LDS Aid in Ethiopia - 1984

I've been reading up on how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has grown in Nigeria. In the process, I found an interesting article from the 1988 August Ensign talking about the church's efforts during the 1984 Ethiopia famine and other aid projects. In response to the famine in Ethiopia, the Church sent out a special request for the entire membership to go without food or water for 24 hours (a fast) and give the money they would have spent or more specifically to help the people in Ethiopia:

Price transmission in Nigeria

With the fuel subsidy's disappearance, the price of gasoline increased from N65 ($0.40) to N140-N150 (just under $1). What other prices go up and how quickly? I'll be updating this post from time to time with new prices as I learned them:


Small plastic bag with water: N5 up to N10; larger bag in Lagos from N60 to N150 Jan 4   (reported through Twitter from numerous sources)


Jan 5 from our shopping - taxi service price up from N1000/hour to N2000/hr; water jug refills unavailable; most food sold at the same price; lower selection of bread than usual; 


Jan 5 NigeriaNewsDesk Twitter report: Many filling stations outside Calabar, the Cross River State capital, are selling premium motor spirit, popularly known as petrol, for N250

Fourth-hand Twitter report: Packet of St Louis Sugar was N100. Post subsidy N250


A student reports: A bowl of raw foreign rice has gone from N250 to N270 in Kaduna while a similar bowl of black eyed peas has gone from N120 to N180.


Jan 9 - water jug refill up from N350 to N375. Tailoring services and fabric same price as before.

LDS Aid

Two professors, one a Cornell-trained BYU professor of nutrition, have been working to improve the Atmit porridge that is often given out in LDS care packages. The hope is that it will be even better for small children with a better mix of micronutrients (particularly more iron) but without compromising on shelf-life. Another article describes its dissemination in poor areas of Peru.

A single serving provides 34 percent of the recommended daily allowance of protein, 43 percent of calcium, 99 percent of iron, and high percentages for a dozen vitamins and minerals for children under 5 years old. ... 
In 2010, 645,000 pounds of Atmit were shipped by LDS Charities to four countries. Depending upon the age and size of the children, that's enough to feed 100,000 to 130,000 children for one month. The cost? Less than $6 (USD) per child.

LDS efforts to help those suffering from the famine in the Horn of Africa:

In Ethiopia, projects to aid more than 100,000 refugees are under way, including water tanks, trucking services, sanitation supplies and hygiene training for 15 villages; supplementary food for 8,700 malnourished children; nutrition centers and sanitation facilities for Somali refugees in Dollo Ado; and 5,000 hygiene kits.
The Church also plans to provide water catchment and storage structures, as well as soap and washbasins to serve tens of thousands of other residents in the communities surrounding the Dollo Ado camps.

Other projects in Kenya, Uganda, and Somalia are also underway and briefly described at the link.



At the most recent General Conference, Church President Thomas S. Monson reminded members about the General Temple Patron Fund. Donations from members around the world are used to help members who live far from a temple travel there. A recent article highlighted some of the saints in southeastern Africa who have been blessed by the Fund:

The value of nothing

Okay, let's pull out the old chestnut: An economist is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Right, right, haha, boy you ignorant peasants sure do have a lot of common sense wisdom we lack thanks to years of studying.

Instead of bowing to the inevitability of the low forms of wit, let me argue the point by talking about the Paradox of Value. In the homework for intermediate micro, they are asked about why teachers are paid so much less than basketball players. The "common sense" conclusion is that our society's values are messed up: we value entertainment more than education.

This is nonsense and we've been talking about it since literally Adam Smith.

What were my students asked and what were my answers? Find out below the fold:

LDS service in Latin America

In Seamay, Guatemala:

A retired civil engineer, Elder Curtiss supervised the construction of a water tank that helped bring water into the homes of the 2,000 villagers, who had never had running water in their homes [right]. In the meantime, he and his wife taught sanitation classes at the Church and helped begin construction on a new school that will soon have a library and a computer lab. While the Church paid for the water tank and facilitated construction of the school, the villagers did the labor themselves, which Elder Curtiss says helped them feel ownership of the changes occurring in their village.

In Brazil during an LDS national day of service, July 31:

More than 6,000 volunteers were mobilized to fight against dengue fever, a virus-based disease spread by mosquitoes, through a door-to-door education campaign. In Santa Catarina, near the Brazilian coast, volunteers gathered nearly 17 tons of food to be used by institutions for needy families.
Mormon Helping Hands volunteers also facilitated the donation of blood to local blood banks. Other projects included cleaning beaches, marshes, parks and public squares and the distribution of newborn kits for hospitals.

The LDS Africa day of service will be August 31, as we learned while meeting with the saints in Abuja. In Abuja they will be repairing a local school. I'm not yet sure what we in Yola will be doing because we only just got here.


I was also touched by this story of an LDS reporter who went to Tonga and found everything chaotic and not according to plan. She was advised that while there, many things would not go "right," but that she would find unexpected treasures that delight, comfort, and enable her to do what needed to be done.

As was evident in the Tonga airport, things in that island nation did not go as she expected they should. She did not have a telephone or Internet connection in her room. The building had no food services. The refrigerator across the hall started beeping at 3 a.m. — every night — and never stopped. And there were few road signs and no fast food restaurants in the country.
But — thanks to sweet direction from a faithful temple president — she found things far greater. Church members hung bananas outside her room. They helped her use a computer at the Church's administrative offices on the campus of the LDS high school. And they invited her into their homes for dinner.

Such a story sounds much more familiar than it did a few weeks ago.

The most amazing people in aid

1. The guy who changed his domestic ways to become a loving, caring husband after having been exposed once at a road-crossing to a billboard that said: "Stop GBV Now! (HRI with support from Country South of Canada)";
2. The Donor representative who, every month, reads every one of the 76 reports they receive from relevant HRI affiliates and therefore has a very clear idea of what each affiliate is doing and where they need most support;
3. The inhabitant of the village in "Africa" whose life has changed to the better once she received a slightly used pair of shoes from a mythical place South of Canada;
4. The government employee who has successfully made the transition from a cynical, underpaid, mis-qualified relative-of-someone-important to a dynamic, modern element of change in the government, after having interacted with a HRI "Technical Advisor" during a capacity building workshop;
5. The guy who returned part of his per-diem after a trip to Nairobi, claiming that the three meals and tea offered during the training were quite sufficient for his subsistence; 

More celebrated individuals at Hand Relief. 

Less sardonically, Aid Watch had a more serious paper praising and shaming various bilateral aid organizations. Water Wellness also celebrates a community where the impossible dream of proper water project maintenance is happening.

Mormons in Africa series

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put out a series of news reports last week on the church's activity in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Church's Africa Fact Sheet can be found here. There are nearly 320,000 Mormons in Africa, roughly 100,000 of them in Nigeria. The fact sheet also provides statistics for the church's humanitarian aid. The initiatives are described in more detail here and I regularly link to more information.

Elder Richard G. Scott, a senior member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, visited Mozambique in January. In his last visit in 1999 there were 40 Mormons in Mozambique, while there are now over 5000. He spoke to members in several meetings, with some members traveling two days for a chance to be there, as well as to doctors and nurses teaching neonatal resuscitation techniques to 53,000 medical professionals so far. His message was one of hope, reassurance, and encouragement. Another apostle, Jeffrey R. Holland, prophesied in Burundi that “Africa will someday be seen as a bright land full of ... hope and happiness.” Several African Church leaders tell their stories here.

This article tells several personal stories: one from a rural family in Madagascar who spent 27 years searching for religious truth and two accounts from South Africa. One of them describes the love expressed by white and black members for each other during Apartheid:

Dominic had never seen that type of affection generated from a white person toward someone of darker skin. “You don’t understand how big that was, how amazing it was to see that — how shocking. It went against everything society had taught me.” ... He was baptized and started attending church and was again amazed by the acceptance he felt. “They taught the same thing to me as the white boy sitting next to me at church. That broke a lot of boundaries for me. That said to me in my heart and mind that we are equal.”

This is a first-hand account by an LDS Kenyan journalist. Another article talks in a very introductory way about the 7,000 members in Uganda. The fastest Church growth currently is in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Church runs a program called the Perpetual Education Fund which provides low-interest loans to help people to receive education, usually in order to secure better employment. PEF is helping 2,300 people in Africa so far. The average loan in Africa is $1,200 for a year of schooling. 570 people have finished their education with the program and have seen large increases in income. Funds come from donations by members, myself included, and is run by volunteers.

Most genealogical records are preserved orally in Africa. The Church's FamilySearch program is attempting to record and preserve these family history records. The article quotes a Ghanaian proverb: When an old man dies, it is as if a library has burnt down.

Land Grab

The so-called African land grab grabbed a lot of headlines at the end of 2009: Guardian, NYTimes, BBC, not a bad collection, all available through the African Agriculture blog.

Malibya, the Libyan government's development company in Mali, has built one of the largest canals in Africa. The largely critical article from The Guardian [who apparently failed to ask permission to be on the company's land] notes that 150 families were forced off their land for the canal with minimal compensation and worries that this is only the beginning.

"The government are bandits. What they are doing is completely against every law," says Ibrahim Coulibaly, president of the Coordination Nationale des Organisations Paysannes, which has been organising protests. "Even if the land does belong to the government, the people living on it still have rights, and we will do everything to fight against this injustice."

Mapping systems are said to be quite poor, causing construction workers to dig up several cemeteries which led, very understandably, to further local opposition. There are also serious concerns about water rights issues. A NYTimes article mentioned that " 'In Mozambique, one investment company discovered an entire village with its own post office on what had been described as vacant land,' said Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations food rapporteur. ... The agreement signed with the Libyans grants them the land for at least 50 years simply in exchange for developing it."

Kofi Annan, former UN secretary general, says that “The food security of the country concerned must be first and foremost in everybody’s mind. Otherwise it is straightforward exploitation and it won’t work. We have seen a scramble for Africa before. I don’t think we want to see a second scramble of that kind.”

Of course, statements like this from the state-funded companies do little to help:

Kassoum Denon, the regional head for the Office du Niger, accused the Malian opponents of being paid by Western groups that are ideologically opposed to large-scale farming. “We are responsible for developing Mali,” he said. “If the civil society does not agree with the way we are doing it, they can go jump in a lake.”

One US project is supporting 800 farmers to acquire title to about 12 acres of land each.

How large are the parcels of land being transferred to foreign governments? The World Bank estimates that, between Jan-Nov in 2009 alone, enough land to match California and West Virginia combined, more than 10 times the size of annual land transfer deals worldwide before the food price spike. In Mali, the range is between 600k [as reported by the foreigners] and 1.5 million hectares.

BBC reports that Ethiopia is selling off an area the size of Belgium populated largely by ethnic minorities at about $10/yr/ha. "The Ethiopian government stipulates that foreign investors will have to satisfy domestic food needs before they can export." The government claims that the land is unused, but there are millions of pastoralists in the country, many of whom pass through that area and none of whom are being compensated.

More posts on the Africa "land grab," and a general article mentioning several of the larger deals and concerns. Senegal is reportedly in talks with Saudi Arabia about a parcel of land 4 times the size of Manhattan.

LDS in Asia and other news

The first Vietnamese families were recently sealed in the Philippines temple. One met the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Australia when they bought a used washing machine from a Mormon bishop there who struck up a conversation. They returned to Vietnam without knowing the church had a small congregation in Hanoi until missionaries in Cambodia told them about it (how's that for an international program?)

Another article introduces a few of the Laotian members of the church. There roughly 200 at the moment. Humanitarian service missionaries are working there to distribute custom-made wheelchairs and organize water improvement projects. A desalinization project in Micronesia is also briefly mentioned at the end of this one minute video.

In other LDS/aid related news, here is a success story told by a successful participant in the church's Perpetual Education Fund - a microfinance program for small education loans.

The BYU Law society awarded Senator Joseph Lieberman its first International Religious Liberty Award for his efforts to spread freedom of religion across the world. "Sen. Lieberman co-sponsored the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, which created a commission, an ambassador at large, and a reporting system to monitor and respond to religious persecution." In his remarks, he praised Ambassador J. Reuben Clark for his work declaring that "religion is a fundamental human right"

On a more personal note, he said being Jewish helped him identify with the “sting” of religious discrimination, bigotry, misunderstandings and falsehoods that have too often been directed at the LDS Church.
“I will stand with you,” he said, reiterating that when one group is attacked, all are.

A whole lot of water

I missed the day that by secret appointment everyone was supposed to blog about water. But there's sure enough water to go around:

A typhoon in the Philippines is threatening the rice crop with too much water: "The Philippines is the world's biggest rice importer and damage from the typhoon could see it buy more than had been expected for 2011, which could push up international prices."

Benin has also flooded. "Half the country is under water, and it's still raining."

Kenya, meanwhile, is predicting an upcoming drought. You have read down a ways to find the drought - most of the article is about Kenya's food marketing structure and lack of investment.

On the right to water and who has the responsibility to provide it. Pictures of water's importance in developing countries. Attempts to make crops in Mali flood-resistant.

Population Health vs. Individual Health

The nutrition and development economics I study have never been more interesting to my stomach. Food safety, improved water and sanitation services, the dangers faced by people with HIV/AIDS, and the drawbacks and difficulties of best nutrition advice come to the fore, not to mention the importance of health care services and the insurance helping to pay for it all. What I also conclude is that policies are built on population recommendations, but population-based science is inappropriate -- in my case regularly inappropriate -- for individual diagnosis.

The stresses of being on the job market and work have been upsetting my stomach. While doing some routine sample tests, my doctor discovered a parasite - cryptosporidium - was lurking. His best guess is that the parasite has been dormant and could have been in there for quite some time. Antibiotics should have cleared him out by now (can I just mention how thankful I am that I don't have to pass an "organic" inspection?). If I had HIV, it could have been a deadly infection.

You usually get cryptosporidium from drinking contaminated water, but it can readily be spread from one carrier through the food system and through public swimming pools. A fellow from the NY State health department called up to make sure I was not in a position to be spreading this around. We have not been able to identify when the infection may have occurred. I'm more thankful than ever for the efforts I've reported on in the past to bring improved water sources to people who don't have them. I'm also rather thankful to have a society with someone in it checking up on people like me to try to minimize the spread of these things.

Irritable bowel syndrome isn't the only option on the table, however, and that's what gets me into the policy arena...

BIG Bag o Foodie Links

Water

Libya's Great Man-Made River nears completion at $20 billion and 2,333 miles long to connect the 5% of the country with rain to the rest.

What makes water projects work? Social capital, says IFPRI. Water and sanitation committees (cleverly known as WATSANs) in Ghana are not only more likely where communities have other social groups and less likely where communities are ethnically divided, they seem to improve payment for water services and improve water safety. Female leaders seem particularly important.

Food Safety
Powell gives NY Times reporter Bittman's new book two thumbs down for terrible food safety advice: "This is food safety idiocracy. Any food safety advice in Bittman’s book should be disregarded as fantasy."

Powell also found something worse than e. coli and salmonella:a metal staple in his pretzel-filled M&M. "I would rather take my chances with Salmonella or E. coli that I know I can cook to death rather than bleeding internally to death."  Update: Contrition from Mars goes a long way.

Foodie Faddies
Ben and Jerry's has surrendered. They're taking the "All Natural" label off their ice cream because a number of the ingredients are heavily processed (high fructo... I mean, corn sugar, highly processed? you don't say...)

And speaking of corporations, Wilde lets us know that corporate heads are either deluded or lying when they claim that "Personally, I would like to serve a healthier product.  But, if these efforts threaten profitability, I risk getting sued by stakeholders.  Corporations are obliged to pursue maximum profits and no other goal." A recent study of actual court cases says this is not the case.

If one can argue with a straight face that selling healthier food enhances the reputation and long-term prospects of the company, I think that would count as a reasonable business judgment.

Wilde's best line: "Markets are a great game, but a dreadful religion."

Powell urges us to buy local while avoiding "locavore nonsense" by quoting Doering:

buying local makes a good deal of sense when the natural conditions support the seasonal production of good, fresh local food. Who wouldn’t buy our local asparagus in June and fresh sweet corn and tomatoes in August? ...  What is new is the pretentious elevation of this simple idea by the chattering culinary class to the status of a comprehensive creed, which, they assert, can make a major contribution to a more sustainable food system.

I was in a very chic restaurant in Tucson, Ariz. where the smug chef righteously proclaimed that all his ingredients were locally grown. He was quite offended when I asked him about the environmental and other costs of importing all that fresh water to grow that food in the Arizona desert. And how is it more sustainable to deny developing countries the opportunity to export their tropical fruits and vegetables?

And five programs to improve school lunches:

• Salad bars
• Healthy vending machines (Cornell nutrition and agricultural economics students occasionally foment for that when gradual changes move the vending machines back to less healthy choices.)
• Chefs joining the staff or advising kids on healthy eating and food prep
  
• School gardens (not without controversy)
• Buying food from local farmers

Potpourri
Breakfast in Iraq: "At first this weekend I was jealous of my friends in DC enjoying DC brunches.  Then we went to a local hole-in-the-wall and I saw breakfast. ...  After that, I was basically jealous of myself, because the food was so good." 

Tyson is facing a suit for gender discrimination which could jeopardize millions in government contracts if a) it is proved true and b) they don't give 750 female workers backpay and roughly 100 more female applicants jobs. That could cause a significant market power shift. Change.org naturally assumes guilty before proven innocent.

And the FAO is touting small-holder dairy farms. There are presently over 750 million people engaged in it, with an average of two cows. The most interesting and unexpected problem they bring up is environmental: "Low-yield dairy systems in Africa and South Asia are estimated to have higher carbon footprints per 100 kilogram of milk produced than high-yield systems in the United States and Western Europe."

Water project: LDS in DRC

Progress report on the project to bring clean water to Luputa, Democratic Republic of Congo, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (other posts here and here). Luputa has over 200,000 people but no electricity, no roads, no cars, and no clean water.

Twice a day, as men and teenagers tend their family farms, thousands of women and children walk a mile or more to get water. It comes from polluted sources — muddy pools shared by animals or contaminated springs — but people need the water for drinking, cooking and bathing. To avoid the crowded wait, women often get water during the dark of early morning — only to become victims of assault and rape. 

Locals had searched for 15 years before finding some fresh springs in "nearby" hills, but had no way to bring the water the 19 miles to Luputa. They looked for several years until they met LDS Charities who agreed to work with them. There are approximately 1800 Mormons in the area and growing rapidly.

Digging the trench was the most arduous part of the project. Volunteers hacked their way through the jungle and savannah for 19 miles to dig a trench 18-inches wide and 3-feet deep. Volunteers gathered every day — except Sunday — for more than 900 days to complete the trench. ...

On a good day, the men could dig a distance of 150 meters (165 yards). On other days they made little progress due to tree roots or rocky terrain. Special pipe was fabricated in Kinshasa and shipped to Luputa. Volunteers carried the pipe long distances for installation. ...

Two water towers, two stories each, are being constructed without power tools. Cement, sand and gravel are mixed by hand, hauled by a bucket brigade, hoisted up the tower by hand and poured into forms surrounding the steel-reinforced frame. Sixty-four kilometers, or 40 miles, of smaller trenches have also been dug to tie in more than 80 water stations being built. This will provide water every 500 meters, nearly one-third of a mile....

In the villages farther up-line from Luputa, water is already flowing at the turn of a gauge.
And there is joy. Hearts are tender as many people express their happiness.
"I'm very happy for water that is clean," said Jolie Mularju, mother of three. "I thank LDS Church members for their willing sacrifice. Children will no longer get sick and die."
The work continues at a feverish pace to complete by November, when it is anticipated that Joseph Kabila Kabange, president of the DR Congo, will visit Luputa with a member of the Africa Southeast Area Presidency. 

Work is done through local volunteers and local contractors. Training is provided locally so the system can be kept up. Pipes were built in Kinshasa and transported the 600 miles to Luputa. Funding comes from charitable donations from members and interested parties around the world. More about the goals and principles of LDS welfare projects, and this project in particular, can be found here. More on the difficulty of maintaining water pumps here.

Google Reader Tells Me This is Interesting

I think it's right.


The US is more energy efficient right now than it was at any time since 1973. One reason might be this new urinal that combines urinal and sink so that the flush water comes when you wash your hands. Saying that provokes a "what?" but see the quite safe for work diagram makes it all clear.

How language affects how we perceive the world:

From an article in the New York Times by Guy Deutscher, ....

For instance, some languages, like Matses in Peru, oblige their speakers, like the finickiest of lawyers, to specify exactly how they came to know about the facts they are reporting. You cannot simply say, as in English, “An animal passed here.” You have to specify, using a different verbal form, whether this was directly experienced (you saw the animal passing), inferred (you saw footprints), conjectured (animals generally pass there that time of day), hearsay or such. If a statement is reported with the incorrect “evidentiality,” it is considered a lie. So if, for instance, you ask a Matses man how many wives he has, unless he can actually see his wives at that very moment, he would have to answer in the past tense and would say something like “There were two last time I checked.” After all, given that the wives are not present, he cannot be absolutely certain that one of them hasn’t died or run off with another man since he last saw them, even if this was only five minutes ago. So he cannot report it as a certain fact in the present tense.

More on mobile slaughterhouses. (Other post here)

Improving nutrition and food appeal in hospitals (a very wordy post to say that a few well-trained chefs in a few hospitals are trying to cook good food (tasty and healthy) using approved ingredients.

Don’t get me wrong, the cafeteria still serves pizza, coke, and other food you don’t expect to find in a facility treating people with heart, kidney, and other health problems. Change comes very slowly, even in institutions allegedly built to keep us well. But I was heartened to find that people could make healthy choices—and plenty of them for lunch or dinner.
... One worker served up small batches of striped ravioli with a tomato sauce; sprigs of watercress and a mix of cheese and herbs would also wind up on the plate.

Speaking of which, did you know that McDonald's hamburgers and fries don't age?

Let's play a game. We'll name off several government stimulus programs, you tell us if they are "Real or Fake?" I'm having trouble finding the externality or multiplier these answer. (HT: Carpe Diem) Video below the fold.

Social Entrepreneurship: Toilets in Kenya

An IkoToilet video touting the importance of the social entrepreneurship work they are doing in Nairobi (Warning: this is a press release copied and pasted). Acumen Fund is investing in them. HT: PNB.
Video below the fold

Social Entrepreneurship: Water in India

Acumen Fund has a video up touting a Water Health Initiative that claims to have brought clean drinking water to 300,000 people in India. And to practice what I humorously preach -- Warning: This article is basically just a press release, copied and pasted.

Successes: Social Entrepreneurship - Water pumps in Africa

A portable water pump is crediting itself with help 500,000 Africans lift themselves out of poverty.

"I went over to Africa as a socialist, and after about five or six years of hitting my head against the wall, became a small "c" capitalist," Fisher [the developer] said.

Hat tip: Poverty News Blog.

What is Public Health and Why?

Marion Nestle's explanation (bold added):

public health makes it easier for individuals to make healthful food choices for themselves and their families. Or to put it another way, public health makes better food choices the default.

The classic example of a public health intervention is water chlorination.  As individuals, we could all boil our own drinking water to kill harmful organisms but this requires us to have stoves, pots, and fuel, and to know how to boil water.  For many people, having to do this would be an intolerable burden and responsibility.  Instead, some societies choose to take public health measures to ensure that drinking water is safe at the tap for everyone.
Other food examples: milk Pasteurization, banning of trans fats, food labeling. ...

Preventing obesity is another example: We could, as a society, take measures to make it easier for people to eat more healthfully and be more active (public health) or leave it up to individuals to do this for themselves (personal responsibility). Many of the arguments about suggested public health measures to prevent obesity are about how best to balance society’s needs with individual rights.  But as I see it, the proposals aim to tweak societal choices that have already been made: which crops receive farm subsidies, for example.... 

Obviously, both public health and individual approaches are necessary, but the overall objective of public health is to make it much, much easier for individuals to make better health choices without having to think about them. Because public health applies to everyone, it is essentially democratic.   And that’s one of the reasons why I think it matters so much.

New Human Right Announced

Water has now been officially declared as a human right according to the United Nations. Last week, the UN General Assembly passed the resolution to call on governments to provide water to their people. The UN has not recognized water as a human right until now as it was not in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed in 1948.

Given a right to life and water as a necessity for life, it does seem (at a rhetorical level) a small step. The devil, as always, is in the details. Overall, and given the topic of discussion, I would say my response is tepid.

In the jargon, the right to life is generally deemed a "negative" right: no other person or government can take away my life. A "positive" right to life requires the "duty-bearer" to actually promote my longevity. The implications are vastly different.

Canada and other English-speaking countries tended to fight against the new right, including trying unsuccessfully to amend the language of the right to access to water and sanitation rather than a right to water and sanitation themselves. As Easterly (one and two), and others have pointed out, though, for a right to have meaning there has to be a duty-bearer: someone responsible for providing the right and accountable for failure. Jacob Mchangama, head of legal affairs for the Danish think tank CEPOS, says this is a problem with the new right:

this declaration will not help those whose health and quality of life are threatened by the lack of clean water and sanitation. For rights to have meaning, it must be clear what they are and who is responsible for upholding them.... The right to clean water and sanitation is far less definable and depends on economic development, technology and infrastructure.

Behind the scenes, this is as much a debate over whether to privatize water markets or not and to what extent governments should be involved in providing them. Oddly enough, both the pro and con side are complaining about inappropriate government action in this regard, with the con side worried about authoritarian governments using the right to water as a shield to provide water only to their supporters ... which doesn't make a lot of sense to me:

Above all, if people have a right to water and sanitation, other people must provide it – in practice, governments using public money. ... So this is really a call for state intervention, at the expense of other priorities and freedoms – and water is no more a practically enforceable human right than other essential commodities, such as food, clothing or shelter. ... Giving governments ultimate control over the supply of water may even be dangerous, because authoritarian regimes can use their power to punish the recalcitrant and reward their supporters.

The new right does not delimit how the right to water must be fulfilled. There is nothing preventing a society making use of private water markets to provide most people water and sanitation, or people in a particularly hard-to-reach area, or only as an augment to public efforts. The creation of this right does not empower bad governments to be worse. Saying "your people have a right to water" does not open any possibility for misusing water that didn't already exist. Quite the opposite, it is a way to make bad governments more accountable, potentially to their own citizens, at least through international pressure. The likelihood at the moment, though, given the UN's record on defending the negative rights, is close to zero.

Which brings up one other question. assume for sake of argument that the declaration is utterly without teeth. Should we not still declare our principles for the sake of declaring them?

Hat tip: PNB

Ethiopia: Less-Known Facts

On the 25th anniversary of Live Aid and Band Aid bringing attention to Ethiopia as a Land of Starvation, what do Ethiopians most wish foreigners knew about their country? The Africa News Blog gives us a few top items, including:

It’s green. No, really. That’s one of the things that most surprises foreigners when they come here. Ethiopia is a huge country with both striking green highlands and parched lowlands, hosting many different climates. A fledgling horticulture industry is doing well, with exports of flowers, fruit and vegetables to Europe, the Middle East and Asia growing every year. ...

Ethiopians are fiercely proud that theirs was the only African country to successfully  repel European colonisers....

The country also follows a unique calendar that squeezes 13 months into every year, and it entered the 21st century seven years after the rest of the world with huge celebrations in 2007. ...


It is said to be the birthplace of coffee. The story goes, that more than a thousand years ago, a young Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi was astonished to see his goats frolicking through the night, standing on their hind legs and generally acting crazy after eating some berries. Curious Kaldi munched on a few himself and, suitably exhilarated, ran home to tell his wife of his discovery. The pair then presented the berries to a monk and told him of their strange effect. “It’s the devil’s work!” the monk shouted and threw the beans in the fire. The resulting beautiful aroma drew other monks who took the now roasted beans and, adding them to hot water, invented coffee. Ethiopia is now Africa’s biggest exporter of the bean.

Ethiopia ... provides 86 percent of Nile waters – something Ethiopians are immensely proud of. They call the river “a gift of Ethiopia”

Some varied, interesting pictures at the website too.