Issue 6: Globalization

ISSUE 6: GLOBALIZATION | JANUARY 2016

IMPACT MAGAZINE Our mission is to cultivate a culture of student involvement in social change and to bring awareness to the social impact activities of students, alumni, faculty, and organizations in our immediate and global community.

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Mayookha Mitra-Majumdar CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER Jordan Huynh CHIEF DIGITAL STRATEGIST Tyler Sullivan

MANAGING EDITOR Sam Friedlander

ONLINE EDITOR Morgan Snyder

PHOTOGRAHY EDITOR Connor Boyle DESIGN EDITOR Armaan Chandra EVENTS DIRECTOR Gabriela Rodriguez FINANCE DIRECTOR Svanika Balasubramanian

WRITERS

Shelby Lynne Barlow, Gabriela Goitía Vázquez, Tiffany Huang, Muriel Leung, Abigail McGuckin, Naomi Pohl, Nina Spitofsky, Kyra Schulman, Rebecca Tan, Jacqueline Uy, Aaron Wolff

BLOGGERS

Anna Balfanz, Diane Bayeux, Carol Chen, Emily Chen, Adriana Dropulic, Samarth Hazari, Priyanka Hongal, Celine Jo, Corey Loftus, Leora Mincer, Chris Molaro, Andreas Nolan, Sola Park, Lisa Shmulyan

PHOTOGRAPHERS

Katie Dumke, Alex Fisher, Angela Schwartz, Abbie Starker, Lucy Wu, Isabel Zapata

DESIGNERS

Cathleen Gui, Megan Paik, Tamara Prabhakar

EVENTS TEAM

Emily Irani, Carey Landon, Malcolm, Melinda Wang

Alexis-Amanda

FINANCE TEAM

David Huerta, Iris Kim

TECH TEAM

Helena Chen, Karen Her, Paul Lou

MARKETING TEAM

Chelsea Alexander-Taylor, Yousra Kandri

SPONSORS & AFFILIATIONS The Kelly Writers House Student Sustainability Association at Penn Student Activities Council Penn Publications Cooperative Wharton Social Impact Initiative

LETTER

FROM THE TEAM Long before the term “globalization” entered our daily conversations, there existed mechanisms of international integration which relied on the exchange of cultures, resources, and ideas. However, it is the recent historical context, encompassing eras and processes of industrialization, colonialism, neoliberalism, and so on, that shapes the way that much of the Western world views globalization today. And yet, these “-isms” and “-izations” that are so ubiquitous in discourses of globalization cannot always communicate the lived experiences of the phenomenon in different corners of the world.

The vocabulary around the topic encourages a single story of globalization, one of “equity,” “progress,” “opportunity,” and the oft-used, murkily defined, and ethically problematic “development.” But just as globalization is a composite of movements, innovations, and processes, it gives rise to a diversity of stories, some of which receive less traction than others. For who will give voice to the millions of often-exploited migrant workers who build the skyscrapers, overpasses, and housing projects undertaken by countries to brand themselves as modern? Who will look beyond the walls constructed to intentionally shield low-income housing from the view of more affluent areas? And who will stand with the men, women, and children, upon whose labor rest crucial informal economies, from the destruction of their homes in city slums?

Globalization is the Gilded Age on an international scale—the shine of wealth and novelty obscures the unpalatable realities of a class of people necessary to maintain the veneer of globalization. These dichotomies do not devalue the genuine good that has emerged from many aspects of globalization, but they do demand greater awareness of its bleaker consequences. Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan once said that “arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity.” In light of this inexorable push toward a more interconnected world, IMPACT is proud to introduce Issue 6: Globalization in an effort to find the real stories behind the phenomenon.

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE 06 08 10 12 13 16 18 20 25 26 28 33 36 38 40 Farming Philly Naomi Pohl

On the Provenance of Tumbleweed Samuel Prieto

Stigmas and Solutions Abigail McGuckin

International Honors Program Trips

The New Landscape of Global Health Tiffany Huang

Diaspora Alex Fisher

It’s Complicated Muriel Leung

Slumification Rebecca Tan

Teaching English Abroad Gabriela Goitía Vázquez

Human Rights Around the World Armaan Chandra

Revisionist History Kyra Schulman

In Pursuit of Fair Trade Shelby Barlow

On the Blog

Conversations with Professor Sarah Paoletti Jacqueline Uy

Millenium Development Goals Aaron Wolff

FARMING PHILLY

HOW PHILADELPHIA COMMUNITY GARDENS ARE CLOSING THE GAP BETWEEN FOOD PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION Written by Naomi Pohl

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ill Creek Farm is situated on one of those broad streets in West Philadelphia that seems to extend forever. Neighbors lean on parked cars, chatting as schoolchildren scurry home.

Billowing trees tangle through the farm’s fence and throw shade over the wide sidewalk. On this particular crisp October afternoon, the neighborhood is drawn over with that early fall grayness, making the flowers that wind around the farm’s sign appear a vivid magenta. Aviva Asher, a petite woman with a sunny disposition, is the farm’s director. She carries herself gently—her composed tone of voice matching her gait—as she takes me on a tour around the garden. She points out leafy kale, mustard greens, carrots, hot peppers, scallions, okra, Swiss chard, and eggplants.

Cherry, apple, fig, plum, and peach trees line the farm’s periphery, interspersed with blackberry, raspberry, and strawberry bushes.

Mill Creek grows about 26 unique, organic crops every season on a plot of land roughly a quarter the size of a city block. “But it’s still not really as diverse as it could be,” Asher notes with a smile, while I remain dumbfounded that such a tiny urban farm could be so productive.

The foods we buy in grocery stores are produced much differently from those produced by Mill Creek. Think about what you’ve consumed today: pineapple from Costa Rica, garlic from Thailand, or maybe wheat from a family farm in Nebraska. We’ve become so accustomed to year-round access to global foods that we don’t think twice when we see bananas in grocery stores in January. We would, in fact, get annoyed if supermarkets didn’t carry tropical fruits in the middle of a Northeastern winter. When did food, once so local that it was literally grown in our backyards, become so global?

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PLANTING A GLOBAL ISSUE To answer this question, we first have to look back to the mid1800s. At this time, family-owned farms used clunky hand-held iron tools to churn out just enough produce to feed immediate relatives. Life was difficult for these farmers, but at least they had direct connections to their food. Since the late 1800s, pesticides, advanced machinery like the combine harvester, and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have dramatically increased food production. This greater supply of food has driven prices down; also, data from the United States Census Bureau show that per capita income has steadily increased since World War II. On top of this, global travel has become cheaper and more accessible since the turn of the twentieth century. The combination of these factors has resulted in relatively cheap and easy transport of produce from one part of the globe to another. This is why Philadelphians can enjoy tropical fruits and foreign spices. This is also one reason why we can enjoy out-of-season produce; since the seasons of North and South America are opposite, when produce is out-ofseason here, it can be grown in its appropriate climate in Brazil or Argentina and shipped here.

While these technological advancements may prove necessary for feeding the world’s exponentially growing population, they do not come without repercussions. Pesticides and GMOs have repeatedly come under fire for health reasons, and shipping

When did food, once so local that it was literally grown in our backyards, become so global?

food globally requires an astronomical amount of valuable natural resources, such as water and fossil fuels. In fact, a 2002 study conducted by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health estimated that three calories are needed to produce one calorie of edible food using our current food production system. For grain-fed beef, the ratio is closer to 35 calories needed to produce one calorie of meat. While this “systemization” of food may be productive, it is not necessarily sustainable.

URBAN PARADISE One way to reduce resource waste from food globalization is to shrink the gap between producers and consumers. Philadelphia community gardens like Mill Creek and farmers’ markets aim to do just that. Community gardens are small plots of land—often smaller than a city block—where local residents can grow their own food. Farmers’ markets are outlets to sell the produce grown at community gardens as well as small local farms. There are more than 50 community gardens and almost as many farmers’ markets in Philadelphia, the majority of which are concentrated around University City and South Philadelphia.

Ryan and Suzanna Kuck accidentally founded Preston’s Paradise, a community garden just west of the Philadelphia Zoo, in 2006. The Kucks, both Penn graduates, started growing food in their North Preston Street backyard and soon realized that people were willing to pay for their produce. They saw an opportunity to play up the neighborhood’s strengths, because “people view [these neighborhoods] as having nothing, but living here, we know that’s not true,” Ryan says. A few years later, the couple and a few volunteers were managing the garden and a mobile market that delivered fresh produce to local communities, offering cooking workshops, providing pay-what-you-can meals for 150 friends and neighbors, and conducting volunteer training. Demand for Preston’s services had caused the operation to expand much quicker than anticipated. After having twins in 2013, the Kucks decided to downscale Preston’s Paradise; the couple’s goal now is simply to help neighbors maintain their own gardens and orchards.

In Ryan’s eyes, the organization has “accomplished its job”—it has introduced hundreds of Philadelphia residents to the benefits of local food and created a community within the neighborhood.

While Preston’s Paradise does not exist today in the same way it did five years ago, the experience has given Ryan insight into how people think about food. “Visitors [at Preston’s Paradise] just liked talking about food. They can be overwhelmed with information from the Internet and labels like ‘organic’ and ‘local.’” He noticed

the universal desire to be healthy and the need to have allies in food decisions: “That human element is so important for food.

Your body is your temple, it’s your sacred space…and globalization removes that human connection.”

Like the Kucks, Aviva Asher at Mill Creek has also noticed the social benefits of local food: “Showing people where their food comes from and showing seasonality of food—chemical-free food—in a neighborhood that strives for more self-sufficiency and sovereignty is very important.” Mill Creek sees visitors from all walks of life—from children to the elderly, Chinese to West African, friends to neighbors—and has created a community within the Mill Creek neighborhood. They sell their produce both at the farm and at a farmers’ market at 52nd and Lancaster, which eliminates the tons of fossil fuels that are normally used to ship foods across the world.

Mill Creek also operates a nearly closed-loop system, which means that all materials (including rainwater) that enter the farm are recycled back into its operations. They have a composting system for food waste, a collection system for rainwater, a green roof that captures about 60 gallons of water every season, and even a composting toilet.

“That human element is so important for food. Your body is your temple, it’s your sacred space…and globalization removes that human connection.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT Community gardens are socially important because they break down the isolation that comes with city living, provide spaces for exercise, and create safer neighborhoods. Neighborhoods with active community involvement experience less crime and vandalism than neighborhoods with little community involvement.

Since community gardens rely on volunteers, there is plenty of opportunity for Penn students to get involved. If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, a simple change, like buying bread from the farmers’ market outside of the bookstore instead of Fresh Grocer, supports local businesses. Look for recipes that require overripe bananas instead of tossing them. Eat vegetarian a few times a week to cut down on the enormity of resources spent on meat production. With small daily efforts, we can bring our foods a little closer to home.

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ON THE PROVENANCE OF TUMBLEWEED Written by Samuel Prieto Less man, more tumbleweed, Less city, more trash.

Have you ever watched a black plastic bag roll across a field as the sun sets in the background, Just there, right there Over Penn Park, Where the sun sets?

The sunset— It’s really a beautiful sight.

I like to think That trashmen have a better idea of what kind of world we live in than most— That they see what we all see and the leftovers we don’t.

I prefer the idea That I can use this whole city to collect things from all around the world: Cigarette butts, electronic parts, cellophane wrapping papers, zip ties, shoelaces: The conversations I have with Israel and Puerto Rico and Ecuador and Spain.

This whole city, every whole city, a rolling, tumbling collection of litter that I’ve collected from one place for this one.

The plastic bags and the receipts and clothes tags, all the urban tumbleweeds the world over.

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STIGMAS AND SOLUTIONS

TACKLING THE MISCONCEPTIONS AROUND MENSTRUATION IN INDIA Written by Abigail McGuckin

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here’s a pull deep in my lower abdomen that’s followed by a trickle down my inner thigh. I panic. The nearest pharmacy is two blocks away, so I locate the nearest woman and ask for a tampon. My period panic is short-lived, knowing feminine hygiene products are easily accessible in the United States. However, the same cannot be said for many women around the world. The reality is that the majority of women in developing regions have limited access to feminine hygiene products due to cultural stigmas that prevent their sale and distribution. Women struggle to gain social acceptance in seeking feminine products and suffer physically from unsanitary menstrual control alternatives. Girls miss school.

Women are shamed.

According to The Girl Effect, an initiative funded by the United Nations to end cycles of poverty by investing in girls, a staggering one out of four girls in rural India will drop out of school once they begin to menstruate. According to Dr. Marni Sommer, an assistant professor of sociomedical sciences at Columbia University, “Menstruation is not something a girl is going to openly admit that she misses school for. Some girls may leave school for a few hours each day skipping class, while others may skip school altogether.”

Girls have difficulty managing their periods in India, where only 12 percent of women use sanitary pads. Due to inadequate access to feminine hygiene products, these girls are forced to use unsanitary alternatives to manage their flows. Dirty towels, scraps of fabric, 10 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

sand, ash, dry leaves, and plastic sheets are commonly used. These alternatives are unhygienic, messy, and even fatal.

Menstruation also hinders home life. When asked how menstruation affects her daily routine, 32-year-old Manju Baluni from Uttarakhand, India said in an interview with BBC, “I’m not allowed into the kitchen; I can’t enter the temple; I can’t sit with others.” She explains that the shame surrounding menstruation prevents women from discussing the topic. This shame originates from a section of the ancient and sacred Hindu text, The SrīmadBhāgavatam. In the sixth canto, the god Indra kills Visvarupa, a brahamana, which leads to a series of implications for women, land, trees, and water. “Because women accepted one fourth of the sinful reactions [of Indra], they are untouchable during their menstrual period” (Srīmad-Bhāgavatam 6:9:4). The sense of impurity and embarrassment regarding menstruation is mortifying for women like Manju. However, some women stand to end the stigma. Manju concludes, “I will never let my daughter suffer the way I do when I have my period. My family treats me like an untouchable.”

Manju’s call to end the cultural stigmas around menstruation is reflected by several organizations in India that make sustainable feminine hygiene products. Goonj, for example, is a group that operates in 21 out of India’s 31 states to salvage discarded materials like clothes and rags to be reused and recycled. Their project “Not

Just a Piece of Cloth” produces inexpensive feminine products called MY Pads. Over 2.5 million MY Pads have been made from cotton that would have ended up in a landfill.

With a similar mission to Goonj, Village Volunteers started the Water Hyacinth Pad Project, which utilizes water hyacinth, an invasive aquatic plant, to make biodegradable sanitary pads.

Local factories that produce the pads are run by women trained in social enterprise by Village Volunteers. The pads are cheap and distributed through local women’s groups, schools, hospitals, clinics, NGOs, and governmental organizations.

Village Volunteers is supported by donations and international partners such as local Philadelphia start-up Cora. Struck by the harsh realities of menstruation that girls face in India while studying and working globally for women’s economic empowerment, social entrepreneur Molly Hayward started the Fishtown-headquartered company in 2014 with the mission of providing women across the world with safer feminine hygiene products. The tampons sold domestically by Cora are made with 100 percent organic cotton and shipped as a monthly subscription box. Unlike conventional pad and tampon companies that do not fully disclose their ingredients, Cora is proud to share theirs.

Non-organic feminine hygiene products are laden with chemicals and constructed from rayon, a semi-synthetic fabric. The

combination of rayon and chemicals produced from the cotton bleaching process, like dioxin, are harmful. The FDA has done research on these toxins and has imposed stricter quality standards; however, health risks still exist. According to the Mayo Clinic, Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS) is associated with highly absorbent tampons which users tend to change less frequently. The prolonged tampon usage allows more bacteria like Staphylococcus to grow. Some strains of Staph bacteria are toxic. In October 2012, Los Angeles model Lauren Wasser famously lost her leg to TSS after reporting flu-like symptoms that led to an eventual amputation from the infection. The dangers of toxic shock are relevant to menstruation in India because rather than donating conventional products, Goonj and Village Volunteers have sought out healthier and sustainable alternatives to help women manage their periods.

Menstruation is not a taboo; it is a biological process. The cyclical nature of menstruation causes routine suffering that only ends with menopause or intervention. Women whose period panic merely involves a trip to the nearest pharmacy rather than anxiety about a week of shame need to raise awareness about the realities of managing menstruation domestically and internationally. Enabling women to realize their full potential by adding another week to each month of their life with access to feminine products would result in tapping into untold and under-utilized human capital.

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INTERNATIONAL HONORS PROGRAM TRIPS O

ff and away! Every year, approximately 600 Penn students study abroad in nearly 50 countries. Among the many programs available to Penn students is the International Honors Program (IHP), offered through the School of International Training (SIT). Students in IHP spend a semester with a cohort of undergraduates in four different cities around the world, studying a particular field such as urban studies, public health, or human rights. Students are immersed in interdisciplinary, experiential learning, which involves field research, site visits, guest lectures from local experts, and homestays with families. Check out the experiences of Penn students whose worldviews were changed through IHP.

ADAM COHEN, CAS ‘16

Major: Urban Studies Program: Cities in the 21st Century: People, Planning, and Politics Locations: New York City, United States; São Paulo, Brazil; Cape Town, South Africa; Hanoi, Vietnam “Between extracurriculars, three part-time jobs, and trying to fill all of the different course requirements, I remember finishing my sophomore year feeling like I was too distracted to get all that I could out of Penn. I applied to IHP because I saw it as an opportunity to free myself of some of my responsibilities and engage in a really deep study of three different cities with people whose conversations and arguments weren’t limited to three class hours each week. In this sense, my expectations were met. For the entire semester, I spent two to three hours per night reading critical theory about cities and spent nine hours per day having my interpretations and assumptions turned upside down. Most importantly, I came to realize how cities and neighborhoods are not lived the way they are by accident or nature, but rather are deeply affected by intentional decision-making in other parts of the city, country, and world. This meant that, when I returned to Philadelphia, if I was still interested in improving the quality of life in the inner city, I needed to stop confining my studies to the inner city.

What I failed to predict, and, in many ways, learned most from, was the power of living with host families and seeing the different ways that other people and families organize their lives. In São Paulo, where a drought brought critical water shortages, my host mother taught us to wash dishes using just one cup of water. In Cape Town, my three host brothers, all over six feet tall, chose to share a bedroom so that the third room would be available to IHP students. These were valuable insights and helped me to consider how I would restructure my life when I returned.”

Major: Health & Societies Program: Health and Community: Globalization, Culture, and Care Locations: Washington D.C., United States; New Delhi, India; Cape Town, South Africa; São Paulo, Brazil “At Penn, I had become passionate about global health and social justice issues, but as a Health and Societies major, I felt like I was only learning vicariously through the medium of books or other people. I wanted to grapple with and immerse myself entirely in these issues by living (temporarily) across the world, and IHP was the perfect opportunity to do just that.

IHP was amazing. It was exhausting, yes, but it also solidified my passions and grounded abstract ideas into faces and experiences. I will never forget conversing with beautiful and intelligent girls at a school in rural India, attending service at the mosque with my homestay family in South Africa, and eating fresh palmitos in an agroforest in Brazil. I cannot articulate everything I went through, and I am glad I kept a journal and blog to document the journey. But I did come away with this: We, as Penn students, are so privileged, simply by circumstance and where we are now.

We oftentimes get too caught up in our own ambitions and the “Penn grind” to give to others, let alone others halfway across the world. But going on IHP gave me that breath of fresh air that allowed me to re-center myself and see where my passions lie: not only in caring for and treating individuals, but also in changing, even fighting, the structural circumstances that affect their health and well-being. Although I was constantly traveling, uprooted from my comfort zone, I felt like on IHP I developed a firmer sense of who I was as a person, and what I wanted to do with my life purpose.”

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EILEEN WANG, CAS ’16

THE NEW LANDSCAPE

OF GLOBAL HEALTH Written by Tiffany Huang

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lobalization simultaneously signifies a threat and a promise for the global health landscape. The movement of people and goods made possible by increasingly porous national boundaries is accompanied by serious repercussions, including a heightened risk of acquiring infections like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and more recently, ebola. Physicians and nurses from low-income countries are immigrating to nations that afford them more prosperous job opportunities, and medical tourism and illicit trafficking of genetic materials, tissues, and organs are on the rise. The consequences of globalization are numerous and severe, and yet globalization also offers enormous potential for collaboration between governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and philanthropic foundations to improve the health of communities around the world. The idea of health as a universal human right, as a means and ends of development, has become increasingly influential in the global health discussion and implementation of global health governance. But first, what exactly is global health?

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WHAT IS GLOBAL HEALTH? Professors Robert Beaglehole and Ruth Bonita of the University of Auckland propose that global health is “collaborative transnational research and action for promoting health for all,” a definition that accentuates the need for partnerships between diverse international groups. It’s hard to fully realize the scope of global health. Though national governments address health issues through reform and policy adoption, they cannot meet global health challenges alone: globalization has given rise to NGOs and international health agencies that work to mitigate crises and improve healthcare delivery around the world. Increased cross-border movement allows NGOs and global health organizations to be more involved with problems in remote communities and more connected to populations in need. As political scientist and global health expert Dr. Kelley Lee states, “previous boundaries separating individuals and population groups have become increasingly eroded and redefined,” which demands global health to be a field that “transcend[s] the territorial boundaries of states.” The World Health Organization (WHO), in particular, has become a vital player in the direction and coordination of international health since the mid-20th century.

WHO’S WHO? WHO is a major international agency within the United Nations (UN) that deals with global health issues by creating international health regulations and working with countries to reach health objectives. WHO was established in 1948 following the formation of the UN as the need for a permanent global organization dedicated to health became clear. Since its inception, WHO has provided emergency assistance to disaster-devastated areas, held mass immunization campaigns, standardized drug names, established standards for air and water pollution, and sent response teams to contain outbreaks.

For example, in 2004, WHO developed the International Health Regulations (IHR), an international political instrument that serves as a framework in which organizations can improve response to global health threats by requiring countries to report certain disease outbreaks and public health events. In 2014, WHO developed a registry of foreign medical teams around the world to respond to the ebola threat. Organizations such as International Medical Corps, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, and other NGOs formed medical teams to take on ebola treatment units under training and structures put in place by WHO. More recently in early October of 2015, WHO issued expansive guidelines to fight HIV by potentially putting millions more people on HIV medication, including women and girls in Africa not previously covered.

One of the organization’s most important strengths is its ability to bring worldwide attention to problems in local communities.

WHO utilizes this power by establishing regulations that create tangible change, as shown in its key role in the adoption of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a 2003 treaty that responded to the globalization of the tobacco epidemic.

FCTC: A CASE STUDY Lifestyle-related conditions are becoming more prevalent around the world as the tobacco, fast food, and alcohol industries increasingly target developing countries as a market 14 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

for their products. According to Tikki Pang and G. Emmanuel Guindon from WHO’s Department of Research Policy & Cooperation, these transnational companies have “developed global brand names and aggressive marketing strategies adapted to local situations” that have resulted in a sharp rise in tobacco use in developing countries. Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 84 percent of smokers live in developing countries, a figure that illustrates the health implications of a globalizing market.

FCTC was created to tackle the causes of the tobacco epidemic, including foreign investment, trade liberalization, and tobacco advertising. The treaty aims to reduce tobacco demand through price and tax measures, public awareness, and reduction measures targeting tobacco dependence. According to the 2015 FCTC Global Progress Report, nearly 80 percent of participating countries have developed or strengthened tobacco control legislation in the past decade. For example, Bangladesh has established over a thousand mobile courts for smoking violations and illegal advertising, and countries such as Finland, New Zealand, and Ireland have declared their intent to achieve tobacco-free status.

Notably, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that 84 percent of smokers live in developing countries, a figure that illustrates the health implications of a globalizing market.

However, the implementation of the FCTC was not completely successful in that actual compliance to the framework was suboptimal. The actual design of the treaty resulted in inadequate performance and insufficient intergovernmental cooperation. Nonetheless, the treaty is significant because it is the first time that WHO issued restrictions on an industry that is detrimental to the health of people in the developing world.

The FCTC is an exemplar of international health cooperation between UN and non-UN entities, reaffirming their commitment to bettering the health of people worldwide.

THE QUESTIONABLE SUSTAINABILITY OF AID Temporary relief through aid to ailing communities is not sustainable in regard to long-term development. In many cases, aid is delivered to meet short-term objectives that may lead to dependency on donor countries, organizations, and individuals.

Such temporary aid includes distributing specific medications and providing meals or shoes for children living in economically impoverished areas. In 2010, a Florida businessman decided to donate a million t-shirts leftover from his advertising company to east-African nations as an act of charity. However, critics say that flooding markets with free shirts could bankrupt local vendors already selling clothing and disrupt the local economy.

“The long-term solution is not aid,” asserts Kenyan newspaper columnist and author Rasna Warah. “It may seem cruel that aid should stop, but really it should.”

Sustainable aid practices provide assistance in a way that self-produces and yields positive long-term economic impacts.

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), also known as Doctors Without Borders, is one of the most reputable and largest

CHALLENGES IN GLOBAL HEALTH

humanitarian medical organizations in the world. Its creation was founded on the concept of health as a universal right, that “all people have the right to medical care regardless of gender, race, religion, creed, or political affiliation, and that the needs of these people outweigh respect for national boundaries.”

MSF responds to disease outbreaks and epidemics, treats refugees and displaced people, and offers medical care in more than 60 countries around the world. MSF was the only international health organization offering timely advocacy and aid in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia during the 2014 ebola outbreak, while other health organizations were largely paralyzed by ineffectiveness and bureaucracy. MSF is known for its action on the front lines of innumerable catastrophes and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1999 “in recognition of the organization’s pioneering humanitarian work on several continents.”

On a much smaller scale, the Penn branch of Global Brigades sustainably addresses access to healthcare in foreign rural communities. Each summer, a group of Penn students travels to countries such as Nicaragua, Honduras, and Ghana to set up mobile medical clinics where they hold public health workshops and distribute medicines. Trips last for only seven to nine days, but the organization as a whole follows up and guides the communities to independently maintain an adequate level of healthcare. This transition allows the local communities to be self-sufficient far into the future, without the need to rely on outside aid.

Private foundations are also major players in shaping the global health narrative. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Division partners with organizations to provide health intervention for those in need. The foundation worked with other supporters to achieve the UN’s Millennium Development Goals, a set of eight objectives set forth by the UN to combat issues such as poverty, child death, and disease. Also, the foundation invests in and develops strategies with collaborators, often providing grants for groups that are evaluated to have positive outcomes. Recipients of grants have included Pan American Health Organization in 2015, the Medical Research Council of South Africa in 2015, and the University of Pennsylvania for work in Discovery and Translational Sciences in 2013.

Despite the numerous regulations and policies set forth to improve global health, studies have shown that there is still a discrepancy between promise and actual performance, especially in rural areas. Most health development programs disproportionately target urban areas, resulting in a lack of coverage. Susan Whyte and Harriet Birungi of the University of Copenhagen show that policies similar to WHO regulations were unsuccessful in discontinuing inappropriate use of pharmaceutical medicines on the local level. Such initiatives would have to be able to bridge the gap between the formality of these policies and ordinary people seeking health in their everyday lives.

Health systems are in need of reform. As a 2008 WHO report titled “Primary Health Care—Now More Than Ever” says, “Rather than improving their response capacity and anticipating new challenges, health systems seem to be drifting from one short-term priority to another, increasingly fragmented and without a clear sense of direction.” This includes singledisease focused programs, the drive to reduce costs in treating patients, the inaccessibility of healthcare in many regions, and the inability of poorer people to afford expensive medications.

These inequities demand change that redefines the principles of primary health care and the conversation around health reform.

MAKING GLOBAL HEALTH LOCAL As Craig Janes and Kitty Corbett state in their article “Anthropology and Global Health,” the assemblage of ideologies and representations of health, science, and technology “interact with communities in diverse ways, both shaping and being transformed by local beliefs and practices.”

The challenge lies in adapting global health-promoting policies to the context of individual countries, geographies, cultures, and communities. Because of the complicated ethical, cultural, and economic nuances that differ from community to community, cultural competence needs to be incorporated in the global health debate. Health systems and aid should be sustainable and empowering for the recipients, leaving them in a stronger and more self-sufficient position. The goal is to do good that reproduces itself well into the future.

“Rather than improving their response capacity and anticipating new challenges, health systems seem to be drifting from one short-term priority to another, increasingly fragmented and without a clear sense of direction.”

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DIASPORA

Written and photographed by Alex Fisher

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he means through which we stay connected to our past is different for each nation and culture. Regardless of background, remembering one’s heritage is a key step toward defining one’s identity.

While this may seem like a challenging process, recent trips to the West Philly African & Caribbean Multicultural Festival and Uhuru Flea Market revealed that it may be more simple than not.

As leader of both the Uhuru Movement and the African People’s Socialist Party, Chairman Omali Yeshitela unifies spiritual, politically active individuals. His speeches are sermons, packing profound logic in concise, easy-to-digest punchlines. .

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Jet and Negro Digest represent a discourse community of Black Americans. Serving a niche audience, they fuse serious content with satirical analyses of the African American experience. Looking back through the archives, modern readers can feel transported to another place in another time.

For Philadelphia’s African diaspora, handmade objects keep alive a history of making and doing. Beaded pouches and vibrant textiles are region specific: while they may appear more similar than not, look closer and one sees subtle variation in stitch pattern and color palette.

This Esketsa style dance—full of passion, pageantry, and symbolism— is a tribute to Northern Ethiopia. As Amsale Mitkie’s “Babajalew” pours out of the speakers, stomps, twirls, and smiles fill the stage.

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IT’S COMPLICATED

SECOND-GENERATION STUDENTS REFLECT ON IDENTITY Written by Muriel Leung

W

hat are you?

Something about that question, and the assumptions people make after I answer—half Chinese-American and half Polish-American—seem to imply that family origin and identity are the same, which is not necessarily true. I spoke with secondgeneration American Penn students from diverse backgrounds to explore the various ways in which identity, experience, and perspective can be influenced by mixed heritage.

complexity Because I was raised primarily by my mother, a secondgeneration American, neither my Polish nor my Cantonese background significantly influenced my upbringing. Other second-generation Penn students had limited exposure to 18 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

their cultural roots for a variety of reasons. College freshman Matthew Chen, of Chinese descent, explained that his parents consciously chose to raise him “as American as possible.”

Having experienced discrimination themselves, “they wanted to reduce as much bias as possible towards me. They thought if I were to fit more of the stereotypical roles of what an Asian would be, I would be left out a lot more.”

Other students grew up immersed in their parents’ cultures. “[Syrian culture] is very strong in my daily life—in how my parents raised me, in all the traditions, in all that I ate for lunch and dinner was Arabic food. I was raised as if I was in Syria,” says College freshman James Nassur. Exposed to American culture outside of his home, James has developed a complex cultural identity. James reflects, “In Syria, academics [are] so heavily focused upon, but here, it’s more about who you are.

In that aspect, I feel more American. But in the way I celebrate

holidays, and in my daily routine, that’s more [Syrian].”

Many students steeped in both their heritage and American culture feel that their identities are mixed, sometimes making them feel like outsiders. College freshman Sophie Trotto described having many “quirks,” including “strong opinions and getting angry when someone makes bad pasta,” which she attributes to growing up with her Italian father. Yet she doesn’t speak Italian and feels distant from her Italian family. When her grandparents come to America to visit her father, “they talk amongst themselves, and I’m not a part of it.” College freshman Candy Alfaro reflects that as a second-generation Mexican-American, “you are kind of split between two cultures, and you aren’t really one thing or the other. When I go back to Mexico to visit my family, they say I’m too American, and when I’m here with my friends who are American, I’m too Mexican. It’s really hard to find a balance.”

acceptance Candy has even felt pressure to choose one culture over the other. With Mexican culture defining her home, Candy struggled to fit in with her peers at school. “People would talk about things I didn’t understand. Since I grew up [watching] a lot of what my mom watched—telenovelas—I’d never really seen Disney movies like Finding Nemo or Aladdin.” As a result, she remembers, “For a while, I was very embarrassed of my background and my heritage, so I tried really hard to take on a lot of American culture.”

Cultural insecurity can often be exacerbated by prejudice, or even hatred, toward anything outside the American mainstream.

In the sixth grade, James Nassur was called a terrorist. “That really hurt me,” James remembers, “because I realized that a lot of people associate my culture with acts of violence, when there is so much more to it than that. And for some people, that might stop them from getting to know who I am.”

There is also the problem of “being put in a box,” because of heritage. College freshman Katherine Wu, whose parents immigrated from China, dealt with academic stereotypes about Asian-Americans: “When I would get a good grade...everyone assumed it was so easy for me, because I was Asian.” At my own high school, a boarding school with almost no secondgeneration but many international students, students from the same country often stuck together. This was partially because they felt culturally connected—but also because they were noticeably slighted. Two of my closest friends, who were from Hong Kong, were often ignored and patronized by some American students. As their friend, I was also treated differently.

My roommates were open-minded to other cultures and new experiences. When they visited my home in New York City, for example, we made lasting memories wandering through the different sections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and trying foods from all over the world. Yet many of their peers were not open-minded toward them, and reduced their complexity and humanity into cultural stereotypes.

“When I go back to Mexico to visit my family, they say I’m too American, and when I’m here with my friends who are American, I’m too Mexican. It’s really hard to find a balance.”

For both Maddie and Candy, becoming who they are has involved thought: considering a variety of values and customs, choosing the ones that fit them best, and also learning to respect the ones that don’t.

perspective Living with different cultures, second-generation students are exposed to a variety of often-conflicting values and ideologies.

How do these students ultimately develop their own?

Candy identifies closely with the high value Mexican culture places on family. However, her parents’ emphasis on family life has also led her to feel restricted. “When I was younger, I really wanted to come to the East Coast for school. My parents still wanted me to go to college, but they wanted me to stay close to home.” Ultimately, her parents came to see Penn as a great opportunity for her and supported her decision to come here, allowing her to reconcile the significance of family with the importance she has independently come to place on more independent initiative-taking.

Maddie Alvendia—of Filipino descent on her father’s side— has had a similarly mixed relationship with Filipino values.

Growing up, her father helped her appreciate what she believes is a more relaxed Filipino lifestyle. She remembers, “Dad was very laid back and just kind of enjoyed life and [had] fun, while Mom was always the one who took me to my violin lessons or parent-teacher conferences.” But although she has embraced her father’s day-to-day approach to life, Maddie has actually been alienated by her Filipino family’s more traditional, conservative political beliefs and has become politically liberal.

She noted, however, that her home environment also helped her respect conservative views—that “this is traditional, this is something [they] believe in.”

For both Maddie and Candy, becoming who they are has involved thought: considering a variety of values and customs, choosing the ones that fit them best, and also learning to respect the ones that don’t.

life at penn For most of these students, Penn is a diverse and accepting home where they can be themselves. “Here,” comments James, “everyone admires it if you’re different.” As Maddie describes it, “Penn is more of an international global culture where we are so used to living next to someone from China that it’s very normal to embrace [differences].”

Many second-generation students actually feel closer to their cultural roots since coming here. James has involved himself with Penn’s Arabic House and is taking a class called “Cultural Heritage, Politics, and War in the Middle East.” Maddie, who is taking beginner classes in Tagalog, says that since coming to Penn, she even has a better relationship with her grandparents: “I call them every week to work on my homework together.”

And it’s not just connecting to your own heritage—it’s learning about others. “People are really involved with their culture here,” says Maddie. “[My friends] are always dragging me to their events, or telling me to come to their dance shows, so it’s super easy to learn about people’s cultures.“ Candy is excited to cook for her friends and to “show them what a real Mexican dish is.” As Katherine believes, diverse cultural experiences are “one of the great things about Penn,” and something that we should all take advantage of.

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S L U M I F

I C A T I O N

Written by Rebecca Tan

U

rbanization is not a new phenomenon, but the rate at which it has been occurring since the 1950s is. The expansion of global markets brought an exponential increase in labor and employment, motivating millions to leave rural villages to pursue promised opportunities in cities. Migrants voyaging into cities in search of better jobs, neighborhoods, and futures wind up instead in slums: overcrowded, informal settlements characterized by the same profound poverty that its residents sought to escape.

Slums are an awful, inconvenient reality. It is much easier, and certainly more common, for us to celebrate the wonders of globalization than it is to confront the gross repercussions of this same phenomenon. The United Nations’ 2009 Urban Agglomerations Wall Chart declared that for the first time in history, more people lived in cities than in rural areas. This is a staggering statistic, still used today to represent the narrative of urbanization. Yet the complicated issues that accompany this demographic shift are often overlooked.

AN ONGOING CHALLENGE A 2003 UN Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat) report titled “The Challenge of the Slum” underscored slum housing as a global concern. The report described a class of urban poor “trapped in an informal and illegal world, in residences not reflected on maps”—a new class of people that formed the labor base of our new global economy, but, officially speaking, did not exist.

Twelve years on, the situation has only deteriorated. Globally, there are currently 3.5 billion people living in cities, with one billion of those living in slums. This figure is projected to double by 2030.

Rapid urbanization leads to a situation in which infrastructure requirements of a city and its population are not met, leading to the creation of slums. This is why slums are most prevalent in countries with nascent governments, though exceptions do exist. For example, although Southeast Asia has the third highest proportion of slum-dwellers in the world (31 percent) after Africa and South Asia, its smallest constituent, Singapore, has become known worldwide for its effective housing policy. From 1960 to 1965, the five years leading up to its independence, Singapore’s fledging government worked

with the private sector to successfully address a deficit of 147,000 housing units. Today, 85 percent of the population occupy government-provided residential estates, while the rest live in privately owned condominiums or property. Contrast this to the state of public housing in Indonesia, where approximately 20 percent of people live in slums. There are frequent reports of the government embezzling funds allocated to housing improvements; just last year, the Public Housing Ministry was investigated for siphoning some one trillion Indonesian rupees away from housing projects in the district of East Nusa Tenggara.

Here, we can observe how slums are enabled and disenabled by the policies of their administrators. Inherent difficulties arise while addressing slum housing through policy. Slum communities materialize in wildly unpredictable spaces that can be challenging for the government to develop. In Lagos, Nigeria, some 85,000 people currently reside in a floating slum called Makoko, eating and sleeping in wooden houses lifted a few feet above their own refuse. So too in Caracas, where in 2005, some 3,000 people invaded an unfinished skyscraper known as the Tower of David, forming what is now known as the world’s tallest slum.

Unfortunately, because slum dwellers institutionally lack power, these policies often veer towards apathy. In Nairobi, Kenya, politicians rarely, if ever, visit the 200 or so slums around the city, even though 60 percent of the capital’s population resides in these settlements. Makoko residents were bewildered when authorities arrived to raze their slum in 2012. Community leader Steve Adji remarked, “The governor promised us schools and hospitals at election time, and we voted for him.

Nobody ever mentioned we would lose our homes.” The institutionalized voicelessness of the urban poor means that more often than not, authorities can make and break promises

Dharavi, Mumbai, India 22 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

to them without the risk of serious political backlash.

THE REALITY OF SLUMS When used in formal discourse, “urban poverty” is often represented in facts, percentages, and census results. These discussions make the case for the existence of poverty, but rarely provide the tools to fathom its quotidian implications.

As informal settlements, slums are not organized around centrally controlled power grids or sewage systems. In the Nairobi slum Kibera, there is approximately one toilet for every 800 people. People defecate in public spaces or otherwise employ “flying toilets”: polythene bags thrown into the night wind—nature’s version of a flush. A 2008 World Bank report found that the lack of an adequate sanitation system in Indonesia causes close to 50,000 premature deaths annually.

This statistic is shocking, but for Ibu Nunung, a resident of the Jakarta Muara Angke slum, where people regularly bathe in murky water from fish ponds, it merely describes an established lifestyle. “We often have itchy skin,” reflected Nunung, “but I don’t feel disgusted at all. I’ve gotten used to it.”

The lack of basic amenities also cultivates illegal activity. In Dharavi, Mumbai, India’s largest slum, with a population close to one million, residents deprived of utilities find themselves at the mercy of local gangsters, called goondas in Hindi. These goondas monopolize and allocate resources in the absence of a regulatory body. In Venezuela, the most weaponized country in the world, where some 24,000 people are routinely murdered each year, slums are run by armed gangsters, or malandros. With no effective form of governmental protection, slum dwellers can do little but submit to the violence of their communities.

Lawlessness is pervasive in slums not just because of administrative negligence, but also because there are numerous infrastructural challenges that impede law enforcers from operating effectively. In 2002, inter-communal violence in the Lagos slum Mushin took four days to quell because authorities were belatedly notified and then faced difficulty in penetrating the slum. These delays led to the deaths of more than a hundred residents.

In 2006, The New Yorker’s George Packer noted acutely that, “the really disturbing thing about Lagos’s pickers and venders is that their lives have essentially nothing to do with ours. They scavenge an existence beyond the margins of macroeconomics.” Poverty is so ubiquitous in cities that economic and political leaders often become desensitized to its existence, unable to sustain interest in a problem so widespread and complicated. The injustice here is that slum dwellers have to grapple with not only the material conditions of their residences, but also with the idea that there is little possibility of redress.

Migrants voyaging into cities in search of better jobs, neighborhoods, futures, wind up instead in slums: overcrowded, informal settlements characterized by the same profound poverty that its residents sought to escape.

Slum communities materialize in wildly unpredictable spaces that can be challenging for the government to develop.

A GULF OF EMPATHY Even as we strive to fathom the conditions of urban poverty, we have to be wary of oversimplification. The millions of people in Africa, Asia, and Central America migrating into cities do not uniformly experience poverty and opportunity, or relate to either of these experiences in the same way. While we have a responsibility to confront the dire living conditions with which slum-dwellers grapple, we cannot do it in a way that caricatures these individuals as a powerless, homogenous entity.

For all that has been written, the masses of people in Dharavi, Makoko, and the Tower of David are much more than just “victims.” Katherine Boo, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity told Guernica Magazine that “people may be part of a larger story or structure, but they’re still people.

The only way readers will get invested in what potential is being squandered is if they engage with the people in this story as individuals.”

Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, described Lagos as “a protean organism that creatively defies constrictive Western ideas of urban order.”

Teddy Cruz, Professor at University of California San Diego, agrees, expressing that slums “have sophisticated, participatory practices, a light way of occupying the land.” Here, Cruz refers to the relative sustainability of slum communities: they get by with less water and electricity, and they come up with unique ways to share these scarce resources. On an economic level, slum dwellers are exceptionally entrepreneurial, possessing the ability to convert virtually any space into a market. While it is vital that we educate ourselves on the inadequacies of slum housing, that understanding must be accompanied by the acknowledgement that slums also possess strengths and hold valuable lessons in urban development.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE The more we learn about urban poverty, the more it seems as though “the challenge of the slum” is hopelessly complicated.

Yet, it is precisely this complexity that makes the measures taken to address slum housing particularly innovative and valiant.

In 2010, The Economist reported that even though the absolute number of slum dwellers around the world was set to rise, there were specific regions where the situation was improving. China and India, for example, had “already lifted 125 million people out of slum conditions in recent years,” mostly by providing opportunities for families to rise into the middle class.

On a supranational level, UN-Habitat consistently works with other organizations to provide funding for governments to address housing deficits. While such global initiatives are certainly heartening, their efficacy is often compromised by

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 23

Humanitarian aid is certainly necessary, but it only becomes meaningful if it is framed within the genuine needs and desires of the slum dwellers. constraints or misuse of funds on the ground. For example, the Nigerian government received a 200 million dollar loan from the World Bank in 2013 to provide low-income housing, but it was recently found to have used the funds to build high-end homes, shopping centers and offices instead.

The involvement of external bodies often tends to exclude the input of the most important stakeholder of all: the residents of the slums. Humanitarian aid is certainly necessary, but it only becomes meaningful if it is framed within the genuine needs and desires of the slum dwellers. Journalist Mark Jacobson demonstrated this in a piece on Dharavi for National Geographic Magazine: “What need do I have of my own toilet?” asks Nagamma Shilpiri, who lives with her crippled father and 13 other relatives in two 150-square-foot rooms. Certainly, Shilpiri is embarrassed by the lack of privacy when she squats in the early morning haze beside Mahim Creek. But the idea of a personal flush toilet offends her. To use all that water for so few people seems a stupid, even sinful, waste.”

Jacobson’s reporting calls into question a larger, existential problem for slums. Given the dire living conditions in these settlements as well as the threat that they pose to the overall real estate value of the city, governments often face the conundrum of whether slums should be allowed to exist at all. For example, Dharavi, India’s largest slum in the country’s most expensive

Makoko, Lagos, Nigeria 24 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

city, is estimated to represent close to 10 billion dollars in dead capital, which refers to the decreased value of informally held property.

In 1990, the Nigerian government sent bulldozers and soldiers to raze the slum settlements at Makoko, leaving some 250,000 people homeless. In 2005, the Zimbabwean government launched “Operation Murambatsvina,” a demolition of slums in the city of Harare that led to some 700,000 people losing either their homes, their source of livelihood, or both. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, authorities have begun a massive cleanup of the city’s favelas in anticipation of the 2016 Olympic games. Activists estimate that 170,000 people have already been evicted from their homes to make space for Olympic infrastructure that will accommodate visitors from around the world.

Slums are symptoms of serious economic and political chasms that only become less visible if the communities that suffer in them are broken up.

Slums are symptoms of serious economic and political chasms that only become less visible if the communities that suffer in them are broken up. “What people really want,” says Makoko resident Afose Sulayman, “is the government to help them develop the community, instead of trying to take the land.” UN-Habitat proposes a twin-track approach: improving the supply and affordability of new housing options with the long term goal of eliminating slums, while undertaking stopgap measures to ensure the basic habitability of existing slums.

However, as seen with testimonies like Shilpiri’s, the latter is a tricky business because it depends on the receptivity of the residents. Local initiatives tend to fare better because they are targeted towards specific problems faced on the ground. For example, in 2013, Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyimi designed a floating school for Makoko. His construction, which features low-cost, wooden scaffolding, an in-built rainwater collection system, and composting toilets, was not only an urgent alternative to the only other school in Makoko, but one that fit the local context well.

Katherine Boo wrote that “the people who wield power often have the most simplistic grasp of its grip on society,” highlighting that privilege is often not just the inability to care about poverty, but the inability to fathom the nuances and variations of its experience. Whether we are striving to understand the causes or solutions of urban poverty, whether we are looking at a slum in Mumbai or Lagos, we need first and foremost to remember that the complexities which exist in our societies, and indeed in ourselves, exist in these places as well.

TEACHING ENGLISH ABROAD AN ETHICAL APPROACH Written by Gabriela Goitía Vázquez

G

oogle “teach English abroad” and you’ll find that travelling to another country to become a teacher is surprisingly easy. All you have to do is find an abroad program that you like, interview for a job placement, and off you go.

Organizations like Council on International Educational Exchange, LanguageCorps, Interexchange, and even the Fulbright Student Program offer placements in Peru, the Dominican Republic, Vietnam, and Morocco, among others. The companies flaunt missions that promote cultural understanding, using phrases like “globally interdependent” and “diversity of cultures.” All of these programs are based on the premise that teaching English abroad will help developing countries partake in a globalized world. This premise is problematic and ultimately poses the important ethical question: Who benefits from young graduates traveling to other countries to teach English?

First, programs that teach English abroad establish English as a more important language than those native to other countries. Some may argue that in a globalized world, we need one language to connect to one another, and for better or worse, that language is English. But globalization does not have to imply homogeneity. The problem emerges when learning English directly counters the preservation and continuity of indigenous languages. Teaching English in and of itself is not linguistic imperialism. Linguistic imperialism occurs when developing countries value English over indigenous languages, thus diminishing funding for languages that both conserve cultural identity and develop domestic education infrastructure.

Second, teachers are not required to learn the language of the country where they’ll be teaching. How can teaching

English abroad promote cross-cultural awareness if language learning is one-sided? Teaching programs should promote true cross-cultural exchange by valuing native languages as much as they value English. Recent college graduates should be expected to learn as much about other countries as foreign students are expected to learn English and actively promote local language preservation.

Third, teachers only stay for a period of one to two years.

This means schools become reliant on foreign teachers who come for a year at a time, instead of developing their own English language curriculum. These programs should provide training for in-country teachers to become full-time English teachers. Then, foreign countries can develop self-sufficient language programs.

Often, teaching abroad programs capitalize on the situation by linking English-speaking college graduates to students who want to learn English in other parts of the world. Whether college graduates are drawn to the prospect of teaching abroad due to wanderlust or by a genuine intention to do good, the question still remains: who are these programs really benefiting? Ethical participation in these programs comes down to intention. If you want to make a difference in a foreign country, you have to make sure the program you’re participating in values long-term change. You must be willing to do research, learn a new language, and promote bilateral cultural exchange. You have to view yourself not as a savior, but as a facilitator for genuine educational reform. In other words, before you decide whether or not to go abroad and teach, reevaluate who will be affected by your actions, and whether or not your intentions line up with the impact you want to make.

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HUMAN RIGHTS AROUND THE WORLD Written by Armaan Chandra

ABORTION 100

100 99 99

90 80

76 77

79 70

70

75 76

72 71

74 65

63

67

62

60

60

63

50 40 40

40

42

30 20 10 0 To save a woman's life To preserve physical health

To preserve mental health

In case of rape or incest

1996

2005

Because of foetal impairment

For economic or social reasons

On request

ABORTION PROHIBITED IN ANY CIRCUMSTANCE: CHILE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC EL SALVADOR THE HOLY SEE MALTA NICARAGUA

2011

LEGAL GROUNDS ON WHICH ABORTION IS PERMITTED IN THE WORLD, 1996-2001 (PERCENTAGE OF WORLD POPULATION)

FREEDOM OF PRESS “Scores are assigned in response to 23 methodology questions that seek to capture the varied ways in which pressure can be placed on the flow of objective information and the ability of media platforms—whether print outlets, broadcast stations, news websites, blogs on public affairs, or social media that carry news content— to operate freely and without fear of repercussions. Issues covered by the methodology include the legal and regulatory environment in which media operate; the degree of partisan control over news content; political influences on reporting and access to information; the public’s ability to access diverse sources of information; violations of press freedom ranging from the murder of journalists and bloggers to other extralegal abuse and harassment; and economic pressures on media outlets and their means of distribution.”

- Freedom House report (Press Freedom in 2014: Harsh Laws and Violence Drive Global Decline)

BIGGEST GAINS AND DECLINES, 2010-2014 26 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

GUN VIOLENCE

HOMICIDE MECHANISM, BY REGION (2012 OR LATEST YEAR)

PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF VICTIMS OF HOMICIDE, BY SEX AND SELECTED AGE GROUP (2012 OR LATEST YEAR)

SAME SEX MARRIAGE

Sources: UN Department of Social and Economic Affairs, Freedom House, UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Freedom to Marry.

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R E V I S I O N I ST H I STO R Y A PROJECT FOR THE MAINTENANCE OF A CLEAN NATIONAL CONSCIENCE

28 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

Written by Kyra Schulman THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 29

I

n Paris in July 1942, my grandmother and great-grandmother escaped deportation to Auschwitz. They had been warned by a policeman that a raid was imminent and that they should go into hiding. French police arrived at their Boulevard Massena address several days later looking for the Chapiro family as a part of the notorious Velodrome d’Hiver roundup in which approximately 13,000 Parisian Jews were deported to Auschwitz. The two women joined my great-grandfather, who had fled Paris in April of 1942, in Lyon. There, the family went into hiding.

But on August 7th, 1944, my great-grandfather was caught in a random raid, taken to Montluc Prison, and then sent on the very last train from France to Auschwitz on August 11th. He died in Mauthausen following a death march from Auschwitz as a part of the liquidation of the camp. My grandmother and greatgrandmother survived the war.

I spent this past summer in Budapest, Hungary, working at the Open Society Archives, the archive affiliated with George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. After work one day, following the advice of my supervisor, I took an extended route home walking

by Szabadság tér (Liberty Square). There, I found a monument depicting the Archangel Gabriel holding Hungary’s coronation orb as an eagle prepared to attack. The angel represents a victimized Hungary that had fallen prey to the imperial eagle of Nazi Germany.

The following day, I brought up the subject of the monument at the archives. My supervisor explained to me that the monument was erected overnight in July 2014 by the Orbán government. The monument presents Hungary during World War II as a victim of Nazi Germany. And, accordingly, it fosters a growing government-sponsored belief that Hungary should bear no responsibility for the genocide that occurred under German occupation. In reality, Hungary—an Axis power until March 1944—readily assisted with the deportation and murder of approximately 600,000 Hungarian Jews. As Istvan Rev, the director of Open Society Archives and professor at Central European University, writes, “[t]he Hungarians wanted to send six transports a day, and as a compromise, Eichmann suggested two trainloads every other day.”

The monument is an attempt on the part of the Hungarian government to rewrite their role in World War II and a part of a larger project taken on by the current Hungarian government to cultivate Hungary’s “innocent victim” status in the periods of occupation. This is part of a larger, global trend of revisionist history that threatens to retell history inaccurately. This trend is an affront to my family and others like mine.

HUNGARY IN WORLD WAR II In 1940, Hungary, under the leadership of Admiral Horthy, joined the Axis powers. The following year, Hungary declared war on the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Kamenets Podolskii deportations took place that same year, amounting to the first mass killing of Hungarian Jews. In 1944, fearing that the Hungarians intended to leave the Axis partnership, Adolf Hitler decided to occupy the country.

Following Admiral Horthy’s consent, German troops arrived in Hungary. The Hungarian government issued a statement when the German troops arrived, stating, “On the basis of a mutual agreement, German troops have arrived in Hungary in order to help Hungary to fight more effectively in the common war against the common enemy… The two allied governments agree that in the spirit of traditional friendship and military co-operation, 30 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

the arrival of the troops would contribute to the final victory of our joint cause.” The German troops received no resistance on entering the country. That summer, approximately 440,000 Jews were sent to concentrations camps. On July 7th, Horthy ordered a stop to the deportations and attempted to reach an armistice with the Soviet Union. In October, the Germans arrested Horthy and replaced him with Ferenc Szalasi, the leader of the Hungarian fascist party (Arrow Cross). In January 1945, Hungary signed an armistice with the Soviets. Soviet troops chased out the remaining Germans and members of the Hungarian Arrow Cross.

THE CURRENT POLITICAL CLIMATE IN HUNGARY Hungary, not unlike other countries in Europe today, has experienced a rise in support for right-wing nationalist parties. The current Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, is the president of the right-wing Fidesz party. Fidesz was founded as an anticommunist liberal party. Today, it is considered a center-right, pro-church, and pro-family party. The party’s ideology can be seen as a mix of national conservatism and light euro-skepticism.

In the 2014 elections, Fidesz formed a coalition with the rightwing Christian Democratic People’s Party (Kereszténydemokrata Néppárt, KDNP). The Fidesz-KDNP government adopted a new constitution on taking office that stated, “We date the restoration of our country’s self-determination, lost on the nineteenth day of March 1944, from the second day of May 1990, when the first freely elected body of popular representation was formed.” This new constitution claims that Hungary bears no responsibility for its actions in the years of lost “self-determination” and, therefore, should allow the country to claim World War II victim status.

THE REVISIONIST PROJECT IN HUNGARY Prime Minister Orbán has launched a project of revisionist history that goes beyond just words in the constitution. In 2013, a government-backed historical agency, VERITAS Történetkutató Intézet (VERITAS Research Institute for History), was formed.

According to the VERITAS website, “The government of Hungary created [VERITAS] with the explicit goal of studying and reevaluating the historical research of Hungary’s past one hundred fifty years, especially of those historical events generating much debate but never having reached a consensus understanding.”

The monument is an attempt on the part of the Hungarian government to rewrite their role in World War II and a part of a larger project taken on by the current Hungarian government to cultivate Hungary’s “innocent victim” status in the periods of occupation.

In January 2014, the Orbán government appointed Sándor Szakály as director of VERITAS. Szakály is regarded as an expert on the Hungarian military during World War II. He is the author of a number of publications including The Hungarian Military Elite 1938 to 1945 and Was There an Alternative? Hungary during World War II. Szakály’s appointment received some pushback following a statement made where he referred to the Kamenets

Szabadság tér (Liberty Square), Budapest, Hungary

Podolskii deportations—a 1941 deportation of approximately 23,400 Jews to Ukraine, where the majority were murdered— as “police action against aliens.” Mazsihisz, a Hungarian Jewish umbrella organization that represents the Hungarian Jewish community, demanded his removal. The group claimed that “Szakály attempted to diminish the then-government’s responsibility” and that “this attempt to falsify history warrants the resignation of the institute’s leader.”

Under Szakály’s direction, VERITAS hosted a conference called “From Occupation to Occupation.” The conference focused on the period from German occupation in 1944 to the fall of the communist regime in 1989. It took place in Hungary’s Parliament, where specialists presented what they called a “new historical truth.” Former Hungarian Prime Minister and head of the VERITAS advisory board, Péter Boross, said that the period in question has been “misinterpreted” since the fall of the communist regime. One of the greatest misinterpretations, according to Boross, is the claim that the Nazis had “Hungarian collaborators.” Boross called this misinterpretation a “spiritual trend that enjoys destroying Hungarian national consciousness.”

The Orbán government is in the process of creating a new Holocaust memorial museum in Hungary called The House of Fates. The new museum begins its history in 1944 following the German occupation with the ghettoization and deportation of the Jews. Judit Molnar, a Hungarian Holocaust historian, is appalled by the representation of the Holocaust in Hungary by the House of Fates. Molnar comments, “[Those responsible] for what happened here during the Holocaust, according to the new Holocaust exhibition concept, were only the German Nazis and the members of the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross Party—excluding the responsibility of the then-Hungarian Horthy regime.”

“[Those responsible] for what happened here during the Holocaust, according to the new Holocaust exhibition concept, were only the German Nazis and the members of the Hungarian Nazi party, the Arrow Cross Party—excluding the responsibility of the then-Hungarian Horthy regime.”

A GLOBAL TREND In 2014, the monument I saw in Szabadság tér was erected. I spoke with a librarian working in the University of California’s Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive at Central European University in Budapest about the monument. He told me that he was a part of a group, Eleven Emlékmű Szentendrén, that meets in the square every evening to protest the monument.

He gave me the group’s manifesto, which is entitled, “Civilians Protest Against Monument Falsifying History.” The manifesto claims, “The monument is a lie serving a political intention.

Hungary was a faithful ally of Hitler’s Germany in World War II… On March 19, 1944, the arriving German troops were received with bouquets rather than bullets.”

However, attempts to revise history are not unique to Hungary; rather, revisionist history is a global trend. In Austria, the Holocaust memorial in Vienna at Judenplatz has an inscription that reads, “In commemoration of more than 65,000 Austrian Jews who were killed by the Nazis between 1938 and 1945.” Nothing is said about how the Austrians, as a whole, did not object to the deportations of their Jewish neighbors and in many instances assisted with the deportations. Interestingly, Austrian artist Ruth Beckermann set THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 31

up a video by the Monument Against War and Fascism depicting the “Missing Image” of Austrians cheering as the Nazis marched into Vienna in 1938.

Post World War II France did not acknowledge the role played by the collaborating Vichy government in deportations. It was not until 1995 in a speech given by President Jacques Chirac that the French state recognized their role in the Holocaust. Chirac said, “These dark hours forever sully our history and are an insult to our past and our traditions… Yes, the criminal folly of the occupiers was seconded by the French, by the French state.”

The Turkish government claims that numbers for the Armenian genocide are “exaggerated” and even debate the use of the word “genocide” in describing the event. In 2005, writer Orhan Pamuk was indicted after claiming that “thirty-thousand Kurds and one million Armenians were killed in these lands.”

In Russia, President Dmitri Medvedev established the Presidential Commission of the Russian Federation to Counter Attempts to Falsify History to the Detriment of Russia’s Interests in 2009. Additionally, in 2004, a new textbook was assigned in Russian schools: History of Russia and the World in the 20th Century by Nikita Zagladin. The textbook has received criticism for its omission of the negative details in Russian history. According

to journalist Maria Danilova, “[The textbook] is virtually mute on the deportation of ethnic groups under Stalin that left hundreds of thousands dead and sowed the resentment that exploded in Chechnya a half-century later. The gulag gets scant attention and anti-Semitism the barest of mentions.”

In 1935, speaking to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill warned against the dangers of not learning from history: “Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong— these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.” We should work to learn from mistakes in the past rather than rewrite them. Eugene McLaughlin, John Muncie, and Gordon Hughes conclude in their book, Criminological Perspectives, that “if the Turkish government can deny that the Armenian genocide happened; if revisionist historians and neoNazis deny that Holocaust took place; if powerful states all around the world today can systematically deny the systematic violations of human rights they are carrying out—then we know that we’re in bad shape.”

Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial, Vienna, Austria.

Inscription: “In commemoration of more than 65,000 Austrian Jews who were killed by the Nazis between 1938 and 1945.”

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IN PURSUIT OF FAIR TRADE TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND LABOR RIGHTS Written by Shelby Barlow

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 33

Rana Plaza, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2013

I

ndustrial labor conditions in low-income countries were thrust into the spotlight in April 2013 when a building containing five garment factories collapsed. More than 1,100 people were killed and an additional 2,000 were injured. It is the worst disaster in the history of the garment industry to date. This factory building, known as the Rana Plaza and located in Dhaka, Bangladesh, employed a staff comprised almost entirely of young women, ages 18 to 20, who worked 13 to 15 hour shifts daily to produce apparel for nearly all of the top brands and retailers in the world. Workers at the Rana Plaza—the majority of whom were women—earned the lowest wages among garment workers across the world. The newest workers in the Rana Plaza, dubbed “helpers,” received the equivalent of only 12 American cents an hour, while the junior operators and senior sewers took home 22 to 24 cents an hour.

Compensation for a 90- to 100-hour work week was less than 20 dollars for the average worker.

The day before the collapse, an engineer inspected the building and reported that it was unsafe for human habitation.

The upper levels, which housed the heavy generators that would eventually cause the collapse, were constructed illegally with subpar materials. Large cracks were clearly visible in the walls. Despite this and the fearful protests of the people working in Rana Plaza, the owners of the factories within the

Sustainable manufacturing involves creating products through economically-sound processes which minimize negative environmental impacts, while fair trade promotes securing and protecting the rights of marginalized workers and increasing equity in international trading partnerships.

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building demanded that their employees continue to work. At about 8 a.m. on April 24th, the building’s electricity went out.

When the emergency generators powered on, the eight-story building began to shake. The cracks in the walls split open.

Within minutes, the entire building was reduced to rubble— under which thousands of people lay crushed and killed.

When American students are taught about the Industrial Revolution, we are all horrified (and fascinated) by the deplorable working conditions that defined the era. We are never taught that the burden of those conditions now rests on the shoulders of men and women in countries that utilize an abundance of cheap labor to compete in the global economy.

We are never told that the shirts we throw on and the shoes we lace up every morning are carefully stitched by the hands of a young woman, who, after working for 13 hours that day, can still barely afford to feed herself. The movement for sustainable manufacturing and fair trade aims to correct this.

Sustainable manufacturing involves creating products through economically-sound processes which minimize negative environmental impacts, while fair trade promotes securing and protecting the rights of marginalized workers and increasing equity in international trading partnerships.

In the 1990s, Nike Inc. came under fire when accusations of abusive labor practices emerged after the company outsourced labor overseas to take advantage of lower costs.

Jeff Ballinger, Director of Press for Change, a consumer information organization dedicated to monitoring labor rights issues in developing nations, published an exposé of Nike in 1992 that revealed miserable working conditions. His report documented the dreadfully low wages that employees received and described the crowded, unsafe factory environments.

With sales plummeting and its public image tarnished, Nike acted swiftly to reform its factory policies and practices, maintaining an admirable level of transparency throughout the process. “The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse,” CEO Phil Knight said in a 1998 speech addressing Nike’s plan to improve. “I truly believe the American consumer doesn’t want to buy products made under abusive conditions.” Nike pledged to increase supervision in its factories and to adopt United States Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) clean air standards. Additionally, the company established a department dedicated to improving conditions

for its workers, and Knight announced that the minimum wage would be raised for all employees.

Like Nike, other big-name brands have pledged to ensure better conditions for workers, but many struggle to uphold their promises. The main supply of the raw materials sourced

by Apple Inc. can be traced to the Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia, where children as young as 12 years old are either enslaved or paid pennies to dig minerals out of mines with their bare hands. They wear no protective gear and often enter the mines without supervision. Working in mines as deep as 70 feet, they risk being buried alive. Some die from sheer exhaustion. The materials are then sent to Foxconn, a plant headquartered in Shenzhen, China, that is notorious for allegations of abusive labor conditions. In 2010, 17 employees attempted suicide in response to pay cuts—14 were successful.

Foxconn responded by placing “anti-suicide” nets around the building and forcing all employees to sign an agreement that neither they nor their descendants would sue the company as a result of an unexpected injury, death, or suicide.

Apple’s questionable labor practices extend to United States soil. The average employee in an Apple store makes 11 to 12 dollars per hour, which appears respectable given that the federal minimum wage is US$7.25 per hour. However, as C. Robert Gibson asserted in a scathing Huffington Post article, “even though Apple is raking in massive, record profits by selling expensive technology, and even though Apple has twice more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury, and even though Apple pays a far lower effective tax rate than the average American family, their workers make so little that they qualify for food stamps and Medicaid.” PandoDaily—a web publication that offers news and analysis focused on technology companies and startups—revealed in a 2014 investigation that Apple and other leading technology companies like Google, Hewlett Packard, and Comcast formed a coalition in an effort to keep wages for engineers and coding experts at a nearly identical rate across all companies involved. This wage conspiracy, which violates a worker’s right to seek competitive pay, impacts over a million employees.

“Even though Apple is raking in massive, record profits by selling expensive technology, and even though Apple has twice more cash on hand than the U.S. Treasury, and even though Apple pays a far lower effective tax rate than the average American family, their workers make so little that they qualify for food stamps and Medicaid.”

Apple can afford to source its materials ethically and allow its employees to share in the skyrocketing profits that are currently reserved for executives and shareholders. To put it in Gibson’s words, “The decision will ultimately be up to us, the buyers. We either have to collectively decide that we’ll hold onto our current products as long as we can until the promise of sustainable manufacturing is made, or to line up like cattle

Fair trade brands, such as American Apparel, are usually very expensive, and even with a fair trade certification, there is no guarantee that workers were not exploited in the making of the product. for the next level of expensive gadgets made possible by a tremendous amount of human suffering.”

More and more companies have partnered with groups like the World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) and have therefore committed to providing fair wages and acceptable working conditions. Members of WFTO must complete self-assessments and produce reports of employee wages.

Additionally, members are subjected to random factory inspections. This holds members to higher standards of accountability and, in return, they earn credibility as a fair trade brand. However, a fair trade label does not always guarantee fair trade, as demonstrated by the accusations Victoria’s Secret faced in 2011. Parent company L Brands Inc. said that in 2007, it “established a pilot program to purchase fair trade-certified organic cotton from primarily women farmers in Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa that struggles with endemic poverty.” They were committed to the program “because of its potential to generate life-changing opportunities for some of the world’s poorest women.”

Although the farm from which Victoria’s Secret harvested its cotton was certified for its fair and organic trade practices, Bloomberg, a private technology and media company, discovered that the organically-grown cotton was being harvested unethically. Most of the workers that maintained the fields were children. The official report focused on the narrative of a 13-year-old foster child named Clarisse, who started her work everyday at sunrise. Because herbicides and pesticides are not used on organic crops, her first task was to pick worms and bugs from individual cotton plants. Once finished, Clarisse hauled buckets of manure compost on her head half a mile to the cotton field, where she finished her day by digging a plot the length of a football field with “nothing more than her muscle and a hoe.” Clarisse attested that the work was very painful and that she feared the farmer, who would beat her if she slowed down.

There is no simple solution. Understanding that brand executives continue to capitalize on the abundance of cheap labor and literally profit on a foundation of human suffering brings about a moral conflict. Fair trade brands, such as American Apparel, are usually very expensive, and even with a fair trade certification, there is no guarantee that workers were not exploited in the making of the product. As consumers, we can do our part by educating ourselves. Learn about the issue; teach someone else. The consequences of unfair labor practices are fatal, and demanding fair trade literally saves lives. Just ask Jose Luis Castillo Vasquez, father of six and member of Equal Exchange, a worker-owned fair trade cooperative: “Thanks to fair trade, we will not die of hunger.

We will not lose our land. Our children can attend school,” he says. “We have a seed of hope in our lives.”

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 35

ON THE BLOG Rebel Ventures: Students Fighting Food Injustice Dark Chocolate: The Fountain of Youth

by Cristobal Salamone*

by Carol Chen

Past & Present: How Literature Informs Social Justice Exploring the Italian Market

by Leora Mincer

Destress and Find Balance with Yin Yoga Creating a City of Arborly Love

by Corey Loftus

by DesirĂŠe Harding*

The Forgotten Flaw of Global Development "Pay for Success": Social Impact Bonds Pop Culture's Compelling PSA

by Ava Sasani*

by Lisa Shmulyan

by Emily Chen

Refugees: A Community of "Others"

by Diane Bayeux

Be Innovative Yet Cautious: Secondary Effects Loom StoryCorps: Storytelling of Humanity What Do You Care About?

Got Food Guilt?

by Andreas Nolan

by Chris Molaro

by Diane Bayeux

by Tyler Sullivan

by Corey Loftus

The Affordable Care Act: A Primer

by Mayookha Mitra-Majumdar

How Teaching Taught Me to Lead

by Jordan Huynh

Refugee Rights: A Summer Internship with Social Impact * Indicates guest writer

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by Sam Friedlander

CONVERSATIONS

WITH PROFESSOR SARAH PAOLETTI Written by Jacqueline Uy

P

rofessor Sarah Paoletti currently directs the Transnational Legal Clinic, the international human rights and immigration clinic at Penn Law. IMPACT sat down with Professor Paoletti to learn more about migrant workers from Nepal and Indonesia.

Can you tell me more about what you do at the Transnational Legal Clinic?

I run the Transnational Legal Clinic here at the law school.

Students enrolled in the clinic provide direct representation to individuals in immigration proceedings and engage in arranged human rights advocacy and projects. Almost all of our human rights work is related to the rights of immigrants and migrants both here in the United States and globally.

What drew you to Nepal and Indonesia in particular?

We picked Indonesia and Nepal partly because there were partners on the ground who we could work with—which is the reality of having good research partners—but also because these two countries were representative of the demographics of migrants going to the Middle East. For Nepal, regular migration channels [are comprised of] predominantly men in the more formal job sector of construction and related industries.

For Indonesia, significantly more women [travel] as migrant workers, predominantly in the domestic service worker industry.

It gave us a chance to look at countries in south and southeast Asia with a diversity of work experiences and demographics in terms of work in the Middle East.

What are the differences between Nepali and Indonesian migrant workers?

I think the narrative of the migrant worker, globally, is very consistent. Often you have issues of recruitment fraud—charges of excessive fees to be able to migrate. For those working in the Middle East, in particular the Gulf states, some migrants have good experiences and some have really bad experiences.

It depends on where the migrants are going. Their experiences are often of exploitation, unsafe working conditions, and inability to access justice when rights are violated. In most of the Gulf states, you have the kafala system [in which a local citizen or local company must sponsor foreign workers in order for their work visas and residency to be valid]. Their ability to assert any claims against their employer is limited because once they do that, they lose their [legal] status in the country.

In the Indonesian migrant worker community, a greater number of female Indonesians are leaving, coming back to their home country, getting an education, and moving on. It’s an opportunity to earn money but isn’t viewed as a permanent job solution. That’s the common narrative in Indonesia. In Nepal, 25 38 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

percent of the gross domestic product comes from remittances from foreign migration. There’s a significant economic reliance on migrant workers for the country as a whole.

What kind of problems do migrants have that cause them to seek justice?

In domestic work in general, access to justice is hindered because you’re in a home—you’re private, you’re isolated.

Your ability, physically, to actually access any sort of mechanism for justice is extremely limited. Legal systems, like the kafala system, [are] a problem in terms of what rights folks actually have under the laws of the country they’re working in. Workers have often paid large sums of money for the ability to work and travel abroad, so when they get to the destination country, they and their families are indebted. When they come home, if they’re trying to appeal to justice mechanisms from within their countries of origin, they’re all centralized in the capital city both in Indonesia and in Nepal.entralized in the capital city both in Indonesia and in Nepal.

Besides the kafala system, do other policies encourage other kinds of abuses toward migrant workers?

[It is] less policies than practices. The charging of fees is a practice. In Nepal, there is a maximum amount that a worker can be charged, but that maximum amount isn’t enforced.

There are rules about contracts that workers are supposed to have, but those contracts aren’t enforced. Before a worker [migrates], Nepali law clearly sets up that they should have a contract with their recruiter as well as their ultimate employer in the destination country. Those contracts do not always exist, and even when they do exist, one of the biggest complaints is contract substitution: they get to the destination country and [receive a] contract different from what they agreed upon before they left. Then [migrants] don’t have the documentation to prove what they are doing, so it becomes a question of how to prove your case.

There is also a lack of resources set up to provide justice mechanisms. In Nepal there is a Department of Foreign Employment that is in charge of investigating and pursuing claims against recruiters and recruitment agencies. Those cases, once they pass initial review, are supposed to go to the Foreign Employment Tribunal. Those cases overwhelmingly don’t make it to the Foreign Employment Tribunal.

One of the challenges is that the system in Nepal is designed

for accountability. When people file complaints with the foreign tribunal, it should be set up as a criminal case. The system of going from foreign employment to the Foreign Employment Tribunal to actually getting financial compensation is both lengthy and uncertain, [wrought with] various hurdles and barriers along the way.

As a fundamental issue, labor migration systems [in both countries] are set up as regulation of labor migration, and so they regulate what recruiters can and cannot do. They regulate what migrant workers have to do in order to get the documentation they need in order to leave the country and go to another country to work. This system of regulation can be effective if enforced, but they’re not set up as a rightsbased system; they’re not set up in a way that recognizes and establishes enforceable rights on the part of the individual worker. In Nepal, [we’ve been] looking at how to convert an employment act from a regulatory law to a rights-based law, because when you have a regulatory law, it puts a burden on the government to do the enforcement.

What does the future of Europe look like in regards to the migrant population?

The false dichotomy under both domestic and international legal regimes between forced migrants and voluntary migrants sets up a protection mechanism in theory for forced migrants who might qualify for protection in the [1951 United Nations] Refugee Convention. But then it excludes recognition of rights and protection of rights for what are deemed economic and social differences. This fails to recognize the ways that environmental conflicts and disasters create forced migration that isn’t necessarily a refugee population, forcing people to look at this dichotomy between forced and voluntary migration.

I think long term, there needs to be a reevaluation of the standards and assessment of who deserves protection as migrants. It requires a broader understanding that human migration is a symptom and not the problem. People migrate because they feel they have to migrate. For the most part, people are going through the journeys they’re going through because they don’t see they have a choice. And so the opportunity for survival through migration is much greater for them and their family than if they were to stay put. That fact requires us to take a comprehensive approach.

Ultimately, I think the EU could absorb the migrants. People are trying to get to countries where they have family ties, cultural ties, or other opportunities, and if that were facilitated rather than hindered, it would allow for greater integration of the migrants in a smoother, more humane process.

The other reality is that it’s a global issue, not a regional one. There’s got to be more to look at [regarding] international cooperation and what the United States, Canada, and other countries can be doing to promote the resettlement and integration of migrant communities. It also highlights the need for more legal channels of migration. What you see in the EU right now is the expansion of illegal smuggling operations and trafficking operations that are putting migrants at a much greater risk at a much greater cost. There needs to be a way to create increased channels for legal migration, and so we look at what’s going on with trade

agreements—we do everything we can to access free trade and commodities, but we don’t do the same when it comes to people. We need to be able to treat people as free actors in movement and something more than another commodity or a threat to national sovereignty.

What challenges do countries that receive migrants face?

The challenges are all very short-term challenges, but all of the studies show that the long term benefits of migration far outweigh the costs, and that is true globally. But how do you deal with short-term costs? In the short term, you face language, job training, and housing issues. You may have, within the refugee population, a population that is highly traumatized and that may need both physical and mental health services. Those are all short-term costs that can’t be addressed through detention.

When countries detain individuals who come in and house them in detention centers or otherwise try to deter their entrance into the country, those costs end up being much greater than the costs of trying to facilitate integration.

But there is also the question of how to facilitate movement within the EU, across borders, so that individuals ultimately get to places where they have shared language, shared culture, family friends, and a support network. Private [support] networks, faithbased groups, and community-based organizations become important [in integrating] migrants and making sure that costs are minimized.

Why should Penn students should care about the issues we’ve been talking about?

Migration as a whole and the treatment of migrants as probably one of the biggest human rights issues that confronts the world today. Human migration is the symptom, not the cause. But the way [human rights violations] are handled is probably the biggest issue when you look at mixed migration patterns, motives for migration, and experiences.

Unless we can change the debate and rhetoric around migration, particularly [around] the non-refugee [migrant] population—who everybody deems the “worthy migrants”— and recognize the humanity of the individual stories that underlie the human migration phenomena, we will never be able to facilitate a more rights-based approach to human migration.

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 39

MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS IN REVIEW

Written by Aaron Wolff 40 \ IMPACT MAGAZINE

A

t its eighth plenary meeting, on September 8, 2000, the United Nations (UN) General Assembly adopted the Millennium Declaration. The three-day summit that led up to the Declaration was the largest gathering of world leaders in history. The congregated dignitaries reaffirmed the mission of the UN, stating, “We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our individual societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality, and equity at the global level. As leaders we have a duty therefore to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.” The Declaration outlined the role the UN hoped to play in the new century. The assembled leaders agreed that the great challenge of the modern age “is to ensure that globalization becomes a positive force for all the world’s people.” The General Assembly opined that “only through broad and sustained efforts to create a shared future, based upon our common humanity in all its diversity, can globalization be made fully inclusive and equitable.” World leaders agreed to concentrate international efforts on achieving eight development goals by 2015. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) consisted of eight goals, 21 targets, and 60 indicators. Targets give specific content to the goals and indicators are metrics for measuring the success of the targets. The eight goals, and their relative successes, are detailed below.

ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION

This goal is defined by one target: by 2015, children everywhere should be able to complete a primary school education. Developing countries increased their net primary school enrollment from 83 to 91 percent between 2000 and 2015. Notably, in sub-Saharan Africa, the primary school enrollment rate went up from 52 percent in 1990 to 80 percent in 2015.

COMBAT HIV/AIDS, MALARIA, AND OTHER DISEASES

This goal consisted of three targets: halt and reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS by 2015, provide access to HIV treatment to all who need it by 2010, and reverse the incidence of malaria and other communicable diseases by 2015. HIV infections are occurring at a slower rate than before: there were 3.5 million new cases of HIV in 2000 and 2.1 million in 2013. By June of 2014, 13.6 million people suffering from HIV received antiretroviral therapy (ART) as compared to only 800,000 in 2003. The incidence rate of malaria went down by 37 percent and the death rate from the disease has decreased by 58 percent since 2000.

IMPROVE MATERNAL HEALTH

This goal is defined by two targets: reduce the maternal mortality ratio by three-fourths between 1990 and 2015 and achieve universal access to reproductive health. Maternal mortality declined by 45 percent, with most of the decrease coming after the year 2000. Only half of all pregnant women get the recommended quantity of prenatal care. This goal was not achieved, but significant progress was made nonetheless.

REDUCE CHILD MORTALITY

This goal had one target: reduce the mortality rate of children under five by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015.

The mortality rate for children under five has been cut by more than half since 1990: from 90 deaths per 1,000 births in 1990 to only 43 in 2015. Although this is a strong step forward, it falls short of the target. To address this problem, there must be a targeted effort in rural areas, as children in these areas are 1.7 times more likely to die before their fifth birthday as those in urban areas.

THE GLOBALIZATION ISSUE / 41

ERADICATE EXTREME HUNGER AND POVERTY

This goal is composed of three targets: to halve the percentage of people living in extreme poverty (defined as less than US $1.25 a day), achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, and halve the percentage of people suffering from hunger worldwide. In 1990, almost half the population of developing countries lived in extreme poverty. By 2015, that number shrank to around 14 percent, surpassing the expectations embodied in this goal. Unfortunately, the global employment-topopulation ratio decreased, rather than increased, between 1991 to 2015. The proportion of undernourished people shrank to about 13 percent.

ENSURE ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

This goal is defined by four targets: introduce principles of sustainable development into domestic policies and stem the loss of environmental resources; slow the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010; improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020; and halve the percentage of people without safe drinking water and adequate sanitation services by 2015. Substances responsible for the destruction of the ozone layer are almost completely out of circulation, and the ozone is on track to recover by mid-century, but carbon dioxide emissions increased by 50 percent between 1990 and 2012. The rate of deforestation decreased from 8.3 million hectares annually in the 1990s to 5.2 million between 2000 and 2010. Protected ecosystems made up 15.2 percent of land and 8.4 percent of coastal marine areas by 2014. Between 2000 and 2014, approximately 320 million slum dwellers gained access to better drinking water, sanitation, or housing; 2.6 billion more people now have access to better drinking water and 2.1 billion now have better sanitation.

PROMOTE GENDER EQUALITY AND EMPOWER WOMEN

This goal is defined by one target: end gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and in all other education levels by 2015. Although the UN claims that they have met this goal, they acknowledge in their summary report that “women continue to experience significant gaps in terms of poverty, labour market and wage, as well as participation in private and public decision-making.�

DEVELOP A GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR DEVELOPMENT

The remaining six targets are all components of this last goal and consist of developing fair trading and financial systems, helping developing countries that are disadvantaged by geography (ex: landlocked countries and small islands), handling the debt issues of developing countries, increasing youth employment, and making essential drugs and the benefits of new technologies more readily available to people in developing countries. Some significant steps have been taken toward the achievement of these goals.

Official development assistance increased from 81 billion in 1990 to almost 135 billion in 2015. The debt burden of developing countries dropped from 12 percent in 2000 to 3.1 percent in 2013. In low-income and lower-middleincome countries between 2007 and 2014, people could find generic medications in 58 percent of public health facilities. Global internet penetration increased from 6 percent in 2000 to 43 percent in 2015.

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On September 25th, 2015, the UN adopted a new set of goals to be achieved by 2030. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are much more encompassing than the MDGs--while the MDGs focused on developing countries, the 17 SDGs include many provisions affecting developed countries as well. The new goals contain a significant emphasis on sustainability, expressing growing concerns with environmental degradation and climate change. The SDGs also commit to combating inequality both within and among nations.

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