Racism Around the World

The World Values Survey is a global research project that explores people’s values and beliefs, how they change over time and what social and political impact they have. It is carried out by a worldwide network of social scientists who, since 1981, have conducted representative national surveys in almost 100 countries.

The WVS survey asked respondents in more than 80 different countries to identify kinds of people they would not want as neighbors. Some respondents, picking from a list, chose “people of a different race.” The more frequently that people in a given country say they don’t want neighbors from other races, the economists reasoned, the less racially tolerant you could call that society.

Racial Tolerance Around the World

Anglo and Latin countries most tolerant. People in the survey were most likely to embrace a racially diverse neighbor in the United Kingdom and its Anglo former colonies (the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and in Latin America. The only real exceptions were oil-rich Venezuela, where income inequality sometimes breaks along racial lines, and the Dominican Republic, perhaps because of its adjacency to troubled Haiti. Scandinavian countries also scored high. 

India, Jordan, Bangladesh and Hong Kong by far the least tolerant. In only [four] of 81 surveyed countries, more than 40% of respondents said they would not want a neighbor of a different race. This included 43.5% of Indians, 51.4% of Jordanians and an astonishingly high 71.8% of Hong Kongers and 71.7% of Bangladeshis.

Racial tolerance low in diverse Asian countries. Nations such as Indonesia and the Philippines, where many racial groups often jockey for influence and have complicated histories with one another, showed more skepticism of diversity. This was also true, to a lesser extent, in China and Kyrgyzstan. There were similar trends in parts of sub-Saharan Africa.

Pakistan, remarkably tolerant, also an outlier. Although the country has a number of factors that coincide with racial intolerance -- sectarian violence, its location in the least-tolerant region of the world, low economic and human development indices -- only 6.5% of Pakistanis objected to a neighbor of a different race. This would appear to suggest Pakistanis are more racially tolerant than even the Germans or the Dutch. (Washington Post)

Racial Diversity Around the World

African countries are the most diverse. Uganda has by far the highest ethnic diversity rating, according to the data, followed by Liberia. In fact, the world’s 20 most diverse countries are all African. There are likely many factors for this, although one might be the continent’s colonial legacy. European powers carved Africa up into territories and possessions, along lines with little respect for the actual people who lived there. When Europeans left, the borders stayed (that’s part of the African Union’s mandate), forcing different groups into the same national boxes.
 
Japan and the Koreas are the most homogenous. Racial politics can be complicated and nasty in these countries, where nationalism and ethnicity have at times gone hand-in-hand, from Hirohito’s Japan to Kim Il Sung’s North Korea. The lack of diversity perhaps informs these politics, although it’s tough to say which caused which.
 
European countries are ethnically homogenous. A number of now-global ideas about the nation-state, about national identity as tied to ethnicity and about nationalism itself originally came from Europe. For centuries, Europe’s borders shifted widely and frequently, only relatively recently settling into what we see today, in which most large ethnic groups have a country of their own.
 
The Americas are often diverse. From the United States through Central America down to Brazil, the “new world” countries, maybe in part because of their histories of relatively open immigration (and, in some cases, intermingling between natives and new arrivals) tend to be pretty diverse. The exception is South America’s “southern cone,” where Argentines and Chileans, many of whom originally come from the same handful of Western European countries, tend to be more homogenous. Canada is rated as more diverse than the United States or even Mexico.
 
Wide variation in the Middle East. The range of diversity from Morocco to Iran is a reminder that this part of the world is much less monolithic than we sometimes think. North African countries include large Berber minorities, for example, as well as some sub-Saharan ethnic groups, particularly in Libya. The diversity of Jordan and Syria are reminders of their internal complexity. Iran, with large Azeri, Kurdish and Arab populations, is one of the region’s most diverse. (Washington Post)

Global Hunger Update

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), hunger is the single gravest threat to the world's public health. One Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of the UN and WHO is to "halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger". 

There are 870 million undernourished people in the world today. That means one in eight people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to the health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. Among the key causes of hunger are natural disasters, conflict, poverty, poor agricultural infrastructure and over-exploitation of the environment. 98% of the world's undernourished people live in developing countries. Two-thirds of the world's hungry live in just 7 countries: Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. Hunger is worst in: Asia and the Pacific: 578 million; Sub-Saharan Africa: 239 million; Latin America and the Caribbean: 53 million.
 

The United Nations estimated that 258,000 people died in the Somalia famine between October 2010 and April 2012. The number of deaths caused widespread shock and the proportion—4.6% of the population—was shockingly high. Famine deaths rarely exceed 2-3% of a country’s population. But the absolute death toll was not especially high by recent historical measures. In 35 big famines since 1900, more than 70m people have died from famine or famine-related causes. Of these, almost half perished in one terrible event: China’s Great Leap Forward of 1958-62, which caused famine deaths of over 30m. Another quarter died during Stalin's forced collectivisation of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s and early 1930s (especially in Ukraine and Kazakhstan). 

The other huge famine was that in Bengal in 1943. Since these countries have transformed their food security, famine mortality has declined over the past century and shifted from Asia to, almost exclusively, Africa. Political crises have triggered famines in sub-Saharan Africa since the 1960s, including those in Ethiopia in 1983-85 and Sudan in 1998. The rains failed throughout the Horn of Africa in 2010-12, but famine deaths were concentrated in Somalia, where the government was weakest. (The Economist)

Global Press Freedom

The Press Freedom Index is an annual ranking of countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders based upon the organization's assessment of the countries' press freedom records in the previous year. It reflects the degree of freedom that journalists, news organizations, and netizens enjoy in each country, and the efforts made by the authorities to respect and ensure respect for this freedom. 

The Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders does not take direct account of the kind of political system but it is clear that democracies provide better protection for the freedom to produce and circulate accurate news and information than countries where human rights are flouted.

This year’s index is a better reflection of the attitudes and intentions of governments towards media freedom in the medium or long term. The same three European countries that headed the index last year hold the top three positions again this year. For the third year running, Finland has distinguished itself as the country that most respects media freedom. It is followed by the Netherlands and Norway. 

Although many criteria are considered, ranging from legislation to violence against journalists, democratic countries occupy the top of the index while dictatorial countries occupy the last three positions. Again it is the same three as last year – Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea. (Press Freedom Index 2013)

The situation is unchanged for much of the European Union. Sixteen of its members are still in the top 30. The United States, which dropped precipitously in the 2012 index after the treatment of journalists covering the Occupy Wall Street protests, was up 15 points this time. 

Coinciding with the release of its 2013 Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders is for the first time publishing an annual global “indicator” of worldwide media freedom. This new analytic tool measures the overall level of freedom of information in the world and the performance of the world’s governments in their entirety as regards this key freedom.

In view of the emergence of new technologies and the interdependence of governments and peoples, the freedom to produce and circulate news and information needs to be evaluated at the planetary as well as national level.  Today, in 2013, the media freedom “indicator” stands at 3395, a point of reference for the years to come.
 

The indicator can also be broken down by region and, by means of weighting based on the population of each region, can be used to produce a score from zero to 100 in which zero represents total respect for media freedom. This produces a score of 17.5 for Europe, 30.0 for the Americas, 34.3 for Africa, 42.2 for Asia-Pacific and 45.3 for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Despite the Arab springs, the Middle East and North Africa region comes last with 48.5.

 

Global Youth Unemployment

There are 1.2 billion youth in the world aged 15 to 24. They comprise 17% of the world’s population and 40% of the world’s unemployed. In 2010, 357.7 million youth were not in education, employment or training, and the number is increasing, as reported by the World Economic Forum.

The threat of youth unemployment is not limited to developing countries. The financial crisis has become a socio-economic crisis, impacting the young by increasing the burden of debt, creating a lack of job opportunities, causing resource degradation and decreasing the overall quality of life. The crisis has stoked increasing resentment among youth and has deepened mistrust of existing institutions, corporations and governments.

The Economist calculates that, all told, almost 290m are neither working nor studying: almost a quarter of the planet’s youth (see chart 1 above). South Asian women account for over a quarter of the world’s inactive youth, though in much of the rich world young women are doing better in the labor force than men.

Young people have long had a raw deal in the labor market. Two things make the problem more pressing now. The financial crisis and its aftermath had an unusually big effect on them. Many employers sack the newest hires first, so a recession raises youth joblessness disproportionately. In Greece and Spain over a sixth of the young population are without a job (see chart 2 above). The number of young people out of work in the OECD is almost a third higher than in 2007.

Emerging economies that have the largest and fastest-growing populations of young people also have the worst-run labour markets. Almost half of the world’s young people live in South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. They also have the highest share of young people out of work or in the informal sector. The population of 15- to 24-year-olds in Africa is expected to rise by more than a third, to 275m, by 2025.

Global Illegal Economy

Each year, global organized crime generates an estimated $870 billion, threatening peace and human security, leading to human rights being violated and undermining economic, social, cultural and political development of societies around the world. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was set up under the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime in  2000,  and is the main international instrument in the fight against transnational organized crime. 

There are many activities that can be characterized as transnational organized crime, including drug trafficking, smuggling of migrants, human trafficking, money-laundering, trafficking in firearms, counterfeit goods, wildlife and cultural property, and even some aspects of cybercrime. 

 

A rough guide to the value of various forms of illegal trade

Solid numbers on illegal business are hard to come by. To estimate the size of the drugs trade, for example, researchers look at the quantity of drugs seized at the point at which they enter a country and combine it with the price of that drug in the market where they think it was heading. This requires building on suppositions and estimations: it is hard to know with much certainty how the quantity of, say, cocaine seized by border police relates to the worldwide supply. If anything, though, the numbers on drugs are better than those on counterfeit goods. (The Economist)

Global English Index

Two recent groundbreaking studies—the 2013 Business English Index (BEI) and the Globalization of English (GOE) report—confirm the primacy of Business English as the de facto language of business. The 2013 BEI, GlobalEnglish’s third annual release of the index, is the result of a December 2012 survey of more than 137,000 global employees in 78 countries across a broad range of industries.

According to the BEI, Business English proficiency scores have increased dramatically during the past year, though scores for several key industries remain low and, in some cases, have declined. Lower scores indicate a high risk of increased organizational inefficiencies, general susceptibility to global miscommunication, and poor collaboration.

 Highest and Lowest BEI Scores Among Countries

• Philippines 7.95
• Norway 7.06
• Netherlands 7.03
• United Kingdom 6.81
• Australia 6.78
• El Salvador & Chile 3.24
• Mexico 3.14
• Saudi Arabia 3.14
• Colombia 3.05
• Honduras 2.92

                    Highest and Lowest BEI Scores within Business Industries

• Aerospace/Defense 6.63
• Professional Services 6.22
• Technology 5.72
• Financial Services 4.93
• Retail 4.92
• Auto/Transportation 3.99
• Energy/Utilities 3.96
• Media/Comm/Entertainment 3.20
• Govt/Ed/Non-Profit 3.18
• Real Estate/Construction 2.82

  

 

 Employees View English Proficiency as a Crucial Skill

The 2013 Globalization of English (GOE), research surveyed 24,000 global knowledge workers from more than 90 countries to determine the sentiment of workers regarding English in the workplace. According to the report, nine in 10 (93 percent), workers surveyed communicated a clear desire to improve their Business English skills within the next two years. The GOE research also revealed that workers see English as a critical skill for career advancement. Ninety-three percent of respondents said that their managers would like them to improve their English skills, and 94 percent said that English is either a required or an important step toward career advancement. 

With whom do you communicate in English?

• Managers/Executives 58%
• Co-workers 57%
• Direct Reports 21%
• Customers 39%
• Suppliers 34% 

                         How soon do you need to improve your English skills?    

• Less than 6 months 31%
• 6 months to 12 months 40%
• 1 year to 2 years 21%
• More than 2 years 8%

 

Global Natural Resources - Natural Rubber

Rubber was known to the indigenous peoples of the Americas long before the arrival of European explorers. In 1525, Padre d'Anghieria reported that he had seen Mexican tribes playing with elastic balls. The first scientific study of rubber was undertaken by Charles de la Condamine, when he encountered it during his trip to Peru in 1735. A French engineer that Condamine met in Guiana, Fresnau studied rubber on its home ground, reaching the conclusion that this was nothing more than a "type of condensed resinous oil".

 

The first use for rubber was an eraser. It was Magellan, a descendent of the famous Portuguese navigator, who suggested this use. In England, Priestley popularized it to the extent that it became known as India Rubber. The word for rubber in Portuguese - borracha - originated from one of the first applications for this product, when it was used to make jars replacing the leather borrachas that the Portuguese used to ship wine.

Natural rubber is a solid product obtained through coagulating the latex produced by certain plants, particularly the Brazilian rubber-tree (Hevea Brasiliensis). This raw material is usually tapped from the rubber tree, which is native to Amazonia. Although there a large number of species that exude secretions similar to latex when the bark is cut, only a few produce sufficient quantities of a quality adequate for exploitation on economic bases. Thanks to its multiple applications, particularly in the expanding automobile industry, rubber produced from latex tapped from rubber-trees became a product in demand worldwide. And there was no lack of rubber-trees in the Brazilian Amazon. This brought a boom to Northern Brazil - which at that time was one of the poorest and least-inhabited parts of the country.

In 1876, the British smuggled out rubber-tree seeds from Amazonia to the Botanical Gardens in London. Through grafting, they developed more resistant varieties that were later sent to the Colonies in Asia where massive rubber plantations were established, particularly in Malaysia, Ceylon and Singapore. The difference between latex production techniques in Brazil and Asia was a significant factor in the development of this business, due to these plantations. While the rubber trees of Asia were set only four meters apart, it was sometimes necessary to walk miles between one tree and the next in Amazonia, limiting the amount of latex collected and increasing its price. Obviously, the well-organized plantations of the Far East resulted in a significant increase in productivity, making them more competitive.

Other countries have been successfully deploying their low-cost labor-forces and easily-available lands to expand in this sector, particularly India and China. By 2001, natural rubber consumption accounted for some 40% of the total amount of rubber consumed worldwide.  

The use of rubber is widespread, ranging from household to industrial products, entering the production stream at the intermediate stage or as final products. Tires and tubes are the largest consumers of rubber. The remaining 44% are taken up by the general rubber goods (GRG) sector, which includes all products except tires and tubes.  

The use of rubber is widespread, as the characteristics and properties of these elastomers make them useful in almost all economic sectors: automobiles, footwear, civil construction, plastics, hospital materials and others that are of crucial importance in the daily life of society.

The importance of the rubber industry ever since it first appeared and the decisive role that it has played in the development of modern civilization prompted much interest in discovering its chemical composition in order to synthesize this product.  A wide variety of synthetic rubbers have been developed since this product was first discovered.

Global Military Spending Update

World military expenditure totalled $1.75 trillion in 2012, a fall of 0.5 per cent in real terms since 2011, according to figures released by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

The fall—the first since 1998—was driven by major spending cuts in the USA and Western and Central Europe, as well as in Australia, Canada and Japan. The reductions were, however, substantially offset by increased spending in Asia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America. China, the second largest spender in 2012, increased its expenditure by 7.8 per cent ($11.5 billion). Russia, the third largest spender, increased its expenditure by 16 per cent ($12.3 billion). Despite the drop, the global total was still higher in real terms than the peak near the end of the cold war.

 

The USA’s share of world military spending went below 40 per cent for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union. A declining trend that began in 2011 accelerated in 2012, with a drop in US military spending of 6 per cent in real terms to $682 billion.

Military expenditure in Asia and Oceania rose by 3.3 per cent in 2012. Large increases were seen in Viet Nam, where tensions with China are prompting major naval purchases, and in Indonesia. Spending in India decreased by 2.8 per cent.

Military spending increased sharply across North Africa, by 7.8 per cent in real terms, the result of both ongoing military modernization and concern over terrorist groups in the Sahel. Military spending in sub-Saharan Africa fell by 3.2 per cent.

Military spending in the Middle East rose by 8.4 per cent rise in 2012. The largest percentage increase worldwide in 2012 was by Oman (a 51 per cent rise). Saudi Arabia also increased spending by 12 per cent. Spending by Iran, Qatar, Syria and the United Arab Emirates is unknown.

In Latin America military spending increased by 4.2 per cent in 2012. The largest increases were by Paraguay (43 per cent) and Venezuela (42 per cent). The increasing role of the military in combating drug cartels pushed Mexico’s spending up by 9.7 per cent.

Military spending in Eastern Europe increased by 15.3 per cent in 2012, the largest regional increase. Besides Russia, Ukraine also increased its spending substantially—by 24 per cent. 
 

 

 

Capital Punishment Worldwide

Capital punishment has been used in almost every part of the world, but in the last few decades many countries have abolished it. Usage of capital punishment is usually broken into the four categories set out below. Of the 195 independent states that are UN members or have UN observer status:

• 90% of the world's countries are not executing, according to Amnesty International.
• 100 (51%) have abolished it.
• 7 (4%) retain it for crimes committed in exceptional circumstances (such as in time of war).
• 49 (25%) permit its use for ordinary crimes, but have not used it for at least 10 years and are believed to have a policy or established practice of not carrying out executions, or it is under a moratorium.
• 39 (20%) maintain the death penalty in both law and practice. These countries make up approximately 66% of the world's population in 2012.

 

 

Amnesty International recorded 682 executions in 21 countries last year. Three-quarters took place in Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. In Iraq the number roughly doubled in a year, to 129, of which 34 were carried out in one day. America killed 43 criminals, making its executioners the world’s fifth busiest. 

 

 

The decline in American executions reflects a broader global trend. Last year Latvia became the latest of 97 countries to wipe the death penalty from its justice system. In a few recalcitrant places, capital punishment is holding steady or picking up. In most of the world politicians are smothering it. (The Economist)