Estonia

In the 90s as Estonia was going through economic reforms, the slogan from the government became “No-one will help you if you don’t help yourself”, or “The government helps those who help themselves”. The societal transition during the reform contributed to a decrease in the well-being of individuals and caused massive poverty in the beginning, but by the mid-90s, conditions stabilized and resumed its normal course of development. The gap between the richest and the poorest grew sharply in the last ten years. In the mid-1990s, the average net income of the richest ten percent was approximately 9 times that of the poorest ten per cent, but by the year 2000, it had reached almost 14 times. Poverty is more widespread and deeper in rural areas. They are double the size of the urban poor living under the poverty line. Many in the rural areas are unemployed or are subsistence farmers.

The most at-risk of poverty population are the youth and working-age singles. Although poverty is on the decline, Estonia still has a large number of poor people whose situation has not changed since the beginning of the economic reform days. Poverty in Estonia has come to be called a multifaceted phenomenon, with economic, social, and psychological risk resulting from an accumulation of social deficits. The duration of poverty is becoming permanently longer and deep social exclusion is becoming evident.

While Estonia does respect the human rights of its citizens, the country refuses to grant equal citizenship to its large non-Estonian speaking population. Non-citizens in Estonia are guaranteed basic rights under the Estonian Constitution, including the right to unemployment benefits and social services. There are concerns regarding the successful integration of Estonia's large non-citizen, non-Estonian speaking population, which comprises nearly 40% of the country's 1.6 million residents. Employment and citizenship require residents to speak the Estonian language and this hinders immigrants’ integration and contributes to the bi-polarity within Estonia’s residents. Adequate representation for non-citizens and a voice for their concerns present another problem. Non-citizens are also subjected to job, salary, and housing discrimination because of language requirements.

Domestic violence and violence against women is common and continues to be the subject of media coverage. Domestic violence or marital rape is not considered a crime, but they could be prosecuted. 40% of crime, including domestic violence, goes unreported and even if the police show up, the abused spouse often declines to press charges due to societal pressure.

While men and women are equal in the work force, this is not the case in practice. Women’s educational levels are usually higher than that of men, but women are continuously being paid, on average, lower than men.

There were reports that women and children engage in prostitution. Trafficking of women and children for prostitution remain a problem.

Estonia has one of the most rapidly evolving HIV epidemics in Europe, spreading at 10 times the rate of most Western European countries, yet has limited resources available to respond. The epidemic developed rapidly in August 2000 through drug users and a difficult economic situation along with high unemployment rates. The HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 1.1% with about 7,800 people living with HIV/AIDS. Most infected are young, intravenous drug users who share their needles and also spread HIV/AIDS sexually to non-drug users. Those infected with HIV/AIDS cannot afford health insurance due to unemployment and are unable to pay for continuous treatment. They only qualify for emergency treatment and cannot rely on the government for any kind of insurance. This puts a lot of pressure on the NGOs, which receive almost no public support in Estonia. The NGOs mainly rely on international projects for its funding.

The government has been criticized for not taking care of the HIV situation and for their negligence on public health. Due to insufficient funds, the AIDS Program was unable to slow the spread of the epidemic or implement preventive measures for the percentage of the population who need it.

The estimated number of intravenous drug users is 12,000-15,000. A majority of them are Russian speaking, which prompts the government to claim that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is not an Estonian problem, a view that many Estonian-speaking citizens agree with.

Environmental pollution by the Soviet Army has degraded Estonia's topsoil and underground water supply. During the Soviet era, the army dumped tons of jet fuel into the ground, improperly disposed of toxic chemicals, and discarded outdated explosives and weapons in coastal and inland waters. Coastal seawater is polluted in certain locations. In 1993, a few years after the army’s withdrawal from Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Environment surveyed the damages: six square kilometers of land were covered by a layer of fuel, eleven square kilometers of underground water were said to be contaminated, and water in the surrounding area was undrinkable.

Estonia's air is polluted with sulfur dioxide from two oil shale-based thermal power stations operating near Narva, in the northeast. It accounts for about 75% of Estonia’s air pollution. The mining of oil shale in northeastern Estonia also left gigantic mounds of limestone dotting the region. Near the town of Sillamäe, site of a former uranium enrichment plant, about 1,200 tons of uranium and about 750 tons of thorium had been dumped into the Gulf of Finland. This was said to have caused severe health problems among area residents. In the coastal town of Paldiski, the removal of waste left by Soviet army nuclear reactors also caused major concern.

Though the percentage of environmental pollution is slowly decreasing, the cleanup of Estonia’s environment will amount to a total of a few billion dollars, which Estonia does not have.

The government has been strongly committed to the priority of education. 99.8% of the population is literate. General education is free and compulsory for nine years in schools established by the state and local government. Secondary education is voluntary and free at state and municipal educational institutions. In order to continue studies at a higher educational institution, everybody has to pass the state exams which are organized by the Exam and Qualification Centre at the Ministry of Education.

Workers with more years of education had better access to jobs and higher relative pay increases. Also, the more educated workers were less likely to be laid-off and faced a higher probability of finding a job if they became unemployed.

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