Failing
I was thinking today (actually at 2:30 am) at my own
failures as a citizen of a bourgeois society, as a father, a husband, a son, as
an orthodox member of my religion, and as a human being on this earth. I know—not
a cornucopia of positive or productive thoughts, but demons come with truth
sometimes.
I thought
upon how we are doing as humans—as a human family. We are failing. I easily
found some statistics.
“According to NetAid, over a billion
people, or roughly one in six, live in extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is
defined as living on less than US$1 a day.
The World Bank goes on to define moderate poverty as basic subsistence living, on $1 to $2 a day. All told, nearly half the world's population lives in poverty -- that's 2.8 billion people living on less than two dollars a day.”
Some other facts to keep in mind:
- Each year
over 8 million people die because they are simply too poor to stay alive.
- More than
800 million people go hungry every day.
- The gross domestic
product of the poorest 48 nations is less than the wealth of the
world's three richest people.
- Thirty-thousand
children die every day due to hunger and treatable illnesses.
- 6 million
children die every year before their fifth birthday, as a result of
malnutrition.
“You
can find detailed poverty assessments of specific geographical regions on the
World Bank's PovertyNet.
And if you're interested in learning how the World Bank comes up with its
poverty statistics, take a look at PovcalNet.
The goal of the Millennium Campaign is to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day by 2015. And the aim of the One Campaign is to direct an additional 1 percent of the United States budget towards eradicating global poverty.”
Complete stats, if you have the courage or can
muster the time to read them:
And…what about human slavery? http://slaveryfootprint.org/
The following article was pulled from Wikipedia; however, everything was cited and sourced.
“Sex trafficking
Main article: Human
trafficking
Sex trafficking is a type of Human trafficking involving the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbor or receipt of persons, by coercive or abusive means for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Sex trafficking is not the only form of human trafficking and estimates vary as to the percentage of human trafficking which is for the purpose of transporting someone into sexual slavery.
The BBC News cited a report by UNODC as listing the most common destinations for victims of human trafficking in 2007 as Thailand and Japan.[7] The report lists Thailand, China, Nigeria, Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine as major sources of trafficked persons.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children
Main article: Commercial sexual
exploitation of children
Commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) includes prostitution of children, child pornography, child sex tourism, trafficking of children for sexual purposes, or other forms of transactional sex with children. The Youth Advocate Program International (YAPI) describes CSEC as a form of coercion and violence against children and a contemporary form of slavery.[8][9]
A declaration of the World Congress Against the Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children, held in Stockholm in 1996, defined CSEC as, "sexual abuse by the adult and remuneration in cash or in kind to the child or to a third person or persons. The child is treated as a sexual object and as a commercial object".[9]
Child prostitution
Main article: Prostitution of children
The prostitution of children is a form of commercial sexual exploitation of children in which a child performs the services of prostitution, usually for the financial benefit of an adult.
India's federal police said in 2009 that they believed around 1.2 million children in India to be involved in prostitution.[10] A CBI statement said that studies and surveys sponsored by the Ministry of Women and Child Development estimated about 40% of India's prostitutes to be children.[10]
Thailand’s Health System Research Institute reported that children in prostitution make up 40% of prostitutes in Thailand.[11]
In some parts of the world, child prostitution is tolerated or ignored by the authorities. Reflecting an attitude which prevails in many developing countries, a judge from Honduras said, on condition of anonymity: "If the victim [the child prostitute] is older than 12, if he or she refuses to file a complaint and if the parents clearly profit from their child's commerce, we tend to look the other way".[12]
Child pornography
Main article: Child
pornography
Child pornography, sometimes referred to as 'child abuse images',[13][14][15] refers to images or films depicting sexually explicit activities involving a child. As such, child pornography is a visual record of child sexual abuse.[16][17][18][19][20][21] Abuse of the child occurs during the sexual acts which are photographed in the production of child pornography,[16][17][19][20][21][22][23] and the effects of the abuse on the child (and continuing into maturity) are compounded by the wide distribution and lasting availability of the photographs of the abuse.[21][22][24]
Child sex tourism
Main article: Child
sex tourism
Child sex tourism is a travel to a foreign country for the purpose of engaging in commercially facilitated child sexual abuse.[25] Child sex tourism results in both mental and physical consequences for the exploited children, that may include "disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and possibly death", according to the State Department of the United States.[25] Thailand, Cambodia, India, Brazil and Mexico have been identified as leading hotspots of child sexual exploitation.”
How can we live our lives acting like these things do not exist?
I cannot.
We go to dinner, on vacations, own more in our pockets than most people will ever see in a lifetime, and yet we do little to nothing.
If we cannot see the monsters they must not exist—but they do exist. We allow them to exist. We just choose not to believe in them.
We are only our brother’s keepers—unless it is easy.
This is our world; are we such worthless creations that these things do not matter?
We may walk on two legs, but do we walk upright?
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