We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government.
Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off. Indeed, maybe the most important thing happening in the world today is something that we almost never cover: a stunning decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease.
Everybody knows about the spread of war, the rise of AIDS and other diseases, the hopeless intractability of poverty.
One survey found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled over the last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed that the proportion had remained roughly the same.
That’s 95 percent of Americans — who are utterly wrong. In fact, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty hasn’t doubled or remained the same. It has fallen by more than half, from 35 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2011.
The Most Important Thing, and It’s Almost a Secret
by Nicholas Kristof
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/opinion/nicholas-kristof-the-most-important-thing-and-its-almost-a-secret.html
We journalists are a bit like vultures, feasting on war, scandal and disaster. Turn on the news, and you see Syrian refugees, Volkswagen corruption, dysfunctional government.
Yet that reflects a selection bias in how we report the news: We cover planes that crash, not planes that take off. Indeed, maybe the most important thing happening in the world today is something that we almost never cover: a stunning decline in poverty, illiteracy and disease.
Huh? You’re wondering what I’ve been smoking! Everybody knows about the spread of war, the rise of AIDS and other diseases, the hopeless intractability of poverty.
One survey found that two-thirds of Americans believed that the proportion of the world population living in extreme poverty has almost doubled over the last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed that the proportion had remained roughly the same.
That’s 95 percent of Americans — who are utterly wrong. In fact, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty hasn’t doubled or remained the same. It has fallen by more than half, from 35 percent in 1993 to 14 percent in 2011 (the most recent year for which figures are available from the World Bank).
When 95 percent of Americans are completely unaware of a transformation of this magnitude, that reflects a flaw in how we journalists cover the world — and I count myself among the guilty. Consider:
• The number of extremely poor people (defined as those earning less than $1 or $1.25 a day, depending on who’s counting) rose inexorably until the middle of the 20th century, then roughly stabilized for a few decades. Since the 1990s, the number of poor has plummeted.
• In 1990, more than 12 million children died before the age of 5; this toll has since dropped by more than half.
• More kids than ever are becoming educated, especially girls. In the 1980s, only half of girls in developing countries completed elementary school; now, 80 percent do.
Granted, some 16,000 children still die unnecessarily each day. It’s maddening in my travels to watch children dying simply because they were born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But one reason for our current complacency is a feeling that poverty is inevitable — and that’s unwarranted.
The world’s best-kept secret is that we live at a historic inflection point when extreme poverty is retreating. United Nations members have just adopted 17 new Global Goals, of which the centerpiece is the elimination of extreme poverty by 2030. Their goals are historic. There will still be poor people, of course, but very few who are too poor to eat or to send children to school. Young journalists or aid workers starting out today will in their careers see very little of the leprosy, illiteracy, elephantiasis and river blindness that I have seen routinely.
“We live at a time of the greatest development progress among the global poor in the history of the world,” notes Steven Radelet, a development economist and Georgetown University professor, in a terrific book coming in November, “The Great Surge: The Ascent of the Developing World.”
“The next two decades can be even better and can become the greatest era of progress for the world’s poor in human history,” Radelet writes.
I write often about inequality, a huge challenge in the U.S. But globally, inequality is diminishing, because of the rise of poor countries.
What does all this mean in human terms? I was thinking of that last week while interviewing Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Nobel Peace Prize winner. Malala’s mother grew up illiterate, like the women before her, and was raised to be invisible to outsiders. Malala is a complete contrast: educated, saucy, outspoken and perhaps the most visible teenage girl in the world.
Even in countries like Pakistan, the epoch of illiterate and invisible women like Malala’s mother is fading; the epoch of Malala is dawning. The challenge now is to ensure that rich donor nations are generous in supporting the Global Goals — but also that developing countries do their part, rather than succumbing to corruption and inefficiency. (I’m talking to you, Angola!)
There’s one last false argument to puncture. Cynics argue that saving lives is pointless, because the result is overpopulation that leads more to starve. Not true. Part of this wave of progress is a stunning drop in birthrates.
Haitian women now average 3.1 children; in 1985, they had six. In Bangladesh, women now average 2.2 children. Indonesians, 2.3. When the poor know that their children will survive, when they educate their daughters, when they access family planning, they have fewer children.
So let’s get down to work and, on our watch, defeat extreme poverty worldwide. We know that the challenges are surmountable — because we’ve already turned the tide of history.
__________________
Nicholas Kristof
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=44002
Oct 3, 2015
Malala’s mother grew up illiterate, like the women before her, and was … invisible women like Malala’s mother is fading; the epoch of Malala is …
__________________
Carol Anne Grayson
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=38900
Dec 15, 2014
As Malala Yousafzai has told the media, that second when she was shot by the Taliban in Pakistan changed her life, (it is also changing the …
“Brand Malala”: Western exploitation of a schoolgirl
Carol Anne Grayson (Radical Sister) blog
https://activist1.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/brand-malala-western-exploitation-of-a-schoolgirl/
__________________
Edelman
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=38895
Dec 15, 2014
Global Communications Support for Malala Yousafzai & Family / Edelman London Client: Malala Yousafzai and her family. Our charge: Malala …
We Work With Clients to Address Global Challenges
Edelman
http://www.edelman.com/fy13-citizenship-report/our-clients/we-work-with-clients-to-address-global-challenges/
__________________
Simon Usborne
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=38820
Dec 12, 2014
When a Taliban gunman boarded a school bus in Pakistan’s Swat Valley last year, he shouted out one question. “Who is Malala?” Some of the …
The making of Malala Yousafzai: Shot by the Taliban for going to school and now in the frame for Nobel Peace Prize
One girl’s journey from a rural classroom to the United Nations, and the family and PR advisers that have guided her
by Simon Usborne
The Independent
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/the-making-of-malala-yousafzai-shot-by-the-taliban-for-going-to-school-and-now-in-the-frame-for-nobel-peace-prize-8862588.html
Jamie Lundie
Group Managing Director, Corporate & Financial, Edelman
http://www.edelman.co.uk/the-team/staff/?staff_name=jamielundie
マララ氏ノーベル平和賞受賞の裏側【週刊金曜日】
今年のノーベル平和賞を受賞したマララ・ユスフザイさん。その受賞の裏側を探る。
by 成澤宗男
週刊金曜日
http://ameblo.jp/lovemedo36/entry-11947099486.html
__________________
Adnan Rasheed
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=21487
Jul 25, 2013
From Adnan Rasheed to Malala Yousafzai
You have talked about justice and equality from the stage of an unjust institution, the place where you were standing uttering for justice and equality, all the nations are not equal there, only five wicked states have the veto power and rest of them are powerless, dozens of time when all the world untied against the Israel only one veto was enough to press the throat of justice.
The place you were speaking to the world is heading towards new world order, I want to know what is wrong with the old world order? They want to establish global education, global economy, global army, global trade, global government and finally global religion. I want to know is there any space for the prophetic guidance in all above global plans? Is there any space for Islamic sharia or Islamic law to which UN call inhumane and barbaric?
From Adnan Rasheed to Malala Yousafzai
http://www.channel4.com/media/c4-news/images/730_wide_images/Malala_letter.pdf
Exclusive: ‘Dear Malala… from the Taliban’
by Fatima Manji
http://www.channel4.com/news/malala-taliban-letter-commander-exclusive
__________________
Tara Sonenshine
https://kushima38.kagoyacloud.com/?p=15195
Sep 3, 2013
In Pakistan, we saw what happened to a young woman – Malala Yousafzai – who demanded the right for girls to have education. And how she …
From Card Catalogues to 21st Century Community Centers: New Dynamics for the American Space
by Tara Sonenshine
http://www.state.gov/r/remarks/2013/205338.htm
(sk)
Nicholas Kristof の言っていることはその通りなのだけれど、だからといって、なにをどうしたらいいのかは、わからない。
ジャーナリストは、戦争、スキャンダル、災害といった「ニュース」を追いかけ、テレビやラジオはシリア難民、フォルクスワーゲンの腐敗、政府の機能不全などということを繰り返し報じる。
事故のこととか殺人事件のことを細部にわたって報道するけれど、いくらそういうことを知ったとしても、普通の人たちが抱えている問題の解決にはならない。
どこに子供を預ければいいのかとか、どうしたら仕事が見つかるのかとか、おカネを借りるとか、保険をかけるとか、そんな切実な問題さえも、ニュースを流す側の儲けのためだったりするのだから、たまったものではない。
何億人もの人たちが抱えている問題も同じ。政府の援助の話を聞かされても、貧困問題の本当のところはわからない。環境会議のニュースをいくら見ても、環境でなにが問題なのかということはわからない。
じゃあみんな何も知らないかといえば、決してそんなことはなく、みんな、戦争のこととか、災害のこととか、病気のこととか、世界で起こっていることを、いちおうは知っている。
でも、たとえば、すごい貧困が、1日に170円以下で暮らす人たちの数が、増えているのか減っているのかは、誰も知らない。
1990年には世界中の47％の人たちが、その1日に170円以下というすごい貧困だったのが、2015年には14％。人の数が増えていて、みんな食糧が足りなくなるって言っている中で、47％が14％になるって。それで食べ物をめぐる状況も、水をめぐる状況も、医薬品をめぐる状況も、みんなよくなっているって、すごくないですか？
どこかの元野球選手が覚せい剤をやっていたとか、どこかの若い女の人が不倫したとか、そんなことより大事だって思ってはいけないですか？
マララっていう少女の後ろにはエデルマンというPR会社がついていて、国連などでのスピーチがプロのスピーチライターによって書かれ、ノーベル賞が政治的に与えられ、その少女がただの操り人形でしかないなんていうことも、あまり知られていない。