Poverty Around the world varies from continent to continent country to country as to the causes and solutions to the problem. War and ethnic violence is often the cause of wide spread poverty. Cultural differences, natural disasters, and location can also contribute to poverty.  For the purposes of this site Poverty will defined as those homeless and starving, or in refugee camps.

The Facts:  

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimated that in December 2005 there was a global population of 8.4 million registered refugees, the lowest number in 26 years, and as many as 23.7 million IDPs in more than 50 countries; the actual global population of refugees is probably closer to 10 million given the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi refugees displaced throughout the Middle East (2006) World Factbook  According to the United Nations press release 100 million people in the world are homeless; mostly women and children.

Pecentage in poverty according to their countries standards

The Solutions:

One solution would be to lower trade barriers between wealthy nations and poorer nations. Absolute solutions are difficult because of the nature of poverty throughout the world. Further education throughout the world is likely needed so that more people understand the cauases of poverty and higher education of teh impoverished.  The countries that have the power to provide food, education and technology for these nations are not for various reasons some of which involve the politcal structure of some nations such as North Korea and Somalia.

Short term solutions include supplying poorer nations with food from richer nations. Another short term solution would be for more people to donate  larger portions of their income to  volunteer organizations that specialize in helping the impoverished , such as UNISEF and  other non-profit groups.

Singapore is an excellent example of a country that went from a third world nation fifty years ago to a dominate world player in the last decade and possiblly one of the strongest economies in the world. This accomplished by educated men who were able to move the people to becoming more educated and more of a capitalist society, a benefit to Singapore is that it has almost no natural resources to fight over.

Israel has also suceeded without having natural resources to speak of because of it's highly educated population and it's ability to develope a thriving capitilist stucture.

Other Sites of Interest:

World Bank site on World Poverty 

Peter Singer's Article on Solving World Poverty The Singer Solution to World Poverty

World Poverty Solutions World Poverty .org

PovertyLocal, GlobalClimateChange, TheWarOnDrugs, TheWarOnTerrorism, FreshWaterConservation, ResourceUsage