The world's poorest people are being denied access to drugs because pharmaceutical companies are focusing their resources on diseases suffered by wealthy, middle-aged Americans, such as obesity and heart disease, a leading expert will say tomorrow.
The world's richest countries are failing to provide the funds needed for education in the developing world, the Global Campaign for Education has said.
Carol Bellamy, UNICEF Executive Director, has recently launched the 2005 UNICEF report "Childhood under threat", a comprehensive and all encompassing report on the state of the world's children. The facts uncovered by the report are devastating: 15 years have lapsed since the convention of children's rights was passed, children have never been so high on the public agenda and yet, the initial promises seem broken. "Childhood under threat" uncovers that at least half of the world's children are severely deprived of one or more of the basic necessities:
It is possible for a child born just ten years from now to live in a world where AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria are on the wane. But this can only happen with considerable investment. Now. Otherwise, today’s grim picture will only get worse. Each day, these diseases kill 16,000 people—devastating entire communities and plummeting countries deeper into poverty.
Several years ago, a former President of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor remarked: “What are our institutions of learning doing? The most sophisticated crimes of our nation are committed by former students of ours some of whom graduated summa cum laude!” During the decade of the sixties, for example, Duane Pope graduated from the University of Nebraska with great honors. His instructors referred to him as “the ideal American citizen.” Besides, his friends described him as “gentle and kind to others.” Three weeks after his graduation, he organized a bank robbery, killed three on the spot and wounded five others!
Back to the Future: Returning to the community to ensure educational access and quality
This paper argues that currently popular market based incentives for teachers are an incomplete and expensive solution to counteract the problems of teacher shortage and lacking accountability in remote areas in developing countries. Instead, a community centered approach, embedded in institutionalized accountability structures, is suggested. Local teacher hiring and the installation of parent committees should, apart from bringing other tangible benefits, allow for a more complete and economically affordable creation of accountability structures, built on solidary and purposive incentives. The argument is built on a literature review on incentive systems, case studies on community based educational policies (India; Mali and El Salvador) and parallels to other community based development approaches.
