Asian Alliance for Solidarity Economy

Human Development Reports
OPHI and UNDP
14 July 2010

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 2010 UNDP Human Development Report will be published in late October, but research findings from the Multidimensional Poverty Index were made available today at a policy forum in London and on-line on the websites of OPHI (www.ophi.org.uk).

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.

‘The MPI is like a high resolution lens which reveals a vivid spectrum of challenges facing the poorest households,’ said OPHI Director Dr Sabina Alkire, who created the MPI with Professor James Foster of George Washington University.

The UNDP Human Development Report Office is joining forces with OPHI to promote international discussions on the practical applicability of this multidimensional approach to measuring poverty. ‘We are featuring the Multidimensional Poverty Index in the 20th anniversary edition of the Human Development Report this year because we consider it a highly innovative approach to quantifying acute poverty,’ Dr Jeni Klugman, Director of the UNDP Human Development Report Office and the principal author of this year’s Report, said. ‘The MPI provides a fuller measure of poverty than the traditional dollar-a-day formulas. It is a valuable addition to the family of instruments we use to examine broader aspects of well-being, including UNDP’s Human Development Index and other measures of inequality across the population and between genders.’

OPHI researchers analysed data from 104 countries with a combined population of 5.2 billion (78 per cent of the world total). About 1.7 billion people in the countries covered – a third of their entire population – live in multidimensional poverty, according to the MPI. This exceeds the 1.3 billion people, in those same countries, estimated to live on $1.25 a day or less, the more commonly accepted measure of ‘extreme’ poverty.
The MPI also captures distinct and broader aspects of poverty. For example, in Ethiopia 90 per cent of people are ‘MPI poor’ compared to the 39 per cent who are classified as living in ‘extreme poverty’ under income terms alone. Conversely, 89 per cent of Tanzanians are extreme income-poor, compared to 65 per cent who are MPI poor. The MPI captures deprivations directly – in health and educational outcomes and key services, such as water, sanitation and electricity. In some countries these resources are provided free or at low cost; in others they are out of reach even for many working people with an income.

Half of the world’s poor as measured by the MPI live in South Asia (51 per cent or 844 million people) and one quarter in Africa (28 per cent or 458 million). Niger has the greatest intensity and incidence of poverty in any country, with 93 per cent of the population classified as poor in MPI terms.

Even in countries with strong economic growth in recent years, the MPI analysis reveals the persistence of acute poverty. India is a major case in point. There are more MPI poor people in eight Indian states alone (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal) than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million). The MPI also reveals great variations within countries: Nairobi has the same level of MPI poverty as the Dominican Republic, whereas Kenya’s rural northeast is poorer in MPI terms than Niger.

The recently released 2010 UN Millennium Development Goals Report stressed that the MDGs will be fully achieved only by addressing the needs of those most disadvantaged by geography, age, gender or ethnicity, OPHI researchers point out. ‘Our measure identifies the most vulnerable households and groups and enables us to understand exactly which deprivations afflict their lives”, said Dr. Alkire. “The new measure can help governments and development agencies wishing to target aid more effectively to those specific communities.’

Additional materials about the Multidimensional Poverty Index can be retrieved online:
• MPI Interactive data
• MPI Research Brief
• MPI Country Briefings
• Human Development Report 2010

Africa is witnessing a gradual shift towards massive investment in Information and Communications Technology (ICT), thanks to the role of policymakers who are pushing for full regulatory reform for ICTs. Many African leaders have realised that, for any meaningful economic development to occur, technology has to play its part. But the free flow of investment in the sector was slowed down last year, owing to the global economic downturn, which forced many African countries to cut spending in some sectors and prioritise the most urgent areas. The question as to whether Africa should continue to invest in ICTs was raised at this year’s eLearning conference debate in the Zambian capital, Lusaka.

By Talent Ng’andwe

July 3, 2010

Newsportal: eLearning Supported by Development Partners

The debate, chaired by former British parliamentarian Dr Harold Elletson of the New Security Foundation, UK, and Dr Katherine Getao from NEPAD on the last day of the conference, centred on the following motion:

“Despite the global financial crisis, Africa must continue to invest in ICTs for education, and 1:1 computing provides the most affordable, educationally rich computing solution.”

The two opposing panels comprised Richard Niyonkuru, Monitoring and Education Advisor for ICT Projects for the Rwanda Ministry of Education, and David Cavallo, Vice President for Learning at the One Laptop per Child project, USA, on the proposing side, and Alex Twinomugisha, Global e-Schools and Communities Initiative (GeSCI), Kenya, and Anthony Bloome, USAID, USA, on the opposing side.

In his opening speech, Richard Niyonkuru argued that Africa must continue to invest in technologies for education.

“ICTs are lifetime opportunities which are knocking on African doors, and as a continent we should not miss this opportunity“, he said, before going on to explain that ICTs in education should not be considered a luxury, as has been the case in the past, but should be regarded as commodities or public goods, since they allow the benefits of the information revolution to be harvested.

The audience backed his argument that in terms of ICTs in education, the emphasis should not be on computers and software deployed in schools but rather on revolutionising and re-engineering education systems so that they provide a service to the new society.

His views were supported by David Cavallo who added that the education system in Africa needed appropriate technologies suitable to its culture and environment.

Much to the amusement of the audience, Alex Twinomugisha interjected, saying that we do not need massive investment in technology at the expense of poor road networks, unreliable energy and the fight against diseases such as HIV/AIDS. “We have come this far without technology, we have proven that we can achieve our educational goals without technology,“ he said.

Alex Twinomugisha said he believed that Africa should focus on one-to-one solutions for teachers, who are fundamental to the development of education. Teacher development is vital, he said.

Anthony Bloome agreed with Alex Twinomugisha, saying that investment in ICT for education at this stage, when Africa is struggling to recover from the global economic downturn, is not practicable and is very costly. “My concern is that without greater reform efforts, ICT for Education initiatives will not get past the pilot stages and will not be more widely integrated, so that wider education reform efforts will not get the support they need,” he said.

However, such investments in education, if any, should be contextualised by significant improvements in terms of quality educational reforms in policy, curriculum development, professional development for teachers and administrators and focusing on student achievement.

The debate intensified when members of the audience were given an opportunity to express their views. There was plenty of lively confrontation and a couple of tense of exchanges.

Bernard Appiah from the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications, USA, accused major players in the ICT sectors of dumping technology in Africa. James Uhomoibhi from the UK responded by saying that people should not portray every technology for Africa as bad. He cited examples of mobile phone technology, which is helping to improve education in Africa’s health sector.

In conclusion, the proposing side was unable to convince the audience of the role that ICT can play in enhancing education in Africa and failed to explain adequately the costs associated with the introduction of technology.

The opposing side was quick to take advantage and capitalise on such weaknesses.

Mr Elletson, the Chairman, put the motion to a vote by a show of hands. The opposition had the majority and emerged as winners of the debate.

by Sam Chelladurai

Sunday, May 9th is Mother’s Day and in their honor I wanted to take this opportunity to remind us the reality of being a child to a mother.

Mothers everywhere share many common goals: they want their families to be healthy, have enough food and have  a brighter future.  Women are often the primary caregivers and are deeply invested in their communities’ overall development — unfortunately, in many countries women are constrained by substandard or even nonexistent medical care.

Last year there were over half a million maternal deaths worldwide and mortality rates are highest in countries experiencing disaster and conflict.  Tragically, the vast majority of these deaths are preventable — with a trained medical attendant and the necessary medicine and equipment, maternal mortality is extremely rare.

In Afghanistan, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world, some NGOs have trained last year  100 new midwives who can now assist with thousands of deliveries around the country.  The  commitment to women’s health is also crucial to our country:   mobile clinics, we provide supplementary nutrition to pregnant and lactating mothers and  implemented an early childhood development program to improve mothers’ bonding with infants in the aftermath of this crisis.  This could be only the beginning of our long-term commitment to improving women’s health care in our country. The politics magics and hypocrisies have been only playing colours in the eyes of the poor.

Let us play a constructive role and promote that sustainable development is only possible with comprehensive medical care and support for women and their children.  Promoting women’s health not only saves lives but is an investment in the future. How far we intend to think about the poor who lives next door, or assist us in keeping our homes clean and tidy, a poor who picks up the rags from the dustins. Immagine if they did not turn up for a week to pick up the waste?

Let us take pride of our mothers who are old and weak and waiting for some care and love

Let us acknowledge the good things we received or receive from the mothers

Happy mothers’ day

by Krystalline Kraus April 22, 2010 at 9:51pm

Type: Causes – Protest
Date: Thursday, 22 April 2010
Time:  09:00 – 17:00
Location:  Queens Park Toronto

HST affects everyone, so even if you are not Aboriginal and wish to come and support us in this protest you are more then welcome to come out and you are encouraged to do so.

On July 1st the Government is taking away our inherent right to point of sale tax exemption unless we all unite to be heard.

We Native poeple of Ontario have to come together and fight for our right of point of sale tax exemption because once the government takes
it away we will never get it back, so we must stop it beforeit is pushed through.

It is Illegal and Immoral for the Federal Government to ignore our treaty’s and turn their backs on us.

Large protests and demands have worked in the past. If we organize a lot of protests then the goverment has no choice but to cave in.
Remember when young people protested the changes to young drivers by the Liberals by using facebook. It sure has worked before so we have
to make it work this time or it will forever be just another thing stripped from our rights and gone for good.

THIS PROTEST IS COMMING FROM A GRASS ROOTS ANGLE SO ALL COMMUNITY”S ARE ABLE TO COME OUT AND ANYONE CAN SPEAK OUT AT THIS PROTEST!

Please invite anyone and everyone to this protest and come out and fight for our rights! The only way we can do this is by getting off
our butts and assemble in this protest. It is important that as many people come as possible so please let’s get the word out of this event
and stop the hst!

“HST IN ONTARIO… this approved proposal, which will take affect this year, is only designed to keep Ontario from progressing….. it takes
more money out of the hands of the improverished and First Nations people. As a First Nations person, I refuse to pay the HST because it
is illegal for a nation to tax another nation, such as FIRST NATIONS PEOPLE.

The new 13% tax will therefore apply to things like your electric bill, your gas bill, your water bill, condominium fees, insurance
premiums, and every other good and service you purchase. There are almost no exemptions.

The extension of the new 13% GST/PST to homes is simply a tax assault by the government on your primary home. They want to tax your primary home and you will suffer because of it.

Why? Because if a purchaser has to pay almost $200,000 in taxes to buy your $1 million dollar home, the purchaser is going to pay less to you
for your home. The purchaser will reduce the amount he or she is willing to pay to you in order to pay all the taxes.

The New 13% Tax Will Effectively Raise Your Income Taxes Currently, the combined Federal/Ontario income tax rates are roughly 25% on the
first $20,000 of taxable income, 42% on the next $40,000 of taxable income, and 46.5% on each dollar of taxable income over $60,000. On
top of that you have to add the “Fair Share Health Tax” of up to $1,000 each of us has to pay.

If the Ontario Government gets away with implementing their new harmonized GST/PST sales tax of 13%, the top effective income tax
rates in Ontario will be as follows (since you can’t spend any of your tax paid dollars without paying the new harmonized 13% GST/PST tax):

38% on the first $20,000
53% on the next $40,000
59.5% on every dollar over $60,000

On top of that, you have to pay your Ontario Fair Share Health Tax, your city realty taxes, your city garbage fees, your city water fees,
your city street parking permit fees, your annual Ontario and new city of toronto vehicle license plate fees, your Ontario land transfer tax,
your new city of toronto land transfer tax, your gasoline taxes, your liquor taxes, your air departure
taxes, your entertainment taxes, and so on.

While you can see above that the tax is not only a First Nations violation of rights, it is also a violation of rights of the Tax
Payer. Many of times I have sat in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and witnessed many of these Liberal Ontario elected officials not even
be present when the questions of their misspending comes forth, while they are making huge, profit gaining deals, like those with
international corporations like Samsung to gain profit on behalf of Ontarians. These people are only out to line their pockets with cash.

I will say this, because I don’t care right now… Dalton McGuinty is the WORST thing to ever happen to Ontarians, and at this point, he’s
probably made so much money off private deals for Ontario that it doesn’t matter whether or not he ever gets re-elected.

The only thing that I can say at this point is that for those of you who don’t vote and don’t contribute to any of the causes that you
believe in, you thus leave decision making, like the HST to people like Dalton McGuinty…..but.. you also leave it to people like
activists to fight for your rights in decisions that will affect your life and you leave it to politicians like Dalton McGuinty to make
choices for you. Regardless of what your or our opinions are, please make sure that everyone knows what you think, because each and
everyone person on this group and beyond are sooo important to the collective and I want to say Miigwetch to every single one of you…
because it is only you who can make change!”

by: Miguel Yasuyuki Hirota (mig@olccjp.net)

1. 1. SE’s achievements in Asia

The arrival of the concept of SE to Asia was rather late in comparison with other continents and it was only October 2007 when the 1^st Asian Forum for SE took place at Manila, the Philippines.  Workshops on this new economy took place in October 2008 at Bangkok, Thailand and in March 2009 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when the Asian Alliance for SE (AA4SE, http://www.aa4se.com/) was established, but the term SE is still very little known, even in comparison with Europe or Latin America.

But this does not mean that SE experiences are foreign to Asia: there are indeed a number of unarticulated grass-root practices in many countries, such as consumers’ coops and NPO Banks in Japan, social enterprises in Korea, microfinance initiatives (remember that this movement was born in Bangladesh!) all over the region, local currencies in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, elderly-care groups in Japan and CSR-minded small businesses throughout Southeast Asia, just to name a few.

1. 2. Challenges for Asia:

Some challenges should be taken into account seriously if we are to promote SE and to articulate its players all over this continent.

Linguistic diversity: it should be remembered that Asia has a number of mutually-unintelligible languages, such as: Bengali (Bangladesh), Burmese (Myanmar), Cambodian (Cambodia), Hindi-Urdu (India and Pakistan), Japanese (Japan), Korean (North and South Korea), Lao (Laos), Mandarin (China and Taiwan), Malay-Indonesian (Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore), Mongolian (Mongolia), Sinhalese (Sri Lanka), Filipino (the Philippines), Tamil (India, Sri Lanka etc.), Thai (Thailand), Vietnamese (Vietnam).  While in some countries English is widely spoken, it should be taken into account that most SE players in Asia only speak their respective country’s official language (Thai if they live in Thailand, for instance), making it tough for SE players to be articulated and to communicate each other beyond the language (=national) border.

This linguistic diversity poses another challenge on promoting SE in each Asian country too: since most people, including professors and public servants, are often not good at English, it is required that at least some basic information on this topic should be given in each country’s official language so that opinion leaders throughout the continent could share our perspective on SE and let it known to people in their respective language.

Geographical and psychological distance from other continents: another important remark is that most countries where the SE movement has been consolidated are non-English-speaking countries (France, Italy, Spain, Latin America and Québec) with which Asians usually do not have strong relationship. The traditional lack of links between these continents makes it harder for Asians to grasp what is happening globally in terms of SE and to exchange experiences with them.

1. 3. Perspectives and proposals for the next decade

Although the consolidation of SE players in Asia is still in an early stage, the coming years will see important events, such as the 3^rd Asian Forum in Malaysia in 2011 and the 5^th RIPESS conference in 2013.  It is quite important to make the best use of all available resources in order to maximise our synergy and take more steps forward.  Some proposals will be given below to help promote the SE movement in Asia:

Creation of multilingual platforms: the lack of information on SE and of international communication among Asian SE players who do not speak English has been the biggest hurdle, so it is crucial to set up platforms to get it over.  I would like to suggest the creation of following tools so that more Asians should be familiar with SE and be articulated better.  Obviously a huge amount of money would be required for translation services, but this cost should be regarded as something indispensable and efforts should be done to win such a funding.

-       Creation of another portal website on SE in Asian languages (not only English but also Chinese, Japanese, Thai etc.): this is not to deny AA4SE’s efforts so far to share information, but it would be ideal if more information could be provided in more Asian languages so that SE players, researchers, policymakers etc. could learn what SE is, how SE is practiced in Asia and other continents etc.

-       Creation of multilingual communication method: the multilingual discussion groups managed by Alliance 21 WSSE (now ALOE) with translation service between English, French and Spanish / Portuguese has been a key factor on articulating SE players and to stimulate communications among them, but it is crucial to provide similar services among key Asian languages if we are to expect same results. More SE players are expected to be articulated only when they feel linguistically comfortable, so it is indispensable to set up a platform in which people could communicate in Chinese, Indonesia, Japanese, Thai and other Asian languages.

Exchange of young SE players / students: it is essential that more Asians should understand how SE has been growing in the world in order to transfer such experiences to their own countries.  So it would be helpful if some programmes could be set up to promote exchange of the youth.  The mutual exchange (not only Asian youth to other continents but youths from other continents to Asia) would strengthen mutual understanding in terms of SE practices, and such articulators will help both quantitative and qualitative development of solidarity economy in Asia.

All we would like to say has been summarized beautifully in our new year card. Much thanks to Riku for designing the card.

2010 is going to be harder for us and more actions are needed. Let’s conserve our energy and move forward together.

Junya “Lek” Yimprasert

Thai Labour Campaign