Failed States, Just Give Women A Chance!

Thanks to World Pulse - the largest network of women, I now have a colleague in each of the 187 countries. So anything happens anywhere in the world and I can actually have someone to connect it to! And that's what I am doing now, linking the Failed State Index to my colleagues in - the failed states!

Early this week, I started reading the Failed State Index 2012 – an annual, globally recognized and accepted report prepared by the Washington DC- based organization Fund for Peace that ranks countries of the world according to their stability and capacity.

Topping the list of the failed states, for the fifth straight time, is Somalia. According to J J Messner, editor of the report, if this was a championship, Somalia would be called a legend. But since it’s not, the rank only indicates how bad the state of affairs is in the country where chaos and conflicts rule. Things are almost equally bad in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which has gotten the dubious 2nd place. Also sharing the space in the top 10 bracket is Zimbabwe.

Now, I have read this report a couple of times in earlier and just took them as what they were: a compilation of facts. But this year as I was reading it, a series of faces flashed before my eyes; women who are young, energetic, forever challenging, forever questioning everything that is wrong and, what’s more, also working to set them right.

These women come from these failed states, but are anything but a representative of failure. And here’s the reason why I thought of them: they are women of our very own World Pulse change-makers’ fraternity.

Landmine: its also about food insecurity

I was browsing through the press reports about the historic visit of Laos by Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of state, this week. This is the first visit by a US secretary of state to Laos in 57 years, so obviously there has been a lot of buzz. But among the dozens of reports I found, a particular one in a local (Laos) newspaper caught my eyes. The report, among other things, say that Laos should utilize Clinton's visit as an opportunity to clear its vast stretch of cultivable land currently filled with killer landmines.

Quoting Channapha Khamvongsa - an eminent social activist and the head of  the NGO Legacies of War, the report says that an estimated one-third of Laos is still littered with unexploded bombs from over 40 years ago, making land unavailable for food production or development.

It made me sit up. I was well aware of the danger that landmines pose to human lives. But I had never really seen the issue of landmines as something so closely connected with food production and food security.

The article really made me think of that now. And then I did a little more reading. I found that worldwide, there were millions of acres lying uncultivated just because some war mongers had planted landmines all over them. And what's more, most of these countries are those that are fighting poverty and hunger everyday.

Take Albania for example. Or Angola. Or Somalia. Or Libya . Or Palestine.Or Cambodia. Or Afghanistan. Everywhere, there are hundreds of thousands of acres land that are made dead by mine planters. If there were no landmines, and if those hundreds of acres were under cultivation, wouldn't it change the state of food production in the world today?

And this is the question that applies a 100% to India.