Health and Human Rights 8.3 Flashcards
What is the relationship between social and economic development?
The relationship between social and economic development is complex and dependant on decision made by governments on the importance of social progress
- Nordic countries prioritise social progress
- USA and China prioritise economic progress
What is a democracy?
- strong political culture, high political turnout – Norway
- a system where the people of a country elect their leaders e.g., Canada
What is a flawed democracy?
- Where elections are fair and free but have many issues within the democracy e.g., media can show false information or can be used to persuade population, low levels of participation in politics
- USA or UK
What is hybrid?
- combination of democratic traits (e.g. frequent and direct elections) and autocratic traits (e.g. political repression)
- Country example - Bolivia
What is a totalitarian government?
- A form of government that attempts to assert control over population
- Strong ruling body over many parts of life of the population
- Coercion and repression
- North Korea – ruled by the same family since 1948
- Censorship of media, mandatory of military sign up, only one child, same political party
How has the WTO contributed to Free Trade, privatisation or the deregulation of financial markets in order to assist the development?
- Promotes free trade between developed and emerging countries
- Removing trade barriers to make it easier
- Preventing disputes from escalating
How has the IMF contributed to Free Trade, privatisation or the deregulation of financial markets in order to assist the development?
- Encourage privatisation to allow for competition to enter emerging countries to create lower prices
- Encourage developing countries to privatise their industries to make money – as FDI will invest into it and make it better
How has the the world bank contributed to Free Trade, privatisation or the deregulation of financial markets in order to assist the development?
-Gives out loans to help with aid support with conditions (reduce barriers to trade or deregulate) to encourage economic and social development
Example of a socialist government
-don’t allow foreign investment - Finland have very high taxes to fund this social development
What do totalitarian governments prioritise?
- Some governments focus on military spending and other adopt a totalitarian regime with little spent on health and education as a way of controlling the population (Uzbekistan) – not educated, not aware of human rights so they stay loyal to government
- Propaganda – ban tv programmes that are against policies to try and make population against western culture
Example of a welfare state
-Brazil is focussed on economic development as a way of increasing social development whereas some development focus on the welfare state
What does the USA government priorities?
- Large spending on military
- Put power and international status as the top priority
- Need to spend military to remain powerful – focus on economic development
What is the world bank’s role in development?
- They are founding members of the Global Partnership for Education focussing on two of the MDG’s:
- Achieve universal primary education
- Promote gender equality
Why does the world bank say education is important?
- It’s a human right
- Strongest factor for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace and stability
- Delivers returns in terms of incomes and ensure equal opportunities
- It promotes employment, earnings, health and poverty reduction
- It drives long term economic growth, incentive for innovation
How does the world bank help the developing world with education?
- In 2020, it provided $5.2bn for educational programmes in the developing world
- Work for education programs in 80 different countries
Education in India by the world bank - what is education like in Rajasthan in Northern India?
- girls traditionally stayed at home and were sometimes married off when they are young however this is now changing.
- Girls married off when babies
- Educating is a waste for girls and money is spent on boys going to school
- Most women and girls can’t read or write and will spend most of their lives doing hard labour
How is the world bank changing education for girls in India?
- Girls are now getting to go to school and learning to learn and write
- Better sanitation accessible
- Food and sleep at school
- More technology use
- Spreading and promoting universal primary education
Education in China by the world bank - what is the problem?
-China’s young people often have difficulty finding jobs after graduation while companies also can’t find employees with the qualifications they need.
Education in China by the world bank - what is the world bank doing to help?
- A world bank supported project is helping nine vocational schools foster collaboration with companies and train students with skills to meet their needs
- Companies send tutors and provides equipment and raw materials
Education in China by the world bank - how does this project help?
- Helps improve their skills
- Helps to sell their products
- Teachers have more opportunities to learn new skills from experienced staff
- New building that has been financed by the project provides facilities to gain hands on experience
Can the WTO ever support the environment? YES
- Panels have people that specialise in the environment
- Encourage cooperation between the WTO and the environmentalists
Can the WTO ever support the environment? NO
- They encourage countries to trade which leads to lots of carbon released through the transportation of goods
- Trade also requires countries to exploit their environment to make economic gains
What is the negative of the IMF trying to reduce poverty?
-The IMF has been heavily criticized particularly for its Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs). These are where the IMF force governments to privatize industries (benefitting TNCs) and cut their public spending.
How has the IMF changes its strategy to reduce poverty?
-From 2000 its strategy has changed through its Poverty Reduction Programme where countries are required to come up with their own plans to reduce poverty in order to receive help from the IMF.
How has the debt relief by the IMF in Haiti helped?
- IMF approved $1.2bn debt relief
- Instead of spending millions to relieve debt, Haiti will save $50 million each year in the next 10 years to help improve health and education and to fight against poverty
- Struggles with political instability and a weak economy
- Can improve conditions of population
Debt relief in Haiti by IMF - has it been successful?
- More economically stable
- Still, lots of poverty by more growth and development
- Remittances are a lifeline for many families
- Fall in government revenues – prices of Haiti’s imports became lower
What struggles has Haiti experienced?
- 2008 – riots over rising food and oil prices
- 4 back-to-back hurricanes destroying 60% of the winter harvest
- Global economic crisis impacted economy
Pros and cons of world bank
- role is development
- can cause environmentally damaging in developing countries
- better for economic reasons
- Financial support – give both technology and financial support they need, give out loans
- education in many developing countries have improved – more equality for girls (Rajasthan)
Cons of the IMF
- Decision making power and voting power is given to the largest economies
- Neo-liberal criticisms – some free-market policies are not always suitable for the situation of the country – privatisation can lead to the creation of private monopolies – Bolivia’s water industry
- Ecuador agreed to borrow $4.2bn from the IMF over 3 years for the government to agree to certain economic programs – this led to firing of tens of thousands of public sector employees, raising taxes that fell on poor people and making cuts to public investments
- exacerbate the world dependency theory
What are the millennium development goals?
- 8 goals created in 2000 with the aim of reducing global poverty
- the aim was for them to be completed by 2015
- didn’t meet goals so made new ones
Which regions have been the most successful in the millennium development goals?
- South eastern Asia
- Eastern Asia
- China
- India
- Global shift – attracting a lot of investment
- Asian tiger economies
Which regions have been least successful in the development goals?
- Oceania – small populations, many islands – hard to develop isolated areas with indigenous populations
- Cultural differences
- Subsistence lifestyles
- Resistance to change
- Prone to natural disasters
- Inhospitable place
Why were the new development goals created?
- Previous goals had expired 2000 – 2015 – needed to review them either extend them or come up with new goals
- Realised that sustainability wasn’t included
How successful were the millennium development goals?
- UNDP – championed the goals, funded projects, accelerated progress and tracked progress
- People earning less than $1.25 per day (PPP) have been halved – sign of success
- Number of primary kids that don’t go to school was halved
- Child mortality down by almost half
Why weren’t the millennium development goals not successful?
- 800 million are still earning less than $1.25 per day
- Deforestation is high
- Oceans becoming more acidic
- 1 in 6 adults is illiterate – 2/3 of them are women
What are the 3 pillars of sustainable growth?
Social progress, economic growth and environmental protection
What are the difficulties in reaching these goals now?
- A growing population
- A changing environment – climate change
What are the drawbacks of these SDG’s?
- Not very specific – can’t really measure it
- Every country have different definitions of these terms
Similarities between the MDG’s and the SDG’s
- Poverty is still one of the most important
- All unrealistic – can’t be achieved in the next 15 years
- External factors affect the success of both targets
- Both have same time scales
Differences between the MDG’s and SDG’s
- More environmental targets that are more specific
- More focus on sustainability
Reasons why the SDG’s will be met
- Global agreements – Paris agreements – aligns them with the environmental targets
- China is involved – a global superpower – global cooperation now – using power that promotes global development
- More investments into sustainable technology
Obstacles to the SDG’s being met
- Both very broad – no way of measuring them
- Too many goals
- External factors that you can’t predict
- All 3 pillars may not be met – economic development can cause poor environmental development
