By MediaGlobal
UN GLOBAL COMPACT BRINGS CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY TO BUSINESS SCHOOLS
7 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The United Nations is making strides towards making businesses more sustainable by partnering with business schools through its Global Compact. The Principles for Responsible Management Education initiative (PRIME), launched by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in mid-2007, has now been endorsed by more than 100 business schools and universities around the world. In adopting the compact, schools vow to incorporate six principles into their core curriculum. The aim, says Dr. Manuel Escudero, Head of Academic Initiatives at the UN Global Compact, is to truly embed the sustainability agenda championed by the UN in the training of future business leaders. While business schools have long taught these values through specific classes, Escudero believes this alone is not enough. “What’s important for the future is that more traditional topics like financing, marketing and so on are also colored by the values of sustainability and corporate responsibility,” he told MediaGlobal. “I think that calls for profound revision of the topics that are being taught in business schools.” By teaching these topics as an integral part of the business curriculum, the architects of the PRIME initiative hope to produce a new generation of leaders who will transform the way business is conducted, a transformation with global consequences. “The principles of the Global Compact are, in a way, the other face of the same coin as the Millennium Development Goals,” said Escudero. “We hope that with this [Compact] we are going to contribute to the fulfillment of the MDGs. Although we know that what we are doing now will have an impact only in the long term, this is our contribution.”
CAMPAIGN AGAINST MEASLES AND RUBELLA BEGINS IN LEBANON
7 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: In an effort to eliminate measles and rubella by 2010, Lebanon has launched a vaccination campaign that is expected to inoculate over 900,000 children. The campaign will target children aged nine months to 14 years and will be split into two phases. The first phase is directed at children in educational institutions and nurseries. The second phase, which will take place from 29 April to 3 May, will focus on children missed during the first round, reports the United Nations Children Fund (UNICEF). “Lebanon is facing measles outbreaks every year. Current measles vaccination coverage in the public sector is about 54 percent. During 2007, only 30 percent of children received two doses of MMR [measles, mumps and rubella] vaccine in public sector. This means that there are many susceptible in Lebanon who are at risk,” Imran Raza, a health officer for UNICEF, told MediaGlobal. Vaccination will be carried out by 350 teams in over 3,000 private and public schools, with each team including at least one medical doctor or one registered nurse, reports UNICEF. “A healthy mind means a sound body, and the Lebanese child is our first concern,” said Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Khalid Qabbani, at a press conference on Thursday.
HAITIAN PRISONERS FACE HARSH CONDITIONS AND LONG WAITS FOR JUSTICE
8 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: In Haiti the prisons are overcrowded and justice is underserved. According to a report this week in the Canadian magazine Maclean’s, the National Penitentiary has eight times as many prisoners as it has room for under international minimum standards. Ninety percent of the prisoners have yet to be tried, and many have waited several years to see a judge. Some prisoners have not even committed a crime, but are held in a state of legal limbo called “preventative detention.” “That is, of course, a human rights issue,” Hedi Annabi, United Nations Envoy to Haiti, told MediaGlobal during a visit to UN Headquarters this week. “This is not something that can be solved overnight,” he added. “The judicial system has been weakened by decades of instability.” In response, the UN mission in Haiti is supporting a judicial overhaul, Annabi said, which began with last year’s passage of three laws, making courts more independent and accessible. For its part, the UN is working to provide the institutional support needed to process Haiti’s backlog of cases. “We need to strengthen the justice system, strengthen [its] capacity to prepare case files, to collect evidence, so that the [cases] presented can stand in court and the trials can take place according to basic standards,” he said. “We have made a good start and this year I think we can make a difference.”
AS CITIES GROW, PLANNERS COPE WITH HIGH COST OF EFFICIENT HOUSING
8 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Never before have so many people lived in cities. This year, for the first time in history, the world’s urban and rural populations will be equal. Much of this increase is due to demographic shifts in the developing world, where in many places rapid urbanization has taken a heavy toll, both on the quality of life of city-dwellers and on the environment. The solution, urbanization experts say, is to build up instead of out. Compact, well-managed cities provide greater access to basic services. They use less energy and create less pollution. But high-quality high-density living is expensive. “The big challenge is in poor communities,” Helen Zille, the mayor of Cape Town, South Africa, told MediaGlobal at a briefing on this week’s meeting of the Commission on Population and Development. “We have massive in-migration and urban sprawl extending over many square kilometers,” she said. The resulting single-level shack settlements are over-crowded and under-served, and local wildlife is threatened by the city’s expansion. But for many cities in the developing world, the model of high-density vertical housing advocated by urban planners is unaffordable. “It is costing us much more to densify and build up than to spread out,” Zille said. “Even when you go up in a very simple format – a three-story walk-up with small rooms – you’ll end up spending at least four times the basic state subsidy per unit, in a context where people can’t afford to pay anything for their housing.” The urban development that has made crowded cities like Paris and London both efficient and comfortable requires a high level of funding, she said. “These are some of the intense problems of densification in a developing context in which you don’t get the incomes that enable dense living to take off on its own and be palatable.”
URBANIZATION IS AN OPPORTUNITY TO ADDRESS POVERTY
8 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Addressing the needs of slum dwellers in the cities of developing nations is critical to addressing both the health and poverty of those nations, said population experts who gathered at the United Nations on Tuesday. “It’s a common misconception that providing basic services to long-settled slum communities will draw in more migrants to cities,” Mark Montgomery, Senior Associate at the Policy Research Division of the Population Council, told MediaGlobal. Because of this, many cities in developing nations have ignored the large proportion of their urban citizens living in informal settlements without access to basic services such as running water, electricity or permanent housing. With half of the world’s populations now living in cities, and as much as 74 percent of urban dwellers in the world’s least developed countries living in slums, their presence and poverty cannot simply be ignored. In terms of health, Montgomery said, the urban poor living in slums are often much worse off than the poor in rural areas, despite living in cities where services such as health care should theoretically be more accessible. Clearly, he said, it is not improved access to services that is drawing poor populations to cities. “I think, in fact, the main magnet for migrants is not so much services. They’re important, but the real payoff is in terms of urban jobs and the possibility of having multiple employment opportunities available,” Montgomery told MediaGlobal. “In the scale of things I suspect that it’s the lure of employment that’s the more important factor.” Montgomery hopes that cities in developing countries will therefore start to address the needs of the urban poor. Unlike in rural areas where populations are spread out, slums offer a concentration of need, meaning that even modest improvement in services can have a positive impact on a large number of people. Thus urbanization can in fact be a positive force in a developing country’s efforts to address poverty. “I believe we will see, though it has been long in coming, constructive changes in cities of developing countries over the coming years,” he said.
CLIMATE CHANGE CAN ERODE FOUNDATIONS OF HEALTH, WARNS THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION
10 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Climate change poses serious risks to global health, and populations in the developing world are the most at risk, warned the World Health Organization (WHO) on World Health Day. “Human beings are already exposed to the effects of climate-sensitive diseases and these diseases today kill millions. They include malnutrition, which causes over 3.5 million deaths per year, diarrhoeal diseases, which kill over 1.8 million, and malaria, which kills almost 1 million,” the WHO reported. “We are increasingly concerned that the effect of climate change on health will be wider and more complex, including, for example, the effect of widespread drought and water scarcity, and effect[s] on food production and prices, and therefore on risk for malnutrition and potential conflict,” Diarmid Campbell-Lendrum, the WHO’s Specialist on Health and Climate Change, told MediaGlobal. “Overall, the greatest concern is that the wide range of health effects of climate change will combine, and act particularly on poor populations that have the least protection – harming their health, and increasing the inequities in health between the rich and the poor,” he added. To address the health effects of climate change, the WHO is coordinating and supporting research and assessment on the most effective measures to protect health from climate change, particularly for vulnerable populations such as women and children in developing countries, and is advising UN member states on the necessary adaptive changes to their health systems to protect their populations, says WHO. “Although climate change is a global phenomenon, its consequences will not be evenly distributed,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan. “In short, climate change can affect problems that are already huge, largely concentrated in the developing world, and difficult to control.”
YELLOW FEVER STILL RAVAGING URBAN AREAS OF AFRICA AND SOUTH AMERICA
11 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: Yellow Fever continues to plague urban areas of Africa and South America and the disease is spreading at a rapid rate. Daniel Epstein, of the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Regional Office of the Americas, told MediaGlobal that there are “serious problems not only in Africa but in South America as well.” Yellow Fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes. Epstein explained that there are two types of Yellow Fever: Jungle Yellow Fever and Urban Yellow Fever. Jungle Yellow Fever is typically contracted from mosquitoes in jungle areas. The transmission often occurs from animals to humans and the disease can be carried by monkeys. However, the most severe problems occur with Urban Yellow Fever. In this case, Yellow Fever is caught by mosquitoes living in damp areas of densely populated areas. “These could live in a humble cigarette pack. It has a high case-fatality rate,” said Epstein. Urban Yellow Fever can kill up to half the people who catch it. Today the WHO began a week-long vaccination campaign of 5.7 million people throughout the southern region of Mali. “Having a thorough and accurate risk assessment greatly reduces both the cost and the complexity of ensuring that we reach vaccination coverage levels of 80 percent in all at-risk areas of Mali, without doing unnecessary vaccination,” said Dr. William Perea, head of WHO’s Yellow Fever Programme in Geneva.
VIDEO GAME RAISES AWARENESS OF WORLD FOOD SHORTAGES
12 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: There is nothing entertaining about the recent fears over food shortages across the globe, however, the World Food Programme (WFP) is encouraging food insecurity solutions through a video game called Food Force. The game is a source of amusement and education on humanitarian aid. It was the first game created by the United Nations and has been widely successful, with over six million downloads. It is available in 11 different languages. “It’s very action packed, but not violent,” Bettina Luescher, a spokesperson for WFP told MediaGlobal. Tasks of the game include dropping food from airplanes and driving WFP trucks through minefields. The success of the game has translated into a new children’s book by Vichi De Marchi, a spokesperson for the WFP in Rome and the author of several children’s books. The story of the game follows the characters Rachel, Carlos and Joe through their adventures with the WFP. It is believed that playing the video game and reading the book will encourage people to pursue direct outlets to help those affected by food crises worldwide.
CEREAL BILLS SKYROCKET IN THE WORLD’S POOREST NATIONS
13 April 2008 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: The Food and Agriculture Organization has reported that the cereal import bill of the world’s poorest countries will increase by 56 percent in the next year. A steady rise in prices and a decline in food stocks have continued for well over a year; however, urgency over the problem has hit fever pitch, with drastic changes in the last six months. The World Food Programme’s initial budget called for $2.9 billion to aid 73 million people worldwide, but Bettina Luescher, a spokesperson for WFP told MediaGlobal that the figure has been readjusted to $3.4 billion dollars, due to the rapid rise in food prices. Food riots have been reported across the globe, including in Senegal, Ethiopia, Haiti and Burkina Faso. The price of bread, rice, maize, milk and soybeans has mounted despite government policies to curb inflation. “Food price inflation hits the poor hardest, as the share of food in their total expenditure is much higher than that of wealthier populations,” said Henri Josserand of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Global Information and Early Warning systems. Jill Esner, a spokesperson for the FAO told MediaGlobal that they are trying help people gain greater access to food being grown in local regions as a first step towards solving food problems. The WFP has initially taken part by promoting the free-rice.com website. By simply visiting the site, web-goers are helping to feed 1.3 million people a day on 25 billion grains of rice.
GLOBAL HAPPENINGS
For April
NEW: Project for Nuclear Awareness’s Conference Philadelphia, PA (10 May 2008): MediaGlobal is co-sponsoring a one-day, multidisciplinary conference together with the Project for Nuclear Awareness and a dozen partner organizations to “connect the dots” on the environment, security, and global health. Experts, advocates, and interested citizens will be brought together at the Sheraton University City Hotel Ballroom in Philadelphia, PA for a discussion on engaging more people in these critical issues. For tickets information, click: www.projectfornuclearawareness.org/news.aspx/pub/4/id/45
International Banana Conference 2008 – Mombassa, Kenya (7-11 April 2008): Organized by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, the conference focuses on banana and plantain research across Africa, lessons learned and the way forward. A major objective of the conference is to foster international partnerships. Email: t.dubois@cgiar.org _Website: www.banana2008.org
Unite for Sight’s 5th Annual International Health Conference – Yale University, New Haven, USA (12-13 April 2008): The conference will bring together 180 expert speakers in international health and development, public health, eye care, medicine, social entrepreneurship, nonprofits, philanthropy, microfinance, human rights, anthropology, health policy, advocacy, public service, environmental health and education. Website: http://uniteforsight.org
Prince of Wales’ Business and the Environment Programme - Cambridge, UK (15-18 April 2008): The University of Cambridge Program for Industry, Business & the Environment Program is the premier international forum for executive learning and leadership for sustainability. The six annual Senior Executives Seminars held around the world aim to help a select group of highly influential decision-makers understand the challenges and opportunities. Website: http://www.cpi.cam.ac.uk
The Global Travel and Tourism Summit – Dubai, UAE (20-22 April 2008): Set in a unique format – The Round – the Summit will engage invited participants in real dialogue on issues that affect the industry and the world at large. Invited participants include the Chairs and Chief Executives of the Travel & Tourism industry, heads of government, international experts and the global media. Website: http://www.globaltraveltourism.com/
Africa: International Conference on African Culture and Development – Kumasi, Ghana (21-26 April 2008): The conference is designed to draw attention to a missing link in attempts to develop the African continent – culture. Website: www.icacd.ccoghana.org
Rethinking Poverty: Making Policies Work for Children – Conference and Call for Papers. New York, USA (21-23 April 2008): UNICEF and the Graduate Program in International Affairs at the New School will jointly host an international conference to review and mobilize the international agenda on ending child poverty and reducing disparities. Website: www.crin.org
Global Youth Enterprise Conference – Washington, DC. September 15-16, 2008. Call for proposals is open! Deadline: April 18, 2008.
Designed as a participatory learning event, this conference aims to support youth enterprise and entrepreneurship programs and policies achieve greater effectiveness around the world. Website: www.youthenterpriseconference.org
SOURCE: South-South Solutions http://tcdc1.undp.org/enews/index.html
Development agencies and non-governmental organizations are welcome to send details of upcoming conferences for inclusion in our HAPPENINGS column.
Contributors: Nosh Nalavala, Joseph Deaux, Sheana Laughlin, Adelia Saunders and Sarah Long
MediaGlobal is a leading provider of information on global development issues facing vulnerable countries in Africa and Asia. Leaders of developed countries, the global media (with media in developing countries), policymakers in donor countries, non-governmental organizations, Permanent Representatives of Missions to the United Nations and key personnel in the United Nations Secretariat, its agencies and managers in the field worldwide read MediaGlobal’s newswire stories. Contact: media@mediaglobal.org . United Nations, Room S-301, New York, NY 10017. Tel: (212) 963-9878. Fax: (609) 716-1297 Website: www.mediaglobal.org
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