London, 14 July 2010: The Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) of Oxford University and the Human Development Report Office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today launched a new poverty measure that gives a “multidimensional” picture of people living in poverty which its creators say could help target development resources more effectively.
The new measure, the Multidimensional Poverty Index, or MPI, was developed and applied by OPHI with UNDP support, and will be featured in the forthcoming 20th anniversary edition of the UNDP Human Development Report. The MPI supplants the Human Poverty Index, which had been included in the annual Human Development Reports since 1997.
The MPI assesses a range of critical factors or ‘deprivations’ at the household level: from education to health outcomes to assets and services. Taken together, these factors provide a fuller portrait of acute poverty than simple income measures, according to OPHI and UNDP. The measure reveals the nature and extent of poverty at different levels: from household up to regional, national and international level. This new multidimensional approach to assessing poverty has been adapted for national use in Mexico, and is now being considered by Chile and Colombia.
Press Release — Embargoed until 18 June 2010, 9:00 am Managua Time (GMT-7)
Managua, 18 June 2010 — As Nicaragua celebrates completion of its mine clearance activities, Central America becomes the world's first landmine-free region, said the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) today. North and Central America, from the Arctic Circle to the Colombian border, are now free from the threat of landmines. This success demonstrates that with sustained efforts a mine-free world is possible.
“Communities in the region that suffered from conflict in recent history are now free from the threat of mines and can move on with rebuilding their lives,” said Yassir Chavarría Gutiérrez of the Instituto de Estudios Estratégicos y Políticas Públicas, the ICBL member in Nicaragua. “As Central America emerged from conflict, over a decade of mine clearance served as a regional confidence-building measure and embodied the Mine Ban Treaty's spirit of openness, transparency, and cooperation.”
Central American governments, the Organization of American States (OAS), and international donors showed significant political will and demonstrated the importance of international cooperation and assistance in mine action.
Of Central America's seven countries, five used to be mine-affected: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica (the other two being Belize and Panama). All have met their mine clearance obligations under the Mine Ban Treaty, which requires that all known mined areas be cleared within ten years. Nonetheless, residual mine clearance capacity will still be needed in the region, including in Nicaragua, as there are still likely mines in weapons caches or emplaced in unknown areas.
“The job is not done now that all the mines have been cleared. Landmine survivors, their families, and communities require lifelong assistance. Government funding that previously supported clearance should now be channeled to victim assistance initiatives,” said Jesús Martínez, Director of the Fundación Red de Sobrevivientes, the ICBL member in El Salvador, and a mine survivor himself.
//
Colombia is among the world's states most affected by antipersonnel mines and Chile will likely meet its 2012 treaty-mandatory mine clearance deadline. Ecuador and Peru have made slow progress despite the relatively small amount of land remaining to be cleared, and Venezuela has yet to clear a single mine from six contaminated military bases.
Production
In the past, more than 50 countries have produced antipersonnel mines, both for their own stocks and to supply others. Cheap and easy to make, it was said that producing one antipersonnel mine costs $1, yet once in the ground it can cost more than $1,000 to find and destroy.
As of 2008, 38 nations have stopped production, and global trade has almost halted completely. Unfortunately, 13 countries continue to produce (or have not foresworn the production of) antipersonnel mines. For the latest updates see Landmine Monitor.
Nine of the 13 mine producers are in Asia (Burma, China, India, Nepal, North Korea, South Korea, Pakistan, Singapore, and Vietnam), one in the Middle East (Iran), two in the Americas (Cuba and United States), and one in Europe (Russia).
At the same time some non-state armed groups or rebel groups still produce home-made landmines such as improvised explosive devices.
India: Minister of State for Defense M. M. Pallam Raju on 7 July said India is concerned about China's plans to build a rail link with Pakistan through the Karakoram mountain range, The Times of India reported. He said India is planning to take countermeasures against the proposed link.
Comment: This is one of four strategically significant rail projects in Asia. All are important in the UN master plan for Asian railroads, but several stand out.
The first is the Chinese project to build a railroad line in Afghanistan that runs southward from the Oxus River to China's Aynak Copper Mine in Logar Province. This is one of the largest, if not the largest, copper deposit in the world. Eventually it could become the leading edge of mineral extraction projects that could transform Afghanistan a generation from now, if security conditions permit.
The second project is the Iranian railroad to Herat, in western Afghanistan. This is moving ahead slowly, but follows a hard road already built by the Iranians. It will tie relatively quiet Herat and western Afghanistan to the economic market area of Mashhad, Iran's second largest city, when completed.
The third rail project with strategic significance is in North Korea, which has two sub-projects that can complete the link of Europe by rail to Japan. Completion of these long delayed spurs depend on whether whoever runs anything in North Korea ever gets a sound grip on their own economic best interests and permit upgrades to the Chinese and to the Russian spurs that run across the Demilitarized Zone and link to the South Korean rail systems that terminate at Pusan. A ferry ride across the Tsushima Strait links to Japan railroads and Tokyo. London to Tokyo by rail is in sight, if the North Koreans would only decide to become prosperous.
The latest project is that announced for Pakistan. In the 1971 general war with India, only Chinese truck convoys through the Karakoram Mountains via the Khunjerab Pass kept Pakistan in the war for the two weeks it actually fought before suing for peace and losing East Pakistan.
The Khunjerab Pass is the highest elevation paved international border at 15,400 ft above sea level. The railroad would presumably follow the Karakoram Highway, which is the highest paved road in the world.
A rail link through those mountains and that pass would link Xinjiang, China, to Karachi and Gwadar – the Chinese built port in southwestern Pakistan on the Indian Ocean — via the Pakistani rail system. The throughput capacity would be exponentially larger than that achievable by truck convoys.
This railroad will create a new market system. No wonder India is concerned, economically and militarily. Pakistan really would become an extension of the new Chinese economic empire. All China needs to do is to complete railroads through Burma and link the Afghanistan line to Iran and it will have an Asian rail empire, within a generation, all the way to the English Channel without using the Trans-Siberian.
Phi Beta Iota: This is the kind of strategic analysis rooted in solid intellect that should characterize the entire US Intelligence Community, not one lone individual. Three big things appear to be looming on the horizon: free cellular around the planet, monetizing the transactions instead of the connections; low-cost rail (and eventually the Buckminster Fuller electrical grid) girding the globe; and finally, the up-ending of capitalism to focus on the needs–and wealth-creating capabilities–of the five billion poor. No one in Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, or Toyko–or even New Delhi and Jakarta where they have the most to gain–is thinking about this. That is a crime against humanity, a moral and intellectual atrocity so horrendous as to call into question the legitimacy of every government.
You gotta love it when the War Party reveals its desperation to come up with yet another soundbyte to justify continuing the long Afghan War — a war becoming known to cynics in the Hall of Mirrors that is Versailles on the Potomac as the Great Afghan Cash Cow, because it is a golden cornucopia for so many, including, inter alia, the Pentagon, defense contractors, USAID, NGOs, Warlords, the family Karzai, and even the Taliban, which is helping to fund its anti-US operations by running a protection racket paid for by the US-funded trucking companies running supplies to the US forces in Afghanistan.
To wit: The Pentagon just entertained the booboisie with recycled old Russian reports of Afghanistan's supposed mineral wealth (the Saudi Arabia of lithium, for example), which the New York Times and Fox dutifully amplified as new news. Now, if the attached essay by Steve Levine is correct, we are about to be subjected to another recycling as well as a grand synthesis of old theories about turning Afghanistan in a “superhighway of roads, railroads, electricity lines, and energy pipelines for the entire Eurasian landmass.” And lying in echelon behind this assault on our senses is the romantic magnetism of a new Great Game, perhaps devolving ultimately into a never-ending competition between the US and Russia on the high ground of Eurasian Continent.
It is easy to poke fun at such grand strategic nonsense, and Levine does a good job of dissing the latest. But when these delusions are coupled with domestic politics, like …
the hysterical hype surrounding the FBI's allegations of a keystone-cops spy scandal where incompetent sleepers infiltrated the PTA meetings that fewer and fewer parents attend,
the now likely scuppering by Congress of a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia,
the likely torpedoing of the Obama-Medvedev rapprochement,
the increasing possibility of a congressional election debacle for the Democrats in 2010,
… it begins to look like the building blocks are falling into place for a return to political-economic normalcy in the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex — a normalcy taking the form of a permanent new Cold War with Russia.
Blaming Obama for losing the un-winnable Afghan war and for either ineffectually attacking or being afraid to attack Iran should ice the cake in 2012, thus paving the way for a new burst of defense spending in the second decade of the 21st Century, accompanied by its handmaiden, the politics of fear, and funded by greater debt as well as a renewed assault on Social Security and Medicare.
So, don't be surprised by the sound champagne corks popping in the Hall of Mirrors.
The U.S. military is studying a plan to solve Afghanistan's problems by turning it into a superhighway of roads, railroads, electricity lines and energy pipelines connected to the entire Eurasian landmass. According to a piece in the National Journal by Sydney Freedberg, the proposal has the ear of Gen. David Petraeus, whose confirmation hearings to be the new U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan start today in the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Pakistan-Afghan: Expressing dissatisfaction about the deteriorating Afghan situation, Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi said that talks are the only solution to the Afghan problem and no military means can bring peace. Qureshi spoke in a joint press conference with his Afghan counterpart Dr. Zalmai Rasoul.
Qureshi said they discussed the security situation, especially the efforts of the Afghan government to ensure stability through reconciliation. The countries agreed to enhance bilateral relations in politics, trade and economic among other fields.
The foreign minister said peace and security in Afghanistan is important for Pakistan therefore, Pakistan has sincerely offered assistance, cooperation and training facilities to Afghanistan in all the fields, including training Afghan military so that a well trained Afghan Army can take over the responsibility of the security in their country.
NIGHTWATCH Comment: The meeting is significant as a sign of shifting relationships. An Afghan official tilt towards Pakistan is being reciprocated by Pakistani moves towards Afghanistan, as described in the New York Times. Since last year's presidential elections, President Karzai's relations with the US have become strained. The emergence of strain in the US relationship appears to be the precursor to a warming trend with Pakistan.
The shifting ties have mixed implications. Pakistan invested heavily in the Taliban regime in Kabul before 2001, as part of a strategy to provide depth against India. The Pashtuns were the primary beneficiaries of Pakistani support against the northerners who eventually sided with the US in overthrowing the Taliban.
Nevertheless, Pakistani behavior and continuing reports indicate the national security leaders in Islamabad have not, probably cannot, abandon that strategy. They only can de-emphasize it temporarily as a matter of expediency. The Times article and Qureshi's remarks both point in the direction of power sharing, starting with the ex-royalists, the Haqqanis.
Pakistan also is in a position to do much more, provided it has a key role in arranging the power sharing. Pakistan's tactics are more nuanced, but the policy of using Afghanistan to gain strategic depth against India appears to be still in place. Afghanistan's handling of Indian relations, aid and infrastructure construction companies will be a good indirect measure of rising Pakistani influence in Kabul. If Indian Border Roads Organization units are invited to leave Afghanistan, for example, the tilt to Pakistan
Four actual or potential conflict situations around the world deteriorated and none improved in May 2010, according to the new issue of the International Crisis Group’s monthly bulletin CrisisWatch, released today.
Israeli commandos killed at least nine people when they raided a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza on 31 May. Full details are not yet clear but the incident has already thrown into question recently launched proximity talks between the Palestinians and Israel. The international community has been swift to condemn Israel’s actions and the UN Security Council has called for an impartial investigation. However, the event has underscored the failure of a much broader policy for which Israel is not solely responsible. Many in the international community have been complicit in isolating Gaza in the hope of weakening Hamas, an approach that has ultimately harmed the people of Gaza without loosening Hamas's control.
May also saw renewed violence in the streets of Bangkok. Clashes between anti-government Red Shirt protesters and security forces that resulted in scores of deaths in April escalated this month, leaving at least 54 people dead. Soldiers removed the Red Shirts from the capital on 19 May and the government has since lifted a curfew imposed on Bangkok and 28 other provinces. But a state of emergency remains and divisions between the Thai establishment and the protesters, many of whom support former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, have widened. The government has so far failed to address the underlying causes of the protests, which are likely to have long-term implications for Thailand’s stability.
Tensions continued to mount on the Korean Peninsula after investigators announced that a South Korean ship that sunk in March had been hit by a North Korean torpedo. Pyongyang continues to deny responsibility for the sinking which killed 46 people. With Seoul now threatening to take the case to the UN Security Council, recent events have highlighted the challenges facing South Korea – as well as China and the international community more broadly – in dealing with its volatile northern neighbour.
Security also deteriorated in India, where suspected Maoist rebels derailed a train on 28 May leaving at least 147 civilians dead. The Maoists have denied responsibility, but the incident has once again underlined the government’s failure to curb escalating insurgent violence that has become increasingly deadly in recent months.
