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Modern Conflicts and Crisis in Africa

Modern Conflicts and Crisis in Africa.

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Modern Conflicts and Crisis in Africa

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  1. Modern Conflicts and Crisis in Africa There are many crises occurring right now in Africa. Over the next few days we are going to look at some of the most pressing issues. As we are talking about these problems, be thinking of which issue you want to learn more about. Our cross-curricular paper with English for the 4th nine weeks is going to be about the conflict/crisis of your choice.

  2. Poverty • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOBmstGTYsw&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1\ • Poverty is not the root cause of conflicts in Africa, but a result of several different problems. • Today, more than 300 million people in Africa live on less than $1 per day. More than 40% of Africans do not even have the ability to obtain sufficient food on a day-to-day basis. This is not a new situation, but has been the case for Africa for centuries. • Africa is a continent that has a great amount of poverty, or the state of a person who lacks possessions or money. • Unfortunately, we can’t just fix this problem by giving Africa lots of money. There are several causes of poverty in Africa, and each problem requires its own solution.

  3. Poverty • One huge reason for poverty in Africa is unemployment. Unemployment is when a person is actively looking for a job, but is not currently working. • In many parts of Africa, even the people who do have jobs are not paid fairly for their work. You already know that the average per capita income in Africa is $2,500, but many countries per capita income is lower than that. • Malawi, Somalia: $600 • Tanzania: $750 • But even with all of this poverty, Africa still has lots of resources. If they have lots of resources, why are they so poor?

  4. Poverty • The land is a major problem in Africa, with many African countries having confused land ownership so that much useful land is unused - and in some African countries where rainfall is unreliable there is still little or no irrigation of land. Africa's natural resources have also been taken over by European and American companies. • Declining soil fertility, land degradation, and the AIDS pandemic have led to a 23% decrease in food production per capita in the last 25 years even though population has increased dramatically. • For the African farmer, conventional fertilizers cost 2–6 times more than the world market price. • It has been said that Africa is not necessarily a poor continent, but it is certainly poorly managed.

  5. Hunger http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3abZswA5XY • Over 9 million people die worldwide each year because of hunger and malnutrition. 5 million are children. • Approximately 1.2 billion people suffer from hunger • In a world of plenty, a huge number go hungry. • Hunger is more than just the result of food production and meeting demands. Source: Globalissues.org

  6. Hunger • One of the major causes of hunger is poverty itself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxJEwC38Wsc • There are other related causes : • Land rights and ownership • Diversion of land use to non-productive use • Increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture • Inefficient agricultural practices • War • Famine • Drought • Over-fishing • Poor crop yield • Lack of democracy and rights

  7. Water Crisis • Water. It is at the heart of a daily crisis faced by a billion of the world’s most vulnerable people—a crisis that threatens life and destroys livelihoods on a devastating scale. • Almost a billion people live without clean drinking water (that is 1 out of every 6 people in the world!). We call this the water crisis. • It's a crisis because it only starts with water -- but water affects everything in life…. Health. Education. Food security. And the lives of women and children, especially. http://www.youtube.com/user/charitywater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEnlrE4iMBU&feature=relmfu

  8. Disease in Africa • Millions of Africans die every year from diseases that are easily curable; we refer to these as “preventative” diseases because they can be prevented. Preventative diseases include… • Infections- diseases spread directly or indirectly from person to person. • Respiratory infections- infections of the ears and respiratory tract. • Maternal conditions- conditions affecting women before, during and after childbirth. • Perinatal conditions- conditions arising in babies before or within one week of birth. • Nutritional deficiencies- conditions due to food, vitamin and mineral shortages. • These conditions cause almost 30% of deaths in the world every year! • Source: http://www.worldmapper.org/display_extra.php?selected=371

  9. Disease Breakdown by Age Many of these Preventative diseases are caused by poor sanitary conditions. Compared to the U.S.

  10. World Mapper: HIV

  11. World Mapper- Malaria Cases and Malaria Deaths

  12. World Mapper- Cholera Deaths

  13. World Mapper- Blinding Disease

  14. AIDS in Africa- the deadliest of all… • AIDS is also a huge problem in Africa!!! • AIDS is caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus(HIV). HIV destroys the body's immune system, the defense system that fights infectious diseases. • As HIV destroys the immune system, people with the virus begin to get serious infections that they would normally be able to fight off. • The name for this condition is Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome(AIDS). http://kidshealth.org/teen/sexual_health/stds/std_hiv.html • Aids in Africa People Charts: http://www.aidsinafrica.net/people_charts.php • The numbers needed to describe deaths, infections, and orphans brought by AIDS in Africa are too large for us to understand. We are not capable of grasping the scale in which people of Africa are suffering and dying due to HIV/AIDS. • Diagrams also fail to connect statistics with the real people they are meant to represent. When looking at a chart, it is easy to forget that each number represents a real life, with real family members and friends. A death is not a single unit, but an end of a painful progression of sickness that leaves behind widows, orphans, and demoralized communities.

  15. Lack of Education http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWEgyqO6gnw • Access to quality education is a major goal for international development. • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNBvtM1hmzQ • Worldwide, there are more girls out of school than boys; for every 100 boys out of school, there are 117 girls. • Social and cultural factors play a key role in this discrepancy. • Girls spend hours collecting water to meet their families' basic needs • Girls are often responsible for other domestic chores and child care, which can limit the time they can devote to schooling. • In some cultures, people perceive educating girls as less valuable than educating boys.7 • Education is not free in all countries; discrepancies exist amongst students whose families can afford tuition and textbooks, and those whose families cannot. • Children living in regions dealing with political conflicts or natural disasters may have their education disrupted during periods of instability. • In addition, the quality of the education children receive when they are in school can vary, with many developing nations struggling to recruit and train a sufficient number of qualified teachers.

  16. Education • Why is Education important? • Beyond improving individuals' abilities to think critically, solve problems, and make informed decisions for themselves and their communities, education also has the power to • lift people out of poverty • promote gender equality in society • improve knowledge about health and nutrition • promote sustainable development • improve global cooperation Source: http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/stories/stories.cfm?psid=2182

  17. Conflict Diamonds • Conflict diamonds are diamonds mined in regions of Africa that are in conflict. • Ex: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. • What generally happens is a group of “rebels” take over an area where diamonds can be mined and force the people living there (including the young children) to mine for diamonds all day every day. • The conditions of the workers are horrible and in order to keep the workers working, the leaders often keep the people in chains and hold them at gun point. They often kill anyone who disagrees and they are famous for amputations or cutting off people’s limbs (hands and feet) if they aren’t work well enough. • The “rebels” then sell those diamonds on the world market and use the money to buy more weapons to keep the process going. • PSA linkDeBeers Diamond Commercial inspired Link

  18. Child Labor • What is child labor? The International Labor Office defines it as: all forms of work by children under the age laid down in ILO standards (normally 15 years old) • Worst forms of child labor: • Slavery • Debt Bondage • Forced recruitment of children for soldiering • Drug Trafficking or any other illegal activity • In Africa, 41% of the children are working (legally and illegally). In Rwanda alone, there are an estimated 400,000 child workers.

  19. Child Labor • Why are these children being forced to work? • Poverty is high, people will do anything for money. • Access to free education is limited (which would put kids in school rather than work) • Existing laws preventing child labor are easy to break. • Some countries have laws allowing child labor. Examples… • Kenya • prohibits children under 16 from industrial work...but excludes agriculture. • Bangladesh • specifies a minimum age for work...but sets no regulations on domestic work or agricultural work. • Demand for goods are high in developed countries, a strong workforce is needed to produce the goods.

  20. Child Labor • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s9B76_oiSs&feature=related&safety_mode=true&persist_safety_mode=1 (Cocoa Child Labor) • Child labor continues to be a problem not only in Africa, but in some parts of Asia as well. There are organizations committed to stopping child labor, but it is really up to the countries  that have child labor to stop it.

  21. Child Soldiers • start at 5:20, play until 8:40 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZWGBSXr8fk • Warlords are forcing children in conflicts around the world to become killing machines -- nothing more than what one child advocate calls "cannon fodder." • Some children are kidnapped from their schools or their beds, some are recruited after seeing their parents slaughtered, some may even choose to join the militias as their best hope for survival in war-torn countries from Colombia, and across Africa and the Middle East, to south Asia. • Once recruited, many are brainwashed, trained, given drugs and then sent into battle with orders to kill. • http://articles.cnn.com/2007-02-12/world/child.soldiers_1_child-soldiers-child-advocate-human-shields?_s=PM:WORLD • http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/06/13/world/africa/1247468038532/somalia-s-child-soldiers.html

  22. Genocide • Intro with video- stop at 2:30 • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vI18HJM2o&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL3BA5A2ADAF0F7433 • The word genocide was created by combining the Greek word Genos for race and the Latin word cide for killing. Forming a new word, genocide… • Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. • The most common and well known example of Genocide is the Holocaust in which the German NAZI government killed over 6 million Jews and millions of other humans considered “undesirable.”

  23. Genocide Continued… • Unfortunately, the Holocaust is not the only example of genocide. There are several other times in human history where one group of humans as set out to completely annihilate another group of people. • 1915-1918: Armenia-The Armenian Genocide is considered the prototype for future genocides in one of the bloodiest centuries of modern history. Over 1,500,000 Armenians, about half the Armenian population, were killed by Ottoman Turkey during WWI. • 1975-1979: Cambodia- The Cambodian Killing Fields 1,200,000 Cambodians were killed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge political party.

  24. Genocide Continued… • 1994: Rwanda- Rwandan Genocide In a 4-month period, 800,000 Tutsis killed by ethnic Hutu militias. • 2004-?: Darfur in Sudan- Genocide in Sudan Janjaweed, government-backed Arab militias, have engaged in campaigns to displace and wipe out entire communities of African tribal farmers. Based on conservative estimates, tens of thousands of civilians have died and some 1.6 million have been forced from their homes. This genocide has actually resulted in the world’s newest country, South Sudan, but the problems are far from over! • Closing video… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS-JXH1d0zM&feature=BFa&list=PL3BA5A2ADAF0F7433&lf=results_main

  25. Refugees • Watch first two minutes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpwqK3B2ac8\ • Imagine the following scenario: You are a citizen in a nation where political factions have been at war with each other and where civil war has been standard over the past two years. The fighting has officially reached your city, and you know that you are a member of the faction that your townspeople have been sworn to fight. You are no longer safe in your city, so you are forced to leave. With bullets buzzing by your head and soldiers moving in swarms around you, you pack what little you can assemble in twenty minutes and you leave your home. After a long and treacherous walk through your country, you arrive, exhausted, terrified, and hungry, at the border of the neighboring country. Will the other country turn you away? Will you be treated with respect, or will you be treated poorly before you are callously sent back to your own country to face persecution or even death?

  26. Refugees Continued • http://refugeesinternational.org/blog/video/celebrating-30-years possible video • Refugee: someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group; a refugee either cannot return home or is afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries. (Source: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees) • In other words, a refugee is someone who has been forced to leave their home due to wars, famine, and natural disasters. • Just escaping the conflict or natural disaster is not the most difficult part of a refugee’s life. Once they escape from their homes, they face difficulties in refugee camps. • Video about life in the world largest refugee camp… http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/08/09/largest.refugee.camp/index.html

  27. http://awesome.good.is/transparency/013/transparency013seekingrefugerev.htmlhttp://awesome.good.is/transparency/013/transparency013seekingrefugerev.html

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