2007, p.25.

back

13. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007

back

14. Ibid, p.45

back

15. Ibid, p.45

back

16. World Development Indicators 2008, World Bank, August 2008

back

17. Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 , p.44

back

18. See the following:
• World Bank Key Development Data & Statistics, World Bank, accessed March 3, 2008
• Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, The World’s Richest People, Forbes, March 3, 2007
• World Bank’s list of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (41 countries), accessed March 3, 2008

back

19. See the following:
• World Bank Key Development Data & Statistics, World Bank, accessed March 3, 2008
• Luisa Kroll and Allison Fass, The World’s Richest People, Forbes, March 3, 2007

back

20. Trade Data, World Bank Data & Statistics, accessed March 3, 2008

back

21. Eileen Alt Powell, Some 600,000 join millionaire ranks in 2004, Associate Press, June 9, 2005; James Henry, The Price of Offshore Revisited , Tax Justice Network, July 2012, p.36

back

22. Based on World Bank data (accessed March 3, 2008) as follows:
• Total debts of the developing world in 2006: $2.7 trillion
• Total official development assistance in 2006: $106 billion

back

23. See the following:
• Holding Transnationals Accountable, IPS, August 11, 1998
• Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power, by Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies, November 2000

back

24. Log cabin to White House? Not any more, The Observer, April 28, 2002

back

25. Debt - The facts, Issue 312 - May 1999, New Internationalist

back

26. 1999 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme

back

27. Ibid

back

28. World Resources Institute Pilot Analysis of Global Ecosystems, February 2001, (in the Food Feed and Fiber section). Note, that despite the food production rate being better than population growth rate, there is still so much hunger around the world.

back

29. The Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000: Twenty Years of Diminished Progress, by Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker, Egor Kraev and Judy Chen, Center for Economic Policy and Research, August 2001.

back

30. Maude Barlow, Water as Commodity - The Wrong Prescription, The Institute for Food and Development Policy, Backgrounder, Summer 2001, Vol. 7, No. 3

back

31. The state of human development, United Nations Human Development Report 1998, Chapter 1, p.37)

back

Where next?

Related articles

1. Poverty Facts and Stats
2. Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty
3. Poverty Around The World
4. Today, around 21,000 children died around the world
5. Corruption
6. Tax Avoidance and Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy
7. Foreign Aid for Development Assistance
8. Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty
9. United Nations World Summit 2005
10. IMF & World Bank Protests, Washington D.C.

http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats

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POVERTY AND CORRUPTION- 

Corruption

Author and Page information

• by Anup Shah
• This Page Last Updated Sunday, September 04, 2011

• This page: http://www.globalissues.org/article/590/corruption.
• To print all information e.g. expanded side notes, shows alternative links, use the print version:
• http://www.globalissues.org/print/article/590

Corruption is both a major cause and a result of poverty around the world. It occurs at all levels of society, from local and national governments, civil society, judiciary functions, large and small businesses, military and other services and so on.

Corruption affects the poorest the most, in rich or poor nations, though all elements of society are affected in some way as corruption undermines political development, democracy, economic development, the environment, people’s health and more.

Around the world, the perception of corruption in public places is very high:

World map of the 2010 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International. Blue indicates less perception of corruption, whereas red indicates higher perception of corruption. Image source

But it isn’t just in governments that corruption is found; it can permeate through society.

The issue of corruption is very much inter-related with other issues. At a global level, the “international” (Washington Consensus-influenced) economic system that has shaped the current form of globalization in the past decades requires further scrutiny for it has also created conditions whereby corruption can flourish and exacerbate the conditions of people around the world who already have little say about their own destiny. At a national level, people’s effective participation and representation in society can be undermined by corruption, while at local levels, corruption can make day to day lives more painful for all affected.

A difficult thing to measure or compare, however, is the impact of corruption on poverty versus the effects of inequalities that are structured into law, such as unequal trade agreements, structural adjustment policies, so-called “free” trade agreements and so on. It is easier to see corruption. It is harder to see these other more formal, even legal forms of “corruption.” It is easy to assume that these are not even issues because they are part of the laws and institutions that govern national and international communities and many of us will be accustomed to it—it is how it works, so to speak. Those deeper aspects are discussed in other parts of this web site’s section on trade, economy, & related issues.

That is not to belittle the issue of corruption, however, for its impacts are enormous too.

This web page has the following sub-sections:

1. Rich Countries involved in corruption abroad
2. A Cold War Legacy: The Curse of Natural Resources; Inviting corruption
3. Globalization, Multinational Corporations, and Corruption
4. IMF and World Bank Policies that Encourage Corruption
5. Corruption everywhere; rich and poor countries, international institutions
6. Tackling corruption
1. Strengthen Democracy’s Transparency Pillar
2. Address weaknesses in the global system
3. Improve Government Budget Transparency
4. Make it harder to embezzle billions
5. Lessons from the past: US’s New Deal in the 1930s
6. Direct Grassroots Action
7. More Information

Rich Countries involved in corruption abroad

When asking why poor countries are poor, it is quite common to hear, especially in wealthier countries that are perceived to have minimal corruption (at least domestically) that other countries are poor because of corruption. Yet, corruption is not something limited to third world despots. Rich countries too have been involved in corrupt practices around the world.

As Professor Robert Neild from Trinity College, Cambridge University writes in Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution (London: Anthem Press, 2002), “Rich countries and their agencies … commonly have been and are accomplices in corruption abroad, encouraging it by their actions rather than impeding it….” (p.209). Specific problems he highlights include:

• The impact of Cold War corruption (supporting dictatorships, destabilizing democracies, funding opposition, etc);
• Firms from rich countries bribing rulers and officials from developing countries to gain export contracts, particularly in the arms trade and in construction (even justifying it by suggesting bribery is “customary” in those countries, so they need to do it to, in order to compete);
• The “corruption-inducing effects of the purchase, by the rich countries and their international corporations, of concessions in Third World countries to exploit natural deposits of oil, copper, gold, diamonds and the like.” Payments made to rulers often violate local (and Western) rules, keeping corrupt rulers in power, who also embezzle a lot of money away.
• The drug trade. Neild suggests that international law and national laws in rich countries that prohibit drugs may serve to “produce a scarcity value irresistible to producers, smugglers and dealers.” Governments and civil society in the third world are often “undermined, sometimes destroyed” by the violence and corruption that goes with the drug trade. “This is probably the most important way in which the policies of rich countries foster corruption and violence. Yet the effect on the Third World seems scarcely to enter discussion of alternative drug policies in the rich countries.” Legalizing drugs, a system of taxation and regulation, comparable to that applied to tobacco and alcohol might do more to reduce corruption in the world than any other measure rich countries could take, he suggests. (See this site’s section on illicit drugs for more on that aspect.)

Rich countries have been used to it, too:

Bribery may be pervasive, but it is difficult to detect. Many Western companies do not dirty their own hands, but instead pay local agents, who get a 10 per cent or so “success fee” if a contract goes through and who have access to the necessary “slush funds” to ensure that it does. Bribery is also increasingly subtle.… Until recently, bribery was seen as a normal business practice. Many countries including France, Germany and the UK treated bribes as legitimate business expenses which could be claimed for tax deduction purposes.

— Dr Susan Hawley, Exporting Corruption; Privatisation, Multinationals and Bribery, The Corner House, June 2000

Back to top

A Cold War Legacy: The Curse of Natural Resources; Inviting corruption

Professor Neild is worth quoting at extensive length on the impacts the Cold War had in terms of encouraging or exacerbating corruption in the developing countries:

Many Western covert and overt military operation were motivated, in part at least, by the view, which may have been fearfully exaggerated, that the West’s supplies of raw materials and oil were threatened by communist intrusion into Third World countries. A feeling of vulnerability was understandable. The Soviet Union … was largely self-sufficient …; the West, in need of increasing supplies for its growing industrial production, depended heavily on imports from Third World countries…. Western governments used diplomacy plus overt and covert military operations to counter the Communists. Meanwhile western firms paid rulers to obtain concessions to extract oil and minerals.

The business of obtaining oil and mineral concessions has aways been conducive to the use of bribes, omissions, gifts, and favors, and remains so since there are huge “rents” (i.e. windfall profits) to be shared by the parties to a deal…. Third World governments rarely use auctions [for concession, which, when done honestly, removes the opportunity for buyers to bribe sellers]. They commonly sell concessions by negotiation. For which there are some good reasons. It is often necessary for the foreign company that buys a concession to build infrastructure, such as ports, pipelines, roads and dormitory towns for their staff; to make this worthwhile, a whole oil field or major mineral deposit has to be given to one foreign company, rather than split between many competitors; and that one company, which will become the source of a significant, perhaps dominant, part of the nation’s revenue, will acquire substantial economic power vis-à-vis the government. Hence strategic and diplomatic consideration enter the calculation: the government will want to give the concession to a company backed by a government which it believes will be helpful to it in its international relations—and in supplying it with arms and mercenaries. But …. there is [also] the prospect of bribes. Those who run a government that has a concession to sell will know that negotiation creates a strong incentive to the potential buyers to offer them bribes: they will know this from the point of view of the buyers, a sum that will only add a small percentage to, say, a billion dollar deal, will be worth paying in order to win the concession. Once negotiation is adopted as the means of allocating concessions, the dominant incentive is for bidders to engage competitively in the bribery of local rulers and fixers.

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 136-137 [Emphasis added]

But Neild feels that this same attitude has affected rich countries’ domestic political behavior, too. Of particular concern to Neild in this is

the apparent tendency for bribery, which is intense in the business of seeking resource concession and selling arms, to become a secret habit of western firms and politicians that infects their domestic political behavior. Of this there has been considerable evidence in scandals that have occurred recently in Britain, France and Germany…. Le Monde published an outspoken editorial commenting on the [French company, Elf Aquitaine, corruption] affair:

For too long French policy in Africa has been neither moral nor effective.

… It would be wrong to deny that corruption is indispensable in the obtaining of drilling concession, though that does not mean that one should not try to stop it. M. Tarallo [a senior Elf Manager] is unfortunately right when he says that all petrol companies use it… But the sins of others do not absolve Elf. Added to which … Elf has used its money to keep in power dictators whose principle aim has been not the development of their country but their personal enrichment. In exchange, Paris could count on their support in its diplomatic battles and could offer captive markets to French firms…

This “neo-colonialism” was put in place during the presidency of General de Gaulle and has been maintained by subsequent governments regardless of party…

Looked at today the picture is not glorious. A former colonial power has taught corruption to its African clients—who were willing pupils—and there is nothing to persuade us that they have not rewarded their friends in Paris…

… In one case at least, lack of natural resources has apparently been an incentive to anticorruption policies: the tough ruler of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, is reported to have said that he came down hard on the corrupt because his tiny country with no natural resources has to rely on its good name to remain a center of banking and technology.

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), p. 138 [Emphasis added]

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Globalization, Multinational Corporations, and Corruption

Corruption scandals that sometimes make headline news in Western media can often be worse in developing countries. This is especially the case (as the previous link argues) when it is multinational companies going into poorer countries to do business. The international business environment, encouraged by a form of globalization that is heavily influenced by the wealthier and more powerful countries in the world makes it easier for multinationals to make profit and even for a few countries to benefit. However, some policies behind globalization appear to encourage and exacerbate corruption as accountability of governments and companies have been reduced along the way. For example,

For multinationals, bribery enables companies to gain contracts (particularly for public works and military equipment) or concessions which they would not otherwise have won, or to do so on more favorable terms. Every year, Western businesses pay huge amounts of money in bribes to win friends, influence and contracts. These bribes are conservatively estimated to run to US$80 billion a year—roughly the amount that the UN believes is needed to eradicate global poverty.

— Dr Susan Hawley, Exporting Corruption; Privatization, Multinationals and Bribery, The Corner House, June 2000

Dr Hawley also lists a number of impacts that multinationals’ corrupt practices have on the “South” (another term for Third World, or developing countries), including:

• They undermine development and exacerbate inequality and poverty.
• They disadvantage smaller domestic firms.
• They transfer money that could be put towards poverty eradication into the hands of the rich.
• They distort decision-making in favor of projects that benefit the few rather than the many.
• They also
• Increase debt;
• Benefit the company, not the country;
• Bypass local democratic processes;
• Damage the environment;
• Circumvent legislation; and
• Promote weapons sales.

(See the previous report for detailed explanation on all these aspects.)

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IMF and World Bank Policies that Encourage Corruption

At a deeper level are the policies that form the backbone to globalization. These policies are often prescribed by international institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. For years, they have received sharp criticism for exacerbating poverty through policies such as Structural Adjustment, rapid deregulation and opening barriers to trade before poorer countries are economic ready to do so. This has also created situations ripe for corruption to flourish:

As Western governments and the World Bank and IMF shout ever more loudly about corruption, their own policies are making it worse in both North and South. Particularly at fault are deregulation, privatization, and structural adjustment policies requiring civil service reform and economic liberalization. In 1997, the World Bank asserted that:

any reform that increases the competitiveness of the economy will reduce incentives for corrupt behavior. Thus policies that lower controls on foreign trade, remove entry barriers to private industry, and privatize state firms in a way that ensure competition will all support the fight.

The Bank has so far shown no signs of taking back this view. It continues to claim that corruption can be battled through deregulation of the economy; public sector reform in areas such as customs, tax administration and civil service; strengthening of anti-corruption and audit bodies; and decentralization.

Yet the empirical evidence, much of it from the World Bank itself, suggests that, far from reducing corruption, such policies, and the manner in which they have been implemented, have in some circumstances increased it.

— Dr Susan Hawley, Exporting Corruption; Privatization, Multinationals and Bribery, The Corner House, June 2000

Jubilee Research (formerly the prominent Jubilee 2000 debt relief campaign organization) has similar criticisms, and is also worth quoting at length:

Rich country politicians and bank officials argue that because dictators like Marcos, Suharto, and Mobutu were kept in power with western arms and were given loans to squander on ill-judged and repressive schemes, that the people of those countries—who often fought valiantly against those dictators—cannot be trusted not to waste the money released by debt cancellation. This may seem confusing to people not familiar with the logic of the IMF and World Bank. In summary:

·         Creditors colluded with, and gave loans to dictators they knew were corrupt and who would squander the money.

·         Creditors gave military and political aid to those dictators—knowing arms might be used to suppress popular opposition

·         Therefore, successor democratic governments and their supporters, who may have been victims of corruption and oppression, cannot be trusted.

To many people in the South, this seems irrational and illogical—the logic of blaming the victim. It is the logic of power rather than of integrity, and is used to benefit the rich rather than the poor in developing countries.

A similar logic argues that if the World Bank and government export credit agencies promoted inappropriate and unprofitable projects, then southern governments proved their inability to control money because they accepted the ill-advised projects in the first place. Thus, if money is released by debt cancellation, it must be controlled by agencies which promoted those failed projects.

This is the logic that says if people were stupid enough to believe cigarette advertising, then they are too stupid to take care of themselves and the “reformed” cigarette companies should be put in charge of their health care.

The same institutions who made the corrupt loans to Zaire and lent for projects in Africa that failed repeatedly are still in charge, but their role has been enhanced because of their success in pushing loans. Can we trust these institutions to suddenly only lend wisely; to not give loans when the money might be wasted?

Preventing new wasted loans and new debt crises, and ensuring that there is not another debt crisis, means that the people who pushed the loans and caused this crisis cannot be left in charge.

The creditors or loan pushers cannot be left in charge, no matter how heartfelt their protestations that they have changed. Pushers and addicts need to work together, to bring to an end the entire reckless and corrupt lending and borrowing habit.

— Joseph Hanlon and Ann Pettifor, Kicking the Habit; Finding a lasting solution to addictive lending and borrowing—and its corrupting side-effects, Jubilee Research, March 2000

And in terms of how lack of transparency by the international institutions contributes to so much corruption structured into the system, Hanlon and Pettifor continue in the same report as cited above:

Structural adjustment programs cover most of a country’s economic governance.

… The most striking aspect of IMF/World Bank conditionality [for aid, debt relief, etc] is that the civil servants of these institutions, the staff members, have virtual dictatorial powers to impose their whims on recipient countries. This comes about because poor countries must have IMF and World Bank programs, but staff can decline to submit programs to the boards of those institutions until the poor country accepts conditions demanded by IMF civil servants.

There is much talk of transparency and participation, but the crunch comes in final negotiations between ministers and World Bank and IMF civil servants The country manager can say to the Prime Minister, “unless you accept condition X, I will not submit this program to the board”. No agreed program means a sudden halt to essential aid and no debt relief, so few ministers are prepared to hold out. Instead Prime Ministers and presidents bow to the diktat of foreign civil servants. Joseph Stiglitz also notes that “reforms often bring advantages to some groups while disadvantaging others,” and one of the problems with policies agreed in secret is that a governing elite may accept an imposed policy which does not harm the elite but harms others. An example is the elimination of food subsidies.

— Joseph Hanlon and Ann Pettifor, Kicking the Habit; Finding a lasting solution to addictive lending and borrowing—and its corrupting side-effects, Jubilee Research, March 2000

As further detailed by Hanlon and Pettifor, Christian Aid partners (a coalition of development organizations), argued that top-down “conditionality has undermined democracy by making elected governments accountable to Washington-based institutions instead of to their own people.” The potential for unaccountability and corruption therefore increases as well.

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Corruption everywhere; rich and poor countries, international institutions

It goes without saying, almost, that corruption is everywhere. Corruption in poor countries is well commented on (sometimes used dismissively to explain away problems caused by other issues, too). It would be futile to provide examples here (see also the sources of information at the end of this document for more on this).

Rich countries, also suffer from corruption. Examples are also numerous and beyond the scope of this page to list them here. However, a few recent examples are worth mentioning because they are varied on the type of corruption involved, and are very recent, implying this is a massive problem in rich countries as well as poor.

The first example is the US government, accused of outsourcing many contracts without an open bid process. Jim Hightower notes that “An analysis by the Times found that more than half of their outsourcing contracts are not open to competition. In essence, the Bushites choose the company and award the money without getting other bids. Prior to Bush, only 21% of federal contracts were awarded on a no-bid basis.”

Another example is Italy, where former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and some of his close associates were held on trial for various crimes and corruption cases (though Berlusconi himself has not, to date, been found guilty of any charges). Many key teams in the massive Italian soccer league, Serie A were also found to be involved in a massive corruption ring.

In the United Kingdom, the arms manufacturer, BAE was being investigated for bribing Saudi officials to buy fighter planes, but the government intervened in the investigation citing national interests. The Guardian also reported that BAE gave a Saudi prince a £75 airliner ($150m approx) as part of a British arms deal, with the arms firm paying the expenses of flying it. This seemingly large figure is small compared to the overall deal, but very enticing for the deal makers, and it is easy to see how corruption is so possible when large sums are involved.

International institutions, such as the United Nations and World Bank have also recently come under criticism for corruption, ironically while presenting themselves in the forefront fighting against corruption.

The recent example with the UN has been the oil for food scandal, where the headlines were about the corruption in the UN. In reality, the figures of $21 billion or so of illicit funds blamed on the UN were exaggerations; it was $2 billion; it was the UN Security Council (primarily US and UK) responsible for much of the monitoring; US kickbacks for corrupt oil sales were higher, for example. (This is discussed in more detail on this site’s Iraq sanctions, oil for food scandal section.)

At the World Bank, headlines were made when its recent president, Paul Wolfowitz, was forced to resign after it was revealed he had moved his girlfriend to a new government post with an extremely high salary without review by its ethics committee.

Paul Wolfowitz’s appointment was also controversial, due to his influential role in architecting the US invasion of Iraq. A former member of staff at the World Bank also noted concerns of cronyism related to Wolfowitz’s appointment way before the scandal that forced him to resign.

The US nominee for the next president is the former US Trade Representative and currently an executive at Goldman Sachs, Robert Zoellick. His nomination is also coming under criticism. Bush supports it, saying Zoellick “is the right man to succeed Paul in this vital work.” Former World Bank chief economist, and Nobel Prize winner for economics, Joseph Stiglitz feels that instead of a political appointee, it would be better to get an economist who understands development.

As also reported by the BBC, Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, said that he thought Mr Zoellick was a terrible choice because “Zoellick has no significant experience in economic development in poor countries,” and that “he has been a close friend to the brand-name pharmaceutical industry, and the bilateral trade agreements he has negotiated [for the US] effectively block access to generic medication for millions of people.”

While the US typically gets its preferred nomination to head the World Bank, Europe has typically got its preferred person to head the IMF. Critics have long argued that this lacks transparency and is not democratic. While not illegal as such, it does feel like a form of corruption.

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Tackling corruption

What can be done to tackle this problem?

Strengthen Democracy’s Transparency Pillar

One of the pillars of democracy is transparency; knowing what goes on in society and being able to make informed decisions should improve participation and also check unaccountability.

The above-cited report by Hanlon and Pettifor also highlights a broader way to try and tackle corruption by attempting to provide a more just, democratic and transparent process in terms of relations between donor nations and their creditors:

Campaigners from around the world, but particularly the South, have called for a more just, independent, accountable and transparent process for managing relations between sovereign debtors and their public and private creditors.

An independent process would have five goals:

·         to restore some justice to a system in which international creditors play the role of plaintiff, judge and jury, in their own court of international finance.

·         to introduce discipline into sovereign lending and borrowing arrangements—and thereby prevent future crises.

·         to counter corruption in borrowing and lending, by introducing accountability through a free press and greater transparency to civil society in both the creditor and debtor nations.

·         to strengthen local democratic institutions, by empowering them to challenge and influence elites.

·         to encourage greater understanding and economic literacy among citizens, and thereby empower them to question, challenge and hold their elites to account.

— Joseph Hanlon and Ann Pettifor, Kicking the Habit; Finding a lasting solution to addictive lending and borrowing—and its corrupting side-effects, Jubilee Research, March 2000

Address weaknesses in the global system

The Bretton Woods Project organization notes that the World Bank, under pressure of late, has suspended a number of loans due to concerns of corruption. These include loans to Chad, Kenya, Congo, India, Bangladesh, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Argentina. The Bank has also started internal investigations of Bank corruption. However, “despite high-profile moves by president Paul Wolfowitz, the root causes of corruption—underpaid civil servants, an acceptance of bribery by big business, and dirty money—remain largely unaddressed.”

The Bretton Woods Project adds that the “normalization of petty corruption in developing countries has in part been driven by”

• IFI conditions;
• The aid industry for “overpaying consultants” and turning a blind eye to corruption in some regimes; and
• The “World Bank’s ‘pressure to lend’ culture where staff are rewarded for the volume of the portfolio they manage;”
• The World Bank’s slow pace in investigating and disbarring companies found guilty of corrupt practices such as bribery, fraud or malpractice;
• Failing to increase transparency of some of its own procedures;
• The IFI’s “central part of an international financial system which has both actively and tacitly supported the global proliferation of dirty money flows” including, for example, the financing of various despotic rulers that have siphoned off a lot of money to personal offshore accounts.

To help address these problems, the Bretton Woods Project suggests a few steps:

• Greater transparency of World Bank processes, allowing greater visibility for elected officials and civil society in recipient countries;
• Strengthening internal mechanisms within the Bank itself, to monitor integrity of Bank functions, and allow truly independent audits of Bank operations;
• Minimum standards in governance, transparency and human rights that must be fulfilled before approving oil, gas and mining projects in institutionally weak countries.
• Not always tying loans with economic policy conditions in such a way that some governments surrender their policy-making space.

During the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, the BBC broadcast a mini debate on globalization, poverty, and related issues, and had a panel of around 30 experts, from both the developing and rich countries. One person on that panel was Vandana Shiva, a vocal critic of the current form of globalization and its impact on the environment and people in the third world. She was asked why people should listen to concerns from the third world when they cannot sort out the rampant corruption first. Her answer was simple: rich countries need to stop dictating policies that encourage corruption in the first place.

Like Shiva, Professor Neild feels that the solution is philosophically simple. However, as Neild acknowledges, in reality it is far harder to do, due to the power interests involved:

It is hard to see how the international economic agencies and their member governments can introduce incentives that would cause corrupt rulers to [attack corruption]… Not only are the rich countries and their agencies in this respect impotent, they commonly have been and are accomplices in corruption abroad, encouraging it by their action rather than impeding it.

… It is hard to see any solution other than transparency and criticism. It would take an unprecedented degree of united dedication to the checking of corruption for the international community to agree that the oil and mining companies of the world should boycott corrupt regimes, somehow defined, let alone manage to enforce an agreement.

— Robert Neild, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, (London: Anthem Press, 2002), pp. 208-210, [Emphasis added]

Improve Government Budget Transparency

A trusted government is more likely to result in a positive political and economic environment, which is crucial for developing countries, as well as already industrialized ones.

Budget transparency rankings 2010, IBP. (Click for larger view)

The International Budget Partnership (IBP) is an organization that looks at public budgets by governments around the world. Why is this important? Produced every 2 years, in October 2010, they released their 3rd Open Budget Survey report. These reports assess how transparent and accountable the budgetary process for a number of countries around the world (currently just under 100) and ranks them accordingly.

Their introduction (p.2) explained the growing importance of budget transparency:

• Experts have increasingly concluded that making budgets transparent and building adequate checks and balances into the budget process can enhance the credibility and prioritization of policy decisions, limit corrupt and wasteful spending, and facilitate access to international financial markets.
• Budget transparency has become central to a number of international development discourses, ranging from the financing of climate change mitigation, to country-level actions to meet international development commitments like the Millennium Development Goals, to accounting for the revenues from the sale of natural resources, and to examining the amount of international aid given to developing countries and how it is spent.

Of the 94 countries assessed, they had the following findings:

1. The overall state of budget transparency is poor. Only a modest minority of countries can be considered to have open budgets while a large number of countries provide grossly insufficient budget information.
2. The general trend toward open budgets is nonetheless favorable. Budget transparency is improving substantially, especially among countries that provided little information in the past.
3. Budget engagement by the audit institutions and the legislature is typically weak and is strongly correlated to the lack of budget information made available to these institutions and the public.
4. There are many simple steps to opening up budgets that governments are failing to undertake. Such steps can be taken by the executive branch, the legislature, and the supreme audit institutions alike.

Open Budgets. Transform Lives., IBP makes case for open budgets, October 15, 2010

In many cases, where budget documents were made public, essential information was often absent, or some of the documents remained internal. Those that performed poorly on their index were also low income, low democracy, and/or dependent on aid or oil revenues. On the plus side, the IBP found that some countries that fared very poorly in their earlier analysis fared much better this time, sometimes through the simple and cheap step of simply making their budget documents available on their web sites.

As such, the IBP recommended that all key budget documents which are already produced should be made available to the public, for free, while the authority, independence, and capacity of budget oversight institutions should be strengthened. The IBP also recommends strengthening the voice of the public as a complementary check and balance. They even called for a global norm on budget transparency to be established.

Make it harder to embezzle billions

For years, stories of people embezzling millions — even billions — away to tax havens and other financial centers, have caused uproar, but little ever seems to have been done about it despite some various organizations and campaigns trying to highlight these deeper causes and potential solutions for many years. A lot of powerful interests of course are what has always made corruption so difficult to address.

In the wake of the global financial crisis that started in 2008, this issue has caught attention in the mainstream more than usual.

This site’s section on tax havens looks at this further, with links to other sites and organizations that are highlighting the issues further.

Lessons from the past: US’s New Deal in the 1930s

Another strategy for tackling corruption may come from history and seeing how the US “New Deal” in the 1930s help remove a lot of corruption.

Before 1932, the administration of public relief in the US was widely regarded as politically corrupt. Political opponents of the New Deal often complained about the use of relief for political purposes, but by 1940, these criticisms of corruption and political manipulation had diminished considerably.

How this happened was detailed in a paper titled Politics, Relief, and Reform ; Roosevelt’s Efforts to Control Corruption and Political Manipulation during the New Deal by John Joseph Wallis of the University of Maryland, Price V. Fishback of the University of Arizona, and Shawn Kantor of the University of California at Merced.

The authors of the paper asked “New Deal reforms is often castigated as bureaucratic, but rarely corrupt. What changed? How did the country enter the Depression with a public welfare system riddled with political manipulation and emerge with one that was not?”

Our answer is straightforward. The president, Franklin Roosevelt, and other members of the executive branch gained little or nothing from the kinds of local corruption involved in public relief. But they stood to incur enormous losses if the New Deal relief program was perceived as politically manipulative and corrupt by the voting public. Roosevelt and the Democrats brought relief to millions of families every month, and the gratitude of relief recipients was Roosevelt’s political payoff.

— Wallis, Fishback, and Kantor, Politics, Relief, and Reform; Roosevelt’s Efforts to Control Corruption and Political Manipulation during the New Deal , Chapter 17 of Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America’s Economic History (National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report), University of Chicago Press, April 2006

Other politicians—senators, representatives, governors, and mayors—wanted to control relief and use it for political gain. They “maneuvered, manipulated, and cajoled to get their hands on a share of the billions spent each year on relief.” So what did Roosevelt do?

Although Roosevelt made substantial concessions to Congress and to state and local governments in the administration of relief, he sought to curb corruption at the state and local level by his influence over the discretionary allocation of relief funds, by establishing offices to investigate complaints of corruption, and, in the long run, by bureaucratizing the administration of public welfare.

During the New Deal, when the relief programs were reorganized to give the Roosevelt administration more control over the distribution of funds within states, it used that control to limit state and local political manipulation and increased the responsiveness of the allocation of funds within states to the high-minded goals of relief, recovery, and reform.

— Wallis, Fishback, and Kantor, Politics, Relief, and Reform; Roosevelt’s Efforts to Control Corruption and Political Manipulation during the New Deal , April 2006

The authors stress that it wasn’t necessarily a superior morality that drove out this New Deal:

Politics was paramount in the structure of New Deal relief programs; it just turned out that the best political outcome meant a reduction in corruption at the state and local level. This does not mean that Roosevelt did not use the administration of relief for his own political ends. There is ample evidence that presidential politics mattered in the distribution of relief funds. Corruption by others was curbed because it was in Roosevelt’s political interest to see it curbed.

— Wallis, Fishback, and Kantor, Politics, Relief, and Reform; Roosevelt’s Efforts to Control Corruption and Political Manipulation during the New Deal , April 2006

Direct Grassroots Action

As the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis are felt more and more, as food prices around the world increase, and other inter-related conditions get worse for many around the world, some of the resulting public unrest and disquiet is being channeled into anti-corruption concerns.

India, it seems, has had so much persistent corruption, that many are often resigned to it as a sad part of life.

Inter Press Service noted the extent of corruption in India:

In November 2010, the Washington-based Centre for International Policy said in a study that since it gained independence in 1947, India may have lost 452 billion dollars in illegal transfers abroad and estimated the current annual loss to be close to 20 billion dollars.

Julian Assange, founder of the non-profit media group WikiLeaks that collects and publishes classified government documents, provided more evidence in an interview given to the Times Now news channel on April 26. “There is more Indian money in Swiss banks than any other nationality,” Assange said.

— Ranjit Devraj, India: Gandhism Returns to Fight Corruption, Inter Press Service, June 11, 2011

However, recently a number of high profile corruption cases, such as the illegal award of contracts for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and many more have flooded Indian mainstream press, and this time citizens are less reluctant to just accept it.

A strong growing anti-corruption movement has emerged, with people such as Anna Hazare capturing the imagination of many. Hazare, a 74 year old man has vowed to fast to death to see corruption tackled.

His non-violent civil disobedience has created a mass of followers many of whom liken his approach and struggle to that of the iconic independence leader, Gandhi. Some of the public protests against the governments attempt to weaken proposed anti corruption bills have seen hundreds of thousands gather and rally.

This non-violent form of protest appears of have been more effective in its short period than various violent ones (on other political issues) that have plagued parts of India for many years.

Against such a force, the government seems to have responded quite poorly and there is great hope among many in the country that maybe corruption will start to be addressed like never before:

As people across Indian cities and towns and villages rallied in support of Hazare, it was a warning to not just the centrally ruling Congress party but the entire political class that India’s civil society was truly fed up with their corrupt ways.

The conflict between the government and civil society is taking place as Asia’s third largest economy grapples with unprecedented levels of corruption that is said to be undermining the liberalisation-led growth of this nation.

…

With political parties of all shades losing credibility, the field opened up for civil society to move in and Hazare’s campaign for a strong ombudsman gained extra power.

…

[Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, a prominent commentator on political and economic affairs] added that rising food prices may have added to public ire. “India has a huge food inflation on top of corruption scandals. So naturally there is popular discontent that we see surfacing as mass support for Hazare’s movement.”

— Sujoy Dhar, India: Civil Society Shows Its Muscle, Inter Press Service, August 22, 2011

Nepal has also seen mass demonstrations, inspired by Hazare’s protests in India. Diverse groups such as former ministers, womens’s groups and students have held public fasts against corruption and pressed the new government on post-monarchy reforms. The protests have not appeared as dramatic in their effect as has been in India, perhaps because Nepal is just coming out of a long civil war. However, the inspiration is there to continue the protests as some promising developments have occurred.

Various organizations across numerous African countries are trying to come together to tackle an emerging trend of various African countries considering setting up off-shore tax havens, supposedly to kick-start their own financial sectors and streamline red-tape. Tax-havens are a major problem that can hide corruption and undermine democracies and is discussed more on this site’s section on tax havens.

Brazil is also seeing a rise in action against corruption. It is thought that corruption, which is deeply rooted in politics and economics in Brazil, is costing the economy some $43 billion a year. Inspired by the rise in protests in Spain following the effects of the 2008 global financial crisis on the country, many movements in Brazil have seen the rise accompanied by an explosion in use of social networks and technology to help organize and by-pass the institutionalized mainstream media avenues closed off for most citizens.

As an extremely severe global economic and financial crisis takes hold, corruption is likely to increase. Many governments are considering New Deal or Keynesian style macroeconomic policies to help stimulate their economies. It is perhaps a critical — or at least opportune — moment to renew efforts to tackle corruption. Some politicians may have honest intentions, while others (many others, it may seem), may not. In either case, the rewards for stamping out corruption would be significant.

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More Information

This is a large topic in itself. Over time, more will be added, but for now you can start at the following:

• Transparency International has a Corruption Perception Index. It provides many reports, statistics and information.
• The World Bank, despite criticisms about it not looking at its own policies as being a factor, do, however have a lot about corruption. A search result on World Bank site on corruption reveals many articles.
• The Corner House is a UK-based charity that provides many articles looking at corruption, bribery and related issues.
• The World Bank weeds out corruption: Will it touch the roots? by the Bretton Woods Project, April 8, 2006, also has a number of links to further information.
• OECD: Fighting Corruption, from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.
• Corruption at the World Bank, from IFIWatchNet
• International Budget Partnership works around the world to look at public budgets to help reduce poverty and improve governance
• Governance, Corruption, and Conflict is a useful study guide from the US Institute for Peace

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Where next?

Related articles

1. Tax Avoidance and Tax Havens; Undermining Democracy
2. Illicit Drugs
3. Foreign Aid for Development Assistance
4. Poverty Facts and Stats
5. Structural Adjustment—a Major Cause of Poverty
6. Poverty Around The World
7. Today, around 21,000 children died around the world
8. Corruption
9. Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty
10. United Nations World Summit 2005

See more related articles

http://www.globalissues.org/article/590/corruption

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BLOGGED:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Sept 1- Vietnam-Draft Dodgers and Vietnam Vets Canada - Canadian Bill of Rights- from 1960/ Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. - “Heaven,” said King, “was the word for Canada.” -SPEECH- Dr. Martin Luther King in Canada - 1a - Massey Lecture 1967 - Conscience for Change /- Diefenbaker- “I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.” /JOHN F KENNEDY AND HIS VIETNAM WAR- CANADA /How The Civil War Saved Canada

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/09/canada-military-news-sept-1-now-54.html

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CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Poverty vs War -UN Games/Muslim on Muslim Hate/WhiteMansWar/Helping r Street Kids/ It’s Healing time in our Homelands- we matter/Palestine Presents Map 2 UN- No Israel...seriously? News -Qatar and their Hamas, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood /UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 2014- just in- Canada Troops and Peacekeepers2 Africa- EBOLA ?? Ukraine?? Muslim Nations???SEPTEMBER- Abbas threatens dissolve Hamas-Unitity Govt with their coninued use of baby's as bombs and women- world is sick of i

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/09/canada-military-news-sept-1-2014-biting.html

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When America turned against Martin Luther King Jr. he stayed true 2 himself...

"Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year."- while many of us may not have agreed with Vietnam and the politicians who sent our sons and daughters 2 fight their ugly war.... our loyalty 2 our troops have never waivered.... BUT WAR MONGER COUNRIES LIKE USA/CHINA AND RUSSIA AND UNITED NATION'S WICKED WICKED MUSLIM ON MUSLIM WAYS... MUST CHANGE... humanity matters.... imho

HEY COMEDY NETWORK-  THAT CANADIANS PAY 4 BUT 4 SOME REASON JON STEWART'S SITE SAYS WE HAVE 2 GIVE UP OUR FREE MEDICAL/DENTAL HEATH AND MOVE 2 USA 2 ACCESS WHAT IS  ON HIS NET SITE!!!!- so sent this comment on Brilliant Travis Smiley interview on his book- Death of a King- on the one and only Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.- September 11 2014

COMMENT 2 JON STEWART HISSELF...sent-

 

Travis Smiley gave the most incredible interview and a must have book from a great and good man of our times.... In Canada we pay $$$$$$ 4 comedy network and local channels... so it is interesting that we cannot get this on jon stewart's site..... thats it... I gonna call LeonardCohen who smokes weed with Moses and Joan who is raising merry hell as we speak -  IF CANADIANS ARE GOOD ENOUGH 2 PAY AND WATCH AMERICAN NEWS VIA JON STEWART... THE LEAST WE DESERVE IS 2 REVIEW AND SEND A COMPLIMENT WHEN A GREAT WRITER AND MAN APPEARS.... oh yes and Flash boys.... love ya Jon... BUT AM GONNA WATCH COLBERT FIRST FROM NOW ON... U BRAT.... :-)  keep up the good work... old momma nova from Nova Scotia Canada

SO HERE'S AN INTERVIEW-  THAT IS JUST AS GOOD... GET THE BOOK.... imagine all these years later..... and America is still the war monger along with China and Russia of this planet while the poorest of the poor suffer and die in the millions and millions .....

What Would Dr. King Do? As US Moves to Bomb Syria, Tavis Smiley on MLK’s Anti-war Legacy

Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez

Democracy Now! / Video Interview

Published: Monday 15 September 2014

Martin Luther King Jr. was a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War. So what would King do about the possible expansion of another U.S. military operation in the Middle East?

 

What would Dr. Martin Luther King do? As debate continues over U.S. plans to launch airstrikes in Syria, we look at the final year of King’s life when he became a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy and the Vietnam War, calling his government "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." We speak to public TV and radio broadcaster Tavis Smiley, author of the new book, "Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year."

 TRANSCRIPT

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What would Dr. Martin Luther King do? As debate continues over the expansion of another U.S. military operation in the Middle East, we turn to look at the final year of King’s life, when he became a fierce critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Vietnam War, calling the United States, quote, "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Dr. Martin Luther King speaking on April 4th, 1967, at Riverside Church in New York, explaining why he opposed the war in Vietnam. The speech was delivered exactly a year to the day before King was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4th, 1968.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by public television and radio broadcaster Tavis Smiley. He has a new book out this week,Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year. You can read its introduction and first chapter at democracynow.org.

Tavis, welcome back to Democracy Now! What a week to come out with this book.

TAVIS SMILEY: Amy and Juan, good to be back, first of all. Thanks for the invitation.

It is interesting, not just a week, but today, as we sit here for this conversation on the 13th anniversary of 9/11. I have been thinking for the last 48 hours, knowing that this day would come, what King would be saying on this particular day. And his heart would certainly bleed for those persons who lost—those fellow citizens who lost their lives in this great city 13 years ago, no doubt about that, because he abhorred violence anywhere in the world. He said many times that it’s either nonviolent co-existence or violent co-annihilation. And so, he was against violence anywhere, which is why he came out against the war in Vietnam, because he was sitting at breakfast one day, eating, and he was looking at a magazine and saw the pictures of these children in Vietnam who had been napalmed to death, and he just stopped eating. And one of his aides says, "Doc, what’s wrong? Does the food not taste good?" He says, "This food doesn’t taste good, nor will anything else I ever eat, if I don’t commit myself to do something about the violence that’s being perpetrated on these young children in Vietnam." So he was against violence here, he was against violence there.

And I’ve often wondered what that bust of Martin King in the Oval Office must be whispering to President Obama late at night as he’s making these kinds of plans. Everybody quotes Martin. It’s almost become pablum and platitude to quote him every time we have a public gathering. But to really wrestle with the subversiveness of his truth about that triple threat that he talked about, Amy—racism, poverty and militarism? What did we see on display in Ferguson a few weeks ago? Racism, poverty and militarism. And now here we are again, on—what is the irony that on 9/11 the headline in every major paper in this country is that here we go again? And King would just be—he’d have some issues with that.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we’ve often talked on this show about that last year of his life, when he really became not so much a hero for the establishment of the country at the time. But you go behind the scenes talking about what it was for him—

TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —how he reached the decision first. You start the book right on—just before his speech at Riverside Church, and then you go through that year.

TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Could you talk about your decision to do that, after all these other books that have come out about Dr. King in the past?

TAVIS SMILEY: Sure. Glad you raised that, Juan. It’s always the first question: Why another book about Dr. King? Because this one has not been written before, to your point that it focuses just on that last year, April 4, '67, when he gives that speech, to April 4, ’68, a year to the day later, and what happens to Martin in that last year, what kind of person is he really, when all this hell and hate is being directed at him. So let me just say very quickly that this book is impossible without the heavy lifting that's already been done by his three principal biographers, Taylor Branch, David Garrow and Clayborne Carson. I thank them all the time, because they’ve done the real work here. But no book has ever focused just on this last year, because, for me, I think it’s the case that whether you’re talking to Amy or Juan or Tavis or anybody else, any human being, we come to know who we really are in the most difficult and dark days of our lives. And for King, that happened to be the last year of his life.

So if you think you know Dr. King and you don’t know what happened to him in the last year, then you really don’t know Martin, because, to your question, Juan, what happens is, when he comes out against that war and starts talking, Amy, about a Poor People’s Campaign—as long as Martin was talking about civil rights, he was OK. "But, Negro, we didn’t give you license to talk about foreign policy. We didn’t give you license to talk about federal budget priorities." And Martin was saying that war is the enemy of the poor, and that the bombs that you’re dropping in Vietnam are landing in the ghettos and barrios of American cities. And for saying that, for being so vocal about that, what happens, Juan? The White House turns on him. He’s worked with Lyndon Johnson to get the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act passed. But now Johnson is after him. So the White House turns on him, number one. The media turns on him. When you read—you all know this stuff; I feel like I’m telling you stuff you already know—but when you read what The New York—almost 50 years after his death, you read what The New York—the liberal New York Times said about him, what the liberalWashington Post said about him, what Time magazine said about him, it’s embarrassing to read what they said about Martin when he came out against the war in Vietnam all these years later. So the media turns on him. First the White House, then the media. And I might add, the black media turned on Martin King. And then white America turned on him.

The last poll in his life, the Harris Poll, found that nearly three-quarters of the American people, 75 percent, thought that Martin was irrelevant. Get this. Martin King dies with approval ratings or disapproval ratings about the same as George Bush when he left the White House. That’s how bad his numbers were, believe it or not. So, white America turns on him. And hold onto your hat, almost 60 percent of black folk in the country thought he was persona non grata. And so, in his own lifetime, that last year, he really didn’t have a constituency. He couldn’t get his own organization, SCLC, to support him the way he wanted on the Poor People’s Campaign. So, everybody turns on him, and he has to navigate that until he died.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet he stuck to his guns.

TAVIS SMILEY: Oh, absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: Or I don’t actually want to use that analogy there, sticking to his guns, but he was adamant.

TAVIS SMILEY: Yeah, yeah. He stood in his truth.

AMY GOODMAN: Right.

TAVIS SMILEY: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to go back to a clip from "Beyond Vietnam."

REV. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.: As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" And they ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. That question has hit home. And I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today, my own government.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. King a year to the day before he was gunned down in Memphis. This was at Riverside Church, April 4th, 1967. So, his organization in this last year is in financial trouble. People are turning against him. And what were his conversations?

TAVIS SMILEY: He was despondent. We don’t shy away from this in the text. He was despondent. He was depressed. There were times he was admitted to the hospital for what they said was exhaustion. And it was exhaustion, but there was a certain mania that he was enduring, as well, because, again, you’ve got everybody against you, and on top of that, you’re getting death threats every day. And on top of that, he could feel, and told the folk around him he could feel, the death angel hovering around him. He knew there was a bullet out there with his name on it. And so, how do you get up every day and try to tell your truth, when everything, everybody—when it appears even that the cosmos has sort of shifted against you, but you have to speak the truth and stay with the truth and stand in the truth? That’s a very difficult thing to do for most of us, but King, to Amy’s point earlier, never wavered. And the most beautiful part of this book is to see somebody who, when everything is coming at him, still tells the truth. And we don’t have leaders these days who love us enough always to tell us the truth.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, you mention in the book that he was inspired by another legendary figure who was at the nadir of his life and career at the time, Muhammad Ali, and how Ali had just been banned from boxing and basically lost all of his income because of his opposition to the war in Vietnam. But yet, King admired his courage.

TAVIS SMILEY: He indeed admired his courage and told him so; admired his courage, admired the courage of Eartha Kitt, who fell out of favor with the American people when she went to the Johnson White House and challenged Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson face to face in a gathering at the White House, a ladies’ tea, as it were. But she just, you know, wrecked the whole room when she spoke out against the war in Vietnam, and again, just got—just that really blackballed her, in many ways, in the entertainment industry. And King sent her a personal telegram and then called her to tell her how courageous he thought she was. So, whether it’s Eartha Kitt or Muhammad Ali, he wanted to be in solidarity with those who saw that the Vietnam War was wrong.

What’s great, I think, about the book, if I can say that, is the way we chose to write this. Again, those biographers have written the history. Nobody has focused just on the last year. But the narrative was a bit different. This is what I would call a historical novel. It is historic: Everything in it is accurate. There are tons of end notes at the back of the text to tell you where the research comes from. But it’s written as a novel, historical novel, so that every chapter is a page-turner, because, for the first time ever, we put you with King in his seat. And he’s never Dr. King. He’s Doc, because to his family—I mean, to his friends and his co-workers and colleagues, he was Doc. So, from page one to the last page of the book, he’s not Dr. King to you. He’s Doc. You’re in the seat with him. And everything he goes through and feels and endures in that year, you get to feel that with him, because the story is told from his perspective.

AMY GOODMAN: Tavis, you mentioned Ferguson, and I want to go to Ferguson for a minute, where certainly Democracy Now! went in these last weeks. Residents of the town packed a City Council meeting on Tuesday night, the first since last month’s police killing of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown. The City Council unveiled reforms that have stemmed from activists’ demands, including a citizen review board, a cap on how much of city revenue can come from fines, and a one-month recall program for warrants. But a number of residents voiced criticism the reforms don’t go far enough, calling for the resignation of top officials and the arrest of the officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson. Over the course of the night, many who spoke gave their names simply as "Mike Brown," like this young man.

"MIKE BROWN": The police do not represent us. It is time for us to start getting suited and booted, and kick their you know what out of office. We got the power. They don’t. We’re trying to figure out, how do we get this young man, this old man, or whatever, the man, the mayor, that’s up on his iPad, don’t care what we got to say—how do we get him out? We vote him out. We recall him out. It’s time for him to go.

AMY GOODMAN: Last night, a number, scores of Ferguson residents were arrested, once again, protesting in the streets. What would Dr. King do?

TAVIS SMILEY: Protest has its place, there’s no doubt about it. And there’s no way the civil rights movement accomplishes what it does without those kinds of protests. So King would certainly be in support of protest against unjust laws and against practices that take the lives of innocents and precious young people who are unarmed. And so, Dr. King, certainly, was always concerned about this. As you recall, he spoke at the funeral of the four little girls who were killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, the only time that we see King actually crying in public in a public address, because that hurt him so much. But he was so concerned about young people.

And one of the tragedies of his life, at the end of his life, is that he thought that he—there was a disconnect between Dr. King and young people, like the brother you saw speaking there, because Stokely Carmichael was coming on, and H. Rap Brown was coming on, and Huey Newton was coming on, and "Black Power" was the slogan. And Dr. King was trying to get them to understand that "We want the same thing. Our tactics may differ, but I love you, and I care about you." So he went to Newark to talk to young people. Everywhere he went, he wanted to talk to young people.

There’s a great story in the book where, speaking of young people, he’s in Cleveland one day. And they’re in the car, and on the corner there are a bunch of young black women, young black girls, but they’re prostitutes. And they see Dr. King in the car, and they start chiding him and calling him Uncle Tom and calling him other names, because while they’re prostitutes, they’re into this Black Power thing, so they start calling Dr. King names. And the car—the light turns green. The car pulls away. And Andy Young and Bernard Lee, who are his aides in the car, are trying to get him to a church, Olivet, where he’s going to be late for this appearance. And Dr. King says, "Turn the car around." And they said, "Doc, we’re going to be late. We’ve got to keep moving." Doc says, "Turn the car around." And Andy knew what he was feeling. Andy said, "Doc, let that go. They’re kids. Don’t—they’re just kids. Don’t worry about that." Doc said, "I told you, turn this car around." And they turn the car around at the next street. Dr. King went back, got out of the car and stood there for 15 to 20 minutes, talking to these young prostitutes. He wanted to understand why these young folks felt that way, and he wanted them to understand why he was fighting so hard on their behalf. And he had to leave to go to the church. He says to them, "Why don’t you meet me back at"—these are prostitutes—"meet me back at my hotel at 3:00, and we can continue this conversation." So he goes to the church, does what he has to do. At 3:00, the front desk attendant calls his room and says, "Dr. King, did you ask"—he just couldn’t believe that these prostitutes were there to see Dr. King. And sure enough—

AMY GOODMAN: Ten seconds.

TAVIS SMILEY: —they sat for hours, and Dr. King was able to connect to them.

AMY GOODMAN: Tavis, as we say goodbye to you, we also say happy birthday.

TAVIS SMILEY: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: Happy 50th birthday. Are you really doing Dancing with the Stars on Monday?

TAVIS SMILEY: Can you believe it? Yeah, the last foolish thing I’m doing before 50.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s show some of the video as we’re going out. Can we show that video of Tavis Smiley dancing? How you came to do this?

TAVIS SMILEY: Just I decided to do one last really foolish, crazy thing before I turn 50, and here we are, early in rehearsals. I’m actually much better than this now.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll check you out.

TAVIS SMILEY: But Monday night, you be the judge.

AMY GOODMAN: Tavis Smiley, I want to thank you for being with us. Tavis Smiley, public TV and radio broadcaster, renowned journalist. His latest book, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Final Year. You can go to our website to read the first chapter.

http://www.nationofchange.org/what-would-dr-king-do-us-moves-bomb-syria-tavis-smiley-mlk-s-anti-war-legacy-1410795768

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BLOGSPOT

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Sept 1- Vietnam-Draft Dodgers and Vietnam Vets Canada - Canadian Bill of Rights- from 1960/ Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. - “Heaven,” said King, “was the word for Canada.” -SPEECH- Dr. Martin Luther King in Canada - 1a - Massey Lecture 1967 - Conscience for Change /- Diefenbaker- “I am a Canadian, a free Canadian, free to speak without fear, free to worship God in my own way, free to stand for what I think right, free to oppose what I believe wrong, free to choose those who shall govern my country. This heritage of freedom I pledge to uphold for myself and all mankind.” /JOHN F KENNEDY AND HIS VIETNAM WAR- CANADA /How The Civil War Saved Canada

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2014/09/canada-military-news-sept-1-now-54.html

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Pope Francis Says War Is Never Right Way to Stop Injustice; Distances Himself From Support of Airstrikes Against ISIS

Pope Francis has said that war is never the right way to stop the injustices of the world and warned that it always leads to further problems, seemingly distancing himself from supporting U.S. airstrikes against terror group ISIS.

"War is never a satisfactory way to right injustices," the Roman Catholic Church leader said during an inter-faith colloqium hosted in Belgium by the St. Egido community, AFP reported on Sunday.

"War leads people into a spiral of violence which becomes difficult to control. It destroys what it has taken generations to establish and leads the way to even worse conflicts and injustices."

When asked directly in August whether he supports U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets, Francis told journalists:

"In these cases, where there is an unjust aggression, I can only say that it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor," the Vatican leader said. "I underscore the verb 'stop.' I'm not saying 'bomb' or 'make war,' just 'stop.' And the means that can be used to stop them must be evaluated."

ISIS, or the Islamic State as the group is also called, has captured several cities across Iraq and Syria, and has been accused by the United Nations of committing crimes such as mass rapes and beheadings. The Islamic militants have targeted religious minorities, including many Christians, forcing thousands to flee their ancestral homes.

Following the release of a video last week that showed ISIS beheading American journalist Steven Sotloff, the second American journalist to be murdered in the space of two weeks, President Barack Obama vowed that the U.S. will seek to "degrade and destroy" the terror group.

"Those who make the mistake of harming Americans will learn that we will not forget ... that our reach is long and that justice will be served," Obama said in a statement.

He added: "Our objective is clear. That is to degrade and destroy (ISIS) so it's no longer a threat. We can accomplish that. It's going to take some time, it's going to take some effort."

The U.S. has hit a number of ISIS targets in Iraq with air strikes, and has supplied arms to the Iraqi government and the region of Kurdistan, who are fighting back against the Islamic militants.

Francis has reached out several times to the persecuted Christian community in Iraq, and said that the Church embraces her children "like all mothers."

"She 'raises up the fallen child, heals his wounds, seeks the lost … and defends those who are defenseless and persecuted,'" Francis said on Wednesday, according to Vatican Radio.

"Especially these last of you, the defenseless and persecuted, that you are in the heart of the Church; the Church suffers with you and is proud of you; you are her strength and the concrete and authentic witness of her message of salvation, of forgiveness and love," the pontiff added.

Last week an Iraqi priest helping refugees who are fleeing ISIS said that Francis gave him a phone call to tell the priest that he is always with him in prayer.

"'I read your letter,' said Pope Francis. He said he was very sorry for everything that was happening to us and he said, 'Know that I am with you in prayer always. I never forget you,'" Fr. Behnam Benoka said, recalling the pontiff's phone call, which was in a response to a letter the priest had sent to the Vatican detailing the "miserable" situation of the refugees.

http://www.christianpost.com/news/pope-francis-says-war-is-never-right-way-to-stop-injustice-distances-himself-from-support-of-airstrikes-against-isis-126010/

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Poverty in Muslim Countries

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Muslim societies are far worse than the rest of the world in the matter of addressing the problem of poverty. The Islamic world is enormous with over 1.2 billion people, stretching from Senegal to the Philippines – comprising six regions: North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. Except for a handful of countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, there are high and rising poverty levels in both urban and rural parts of most Muslim countries.

 Read » Poverty in Muslim Countries

Additional information on Poverty in Muslim Countries :

- Apr 25, 2011 ... RE (PPI) - Around 1.7 billion people are hand to mouth and living lives below the poverty line. Amongst them 44 percent are residing in Muslim ...

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- Apr 21, 2010 ... As a Muslim country it also belongs to the Arab League. Probably because of its Islamic background Somalia has one of the lowest HIV and ...

- Sep 18, 2012 ... On the other hand, Islamic nations do not have a monopoly on poverty; there is lot of it to go around in Latin America and non-Muslim parts of ...

- Urban poverty and support for Islamist terror. Survey results of Muslims in fourteen countries. Michael Mousseau?. Associate Professor of International Relations ...

- Which Islamic country is most powerful country? Turkey is the most powerful Islamic country. However, the US is the most powerful country. Is Islamic countries ...

- Peaking whilst in the Middle Ages, the religion of Islam has a tenuous relationship with the idea of voluntary poverty. While Sufism has encouraged the ...

- A large percentage of Muslim population in these two countries is poor. The poverty in most Muslim countries is accompanied by growing tensions and conflicts ...

Related links about Poverty in Muslim Countries :

1. What is the poorest Islamic country - WikiAnswers

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4. Urban poverty and support for Islamist terror

5. Top 10 poorest countries in the world 2010 | Financial Jesus

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