Declaring Internet access a human right would dilute the rights that matter more, says Internet pioneer Vint Cerf. Photo: Veni Markovski (Wikimedia)

Get real: The Internet isn't a human right.

That's the message from a man often credited with inventing the Internet, Vint Cerf. Writing in The New York Times yesterday, Cerf, who now works for Google, argued that human rights are "things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives":

At one time if you didn’t have a horse it was hard to make a living. But the important right in that case was the right to make a living, not the right to a horse. Today, if I were granted a right to have a horse, I’m not sure where I would put it.

Today's Internet—publicly developed but privately owned and financed—is a key tool in toppling kleptocracies and enriching millions of poor farmers. So Cerf's position is provocative. But it's a reminder that those of us who believe in markets' power to help solve poverty shouldn't cling too tightly to any single "market-based solution."

That wouldn't be market-based at all.

Post-independence affirmative action policies to redress the class imbalance in India include reserved spots at schools for lower castes. Photo: Thatcher Cook for Mercy Corps.

Few Indians make it across the divide between poor and rich. But some so-called “untouchables” who have crossed it see only one way to bring fellow Dalits across: employ them themselves.

Lydia Polgreen writes in The New York Times of the struggles faced by Dalits, who occupy the very bottom rung of Hinduism’s social hierarchy, in today’s booming Indian economy. She says that while Indian law officially prohibits caste-based discrimination, ongoing social stigma in the private sector—in the form of exclusion from all but the lowest-paying jobs—has left the group among the poorest in the country.

Most struggling Dalits never turn their rags to riches, but the few whose successful businesses have catapulted them to the top have “bought rank in the market economy,” Polgreen writes. Many of their successes are, in part, the product of post-independence affirmative action policies to redress the class imbalance, including reserved spaces for lower castes in education institutions and public jobs.

Just last month, the Indian government continued this trend by requiring state and public companies to make 20 percent of their purchases from Indian businesses, specifying that a fifth of those purchases be made from businesses belonging to the country’s lower castes, like Dalits. Four percent of public purchases equals about USD $1.3 billion, which is nothing to sniff at.

The push to expand affirmative-action policies into the private sector, particularly in hiring quotas, has met harsh criticism. The Economist argues that moves in this direction would be disastrous, resulting in even more social polarization and hiding the real source of inequality—lack of access to good education— which is already being addressed by older policies, albeit inefficiently.

Meanwhile, Dalit business owners have developed their own solution. The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is a thriving hub of corporate leaders bypassing government intervention altogether by networking with qualified jobseekers and filling purchase orders from other Dalit businesses. And if the group’s growth in membership and activity is a harbinger, we’ve found the bridge to cross the divide.

A Victorian stained glass window depiction of the "Good Samaritan" story from the Gospel of Luke. Photo: Lawrence OP (flickr)

This article was republished by The Christian Science Monitor.

The Good Samaritan of Biblical lore was different than you and me: he was able to help without the fear of being sued.

Disturbing footage of an unattended Chinese girl being run over twice and ignored by 18 witnesses has shed unflattering light on China’s civil society. Two-year-old Xiao Yueyue (which translates as Little Joy in Chinese), daughter of two migrant worker parents, died on October 21st in a Guangdong hospital, eight days after the horrific incident.

Disapproving fingers are being pointed in various directions: from the disintegration of society’s morality to the government’s neglect of protecting civil liberties. Yue Yue’s unexpected death has revived a fierce international debate over Good Samaritan laws.

If you missed the final Seinfeld episode, Good Samaritan laws protect people who assist victims of injury or crime. “They are intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death," as Wikipedia puts it.

Prior to the broadcasting of Yue Yue’s tragedy, several sensational lawsuits had embittered the public toward performing heroic deeds for strangers. Specifically, in 2007 an elderly woman sued a young man by the name of Peng Yu for escorting her to the hospital after she had fallen and broken her leg. Mr. Peng was ordered to pay the damages to the elder woman under the judge’s logic that the man wouldn’t have helped her unless he was guilty of injuring her in the first place. Some litigators suggest that lawsuits of this nature create legal disparity between the affluent and the less privileged. Perhaps had the woman not belonged to the poorer class, in need of money, no such lawsuit would have been filed.

A recent China Daily poll reveals that approximately 87 percent of Chinese citizens are unlikely to aid an elderly person who has fallen in the street because they want to avoid being blamed for the accident. “The public's lack of a sense of trust has been made obvious by recent media stories that have looked at the hesitation people feel before they come to someone else's aid," Xie Jing, a communications professor at Fudan University, told the newspaper.

While Good Samaritan Laws in the United States are not federally imposed, the largest jurisdictions in the United States—New York, California, and Texas—have statutes that shield voluntary assistants from liability in the case of an accident. Yet “Good Samaritans” in California and Vermont may be prosecuted if they don’t act in the medical interest of the victim. In 2007 a woman who pulled a friend out of a wrecked car, leaving the friend paralyzed, was liable to civil damages in California because “the perceived danger of remaining in the wrecked car was not "medical," the court ruled.”

One explanation for not imposing more collective responsibility on individuals: separation of morals and law.

"Our common law has always refused to transmute moral duties into legal duties,” Virginia Law Professor Charles O. Gregory noted to Time Magazine in 1965, when the killing of a woman within earshot of dozens of her neighbors prompted a national debate about civic duty. Today, every state has some form of Good Samaritan law protecting people from liability for trying to save a life, according to HeartSafe America.

In Canada, too, each province has its own set of laws concerning Good Samaritan acts. Quebec’s Charter of Rights gives citizens a "duty to rescue:" individuals must assist anyone in jeopardy, unless there is reasonable evidence that it would cause danger to himself or a third party. Abstaining from helping someone is not considered a criminal offense, since it comes from the provincial level. Yet the majority of provinces have adopted a version of the Good Samaritan Law, most of which provide some form of protection for voluntary passers-by from liability for the victim’s damages, unless it can be proven that the damages were caused by the gross negligence of the person.

In France, witnesses to a person in distress can be arrested for not intervening. A Frenchman who fails to help another when he can do so without risk is liable for up to five years in prison and fined several thousands in Euros. The French logic follows that a witness is a participant in the crime if he/she does nothing to prevent it.

In spite of the outrage bubbling in China over society’s apparent moral decline, the majority of the population is reluctant to follow in France’s footsteps. According to one online poll, 77.7 percent of Chinese respondents disagree with the idea of establishing a 'duty to rescue' law. Most claim they don’t want moral acts to be legally enforced. With restrictions on individual freedom already so tightly monitored, the Chinese appear weary to have one more government mandate imposed.

It took the death of a two-year-old girl to bring greater awareness to what it means to do the right thing. Perhaps what is most disturbing about Yue Yue’s death is the realization that an underlying current of fear has become inherently attached to what should be a visceral reaction of compassion. Had the Samaritan described by Luke in the New Testament been bound by today’s laws, perhaps he would not have been so good.

The "Fight Back" application will allow woman to report attacks anonymously. Photo:MissMessie (flickr).

Reporting a rape can be as easy as sending a text message.

Women in New Delhi will soon be able to fight back against attackers with the use of a phone application that alerts friends, family and police, and sends a message to her social networks with a GPS location.

One in four Indian rapes takes place in New Delhi, according to The Christian Science Monitor, making it one of the unsafest cities for woman in India. Women are exposed to constant harassment and many incidents go unreported because of shame and lack of response by authorities.

"Safety for women has become such a huge issue here and we felt that citizens of Delhi, where possibly the problem exists the most, could use this type of technological intervention," said Hindol Sengupta, co-founder of Whypoll, which created the application and touts itself as "India's only open government platform."

The “Fight Back” application will be available for a small fee through the Whypoll website and is compatible with cell phones such as Nokia and Black Berry. SOS alerts will cost the same as an SMS.

The stigma and dishonor of rape leads women to not report the crime. Whypoll willrecord and reflect incidents on its website, but ensure users remain anonymous.

Recording what types of crimes occur and where will provide important information to help push for action in the places it is needed the most.

Reporting crimes against Indian women is on the rise. As more women attain political power, gender-related issues are brought to the forefront and action is taken. The “Fight Back” application will provide a new platform for women to be heard.

Nothing builds prosperity better than peace. And sometimes, a new study finds, nothing builds peace better than a few healthy arguments.

As crises and conflicts ebb, international groups are looking to create sustainable peace in places where peace has been the exception of late. One tactic is the promotion of civil society through education and reform campaigns. But is it possible to educate the violence out of a society?

Consider Liberia, which is still vulnerable five years after a 14-year civil war. The UN, in tandem with the Liberian government, has initiated a campaign to resolve current conflicts and prevent future ones by educating citizens on civic cooperation. Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) monitored the results in a robust 22-month study and produced some promising findings.

The campaign was conducted in three of Liberia’s counties most scarred by war and sought to educate citizens on their rights and those of others, to promote collective problem solving, and to encourage non-violent conflict resolution. Citizens went through eight days of workshops and were then asked to teach what they had learned to others in the community.

Afterward, IPA measured the impact of attending the workshops. Little impact was found on political participation, civic knowledge, and awareness of human rights. The study did, however, find a striking impact on the prevalence of disputes and their resolution.

More disputes occurred after the campaign than before, as neighbors were more prone to confront each other over grievances and assert their rights, but overall violence decreased and the propensity to resolve conflicts grew.

The number of overall violent outbreaks and the small sample size call into question the statistical significance of the results, but IPA found that communities that had undergone treatment were 59 percent less likely than untreated communities to experience violent disputes.

Since peace and prosperity often go hand in hand, such civic education programs may come to show that how well we live is a function of how well we get along.

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.

In Portland's Waterfront Park, Steve Wessing sold Occupation-themed buttons to demonstrators for $1 each. Photos: Michael Andersen for MercyCorps.

Sometimes, people who claim to speak for "the other 99 percent" aren't actually among them.

As the leaderless, left-leaning "Occupy" movement gathered this week for demonstrations across the United States, claiming inspiration from and solidarity with the Arab Spring, some self-described "99-percenters" faced a hard truth: They were, in fact, among the richest 1 percent of humans.

In 2003, the World Bank estimated that anyone who earned at least $47,500 annually was in the world's richest percentile. According to 2004 Census figures, that was a bit higher than the median income for an American over 25 with earnings and a bachelor's degree.

In other words: on a global scale, much of the American middle class are 1-percenters.

As about 5,000 demonstrators, as estimated by the Portland Mercury, gathered Thursday just down the block from Global Envision's headquarters, we headed into the crowds to ask a few participants whether the world's richest can safely speak for its poorest.

The answer we heard: Why not?

Lauren Ho, center beneath banner.

"The 1 percent still exists," said Steve Wessing, 50, an unemployed music professional selling souvenir buttons to demonstrators for $1 apiece. "I can't identify with the 1 percent while the 99 percent are still suffering."

Both Wessig and Lauren Ho, a naturopathic medical student holding a sign that read "People Before Profit," hesitated to identify with this year's successful demonstrations in Cairo's Tahrir Square.

"I don't feel educated enough," said Ho, 27. But Ho said she had come to support "a right to health care, housing" and an end to the destruction of the environment. "You have to start somewhere to make a change," she said.

Heather Perry, 30, attended with her boyfriend and their respective children. She said Thursday's rally was the "coming together" of communes predicted by Karl Marx in the 19th century.

Heather Parry, center left facing camera.

Neither Perry, Ho or Wessig seemed to question that globalization has driven huge increases in wealth around the world, even as it may have eroded the American middle class. Perry, in fact, said this might be for the best.

"If people have money, that should be redistributed to people that don't," she said.

To Charles Newlin, a semi-retired landscaper from Corvallis, Ore., protesting inequality within the United States made perfect sense.

Charles Newlin, right.

"Our income disparity is third-world," said Newlin, 66, who showed up in a Pacific Green Party T-shirt that matched his 18-year-old grandson's. "It's larger than a lot of third-world countries'."

As a result, even prosperous American cities are suffering, he said.

"The paint is peeling off the overpasses on I-5," Newlin said. "It's starting to look like Mexico."

As the crowd began to chant, Newlin said he was excited to see so many Americans taking action for greater equality. The key, he said, was widespread underemployment among young people.

"I think they've made a tremendous mistake," Newlin said, referring to the richest 1 percent. "They gave young people skin in the game."

Demonstrators at Occupy Portland, Oct. 6, 2011.

The 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution mandates greater political representation for women. Photo: Sukanto Debnath (flickr)

Reported violence against Indian women is on the rise. That’s not as bad as it sounds.

A recent study by four economists suggests that this increase reflects growing willingness to report violence against women, rather than an increase in the incidence of crime. The reason, they suggest: more women are involved in Indian politics than ever before.

The study cites a 1993 law that requires at least one-third of all seats in local governments to be set aside for women. Since then, political representation for women has increased, and so has the recognition of gender violence. When women are in power, police are more likely to respond to claims of gender violence. Offenders are arrested, and women are safer.

This is about more than safe and civil societies. According to UN Women, “violence against women impoverishes individuals, families and communities, reducing the economic development of each nation.” Safer women, safer futures. A good place to start may be political empowerment.

The Great Recession has affected some more than others. Mainly, the poor have gotten poorer. Meanwhile, the rich, who've been far less affected, still perceive America as a land of equality.

In a recent PBS NewsHour investigation, Paul Solman polled several upper and upper-middle class individuals in New York City to identify a pie graph of inequality in the United States. Either from unrealistic optimism or simple ignorance, most of those polled choose a pie graph reflecting the levels of inequality in Sweden. However, the United States has much higher levels of disparity than Sweden. According to PBS, the United States falls into the category of extreme inequality "where the richest fifth owns 84 percent of the nation's wealth, while the bottom two-fifths, 40 percent of the population, owns an almost invisible 0.3 percent of the nation's property."

In jobs speech this month, President Obama declared that billionaire "Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary—an outrage he has asked us to fix." Buffet, an outspoken advocate for taxing the "mega-rich," was also interviewed by PBS. He contends that the rich have really no conception of how bad things are for the poor—even the middle class—in America. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed piece, Buffet concluded that the rich should bare some of the economic burden. In his own words, "it’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice."

Watch the full PBS NewsHour short above.

In recent years, the net worth of minority households have plummeted drastically. Photo: Pew Research Center

Equality has been one of the defining tenets of the United States since its establishment. Yet it's disparity, not equality, that is on the rise.

According to data recently analyzed by Pew Research Center, the wealth gap in the U.S. has grown drastically in the past few years. More disturbingly, these wealth disparities are not just between the traditional categories of rich and poor but between whites and minority groups.

The Pew Research Center report, based on 2009 figures, indicates that "the median wealth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times greater than that of Hispanic households." It also acknowledges that the housing bubble and subsequent Great Recession are somewhat to blame, as the crises had "a far greater toll on the wealth of minorities than whites."

For minorities, things have been getting worse fast. Check out the declines in net worth of minority households between 2005 and 2009 (See graph above). Since 2005, they've all more than halved while the net worth of white households — already the highest total — fell by only about 16 percent. Why have minorities seen greater declines in wealth than whites? The answer is two-fold, says the Pew Research Center: different investment choices and regional demographics.

Minority households experienced greater losses because they are more dependent on home equity as a source of wealth. As noted above, housing values started to fall sooner than stock prices and, unlike the stock market, the housing market has not begun to recover. Hispanics and Asians were further affected because they are disproportionately likely to reside in states that have been among the hardest hit by the housing crisis: California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona.

Reliance on a singular financial asset, such as a house, increases risk of losing everything and that's just what happened. Families lost everything — their homes, their one major financial holding. In fact, it seems that the system is slated against those less wealthy. Instead of easing the burden on lower income families, enabling them to make sound financial decisions, and helping to improve their economic status, many U.S. policies favor the wealthy. And lower income families are not getting their due even after lifetime contributions to public programs like social security, according to an article from Forbes

While the income inequality between whites and minorities has fallen over the years, the wealth gap has remained large, says The Washington Post. And there are no breaks for the poor. After coughing up 12.4 percent of their income for social security and paying years upon years on home mortgages, these hardworking Americans now have little to show for it. Is that what we mean by equality?

Empty pharmacy shelves in the West African country of Guinea illustrate the problems of medication access in developing countries. Photo: Julien Harneis (flickr)

Even in the most remote parts of Kenya, there are little shops that sell sodas and mobile phone cards. But too often, the pharmacies of the nation's clinics and public hospitals are empty.

Innovative rural distribution channels are working for Coca-Cola and a new Johns Hopkins study suggests these same methods can work for the distribution of essential medicines.

According to a World Health Organization technical report, “essential drugs are those that satisfy the health care needs of the majority of the population; they should therefore be available at all times in adequate amounts and in the appropriate dosage forms, and at a price that individuals and the community can afford.” To see what makes the cut, check out WHO’s current essential medicines list.

This past May, the pharmacy shelves in Kenya remained bare as the staff awaited a delivery of essential medicines from the national government that was already weeks late. While essential and lifesaving medicines weren't available, junk foods and sodas were.

This is not just a problem in Kenya, but throughout the developing world. Scarcity of basic medicines, health products, and clinicians is an ongoing issue for poor countries with struggling public health systems. In fact, Save the Children published a report this month which claims that "40 million children under five in 25 developing countries live in 'healthcare deserts' where they are deprived even of the most basic health services." In a similar report, the World Health Organization estimates that 30 percent of people worldwide lack dependable access to essential medications — in the most impoverished regions of Africa and Asia, it's 50 percent.

Students at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health's International Vaccine Access Center have taken notice, releasing a study comparing public and private sector distribution structures and how these sectors might collaborate to increase equitable access to medication and health products. “Companies selling soda and mobile phone cards work in the same hard-to-reach markets in Sub-Saharan Africa as essential medicine distributors,” Kyla Hayford, a doctoral student who coauthored the report, explained to Science Daily, “but they have been far more successful at modifying their systems and aligning incentives to overcome distribution barriers.”

Coca Cola, for example, has developed “manual distribution centers” in East Africa that depend on bicycles and carts to deliver crates of sodas to remote and inaccessible outposts. In some places without passable roads, this distribution system accounts for more than 95 percent of sales, according to the IVAC report. Manual distribution could bring vaccines and antibiotics to these isolated communities, too. Mobile clinics and vaccine distribution do exist in places like rural Kenya but they are informal and often spearheaded by a determined health worker or small group of dedicated community health volunteers.

The IVAC study cites that more than 50 percent of hospitals studied in Kenya did not have vital broad-spectrum antibiotics at any given time. Further, Kenya is not just any developing country, but an economic forerunner in Africa with an economy that grew a promising 5.6 percent in 2010, according to moneycontrol.com.

For the IVAC and many others, getting medicine to the developing world is a matter of distribution, distribution, distribution. Public-private partnerships that involve "sharing knowledge, sharing infrastructure, generating appropriate performance monitoring metrics, and investing in product innovation" can help fix this, the study concludes.

But it's no coincidence that vaccines and antibiotics have such a hard time getting to market. The global health system has no arrangement to incentivize their development, production, or distribution. True health equity also requires financial commitments to research and develop lifesaving drugs. Next, they must be produced and sold at prices accessible to the average person in poor countries.

A recent article from The Guardian outlines some ideas about how the poor can become viable consumers and consequently influence the supply-and-demand chain for essential medicines. Poor clientele in developing countries could afford to pay the price of medications in a competitive market with generic production. However, the current system prevents this by allowing companies to patent brand-name drugs and maintain monopolies on their production, often for long periods of time. Instead, The Guardian suggests “annual reward payments based on the product's health impact” be given out to alter the incentive scheme and favor more pro-poor medicine development. If implemented, this policy would reward the research and development of life-saving and essential medicines — those with broad-reaching global health benefits — rather than specific and non-essential medicines which treat the minor ailments of advanced industrial societies.

Increasing access to essential medicines and technologies could prevent and cure diseases for millions in the developing world. The solution is not simple; it’s not just distribution. What makes commercial distribution so effective has to do with profitability and there is no profit to be had in the public health sector. Similarly, the impetus for new drug development depends on what has the potential to make the most money and not necessarily what will save the most lives. But if these techniques can be appropriated and incentives redirected for the greater good rather than profit, the benefits will be tremendous.

Soldiers, the traditional actors in a war, patrol in remote Afghanistan. Not shown here are those that provide comforts on the U.S. bases nearby. Photo: The U.S. Army (flickr)

At the end of a movie, the credits run for cast and crew. At the end of a war, soldiers receive Purple Hearts and well-earned pensions. But when is the production crew of a war recognized?

Lacking in grandiosity, working at a McDonald's inside a U.S. military base isn’t going to win you any medals. And yet, you face the same mortar attacks, the same war zone threats, as soldiers.

In a recent article from The New Yorker, Sarah Stillman reveals the rampant deception involved in recruiting these laborers from the developing world and the slavery-like conditions that prevent them from returning home.

The expansion of private-security contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan is well known. But armed security personnel account for only about sixteen per cent of the over-all contracting force. The vast majority—more than sixty per cent of the total in Iraq—aren’t hired guns but hired hands. These workers, primarily from South Asia and Africa, often live in barbed-wire compounds on U.S. bases, eat at meagre chow halls… A large number are employed by fly-by-night subcontractors who are financed by the American taxpayer but who often operate outside the law.

In recent years, federal officials have been spurred into action. The Department of Defense (DoD) initiated an investigation in 2006 following several such grievances. According to the Pentagon-issued directive, FRAGO 06-188 [Trafficking in Persons], (pdf) which went into effect later that same year, “an inspection of contracting activities supporting DoD in Iraq revealed evidence of illegal confiscation of worker (Third Country National) passports by contractors/subcontractors; deceptive hiring practices and excessive recruiting fees, substandard worker living conditions at some sites, circumvention of Iraqi immigration procedures by contractors/subcontractors and lack of mandatory trafficking in persons awareness training.”

Based on a yearlong investigation, Stillman discloses that despite the directive against human trafficking and the Department of Defense's efforts to increase subcontractor accountability, poor workers are still being manipulated, swindled, and robbed.

A typical manpower agency charges applicants between two thousand and four thousand dollars, a small fortune in the countries where subcontractors recruit. To raise the money, workers may pawn heirlooms, sell their wedding rings or land or livestock, and take out high-interest loans... Many learned [upon arrival] that they were to earn as little as two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month as cooks and servers for U.S. soldiers—a fraction of what they’d been promised, and a tiny sliver of what U.S. taxpayers are billed for their labor.

Taking advantage of the least advantaged is despicable enough, but these workers not only lose money and freedom but sometimes their lives. Stillman writes that "for the first time in American history, private-contractor losses are now on a par with those of U.S. troops in both war zones [Iraq and Afghanistan], amounting to fifty-three per cent of reported fatalities in the first six months of 2010." Yes, that is more than half of the total fatalities—and, she notes, the true number is probably higher. The official number is based solely on what the private contracting companies report.

According to the Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, the United States is ranked in Tier 1. This means that the U.S. government has identified human trafficking as a problem and is implementing preventative and remedial laws and programs. After reading Stillman's article, you might question the United States' rating.

This entrepreneur owns a telecentre in Tanzania and is among the small business owners in the unique position to create change for Africa's poor. Photo: IICD (flickr)

They own apartments instead of huts. They exploit technology to organize revolutions. They are Africa’s new middle class — and they are still living on less than $20 a day.

One in three Africans are earning between $2 and $20 a day and considered middle class. According to the Guardian, it is exactly this growing, educated population that is becoming the catalyst for change throughout the developing world.

According to a World Bank study cited by the Guardian, "countries with lower poverty will have a large middle class and see higher subsequent rates of both growth and poverty reduction." The reasons for this are both social and economic, but the growth of Africa's middle class seems to bode well for the continent.

Because the developing world's middle class still lives on less than $20 a day, it shares many of the grievances of those living below the poverty line, explains the Guardian. However, members of this income bracket pay more in taxes and thus are more likely to seek transparency and accountability from those in power. Since members of this narrowly defined middle class are generally business owners rather than government employees, they are unlikely to reap benefits from a corrupt system. Given these circumstances, they are often the ones most effective in lobbying for improved living conditions.

In developing countries, this mid-level income group is also particularly important in the small business sector. They have higher disposable income to invest in domestic economies and in education to produce a skilled workforce. As small business owners and entrepreneurs, they may also have the hiring power to employ new workers in difficult economic times.

Freeing Africa from poverty and corruption will take all these changes and more. But with one in three Africans qualifying as middle class, the continent may be on the right track.

Protecting the poor's income from corruption is vital to ending poverty. Photo: Miguel Samper for Mercy Corps

A counter-intuitive anti-corruption law out of India may be key to helping the world's poor -- by partially legalizing many bribes.

The grand thefts of rulers may be more infamous, says the New York Times, but the bitter experience of petty corruption is an everyday trial for millions of poor people. So-called “harassment bribes” present a major obstacle to ending poverty by depriving the poor of crucial income and services. Families in some developing countries must bribe nurses to get their own babies, mortuaries for their dead, and various public officials for garbage collection, clean water, medicines, police protection, and admission to public schools.

Professor Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to India’s finance ministry, has proposed an innovative solution -- paying a “harassment bribe” should be made legal, while receiving one remains illegal.

Imagine a situation in which corrupt hospital staff demand a bribe in exchange for a newborn. Often, turning in the hospital staff risks prosecution for the parent (if the parent pays the bribe, and reports the incident to the police), or endangers the child (if the bribe goes unpaid).

But under Basu's system, a parent could pay the bribe, recover the child to safety, report the corrupt hospital staff, and walk free.

For the “game theory” enthusiasts amongst you, the following matrix explains how turning in the corrupt hospital staff changes from a bad option to the ideal choice under Basu’s anti-harassment law:

Possible Outcomes Matrix. Credit: Mark Ethen

Basu's anti-harassment law provides a boost to anti-corruption advocates. After all, who would not want to save their money by turning in a crooked official? Still, the model depends on a functional and reachable prosecution to deter corruption.

When lower level corruption diminishes, the biggest winners are the poor. They keep more of their earnings, and have increased access to government services. Furthermore, economies with less corruption often have superior social safety nets due to more efficient tax collection, and more stable job growth thanks to higher investor confidence.

Combining Basu’s proposal with other anti-corruption tactics, such as moving transactions online to reduce personal contact with public officials, will help alleviate poverty by protecting the world’s poorest from predatory officials.

Electronic companies say it is impossible to trace the source of minerals used in products. But, a dealer in Eastern Congo shows minerals from a rebel-held mine and non-conflict minerals. Photo: Grassroots Group (flickr)

To cut costs, some U.S. companies source and assemble materials overseas, which can make it hard to track a complex global supply chain. It also means that a product designed by a U.S. company but manufactured in China could be considered a Chinese export. For example, take the iphone, designed by the California-based company, Apple. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on findings from researchers at the Asian Development Bank that estimate the iPhone contributed $1.8 billion to U.S. trade deficit with China last year because technically, the iPhone is a Chinese export.

The problem, according to the Asian Development Bank researchers, is that the trade imbalances are determined through an outdated measurement system that doesn't really work for today's globalized economy. "[T]raditional ways of measuring global trade produce the number but fail to reflect the complexities of global commerce where the design manufacturing and assembly of products often involve several countries," they explain to The Wall Street Journal. According to the current measurement system, American products manufactured overseas can be categorized as as U.S. import.

Going back to Apple's iPhone, The Wall Street Journal explains how the current system gives China full credit for Apple Inc.'s iPhone, even though Chinese labor only accounts for 3.6 percent, or $6.50, of the total $178.96 estimated wholesale cost. Even WTO director-general Pascal Lamy agrees that the concept of country of origin as a way to measure exports has become "obsolete," according to The Wall Street Journal. Lamy adds that using a value-added approach would be more appropriate for today's globalized economy.

Mr. Lamy said if trade statistics were adjusted to reflect the actual value contributed to a product by different countries, the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China—$226.88 billion, according to U.S. figures—would be cut in half...If China was credited with producing only its portion of the value of an iPhone, its exports to the U.S. for the same amount of iPhones would be a U.S. trade surplus of $48.1 million, after accounting for the parts U.S. firms contribute.

But, the lack of transparency and inability of U.S. companies to accurately track their supply chains, prohibits a value-added approach from being used. This can create real-world consequences, explains The Wall Street Journal article, because political battles are waged on the basis of these trade figures.

Ambiguous supply chains are exacerbating other hot-button topics like human rights and fair labor issues. Consider Coltan, or tantalum, which is a metal used for various consumer products. Around 80 percent of the world's known coltan deposits are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is deeply entangled in a violent civil war that has claimed over 4.5 million lives since 1998 and is the deadliest conflict since WWII, according to The Calgary Harold. Militias fight for control of a number of resources to sell and use the profits to continue the violence. And utter lack of a system to track where minerals are coming from is a problem. Apple CEO Steve Jobs said it's challenging and problematic to trace origins of minerals to determine which are conflict minerals. In an effort to help companies better understand where their materials come from, Apple and Research In Motion (maker of Blackberry) recently met to discuss a program to help identify conflict-free smelters. This dialog shows that there is some action on the part of industry, albeit slowly, writes the The Calgary Herald.

If companies and their suppliers were able to keep better track their complex global supply chains, trade experts like Pascal Lamy from the WTO would be better positioned to follow a value-added approach to calculate accurate trade statistics.

It seems that with the incredible amount of innovation and design going into technology, surely someone could come up with a viable system to track these very complex supply chains? Isn't there an App for that?

Human trafficking is a very profitable, low risk business venture. Photo: Samuel Ronnqvist (flickr)

Modern slavery takes many forms. Free the Slaves estimates that worldwide, there are 27 million people being forced to work without pay. In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, Siddarth Kara says that human sex trafficking has become one of the most lucrative types of slavery, with much higher profit margins than those of top-performing companies like Google. Kara, a former investment banker with an MBA and a law degree, believes that the best way to fight human trafficking is to address its economic side:

Sex trafficking is probably the most profitable form of slavery the world has ever seen, in that you can acquire or transport someone for a few hundred dollars, maybe a couple thousand dollars, and generate tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands....That’s the essential functioning and logic of the business model: low cost and risk to transport the slave, and immense profitability on the exploitation side.

Because the sex trade involves such minimal risk, the cost to consumers has plummeted. Kara says that in some countries, sex costs the equivalent of one and a half to two hours of work — which many people can afford. If prosecution rates for traffickers were to increase, prices would go up and demand would fall. Kara also recognizes the importance of cutting off the supply of sex slaves:

The minute [you] pull someone out of a sex slave condition, [you’ve] cut off all future cash flows. In terms of a sex slave it’s 10, 15, 20, transactions a day, a week, a month, year after year. You’ve got to pull people out, care for them...and then prosecute and convict effectively. That means several things: fast track courts, judicial review, and an economic penalty regime that makes it uneconomic to be in this business. If you start to alter the landscape, then the perception by the offender is: This business doesn’t pay. Right now the perception is: Huge profit, almost no risk, I’m there. This is about money: It’s not cruelty for the sake of cruelty. I’ve met traffickers. Some of them are just mundane opportunists."

Kara estimates that his proposed reforms would cost about $400 million a year, which could be a relatively cheap solution to a major problem. To read Kara's full interview, click here.