Friday, October 27, 2006

Thing I'm distracted from

Reading the news today, I got angry and defensive when Haiti was referred to as the poorest country in the americas. Then I looked it up, and sometime in the last year Haiti has indeed been reclassed in the human development index lower than any other american country.

But, underneath the status of "low development", there are a whole bunch of "unclassed" countries, which I imagined would be places like Vatican City and San Marino. They're there, but so are Afghanistan, Somalia and Serbia, and some others.

One of the others is the Marshall Islands, who I couldn't even generally point to on the globe. (North Pacific)

They are classed 195th in GDP per capita. (Haiti is 149, and Burkina Faso is 164th) I can't tell you who 195 is near because it doesn't even show up on the Wikipedia list, which stops at 181. To give you an idea of what those countries are doing, here are the ten preceding the cut:

171 Madagascar 908
172 Sierra Leone 903
173 Niger 872
174 Eritrea 858
175 Ethiopia 823
176 Democratic Republic of the Congo 774
177 Yemen 751
178 Burundi 739
179 Guinea-Bissau 736
180 Tanzania 723
181 Malawi 596


I also learned that:
Not being among the 179 member countries of the International Labour Organisation, Marshall Islands is among the handful of countries not obliged to abide by the core labour standards (elimination of forced labour, child labour and discrimination, and respect for freedom of association and right to collective bargaining) as required of ILO members.
The Marshall Islands also host an american testing ground for missiles, and its government is suing the US for increased compensation for its radiation-poisoning victims, according to the BBC Country Profile

1 comment:

Britt said...

I'm glad that you discovered interesting developement information about the Marshall Islands. I would like to discover more about Haiti as well. I am currently living in the Marshall Islands teaching at the college and I've posted some observations similar to the ones you have made on my blog. They might be of interest to you :)

Cheers!