,
•
·2
RDIGRAS
. The e
Council reI a contra e i
, I te I t wee
ve nt membe 0 i
Gras organizations to jail for
excluding pe 0 b ed on
ce, religion or gender.
: The council voted 5 1 to
remove criminal penalti ,in
cluding jail terms.
HAITIA REPATRlA·
: 10 RESU ED
: The u.s. umed the
forced return of Haiti n
[efu I te I t week after the
mill tary government of Haiti
temporarily halted rep tri tion
pf thousands of refugees.
, The military government ar
gued they could not assimilate
such huge numbers of people so
quickly. Eventually 1,500 a
eek are expected to be
returned until the more than
12,000 are returned.
The Bush administration
said most refugees are fleeing
dverse economic condi tions
and therefore do not qualify for
political ylum.
EYE ON THE POLLS?
In his second turnabout on
the issue, President Bush igned
legislation Friday that will pro
vide an additional 13 eea of
jobless benefits for an estimated
two million people.
Habitat vows end
to substandard
housing in its
home county
AMBlUCUS, Oa. (APr.- Habitat for
Humanity bas vowed to eliminate
ubltandard housing in its base of
operations-Sumter County -by
the end of the decade.
"1 think this is a worthy goal and
one which can be reached," former
PrcsidentJimmy Carter told Habitat.
Carter is a friend of Habitat founder
Mi11ard Fuller, and frequently helps
build Habitat homes worldwide.
Habitat, founded 15 years ago in
. this southwest Georgia city, builds
homes at cost for the poor
worldwide. Last year the organiza
tion build its 100,oooth home.
,Habitat'S board decided to
ejlmtnate poverty housing in
Americus and Sumter County at a
recent board meeting. Fuller said.
A board resolution said the agen
cy,would accomplish the goal "by
networking and cooperating with
caurches, civic organizations, city
and county government and other
agencies. "
The board also said it would
elirnlnate • 'poverty and substandard
housing in at least one international
sponsored project by the end of the
decade."
. It did not specify where.
Americus Community Development
Director John Linneman said there
art about 500 substandard homes in
Sumter County that need to be
demolished or repaired. Ten will be
done this year, with more finished in
each year of the decade, Fuller said.
Habitat hopes to build up to 5,000
new homes this year in 800 U.S.
ciiles and 36 other countrie about
1�homes 8 day.
WORLD NATION
meet.
"IT IS THE re ponsibility of
government, among other things, to
ensure basic inve tments in people
- in nutrition, health care, clean
water, e nitatlon, family plan
ning services, and education."
The report cites the economic
ucce tories of Japan, South
Korea, and Taiwan to how that ex
penditure on uch services educa
tion and health are "not just social
expenditures but economic invest
men , not j t indulgences which
can only be afforded after countrie
have become prosperous but the
founda tion wi thout hich
widespread pro perity will not be
achieved."
In other words, concludes
UNICEF, development proceeds
mo t steadily when it walks on the
two legs of a market-friendly
economic policy and a government
commitment to uring i tment
in people .
. Sk w d pending
At present, the governments of_
the developing countries invest, on
average, only about 12 percent of
thcirbudgets in thehealthandeduca
tion of the poer majority. Most of
the available money, ays the
UNICEF report, tends to go to rela
tively high-cost ervices for a small
minority of the population:
"For 75 percent of public spend-
ing on health to serve only the richest
25 percent of the population is not
untypical; for more to be spent on
sophisticated operations than on the
low-cost control of mass disease is
not uncommon; for 30 .percent of
health budgets to be spent on sending
a privileged few for treatment abroad
is not unknown.
•
Transfers from
developing countries
Trade protectionl m I estimated to co t the poor
world a further 50 billion a year in 10 t exports.
Where aid goes
Only about 15% of all aidqo to health and education
(all level ) and to population programmes. Only about 2%
goe to primary health care and primary education which
are the mo t fundamental ervices for the poor majority of
the developing world.
1.3%
to population
programmes
1.5%
to primary
health care
9%
to secoridary and
higher education
employ.
Summit goal
The 1990 World Summit for
Children agreed on the goal of a
basic education for all children (and
completion of primary education by
at least 80 percent) before the year
2000. Japanese Prime Minister
Toshiki Kaifu told the Summit: "It
SUCH DISTORTIONS in favor
of the better-off are also evident in
education. Despite decades of re
search findings which regularly
demonstrate that inve tment in
primary education yields significant
ly higher social and economic
returns, government spending in al
most all developing countries is
heavily biased towards higher
education.
In India, where between 60 and
70 children could be given primary
education for the cost of training one
university student, approximately
half of the nation's children fail to
finish primary school, while the
country as a whole produces more
graduates than it can productively
Malcolm X, e
on book helve
on Mandela now
in outh Africa
Books by Malcolm X and Nel
son Mandela are for the first time
widely available 'in bookstores
across South Africa
"As the walls of apartheid are
being tom down, the people of
South Africa can today read the
books they were denied access to
in the past," says Rich Stuart of
Pathfinder Press, based in New
York.
What titles are sought in par
ticular? "Malcolm X and Nelson
Mandela, tt reports Stuart, "many
of the same titles published by
Pathfinder that are best sellers in
Black History Month." Stuart
recently completed a month-long
visit to stores and libraries in
cities acroSs South Africa.
"Malcolm X twice visited
Africa in the year before his assas
sination in 1965," says Stuart.
"He is known to many aero the
continent a symbol of resis
tance to racist oppre ion and
colonial are But until recently,
in South Africa at least, censor
Ship made Malcolm's wirings al-
. most impossible to obtain."
Send all
news information
to:
Michigan Citizen,
P.O. Box 035601
Highland Park.
MI 48203
OR
Call
869-0033.
, "
A NUMBER 0 boo tores
in JohnanDesburg, Cape Town,
and Dwbanare now also featuring
How Far We Slaves Have COrM!
a new boo of speeches by Nelson
Malcolm X, Nov mbar 1 ,at New York n' conf
following trip to Africa. Photo by Robert Parent. Reprtn eel by .,.,..ftleltton
of Pd1tlnder p,... ,
Mandela and Fidel Castro; 1M Struggle Is My Life, Mandela'
political autobiography; and
Thomas Sankara Speaks, writ
ings and speeches by the slain
former prime minister of Burkina
Faso.
Stores are al 0 displaying
Pathfinder title by Fidel Castro,
Che Guevara, Karl Marx, V 1.
Lenin, and Leon Trotsky- all
formerly banned by censorship
decree.
In the United State , as
schools, libraries, and bookstores
nationwide prepare for Black
History Month, a bestselling title
has been Malcolm X Talks to
Young People; a new-collection
of Malcolm 's peeches to univer-
ity and high chool tu4ents in
the United States, Britain, and
Africa More than 20,000 copies
have been old so far and a second
printing of 15,000 has just come
off the P
Pathfindo' boola are avail
able ill local bookstores and
libraries or call be ordered direct
from PaJhfiJuIu, 410 West sc.
New York, NY 10014.
is no exaggeration to say that the
policy of promoting education con
stituted the very foundation of
Japan's development.
In developing countries the first
priority should be to institute and
improve basic education- and raise
the literacy rate among children so as
to enable them to live with dignity.
National development can take place
only when all people have the oppor
tunity to receive education.",
In both Japan and South Korea,
universal primary education
preceded economic take-off, and in
both the investment in education for
all was made at a tage when per
capita incomes were lower, in real
terms, than in most developing
countries today.
IF THE GOAL of basic educa
tion for all is to be met by the year
2000, then an extraordinary effort is
called for in the early 1�, says
UNICEF.
Pioneering efforts in Bangladesh,
Col umbia, and Zimbabwe, have
shown that ace to primary educa
tion for all children can today be
achieved at an affordable cost.
U ing such new methods, the extra
money required would be ap
proximately $5 billion a year
throughout the 199<a. The costs of
not achieving that goal will be far
!Ugher.
"Investment in education," says
the State of the World's Children
report, "yields its dividends in many
other forms: it Confers the abi�ty to
continue leamin from wide range
of source , throughout adult life. It
modernizes attitud and builds con
fidence in change. It stimula
broader participation in politica11lfe.
It ists the process of allowiD&
what is good in the new to replace
what is bad in the old. It brinp an
awarene of new choices. It raj
the average age of marriage, makes
family planning more likely, and
reduces birth rat ."