ADBI E-Newsline

"Bits of gray land sprout shyly from the Brahmaputa-Jamuna River. The cracked mud seems to understand that when the monsoon season hits, it will become completely submerged. Home to at least 3.5 million people, these few hundred chars, or tiny islands, are located seven hours north of the country's capital Dhaka. They constitute one of the most remote and vulnerable regions in Bangladesh, considered the nation most susceptible to climate change's impacts. People in these communities lack electricity, media and access to any commercial market.

Char-dwellers survive the best they can. They migrate from char to char up to 40 to 50 times in a given life (the average life expectancy here is late-40s), taking their collapsible, tin houses along with them. But most people just wait for relief. Despite the challenges of living on chars, no governmental program exists to relocate the few million char-dwellers."

"One of the Millennium Development Goals of the UN is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by 2015, which would mean halving the proportion of children, who are underweight for their age. According to a UNICEF report, half of the world's undernourished children live in South Asia. Every year, 2 million children die in India, accounting for one in five child deaths in the world. Prevention of many such deaths is possible if efforts towards better nourishment of our children are taken seriously.

Under-nutrition level is serious in rural areas, especially in lower wealth areas and among families with no educated adult. The percentage of undernourished children is far higher than the income poverty rate. Only 33 percent of age-eligible children have received any service from the Integrated Child Development Services program. This shows that only about 650,000 children received some minimal attention of the government, leaving the rest of them to their fate."

"War refugees have found little left of their old lives as they trickle back to their villages in the former Tamil Tiger stronghold eight months after Sri Lankan forces crushed the rebel group. The government says the returnees are getting food rations and money to help them out, but conceded it was not enough. Kilinochchi today looks like a garrison town with dozens of military camps, large and small, every few hundred meters and soldiers patrolling the streets.

No building is without damage and the streets are nearly empty, because only 8,000 of the district's estimated 120,000 pre-war residents have returned. The returnees receive a resettlement package of $250 from the United Nations refugee agency, six months of food rations, 12 tin roof sheets and a tent. Returnees say the resettlement package is not enough for them to make the needed investments in cleaning up and replanting their farms or restarting businesses."

"An Internet search reveals an increasing number of websites containing 'Kidney for sale' advertisements in the Indonesian language. Officials said the scale of illegal organ trafficking in Indonesia was not known, but the Internet phenomenon had raised concerns about the scourge. Indonesia's new Health Law, passed in October 2009, bans organ trading, with offenders facing up to 10 years in prison or a fine of one billion rupiah if found guilty.

According to the World Health Organization, the shortage of organs is a global problem, with potential recipients traveling outside their home country to obtain organs through sometimes illegal commercial transactions. Only 10 percent of the estimated need was met in 2005. As a result, the illegal kidney trade has increased tremendously over the past few years, although the extent of illegal kidney transplants is unknown."

"Shonal Chand, 16, has ditched school to work full time to assist his financially struggling family. He sells pineapples, watermelons and other local seasonal fruit by the roadside six days a week. Chand's family is only too happy he is able to bring home as much as $78 a week. The dropout rate from Fiji schools before the onset of the global financial crisis was as high as 66 percent, mainly because of poverty. There are concerns that the dropout rate may have worsened since the financial crisis struck.

Fiji's compulsory education age is 15, which is also the minimum legal age for work. The law also prohibits Fiji children below 18 from working during school hours. Just as in many developing countries with high levels of poverty and low levels of social welfare, child labor laws are either poorly enforced or ignored as strict implementation could lead to the affected family going without food. An estimated 43 percent of Fiji's population of 850,000 lives in poverty of varying degrees."