News Briefs: January 20, 2006
World Bank Proposes Meeting with Zambia Over Currency Gain
Donations that Canadian Lutheran World Relief receives in Canada is transferred to country programs like Zambia in US dollars. The exchange rate difference between these two currencies can create a negative or positive effect on actual funding within a development program. An increasing Canadian dollar can provide more US dollars whereas a declining Canadian dollar will provide less.
This issue has become more complicated in Zambia because the local currency (“kwacha”) has rapidly increased in value relative to the US dollar. One year ago, the US dollar purchased 4,800 kwacha. Today, the US dollar buys only 3,300 kwacha. CLWR’s donations now pay for only 68% of what they did last year.
This appreciation in the kwacha is not only impacting development programs, but also agriculture, tourism and non-traditional exports.
The World Bank has proposed a meeting with the Zambian government and the private sector to critically analyze the appreciation of the kwacha and its effect on the economy of the southern African country. The problem is not that the kwacha is increasing in value, but rather how fast and deep the kwacha is appreciating.
Zambia's kwacha has gained dramatically against major foreign currencies at the same time as its copper exporter is benefiting heavily from an internationally high copper price and the majority of its foreign debt has been cancelled.
- Reports from CLWR News Service and Xinhua
Buy an Indian Woman for Just $20
Trafficking in children and women to and from India is now a booming business and, believe it or not, a young woman can be 'bought' for as low as Rs 1,000 (about $20).
And in brazen violation of the law, even minor girls are being trafficked, to places as far as the Middle East and the Philippines for prostitution as well as pornography, with the Indian law enforcing agencies looking the other way.
These are among the shocking facts revealed in a path-breaking survey by the New Delhi-based Institute of Social Sciences on ‘Trafficking in Women and Children in India’.
The victims in the trade are from poor families, some of which are forced to "sell" their women because of grinding poverty, or girls lured to cities, often with promises of finding them a place in Bollywood.
The methods used to lure young girls to the sex industry included promises of jobs as domestic servants or in factories or the film industry, offers of money or pleasure trips, promises of marriage, or simple coercion.
In contrast to the low amounts traffickers paid to procure young women, they themselves earned huge profits. Almost a third of them made more than Rs 100,000 annually. Another 20 per cent put their income at Rs 50,000 to Rs 100,000.
The places listed as source areas for traffickers in India included locations where CLWR has either worked in the past or is currently supporting projects: Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal (Murshidabad and 24 Parganas), and districts in Orissa, Assam, Goa and Jammu and Kashmir.
Police in some states are reported to work with the traffickers. Some traffickers said they bribed the police in cash, while others claimed allowing policemen to have free sex with the trafficked women.
"Unless there is a paradigm shift - whereby the traffickers are arrested, made to compensate for the damage and harm done to the victims, and their illegal assets are confiscated - there can be no justice for the victims and no real solution to the problem of trafficking."
- Reports from CLWR News Service and NewIndPress.Com
Bolivia's Congress Declares Morales President
The new Bolivian Congress proclaimed Evo Morales President today, thus setting up the stage for inauguration day on Sunday, January 22. Morales got 53.7 percent of votes.
After the session, the president-elect will be ready to officially take office this Sunday, although he will be invested on Saturday following the indigenous rituals in the pre-Columbian ruins of Tihuanacu.
Delegations from more than 50 countries are scheduled to attend the swearing in ceremony on Sunday. At least 15 heads of states are expected to show up. Among them, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Argentina's Nestor Kichner and Brazil's Luis Inacio Lula Da Silva will present Morales with an emergency plan to help him push his government agenda, particularly to improve living standards of South America's poorest country.
CLWR trains local indigenous people in Bolivia to take on leadership roles in their communities.
- Reports from Escambray
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