Malawi

Malawi, a desperately poor, deeply devastated, and sadly hindered country has faced many hardships in its long history. Catastrophic events such as the 1949 famine, and 1991-92 drought have not only prolonged, but also intensified the country’s poverty recuperation. With a population of about 12 million, it doesn’t make it easy to find any way out. That’s why there are some organizations that participate in bringing Malawi back to life. Many charitable organizations such as WFP have engaged in intensive aid of decreasing the poverty lines in Malawi by targeting the elderly, the chronically ill, pregnant and nursing mothers, orphans, devastated households facing two consecutive years of crop failure, and many underweight children under the age of five.

During this year alone, WFP has decided to deliver targeted food distributions to 2 million people of the total 4.8 million who will need food assistance through to April 2006. This would mean that WFP operations in Malawi would require nearly 98,000 metric tons of food for the current protracted relief and recovery operation from January to June 2006, a huge amount of relief for the Malawian people. Also,

Unfortunately, it is very difficult for many people to understand the poverty conditions the Malawians face every day. Every drought or flood that occurs in the country has a huge adverse effect on not only poverty, but resident life as well.

According to the civilians, they say that they are eating one meal or less per day, and the number of malnourished children under the age of five has been increasing over the years, a big sign of high poverty levels and death rates in Malawi.

As in any third-world country, human rights alongside many other issues play major roles in the country’s development. The country has always been poor, with a narrow economic base characterized by a small and highly concentrated industrial sector and low levels of foreign and domestic investment. In the recent years, Malawi has held its first democratic multiparty election since its independence in 1994, which followed thirty years of authoritarian, one-party rule.

During the election, President Bakili Muluzi and his United Democratic Front party obtained power on a platform that promised to restore the rule of law and to better human rights. Also, recently, the Human Rights Commission was created due to the mistreatment and unjust ruling of the government. This commission was to “protect and investigate violations of the rights accorded by the constitution.”

Other institutions created by the government were the Ombudsman and the National Compensation Tribunal (NCT). These two institutions have been created for the sole purpose of protecting human rights and as a result, they have been very effective in resolving such relevant issues. The NCT has registered over 8,700 claims, of which approximately 25 percent have been resolved. However, once again, it is very difficult to keep such institutions valid without a large source of money. And because of this issue of the lack of funds, the NCT has limited control to settle all claims.

Still to this day, the police authorities use excessive force to quell demonstrators. Such forces include the firing of rubber bullets and tear gas at many protestors. Also, torture of suspects and deaths in police custody are still inevitable and a huge issue for many civilians. Even journalists perceived to be critical of the government are assaulted, threatened, and arrested.

Fortunately, in the most recent years, the overall quality of the human rights situation in Malawi has improved significantly, although, there are some problems such as police misconduct which remain an issue.

Malawi, just like many other third-world countries in Africa have encountered issues with AIDS and other diseases as well. It was in 1985 when the first infection of AIDS was discovered in Malawi. Since then, the number has grown and spread epidemically throughout the country, especially in the urban areas. In the most recent years, it has been proven that across all age groups, HIV prevalence is higher among urban women than among those living in the rural areas. HIV prevalence has been recorded to be highest in among women between the ages 25 to 29 in Lilongwe (32%) and in Blantyre (44%).

Similarly, Malawi’s adult HIV prevalence has been estimated to be around 14 % with prevalence over twice as high in urban areas (26%) as in rural areas (12%). The distribution of the AIDS prevalence is found to be highest in the southern region (18%) followed by the central region (11%) and the Northern region (9%).

But a bigger part of just getting infected with AIDS is the increasing number of deaths it carries with it. Hundreds of thousands of Malawians have given their lives to this ominous disease. It has evident that AIDS is the leading cause of death among those ages 20 to 49. Needless to say, many children also encounter this ferocious tragedy during their younger years- about 80,000 adults and child recently have died due to AIDS in a span of one year. Of this number, about 90% result from heterosexual transmission.

It is imperative to know that because of the levels of poverty, economics, politics, and education, Malawi is challenged by many different types of diseases besides AIDS/HIV. Such major health problems include TB, cholera, schistosomiasis, acute respiratory infection, acute diarrhea disease, and meningitis.

Malawi is one of the world's least-developed countries, with an economy based on subsistence agriculture and over 90 percent of its population rural. Malawi's population has been hard hit by drought and crop failures, which have produced widespread famine in recent years. Almost all fertile land is already under cultivation, and continued population pressure raises the threat of soil erosion and exhaustion, as well as infringement on forest resources for agricultural purposes. The demand for firewood has significantly depleted the timber stock. Malawi has 17.5 cu km of renewable water resources with 86% used for farming and 3% used for industrial activity.

The nation's cities produce about 0.2 million tons of solid waste per year. Human encroachment has reduced wildlife habitats. The preservation of Malawi's wildlife is a significant environmental issue. Recently, it has been found that 8.9% of the country's natural areas are protected. Some of the nation's fish population is threatened with extinction due to pollution from sewage, industrial waste, and agricultural chemicals and siltation of spawning grounds.

Malawi—a land-locked nation—is home to Lake Malawi which houses some of the greatest fish diversity of any lake on earth, but deforestation has resulted in soil erosion and siltation of parts of the lake.

Overtime, deforestation has played a major role in destruction of wildlife, weather, and nutrition. Currently, Malawi has lost nearly 13 percent of its total forest cover due to fuelwood collection and subsistence and commercial agriculture. Tobacco farming, which accounts for nearly 80 percent of the nations export earnings is sometimes blamed for deforestation, but perhaps more importantly, it weakens the country's economy. The nation's heavy reliance on the commodity has certainly weakened the overall economy by leaving it highly vulnerable to decreasing tobacco prices while impacting the health of rural farmers who grow the cash crop instead of food crops.

Malawi’s net primary school enrolment/ attendance (%) is estimated to be roughly 76%. A great difference in education and literacy rates still exists to this day. Analogous to many other worldwide countries, the men have the upper hand in literacy rates over women; 74% for men compared to 56% for women. Also, competition within each gender stands high due to the very limited places offered to qualifying students each year.

Malawi’s education system follows an 8-4-4 orientation system which consists of primary school, secondary school, and university education. Due to overall poverty and economics in many areas, the education system has also gotten hit hard and suffers from good standing literacy rates and equality between men and women.

Most children start formal education at primary school at the age of six. The primary school takes 8 years from Standard 1 to 8 at the end of which pupils write the Primary School Leaving Certificate examinations. The introduction of Free Primary Education in Malawi has seen a large increase in the number of pupils going to primary school but this increase in access has also brought major infrastructure problems and a big decline in quality.

After primary school, most Malawians do move on to secondary school where they are exposed to various subjects in a period of 4 years. Students can attend secondary school in public schools run by the government or in private schools run by the private sector and individuals. But it is very important to know that the private and public institution fee differences are very large in Malawi, which makes it very difficult for admissions and allows only a small group of people to attend the private sector. In reality, the private institutions cost about 50 times more than the public ones. Therefore, there exists a huge gap in education, which creates an inequality for many families.

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