malnutrition ‘shame,’ begins to make progress!

By Simon Denyer, Published: December 26

BANSWARA, India — Stung by the realization that it faced a child malnutrition crisis worse than in most African countries, India is finally waking to the scale of the problem.

Progress is slow and political will patchy, but there are signs that a new approach to fighting malnutrition is beginning to reap dividends.
Efforts to improve rural health and education have combined with an expansion of a child welfare program that employs nearly 2 million village health workers to focus on maternal and infant health and nutrition. A rural jobs plan has helped raise wages in the countryside, and new programs are educating adolescent girls, nearly half of whom will marry before age 18, about feeding and hygiene.

Signs of progress appeared in an independent survey of malnutrition in 100 of India’s least-
developed districts. Released in January, it showed the proportion of underweight children falling to 42 percent, a drop of 11 percentage points.

Even more dramatic are preliminary data from the western state of Maharashtrareleased last month, which show a decline in the number of children who were stunted, to 22.8 percent from 39 percent in 2006, thanks to a government program aimed at the needs of infants and mothers.

“We are confident that there is a good story in the making,” said Victor Aguayo, head of UNICEF’s India nutrition program. “There is excitement that what can happen is happening.”

Maharashtra is home to India’s financial capital, Mumbai, and is the country’s economic powerhouse. But malnutrition rates did not begin falling significantly until the state government started showing the political will to tackle the problem head-on.

Nationally, the wake-up call came in 2007 with the realization that a decade and a half of buoyant economic growth had scarcely dented child malnutrition rates, which remained higher than the average in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly half of Indian children younger than 5 were stunted and underweight for their age, a government survey released that year showed, permanently impairing their mental and physical development.

But in a country where many middle-class people find the subject of malnutrition rather boring, it took the idea that India was underperforming — not just compared with Africa but also with neighbors such as Bangladesh — to embarrass the government into action. In 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called it a “national shame,” and a failed strategy began to be reevaluated.

“India as a nation had been overemphasizing economic growth in the hope it would somehow solve the problem,” Aguayo said. But growth has not been equitably distributed, and experts argue that the health sector has been neglected.

Malnutrition, Aguayo said, has been undermining India’s ambitions to be the nation “it wants to become.”

Grueling reality

Despite the progress, India has a long way to go. In a poor tribal district of Banswara, in the western state of Rajasthan, the mismatch between India’s aspirations and its problems, between its self-image and the grueling reality in the lives of millions of its citizens, is striking.

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com

Indian states fight over river usage!

By Shyamantha Asokan, Published: April 1 | Updated: Tuesday, April 2.

Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images - Indian residents in a district facing a drinking water shortage wait with plastic pots at a community tube well to collect drinking water in Bangalore on October 8, 2012.

MAGIZHI, India — MAGIZHI, India —Valan, a rice farmer in a starched white shirt and sarong, walked along the bone-dry canal bed next to his village in the state of Tamil Nadu as though it were a road. The canal should have been full from last June until the end of the year, he said, but it stood dry, except for one month in which unexpected storms flooded the canal and destroyed his crops.

In the past, “we could just use the rainwater,” said Valan, who like many Tamils has only one name. “But the rains are becoming more unpredictable, so certainly the river is becoming more important.”

There are similar tensions on an international level. Manmohan Singh, India’s prime minister, last week asked China for more openness about its plans to build dams on the Brahmaputra, a vast Himalayan river that flows into India from the Tibetan region of western China.

India’s river disputes “have become more severe, and they will continue to become more severe,” said Ashok Jaitly, who sits on a national government committee that is drafting a law on water management. “Water use is increasing, but the supply is fixed.”

With India ruled by a fractious coalition government, state-level spats can destabilize national politics. The dynastic Congress party, which leads the coalition, controls fewer than half of the country’s 28 states and relies on alliances with regional parties, which often put local and populist causes first. The river disputes are one such example, said Tushaar Shah, a senior fellow at the International Water Management Institute, a research group headquartered in Sri Lanka. “I do think [the disputes] are getting worse. It’s become a political issue, and state politicians are always playing to the galleries.”

One regional party from Tamil Nadu recently left the Congress-led coalition after the federal government refused to alter foreign policy to fit its demands.

India will need 1.5 trillion cubic meters (396 trillion gallons) of water per year by 2030, about double its existing supply and more than a fifth of the projected global demand, according to a 2010 report from the International Finance Corp. and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co. Yet as the population swells, India’s water supply per person is dropping. The country has an annual average of 1,545 cubic meters (408,145 gallons) of water available per person, according to India’s 2011 census — qualifying it as a “water-stressed” nation under World Bank criteria.

source: www.washingtonpost.com

Líderes cristãos pedem oração pela Coreia do Norte

03 abril 2013COREIA DO NORTE

O cristianismo, assim como qualquer outra religião, é proibido na Coreia do Norte. Em uma carta contrabandeada para fora do país, cristãos secretos descrevem a atmosfera de guerra na qual o país está mergulhado. A oração e intercessão faz-se mais importante do que nunca.

"Estamos nos preparando para a batalha decisiva com uma arma na mão e um martelo na outra", resume um líder cristão, sobre  a mensagem que o povo norte-coreano recebeu recentemente do "alto comando" do governo. "O exército militar, a marinha, a força aérea, as tropas estratégicas de foguetes, os guardas vermelhos e os jovens soldados já estão em posição de combate. Reuniões urgentes estão sendo realizadas por todos os lugares, independentemente se é dia ou noite. Nesses encontros, os funcionários decidem sobre o que deve acontecer no caso de guerra, incluindo o papel das mulheres, que precisam estar prontas para entrar em combate”, disse ele.

Segundo fontes da Portas Abertas, na estrada, muitos carros já estão cobertos por redes de camuflagem e soldados portando armas de fogo, que usam chapéus com galhos secos (um tipo de camuflagem também). O líder do país, Kim Jong-Un, divulgou um comunicado para o povo dizendo que "se a guerra explodir por conta das ações dos EUA e o comportamento imperdoável da Coreia do Sul, eles acabarão sofrendo uma queda vergonhosa e a Coreia da Norte viverá o nascer de um novo dia de reunificação”. E disse ainda: “Chegou o momento de mostrar o poder do 'Primeiro Exército’ e a grande nação norte-coreana para o mundo inteiro."

No entanto, cristãos e civis temem uma guerra entre as nações e as suas consequências. "Na dúvida, muitas pessoas têm comprado suprimentos de emergência (alimentos e artigos de necessidades básicas). Por conta disso, os preços desses produtos estão subindo rapidamente”, explicou o contato da Portas Abertas.

Cristãos locais são gratos pela ajuda de estrangeiros ao redor do mundo e pedem por contínuas orações. "Eu gostaria de agradecer a esses irmãos e irmãs que, mesmo estando longe, nos apoiam através do seu amor, suas orações e doações. Sabemos que a nossa caminhada até o céu não será fácil, mas temos a certeza de que a nossa fé e esperança, um dia, darão muitos frutos. Não importa o quão difícil é a vida para nós, nunca devemos culpar ou reclamar por causa das circunstâncias que enfrentamos. Deus nos prometeu na Bíblia que, se buscarmos o Seu Reino em primeiro lugar, todas as outras coisas também nos serão dadas. Por favor, ore por nós!", concluiu outro cristão norte-coreano.

O portal de notícias UOL informou nessa quarta-feira (03/04) que a Coreia do Sul ameaçou atacar caso seus cidadãos corram risco na Coreia do Norte. 

Fonte: Portasabertas.org.br

Saudi Arabia declares destruction of all churches in region

Saudi Arabia (MNN) ― Earlier this month news reports surfaced out of Saudi Arabia that raised the red flag for Christians.
Todd Nettleton, a spokesman for the Voice of the Martyrs USA, says, "The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia--the top Islamic official in the country of Saudi Arabia--has declared that it is "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.'" Nettleton goes on to note that the report hasn't surfaced anywhere except on the Council on Foreign Relations Web site, which was then picked up by The Atlantic.
Ranked second on the Open Doors World Watch List (a compilation of the 50 countries where persecution of Christians is the most severe), the news is not really a surprise. There is no provision for religious freedom in the constitution of this Islamic kingdom.
All citizens must adhere to Islam, and conversion to another religion is punishable by death. Public Christian worship is forbidden; worshipers risk imprisonment, lashing, deportation, and torture. Evangelizing Muslims and distributing non-Islamic materials is illegal. Muslims who convert to Christianity risk honor killings and foreign Christian workers have been exposed to abuse from employers.
Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, created an implication with his assertion. Nettleton explains, "This was in a meeting with Kuwaiti officials who came to Saudi Arabia. They were asking this Islamic official ‘What should we do about the churches?' His statement was, ‘There should be no Christian churches on the Arabian peninsula.'"
According to the report, the delegation wanted to confirm Sharia's position on churches. Essentially, Nettleton says, "If you have churches in Kuwait, which they do, they should be destroyed. The interesting thing about this is that there are no churches in Saudi Arabia. There are no church buildings that are allowed to exist there. So he clearly wasn't talking only for his own country: he was trying to export this ideology to the surrounding countries."
This proclamation could affect churches in Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Nettleton observes that "in most of these countries, we're not talking about a lot of churches; we're talking about a few that are allowed to exist primarily to serve foreigners that are living in that country."
However, the UN Human Rights Council has yet to take a stand on such blatant violations of freedom of religion. How the governments implement this declaration is yet to be determined. "Most of these countries would consider their native population to be 100% Muslim. We could see more persecution, we could see churches closed or destroyed. We just kind of wait to see now."
The concern raised by this view has not escaped notice of the U.S. Government, though. The most recent International Religious Freedom report (annually issued by the State Department) remarks, "Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice.... The government officially does not permit non-Muslim clergy to enter the country to conduct religious services, although some do so under other auspices and are able to hold services. These entry restrictions make it difficult for non-Muslims to maintain regular contact with clergy. This is particularly problematic for Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians, whose faiths require that they receive sacraments from a priest on a regular basis."
For the most part, says Nettleton, the Mufti's statement will be buried in the mainstream media. However, he's encouraging believers to ask God to continue to intervene. There are Christ followers in Saudi Arabia who "take great risk to follow Jesus Christ. They take great risk to even talk about their faith with another person. We can pray for God's protection over them. We can pray for encouragement."
What's more, ask God to continue His intervention. While the Arabian Peninsula isn't a place for the more traditional approach to sharing Christ's story, there are still many who are encountering the Gospel. "Pray that Muslims will come to know Christ. One of the things that's happening, not only in Saudi Arabia but across the Middle East, is Muslims encountering Christ through dreams and visions, and other supernatural ways."

source: http://www.mnnonline.org/article/18380