Eliminating Poverty in Southeast Asia

Essay by carcakesHigh School, 11th grade March 2006

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The total population of the world is six billion. One quarter of the world's population-1.5 billion people-are living in extreme poverty. South Asia is a region in which many of these people are living. Every day, thousands of people in this region go hungry. Most cities have poor sanitation, and little to no public works, all due to poor economy. Despite these extreme conditions, there is hope for South Asia. In order to improve the economy and help the poor, I believe there are four concepts that need to be understood. These concepts are promoting opportunity, facilitating empowerment, enhancing security and securing agriculture and forestry.

In promoting opportunity, the government plays an important role, in making it easy for poor people to start their own small businesses by making the market investor-friendly. It also has to put controls over the expanding of international trade, so as not to harm people, only to benefit them.

For poor people to have equal opportunities in education, health and other services, the government has to improve the quality of these services and increase the participation of the poor in them, keeping in mind social, ethnic racial and gender equality. By doing so, the equal education of posterity is secured, the goal of maintaining a stable government in the future is made palpable, and the future is therefore made brighter for South Asia.

Also in facilitating empowerment, the government has the important role of making all the government positions available to everybody equally. A special emphasis needs to be made here to gender inequality; since women have less rights than men, then poor women are even more disadvantaged and face many obstacles in life, so a special effort needs to be made to eliminate this discrimination by, for example, allowing women to hold...