Skillshare International: Bridging the gap between North and South?

Essay from the year 2006 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Topic: Development Politics, grade: 1.7, The Australian National University, - entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: The gap between rich and poor has never been so wide. The income of the richest fifty million people (a mere one percent of world population) is at par with the combined income of 2.7 billion people sharing a life of extreme poverty.1 Moreover the unequal distribution of wealth and social wellbeing measured in levels of education or literacy, life expectancy, child mortality and economic performance are geographically skewed. The people in the north of the globe are living a good life, while the people living south of the tropic of cancer often struggle for survival. Especially on the African continent, ‘development’ has failed. The statistics for Sub-Saharan Africa’s development are particularly alarming. Here real per-capita incomes have dropped significantly over the last decades leaving half of the population with less than One Dollar ($1) per day.2 HIV/AIDS and other communicable diseases continue to cripple the region like nowhere else on the planet, not only challenging ongoing development efforts, but also by filling orphanages and cemeteries in a disturbing pace.3