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Refugee and immigration issues
Essay on refugee and immigration policy
Essay on refugee and immigration policy
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Introduction
The economy of the Democratic Republic of the Congo - a nation endowed with vast potential wealth - has declined drastically since the mid-1980s. Since 1996, the country has been cursed by conflict, which has devastated and destabilized the country and claimed the lives of an estimated 5 million civilians. People continue to live in crisis conditions in many parts of the country. The war, which began in August 1998, dramatically reduced national output and government revenue, increased external debt, and resulted in the deaths of perhaps 3.5 million people from violence, famine, and disease. Extraneous businesses curtailed operations due to uncertainty about the outcome of the conflict, lack of infrastructure, and the difficult operating environment. Conditions improved in late 2002 with the withdrawal of a large portion of the invading foreign troops. The transitional governance has opened up relations with international financial institutions and international donors, and President Kabila has begun implementing reforms. Much economic activity lies outside the GDP data. Economic stability improved in 2003-2005, although an uncertain legal framework, corruption, and a lack of openness in government policy continues to hamper growth. In 2005, renewed activity in the mining sector and the source of most exports boosted Kinshasa's fiscal position and GDP growth. Business and economic prospects are expected to improve once a new government is installed after elections. Successive armed conflicts in the Republic of Congo over the last decade have had a highly detrimental effect on food production because of the destruction of infrastructure and problems of market access. Some local food is therefore very expensive, and ac...
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...said.gov/our_work/humanitarian_assistance/disaster_assistance/countries/drc/template/index.html , accessed on March 20, 2011
FOA 2010, “Country Profile: Food Security Indicators, Country: Congo” [online] available at: http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ess/documents/food_security_statistics/country_profiles/eng/Congo_E.pdf , accessed on March 20, 2011
FOA 2011, “GIEWS Country Briefs” [online] available at: http://www.fao.org/giews/countrybrief/country.jsp?code=COG , accessed on March 20, 2011
Safiliou-Rothschild, C. 2001. “Food Security and Poverty: Definitions and Measurement Issues,” Dialogue Working Paper # 4. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Dialogue Secretariat
Habicht, J., G. Pelto, E. Frongillo and D. Rose. 2004. “Conceptualization and Instrumentation of Food Insecurity,” Paper Presented at the National Academy of Sciences Workshop, 14-16 July, 2004, USA
What is food insecurity? It is “a household-level, economic and social condition of limited access to food” (Curtis 2008). Nowadays, there are many people that are unemployed and homeless because of our weakening economy. But nobody really stops and thinks about the numerous people that have unequal access to food, especially healthy foods. When I observed the people who go into food pantries, I notice that there are a variety of ethnic groups. However, the most prominent race that I see, are Hispanics. This observation brought me to produce my research question. Is there a significant difference of food insecurity among Hispanics compared to non-Hispanics? The purpose of this paper is to discuss the main factors that cause more food insecurity among Latinos than any other race.
Stuff, Casey, Szeto, Gossett, Robbins, Simpson, Connell, and Bogle (2004) Household Food Insecurity Is Associated with Adult Health Status. Journal of Nutrition, 134, 2330-2335. Retrieved from http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/9/2330.full
Even though closely related to poverty, not all that have food insecurities are in poverty. Often it is the working poor that are hit the hardest. The working poor are a group that, despite having a job, their income is too low to meet their needs or that of their family. Most of the working poor (56%) live in families with children, so the poverty of these workers affects many others as well (Problems Facing the Working Poor, Kim 1999). Many lower to middle class families will temporarily struggle with food insecurity at various times during the year.
Rosier, K. 2011, ‘Food insecurity in Australia: What is it, who experiences it and how can
Gundersen, Waxman, Engelhard, and Brown (2010) found in their study that 50 million people (including 17 million children) were food insecure in 2010. Poverty and food insecurity affects the lives of billions of people worldwide and millions of people in the United States. More than two billion pe...
Food insecurity is an issue faced by millions of Americans every day, and the biggest group affected by this is working families with children. Food insecurity is so big that the United States government has now recognized it and provided a definition for it. The United States government has defined food insecurity as “a household level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food” (USDA.gov). Food banks and anti-hunger advocates agree that some of the causes of food insecurity are stagnant wages, increases in housing costs, unemployment, and inflation in the cost of food. These factors have caused food banks to see a change in the groups of people needing assistance.
In order to determine the prevalence of households that are food insecure, “The Food Security Supplement is administered annually to about 45,000 households as part of the monthly, nationally representative Current Population Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. The supplement has been conducted annually since 1995.” (Health Indicators Warehouse, 2013). The survey was developed by the USDA in conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control, and asks participants questions about their confiden...
The world that we live in is inevitably problem stricken. There will always be a challenge that we are given to overcome, may that be a natural disaster, war, poverty, hunger, etc. As a whole we need to come together to find a ‘solution’ for all of these issues that are so detrimental to this world and those living in it. Some may be more preventative than the others, however, we must work together in times of distress to rebuild. I will be addressing the problem of hunger and food insecurity in America. Food security is define by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) as access by all people at all time to enough food for an active, healthy life. On the other hand, food insecurity is outlined very well by the National Research Council.
World Food Programme. (2013). Comprehensive food security and vulnerability analysis (CFSVA): Uganda. Retrieved from http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/ena/wfp256989.pdf
There are many problems confronting our global food system. One of them is that the food is not distributed fairly or evenly in the world. According “The Last Bite Is The World’s Food System Collapsing?” by Bee Wilson, “we are producing more food—more grain, more meat, more fruits and vegetables—than ever before, more cheaply than ever before” (Wilson, 2008). Here we are, producing more and more affordable food. However, the World Bank recently announced that thirty-three countries are still famine and hungers as the food price are climbing. Wilson stated, “despite the current food crisis, last year’s worldwide grain harvest was colossal, five per cent above the previous year’s” (Wilson, 2008). This statement support that the food is not distributed evenly. The food production actually increased but people are still in hunger and malnutrition. If the food were evenly distributed, this famine problem would’ve been not a problem. Wilson added, “the food economy has created a system in w...
In the United States of America, the richest nation in the world, one in six Americans do not have enough food to eat. Have you ever wondered why there are so many food banks and food pantries throughout the country? They are not simply, as you might think, able to offer emergency food assistance. Indeed, they are the main sources of food for millions of food-insecure Americans. Food insecurity, the state of not having sufficient quantity of affordable and nutritious food, is very widespread and common in America.
I propose that the solution to the post-Civil War violence in Congo is to rid the country of all foreign nations and their problems, namely the Rwandans, and to get combatants inside the country to hold a summit and find a peaceful and fair resolution to the problem, with a superpower like the United States acting as host and mediator. Once all the quarrels are amended, the Congolese can start to focus on an economic strategy for rebuilding the country. Congo's Civil War began on November 2nd, 1998 when Laurent Kabila tried to drive out Rwandan militants who helped him overthrow Mobutu Sese Seko.2 Sese Seko came into power in 1966 when he led a rebellion to overthrow the government of Patrice Lumumbra Sese Seko led to Africanizing of the country by requiring that all citizens drop their Christian names, and by renaming all the geographical locations with more African names.3 During the 1980's Sese Seko's government received support from the United States, in response to communism's rising popularity in Africa. Because of the misuse of the funds and wealth generated by natural resources, the rich got richer and the poor fell farther into poverty. Sese Seko abused Congo's natural resources and eventually helped lead the country into a state of economic ruin. In 1997, Sese Seko was overthrown by Laurent Kabila.
Food insecurity and poor nutrition is an alarmingly large problem for low income families, especially in developing countries. Many strategies exist to fight this problem, although not many of these address all the factors contributing to it along with all the possible solutions to solve it. In many cases, multiple strategies must correlate and work together so that all the determinants of this issue are addressed and can fight food insecurity from different angles. This essay will discuss the significance of the problem, a range of possible strategies to solve the problem, and go into detail on a select few that will correlate and work together to solve different factors of food insecurity and poor nutrition.
Food insecurity is defined as a household-level socioeconomic issue where access to food is either limited or uncertain; hunger itself is an individual issue that may result from food insecurity. In America, the question of its citizens being hungry is a commonly addressed issue, but there seems to be no true change involved. The issue itself lies not in the fact that we don’t produce enough food, because we greatly overproduce, but in the fact that it is allocated to those who can afford to eat. The issue of societal classes further ties into the issue of food insecurity; the top one percent controls a majority of the country’s resources. The underlying question to food insecurity is how to solve it, and is it possible to develop a solution
Food security represents the supply of food available at all levels- community, regional, national and worldwide. Whether or not a country has enough access to food for sustenance is used to define the term “food security.” The dilemma in deciding whether an area is food secure or insecure is defining what is ‘enough’ in regard to food supply (Maritzova, 2014). National food security means that a country can feed it’s own population solely with its own resources. All countries potentially have the ability to feed their populations if they leave their own domestic markets and enter global markets (Maritzova, 2014). However, this allows price fluctuations to occur based on supply and demand, thus acting as a barrier to countries that may be unable to afford certain imports.