Global Issues: Religious Freedom

Are we free to believe in what we want?

It is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance without government influence or intervention. It also includes the freedom to change one's religion or belief.

  Freedom of religion is considered by many people and most of the nations to be a fundamental human right. In a country with a state religion, freedom of religion is generally considered to mean that the government permits religious practices of other sects besides the state religion, and does not persecute believers from other faiths.

Freedom of belief is different. It allows the right to believe what a person, group or religion wishes, but it does not necessarily allow the right to practice the religion or belief openly and outwardly in a public manner.

▪ Most and Least Religious countries
 
Do you live in a religious country?  Let us find out!
Here are the top ten most religious countries in the world (by percentage of the population):

Those are countries with the biggest amount of people that feel religious, it also helps us to identify the adherence to a certain set of religious beliefs.
(Check the complete list)
 
 Countries with the smallest amount of people that feel religious: In these places, religion is not an important part of daily life for most citizens; have you ever think how can it affect your life?
(Check out the list)

▪ Worst Countries for religious freedom

At its core, freedom of religion or belief requires freedom of expression. Both fundamental rights are protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, yet nearly half of all countries penalize blasphemy, apostasy or defamation of religion. In 13 countries, atheists can be put to death for their lack of belief.

The U.S. State Department names and shames eight “Countries of Particular Concern” that severely violate religious freedom rights within their borders. These countries not only suppress religious expression, they systematically torture and detain people who cross political and social red lines around faith. The worst of the worst are:


 ▪  Burma / Myanmar 
MaBaTha’s influence reportedly waned significantly following the government’s public denunciation of the group in July, although members of the organization continued circulating anti-Muslim materials in some villages and continued fanning religious tensions using social media. (Read more)



▪ China
The constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief, a principle that Beijing says it upholds. But an annual report from the US State Department released in August said that in 2016, China “physically abused, detained, arrested, tortured, sentenced to prison, or harassed adherents of both registered and unregistered religious groups”. (Read more)

 ▪ Eritrea
Another Eritrean Jehovah’s Witness dies after release from prison.
(Read more)

▪  Sudan
Sudan’s interim constitution partially protects religious freedom but restricts apostasy, blasphemy and defamation of Islam. Muslim women are also prevented from marrying non-Muslim men. The country’s vaguely worded apostasy law discourages proselytizing of non-Muslim faiths. Christian South Sudanese living in Sudan are subject to harassment and intimidation by government agents and society, but untangling the religious and ethnic motivations for this persecution can be difficult. Muslims generally enjoy social, legal and economic privileges denied to the Christian minority population. Government authorities have reportedly destroyed churches in recent years, and Christian groups have reportedly been subject to disproportionate taxes and delays in building new houses of worship. (Read more)

 

▪  North Korea
North Korea’s constitution guarantees religious freedom, but this right is far from upheld. The state is officially atheist. Author John Sweeney says the country is “seized by a political religion” and that it considers established religious traditions a threat to state unity and control. North Korea allow for government-sponsored Christian and Buddhist religious organizations to operate and build houses of worship, but political analysts suspect this “concession” is for the sake of external propaganda. A Christian group says it dropped 50,000 Bibles over North Korea over the past year. If caught with one, citizens face imprisonment, torture or even death. Given the government’s extreme control over the flow of reliable information, it is difficult to determine the true extent of religious persecution in North Korea.

Most Christians worship secretly. If discovered, they are “taken to political camps (kwanliso); crimes against them in these camps include extra-judicial killing, extermination, enslavement/forced labor, forcible transfer of population, arbitrary imprisonment, torture, persecution, enforced disappearance, rape and sexual violence and other inhuman acts.” CSW reports documented cases of believers being “hung on a cross over a fire, crushed under a steamroller, herded off bridges, and trampled underfoot.” (Read more)

▪ Religious Persecution Cases

▪ Catholic Inquisition
In 12th century, torture became an integral part of all capital legal proceedings. Also, it was often practiced by the inquisition in most European countries in cases of heresy, blasphemy, adultery and many other similar ‘crimes against God’. Beside common means of torture like beating, suffocating and burning Roman-Catholic Church used others, more depraved ways of extracting confessions and execution of its victims… (Read more)


▪ Ku Klux Klan
The Ku Klux Klan, with its long history of violence, is the most infamous — and oldest — of American hate groups. Although black Americans have typically been the Klan's primary target, it also has attacked Jews, immigrants, gays and lesbians and, until recently, Catholics.
(Read More)

 
 ▪  Governmental persecution

In Eritrea, if you are Catholic, Muslim, or a member of the Orthodox and Evangelical churches in Eritrea then it seems you can breathe easy.
However, those who believe and practice minority faiths are routinely persecuted, according to human rights groups. (Read more)

A church in northern China had been demolished not long ago, this, not being the a case apart, which sparks fears of a wider campaigns against Christians as authorities prepare to enforce new laws on religion.
(Read more)

▪ Some Persecuted Religions
 
▪ Jehovah’s Witnesses
Anti-terror legislation is being used to target those whose faith is only ‘extreme’ in terms of its commitment to non-violence. It should be a warning to us all. (Read more)

From the Korean War period to the present, South Korea has relentlessly prosecuted young Witness men who refuse military service, and the government has not provided any alternative to resolve the issue. The result? South Korea has sentenced over 19,200 Witnesses to a combined total of more than 36,700 years in prison for refusing to perform military service. (Read More)


▪ Muslims
“Ultra-nationalist Buddhist group Ma Ba Tha has been spreading anti-Muslim rhetoric across Myanmar for years. Cosmopolitan Mandalay is at the heart of this hostility – which many fear is here to stay.” (Read more)




Read Even More:
▪ Another Blow To The Victims Of Religious Persecution
▪ Bangladesh: Runaway Muslim Persecution of Hindus
▪ Anti-Christian religious persecution on the rise

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Global Issues: Prejudice

Prejudice

Did you know?

▪ The word "prejudice" comes from the Latin roots "prae" (in advance) and "judicum" (judgment), which essentially means to judge before. When we "pre-judge" someone, we make up our minds about who they are before we actually get to know them. Prejudices or "pre-judgments" are not based upon actual real-life interaction with a person or group it is often born of stereotypes and forms the fertile soil of discrimination.

For instance, a person may hold prejudiced mentally towards a certain ethnic group or gender etc. (e.g. sexist).

▪ The word ‘stereotype’ comes from the French adjective ‘’stéréotype’’, which itself comes from the Greek στερεός (solid) and τύπος (type). The earliest example in the Oxford English Dictionary of this usage is from a 1922 essay by Walter Lippmann in the journal Public Opinion: “A stereotype may be so consistently and authoritatively transmitted in each generation from parent to child that it seems almost like a biological fact.”

For instance, a person may stereotype a certain group of people, by the pre assumption based on some members of that group etc.

▪ The word ‘’Discrimination’’  from the Latin ‘’discrīminātus’’, which means literate to separate, can be considered the culmination of both previous terms, it is the behavior or action to make a distinction in favor of or against an individual, a group of people or something (being also most of the time negative) especially based on sex, race, social class, etc.

 For instance: a person might discriminate another by their different way of dressing. 

▪ The effects of social norms on prejudice: 

According to McLeod, S. A. (2008) on Prejudice and discrimination, Minard (1952) investigated how social norms influence prejudice and discrimination. The behavior of Afro-descendants and Caucasian miners in a town in the southern United States was observed, both above and below ground. (Read more)

▪ Affirmative Action

 An Affirmative action is an action or policy favoring those who tend to suffer from discrimination, especially in relation to employment or education; it is also known worldwide as a positive discrimination. Thinking like that it would be right to affirm that this kind of attitude or policy is for the best, isn’t it? Not so fast…

Ten myths about affirmative action:  In recent years, affirmative action has been debated more intensely than at any other time in its thirty-year history. Many supporters view affirmative action as a milestone, many opponents see it as a millstone, and many others regard it as both or neither, as a necessary, but imperfect, remedy for an intractable social disease. Here are some of the most popular myths about affirmative action, along with a brief commentary on each one. (Read more)

▪ Social media prejudice

Is it possible to be preconceived while networking, when we are comfortably set in our couches using smartphones or even during games online? Sadly but indeed it is. The social networking site as we probably know very well today, such as facebook, Instagram, twitter and many others, are formed by human beings, and being imperfect as we are, any tool we possess has the potential of being used as a tool for prejudice.

‘’Social networking as we know creates an "echo chamber" in which a network of like-minded people share controversial theories, biased views and selective news, academics found.
This means that any bias held is simply repeated back to them unchallenged and accepted as a real fact.’’ Says a study by The Telegraph journal. (Read more)

There is also a study about human behavior with and without social Medias: The study compared crowd-sourced and social media recruits to in-lab participants.  Check it out!

▪ Different types of prejudice

Different kinds of prejudice lead to different forms of discrimination. (Read more)

▪ Unconscious bias

Are you preconceived in any way? Do you know what unconscious bias is?

Find out at the videos below.

▪ Prejudice Consequences

Prejudice affects the everyday lives of millions of people across the globe. Prejudice held by individuals unnaturally forces on others who are targets of their prejudice a false social status that strongly influences who they are, what they think, and even the actions they take. Prejudice shapes what the targets of prejudice think about the world and life in general, about the people around them, and how they feel about themselves. Importantly, prejudice greatly influences what people expect from the future and how they feel about their chances for self-improvement, referred to as their life chances. All of these considerations define their very identity as individuals.

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Global Issues: Water Crisis

Water Crisis

“Clean, safe drinking water is scarce. Today, nearly 1 billion people in the developing world don't have access to it. Yet, we take it for granted, we waste it, and we even pay too much to drink it from little plastic bottles.
Water is the foundation of life. And still today, all around the world, far too many people spend their entire day searching for it.” (Continue reading...)

▪ Water Crisis Causes
 
▪ Pollution: Shanghai, with its fancy cafes, glitzy shopping malls and organic health food shops, is emblematic of improving quality of life for China’s urban middle class. Yet while the city’s veil of smog has lifted slightly in recent years, its water pollution crisis continues unabated – 85% of the water in the city’s major rivers was undrinkable in 2015, according to official standards, and 56.4% was unfit for any purpose.
(Read more)

▪ Groundwater overdraft: Groundwater overdraft occurs when groundwater use exceeds the amount of recharge into an aquifer, which leads to a decline in groundwater level. This condition is occurring in an increasing number of groundwater basins throughout California, and is affecting the state in many ways.
(Read more)

▪ Population growth: Water is a key element of life for everyone on Earth. As the world’s population grows, the demand for water mounts and the pressure on finite water resources intensifies. Climate change, which is also closely tied to population growth, will also lead to even greater pressures on the availability of water resources.
(Read more)

▪ Water privatization: The process of water privatization in Chile, which began in 1981 under General Pinochet, established a model for water management that strengthened private water rights, adopted a market-based allocation system and reduced state oversight. That model became emblematic of neoliberal reforms heavily promoted by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
These reforms fundamentally changed the way water is valued and managed globally. No longer a mere necessity for human survival, water has become an object of international financial speculation and experts predict that “blue gold” will soon become the most important physical commodity worldwide, dwarfing oil and precious metals.
(Read more)

▪ Bad insfrastructure: Failure to replace and upgrade our country’s water infrastructure poses a severe risk to both the quality and quantity of the country’s water supplies.
(Read more)

▪ Water misuse and overuse: “The big cities like New York, Chicago and San Francisco, consume massive amounts of water daily due to their massive populations concentrated in one area. New York City, for instance, consumed 1007.2 million gallons of water per day in 2009 (NYC Government). This is 125.8 gallons per person per day. To put this amount in comparison, most people living in Africa only use around 5.28 gallons per day (Water for Africa). Therefore, the average American living in NYC is using 25 times more water than the average public who is living in Africa. In no economy is this comparison acceptable.”
(Read more)

Why Water from charity: water on Vimeo.

▪ Diseases in relation with inadequate water supply: These diseases result from the lack of adequate water supply for human use. The pathogens are passed on faecal-orally from humans to humans or by contact with contaminated surfaces.
▪ List

▪ Ten countries most in need of clean water: The goal of World Water Day is to raise awareness about the water crisis that is happening in our world. We need to educate ourselves on where the crisis is taking place and then we need to do our best to make it so that there will never be a need for another World Water Day.
(Read more)


▪ Natural insfrastructure could help solving Brazilian water crisis: Serious water crisis have plagued Brazil’s major cities in recent years. Severe pollution in Rio de Janeiro’s Guanabara Bay is jeopardizing sailing and other water sports at the upcoming Olympic Games.
(Read More)

▪ An Approach to solve the water problem


▪ Water Facts
By BluePlanet 
By OneDrop

▪ Save Water: How scarcity & misuse is threatening our planet  

Global Issues: Energy Crisis

Energy Crisis

The energy crisis is the concern that the world’s demands on the limited natural resources that are used to power industrial society are diminishing as the demand rises. These natural resources are in limited supply. While they do occur naturally, it can take hundreds of thousands of years to replenish the stores.

 

World energy consumption has been rising at a conerning rate since the mid 1970s. The reliance on oil presents a problem as this form of fuelruns out, the energy crisis worsens. Although rates of increase in energy use have been declining, the industrialization, agricultural development and rapidly growing populations of developing countries will need much more energy. However to bring the developing countries' energy use up to that of industrialized countries by the year 2025 would require an increase in the current global energy use by a factor of five. The planetary ecosystem could not stand this, especially if the increases were based on non-renewable fossil fuels. The current threats of global warming and acidification of the environment also tend to preclude even a doubling of energy use based on the present pattern of energy supply.
(More info)

▪ Energy Crises Causes 
There are many different causes of energy crisis like:


▪ Overconsumption:
Overconsumption is a situation where resource use has outpaced the sustainable capacity of the ecosystem. A prolonged pattern of overconsumption leads to environmental degradation and the eventual loss of resource bases.
(Read more)



▪ Overpopulation: Over the last half century the population of the world has exploded. At the time of writing there are seven billion people on the planet and this number is projected to grow in a short period of time.
(Read more)



▪ Poor infrastructure: Aging infrastructure of power generating equipment is yet another reason for energy shortage. Most of the energy producing firms keep on using outdated equipment that restricts the production of energy. It is the responsibility of utilities to keep on upgrading the infrastructure and set a high standard of performance.
(Read more)

▪ Energy poverty: More than 1.3 billion people – almost a quarter of humanity – have no electricity.This means they have no light in the evening, limited access to radio and modern communications, inadequate education and health facilities, and not enough power for their work and businesses.
Worldwide, more than 3 billion people depend on dirty solid fuels to meet their most basic energy need, cooking. At least 2.5 billion cook with biomass (i.e. wood, dung and agricultural residues), and over half a billion cook with coal.
(Read more)

▪ Poor governance: “The current energy crisis, though also a global problem, has become a critical socio-economic issue for Pakistan and is rooted in the country’s poor governance”.
(Read more)





▪ Unexplored renewable energy options: Renewable energy still remains unused is most of the countries. Most of the energy comes from non-renewable sources like coal. It still remains the top choice to produce energy
(Read more)

▪ Wastage of energy:  Without paying much attention, we use a lot of energy each day — from charging electronics to watching TV. In fact, in 2014, the average U.S. residential household consumed 10,982 kWh of electricity and spent around $2,200 annually on utility bills. Luckily, households can lower this amount up to 25 percent by being more proactive with energy conservation tips.
(Read more and check some tips to avoid the wastage of energy)


▪ Poor distribution system: Our electrical grid is being stretched to the brink. The U.S. is making itself less resilient against catastrophic failure from a major weather event or terror attack every day.
(Read more)


▪ Major accidents and natural calamities: In the spring of 2010, drought devastated China’s southwest, reducing the flow of major rivers and slashing hydroelectric power generation dramatically, upping China’s demand for energy inputs and putting pressure on global fuel prices.
In 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami raged a dual attack on Japan – destroying much of northern Japan’s energy infrastructure and devastating four nuclear plants and Fukushima – forcing Japan to up its imports of oil, coal and natural gas and causing several countries worldwide to cease nuclear development altogether.
Despite different causes and countries, the impacts both natural disasters have had on global energy are enormous.
(Read more)

▪ Wars and attacks: The Heritage team simulated the effects on world oil supplies, demand, and prices after a major terrorist attack on oil exports from Saudi Arabia and resulting disruption of oil shipping lanes between the Middle East and major Asian economies. Analyst...  measured the effects of these disruptions on the U.S. economy and found:
(Read more)

▪ A Crises of Energy

▪ Renewable Energy 

Global Issues: Education Worldwide

Education Worldwide

Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge of a society. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialization or enculturation. (Read more)

▪ Actual World Situation 

As a result of poverty and marginalization, more than 72 million children around the world remain unschooled.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected area with over 32 million children of primary school age remaining uneducated. (Read more)

▪ Latest Human Development Report

▪ Causes of Lack of Education 

▪ A lack of founding for education: 
The amount of total aid that’s allocated to education has decreased in each of the past six years, and education aid is 4% lower than it was in 2009. (Read more)

▪ Poverty: For many of the poorest families, school remains too expensive and children are forced to stay at home doing chores or work themselves. Families remain locked in a cycle of poverty that goes on for generations.
(Read more)

▪ War: Almost 50 million children and young people living in conflict areas are out of school, more than half of them primary age, and reports of attacks on education are rising, according to figures published on Friday.
(Read more)

▪ Exclusion of children with disabilities: Governments in Australia, New Zealand and the UK are failing children with disabilities by not providing necessary learning support and by allowing issues to permeate without intervening.
Schools are deliberately disregarding disability standards through rejecting school places, denying the opportunity of access to activities and offering minimal, if any, support to children with disabilities.
(Read more)

▪ Gender Inequality: “Only around 30 per cent of all girls worldwide have made it to secondary education and more than 66 per cent of all university students are male"
(Read more)

▪ Natural Disasters: Natural disasters, such as floods and typhoons, forced 4.5 million people around the world to leave their homes in the first half of 2017 .
They included hundreds of thousands of children whose education has been stopped or disrupted due to schools being severely damaged or destroyed by the extreme weather conditions.
(Read more)

 ▪ Child Labor: In India, from the population growth, there are more and more people in the country who are illiterate and are in a state of poverty. This leads to child labour. Further, there are more than sixty million children in India who are working under child labour.
(Read more)

▪ Lack of Sanitation: A broader concern is that the absence of school latrines potentially exposes pubescent-age girls to every-day threats of verbal and physical harassment at school, with potential consequences for female educational attainment.
(Read more)



▪ Population Growth: “The rapid population growth estimated at 3.5 per cent per annum is putting pressure on the existing resources and facilities. We need to do something to control this population growth. It is our duty, all of us, to advocate for lower population growth,”
(Read more)

Global Issues: Diseases

Diseases

   

A disease is a particular abnormal condition that affects part or all of an organism not caused by external force (injury) and that consists of a disorder of a structure or function, usually serving as an evolutionary disadvantage. The study of disease is called pathology, which includes the study of cause. Disease is often construed as a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors such as pathogens or by internal dysfunctions, particularly of the immune system, such as an immunodeficiency, or by a hypersensitivity, including allergies and autoimmunity.

(Read More)

Education Reduces the Spread of Communicable Diseases: The spread of disease in developing countries is often exacerbated by a lack of public knowledge about how it is transmitted. (Read more)

▪ Water-related Diseases

▪ Diarrhoea:

Diarrhoea occurs world-wide and causes 4% of all deaths and 5% of health loss to disability. It is most commonly caused by gastrointestinal infections which kill around 2.2 million people globally each year, mostly children in developing countries. (Read more)

▪ Legionella:
Legionellosis (LEE-juh-nuh-low-sis) is a respiratory disease caused by Legionella bacteria. Sometimes the bacteria cause a serious type of pneumonia (lung infection) called Legionnaires’ disease. The bacteria can also cause a less serious infection called Pontiac fever that has symptoms similar to a mild case of the flu. (Read more)

▪ Norovirus

Norovirus causes inflammation of the stomach or intestines or both. This is called acute gastroenteritis. (Read more)

▪ Cryptosporidium

There are many species of Cryptosporidium that infect animals, some of which also infect humans. The parasite is protected by an outer shell that allows it to survive outside the body for long periods of time and makes it very tolerant to chlorine disinfection. While this parasite can be spread in several different ways, water (drinking water and recreational water) is the most common way to spread the parasite. Cryptosporidium is a leading cause of waterborne disease among humans in the United States. (Read more)

▪ STDs Over the World

More than 30 different bacteria, viruses and parasites are known to be transmitted through sexual contact. Eight of these pathogens are linked to the greatest incidence of sexually transmitted disease. Of these eight infections, four are currently curable: syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and trichomoniasis. The other four are viral infections and are incurable: hepatitis B, herpes simplex virus (HSV or herpes), HIV, and human papillomavirus (HPV). Symptoms or disease due to the incurable viral infections can be reduced or modified through treatment. (Read more)

▪ Diseases Transmitted by Food

The failure of food-handlers to wash hands in certain situations (such as after using the toilet, handling raw meat, cleaning spills, or carrying garbage), wear clean disposable gloves, or use clean utensils is responsible for the foodborne transmission of these pathogens. (Read more)

▪ Mosquito-borne Diseases

Mosquitoes cause more human suffering than any other organism -- over one million people worldwide die from mosquito-borne diseases every year. Not only can mosquitoes carry diseases that afflict humans, they also transmit several diseases and parasites that dogs and horses are very susceptible to. These include dog heartworm, West Nile virus (WNV) and Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE). (Read more)

▪ Blood-borne Diseases

Blood transfusion has been and continues to be a possible source of disease transmission. A myriad of agents can potentially be transmitted through blood transfusions, including bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Of these, bacteria are the most commonly transmitted. (Read more)