I've already told you about Half the Sky, the new book about the state of women around the world by husband-wife team Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. If you're not intrigued enough, Slate columnist Johann Hari has given us some more reasons to check out the book--or at the very least, investigate the subject.
Here is what she writes:

"While we rightly roared at racial apartheid, we act as though gender apartheid is a natural, immutable fact. With absolutely the right Molotov cocktail of on-the-ground reporting and hard social science, Kristof and WuDunn blow up this taboo. They ask: What would we do if we believed women were equal human beings, with as much right to determine their life story as men? How would we view the world differently?"

"They take the reader on a grand tour of all the issues that are ignored because women are ignored. For example—who has heard of fistula? It is today's leprosy, causing 2 million women to live and die as despised outcasts—yet it is virtually unknown. When a woman has a long, obstructed labor with no doctors to help her deliver, the blood supply to her vagina, bladder, and rectum can be cut off. The tissues die, and a hole is ripped in her flesh. From that hole, shit and piss will leak for the rest of her life in one long incontinent streak. Because she stinks, she is rejected by her husband and her community, and forced to live scavenging on the streets.
In every African town, you see fistula-stricken women, wandering aimlessly, their heads down in shame. They are the saddest people I have ever met. But this problem is cruelly easy to treat. For $300, a fistula can be repaired in 90 percent of cases. Fistula can be beaten, if only we value women enough to do it. There used to be a fistula hospital in Manhattan. Today, it is the Waldorf-Astoria.
Or how about the enslavement of women in brothels, which is now far larger than the trans-Atlantic slave trade at its height? Some 3.5 million women are being jailed, drugged, and raped for cash today. This brutalization of women doesn't have to happen any more than the enslavement of Africans did in the 18th century. As the authors write: "The tools to crush modern slavery exist, but the political will is lacking. That must be the starting point of any abolitionist movement." International pressure—set in motion by the acts of ordinary citizens—works."

Hari doesn't blink at the book's flaws, criticizing the couple's defense of sweatshops (Kristof believes the work women find in these squalid factories is, in the long run, better than staying home and working the fields).
Hari says:
"Anti-sweatshop campaigners—who he has explicitly chided—want all factories, everywhere, to adhere to certain minimum standards: No use of beatings, a maximum working day, safety precautions. Then they won't be sweatshops; they'll just be factories.
Whenever he is confronted with this argument, Kristof says that any country that imposes basic human conditions on sweatshops loses its trade to a country that won't and women suffer. But this ignores an obvious truth: Anti-sweatshop campaigners want to see these rules imposed everywhere. There should be no escape clauses and no places where multinational corporations can go to cheaply abuse women for a few extra pennies of profit."

Regardless, I'm planning on checking out this book--and soon. Tell me: are there other books I should add to my reading list? What have you read that informed and inspired you?

The Return of Monday Quote Day

Today I've rounded up a few thoughts on poverty. Here at World Next Door, we believe in fighting global poverty. Fair trade is the means through which we have chosen to take our stand, because we believe this means of doing business offers some of the poorest among us--the "global underdog," if you will--an opportunity to support and care for themselves and their families. It is a shot at evening the score, at providing a dignified and sustainable way of life for those who are working hard and coming up short.

"Poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; it is hard for an empty bag to stand upright."

Benjamin Franklin, U.S. Founding Father, statesman, author, printer, scientist, inventor, and diplomat...among others

"The inevitable consequence of poverty is dependence."

Samuel Johnson, 18th century English author

"Poverty is like punishment for a crime you didn't commit."

Eli Khamarov, 20th century writer

Half the Sky

"IN THE 19TH CENTURY, the paramount moral challenge was slavery. In the 20th century, it was totalitarianism. In this century, it is the brutality inflicted on so many women and girls around the globe: sex trafficking, acid attacks, bride burnings and mass rape."

Thus begins this weekend's piece in the NY Times Magazine by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and his wife, journalist Sheryl WuDunn. Their article, entitled "The Women's Crusade," takes on the crucial issue of women's rights around the world. They've just written a new book, "Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide." (This title is based on a Chinese proverb which says that "Women hold up half the sky.")
Below are several quotes from their article that hit home with me on subjects near and dear to my own heart.

Also, be sure to check out this video on the NY Times site. Kristoff narrates a five minute slide show highlighting the issues he delves into in the magazine piece.

His last words?

"Women and girls aren't the problem. They're the solution."

Ok, here are the quotes.

Microfinancing and women:

"...Saima signed up with the Kashf Foundation, a Pakistani microfinance organization that lends tiny amounts of money to poor women to start businesses. Kashf is typical of microfinance institutions, in that it lends almost exclusively to women, in groups of 25. The women guarantee one another’s debts and meet every two weeks to make payments and discuss a social issue, like family planning or schooling for girls. A Pakistani woman is often forbidden to leave the house without her husband’s permission, but husbands tolerate these meetings because the women return with cash and investment ideas.
Saima took out a $65 loan and used the money to buy beads and cloth, which she transformed into beautiful embroidery that she then sold to merchants in the markets of Lahore. She used the profit to buy more beads and cloth, and soon she had an embroidery business and was earning a solid income — the only one in her household to do so."

Does this story sound familiar to any of you fair traders out there? I can think immediately of several groups we order from that work primarily with women (Sari Bari, Freeset, Hope for Women...)

Female mortality rate:
"Girls vanish partly because they don’t get the same health care and food as boys. In India, for example, girls are less likely to be vaccinated than boys and are taken to the hospital only when they are sicker. A result is that girls in India from 1 to 5 years of age are 50 percent more likely to die than boys their age. In addition, ultrasound machines have allowed a pregnant woman to find out the sex of her fetus — and then get an abortion if it is female.The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It appears that more girls and women are now missing from the planet, precisely because they are female, than men were killed on the battlefield in all the wars of the 20th century. The number of victims of this routine “gendercide” far exceeds the number of people who were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century."

Death in childbirth:

"Another huge burden for women in poor countries is maternal mortality, with one woman dying in childbirth around the world every minute. In the West African country Niger, a woman stands a one-in-seven chance of dying in childbirth at some point in her life. (These statistics are all somewhat dubious, because maternal mortality isn’t considered significant enough to require good data collection.) For all of India’s shiny new high-rises, a woman there still has a 1-in-70 lifetime chance of dying in childbirth. In contrast, the lifetime risk in the United States is 1 in 4,800; in Ireland, it is 1 in 47,600. The reason for the gap is not that we don’t know how to save lives of women in poor countries. It’s simply that poor, uneducated women in Africa and Asia have never been a priority either in their own countries or to donor nations."

Human trafficking and modern-day slavery:
"In the developing world, meanwhile, millions of women and girls are actually enslaved. While a precise number is hard to pin down, the International Labor Organization, a U.N. agency, estimates that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in forced labor of all kinds, including sexual servitude. In Asia alone about one million children working in the sex trade are held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery, according to a U.N. report. Girls and women are locked in brothels and beaten if they resist, fed just enough to be kept alive and often sedated with drugs — to pacify them and often to cultivate addiction. India probably has more modern slaves than any other country."

Jackman Tackles Trade

Hollywood star Hugh Jackman has taken on a new project, according to Britain's Hello magazine. Jackman has taken to the New York streets, camera crew in tow, as he barges into the restaurants and coffee shops of unsuspecting small business owners "tackling the issue of fair trade for producers in the developing world."

Hello says that:

Father of two Hugh is deeply involved in anti-poverty initiatives. After shooting an advert recently on the topic for the UN, he said his commitment was "as an actor... not an economist”...

He is looking to answer questions such as “How is it that a kid dies every three seconds from extreme poverty".

We're all in favor of this latest work...and can't wait to see the documentary he comes up with!

Back to the Basics

It's back to the beginning today for a reminder of what fair trade is, how it works, and why it's needed. I can always use a reminder of why we're doing what we do--I figured that the rest of you probably feel the same way!
Fair trade is an international system of trade. It gives the farmers and artisans who produce the goods we all use every day (for example, coffee, chocolate, and handicrafts) a way to lift themselves out of poverty by guaranteeing fair prices and sustainability. In short, the people who do the work are paid fairly for their labor.
Why bother with fair trade? Here's a start. Did you know that:

-Nearly half the world lives on less than $2 a day and the poorest 40% of the world's population earns only 5% of the global income.
-An estimated 218 million children are engaged in child labor (UNICEF).
-At least 70% of child laborers work in agriculture (UNICEF).
-Almost three-quarters (126 million) of children engaged in child labor work in hazardous situations or conditions, such as working in mines, working with chemicals and pesticides in agriculture or working with dangerous machinery (UNICEF).
-When farmers are not guaranteed a minimum price for their crops, they often fall victim to the global economy if demand decreases. When farmers rely on few, specific crops they are left particularly vulnerable to changes in the market. Fair trade guarantees a minimum price, so that farmers won’t fall deeper into poverty if the global economy influences profits.

(The above facts are taken from Plan and Transfair. Check out their websites for more information!)

And Throw Away the Key

A dozen may be a good thing when you're talking doughnuts or roses, but 12 is a big number when referring to years. And according to the latest reports out of North Korea, that is the number of years that U.S. journalists Laura Ling (bottom picture) and Euna Lee (top picture) will be spending doing backbreaking work in a North Korean labor camp.

The two women were sentenced today, after they were arrested by North Korean authorities for allegedly crossing the Chinese border into Korean territory approximately three months ago. At the time of their arrest, the journalists were based in China and were reporting on the trafficking of North Korean women for a California-based TV station owned by Al Gore. Family members have said that the reporters did not intend to cross the border into North Korea.
Word of the women's sentencing has sparked speculation that the reporters are being used as bargaining chips by the North Korean government, which has recently faced global ire as the reclusive country allegedly continues its testing of nuclear weapons.
NPR has done an excellent wrap-up of the situation; click here to read their story about the journalists' dilemma.
The Los Angeles Times offers a chilling perspective on what life inside those camps would be like for the two women. Here is an excerpt from their article:

"The first thing that passed through my mind when I heard about the verdict was that, from an American perspective, this is tantamount to a death sentence," said Scott Snyder, director of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy for the Asia Foundation, a Washington-based think tank.
"There aren't a lot of guarantees in that type of environment. It's different from any prison that exists in the modern-day United States. This is a very sobering challenge for a new administration."

North Korean defector Kim Hyuck, who spent a total of seven months between 1998 and 2000 in a "kyo-hwa-so," said that the percentage of prisoners who die from the harsh conditions would be unimaginable in the west.

"It is not an easy place," he said of the camps. "Centers for men and women are separate. But even [the] women's place is not comfortable at all. . . . When I was in the center, roughly 600-700 out of a total 1,500 died."

Hawk said many of the re-education camps are affiliated with mines or textile factories where inmates labor for long hours, shifts that are often followed by work criticism sessions and the forced memorization of dry North Korean policy doctrine.

The literal meaning of a "kyo-hwa-so" in Korean is "a place to make a good person through education," said Hawk, who interviewed a dozen gulag survivors for his study for a group known as the U.S. Committee for Humans Rights in North Korea.

Kim, 28, who now studies math at a South Korean university, said that escape from the camps is nearly impossible.

...

As I keep up to date on this situation, my heart is saddened for the women at the center of this political maelstrom. But they, at least, have the benefit of an entire nation that is up in arms over their imprisonment, and officials remain hopeful that their situation will be resovled diplomatically. Because news from within North Korea is sporadic at best, it is all too easy to forget the worries of the 28 million who call the nation home.

A 2006 report from Amnesty International details the woes Koreans face, including starvation (an estimated 12 percent of the population suffers from "severe hunger," and 37 percent of children and one-third of North Korean mothers are malnourished). Freedom of expression is non-existent; Reporters Sans Frontiers has reported that dozens of North Korean journalists have been "re-educated" for mistakes as simple as misspelling the name of an official. Tens of thousands of North Koreans have fled across the Amnok River to China seeking a better life.
It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. This 2003 photo (which you may have seen before) aptly proves the point: while the lights of South Korea gleam brightly on the southern part of the peninsula, North Korea is dark, stark evidence of the country's isolation from the rest of the world.

Click here to read a MSNBC story on what life is like inside the secretive nation.

Fair trade is not an option for the people of North Korea, at least not for the foreseeable future. But my hope is that one day they will be free, like their brothers in the south, to support themselves and craft a life of their own choosing. And until that day, our hearts and our prayers are with Ling, Lee, and their waiting families.

Clean Water in Africa

Would you want to spend three months running through the world's largest desert?

I didn't think so.

But that's exactly what ultra-marathoner Charlie Engel and his two teammates did in 2005-2006, when they ran through the Sahara for 111 days, trekking an estimated 4,300 miles and inking their passports with the stamps of six countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Egypt, if you're keeping track).

Charlie is in town tonight for the Arts and Education Council of Chattanooga-sponsored film screening of Running the Sahara, a feature length documentary that chronicles the amazing feat (Click here to watch the trailer). A portion of the proceeds from the event will benefit H2O Africa, an organization fighting to raise awareness and funds for clean water in Africa, and the Rodale Institute, which promotes organic farming methods as a tool to combat global warming.

As you might have guessed, although we couldn't set out across the African sands ourselves, at World Next Door we've packed up some of our products from nearby countries and are headed to the screening. We hope to serve as an educational resource about poverty across the globe, while also giving people an up-close glance at how they can help some of the poverty-stricken help themselves.

Here's a quick glance at some of the stats we'll share tonight:

GLOBAL POVERTY
· 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. (World Bank)
· Poverty causes the deaths of 25,000 children every day. (UNICEF)
· There were 3 billion people living on less than $2 a day, and 1.3 billion living on less than $1 a day in 1999. (Global Policy)