Raising news awareness on driving forces behind failing states

While an increase of rape cases has been mentioned in some news reports since the disaster, a health survey, conducted by UNFPA Haiti in October 2010, found that the pregnancy rate among women age 15 to 49 had tripled in the areas affected by the earthquake, compared to the situation before the disaster. This was never mentioned in on-going media coverage or in NGO aid appeals.

4) In Gaza, around 1.5 million people are crammed onto an arid strip of land 40km (25 miles) long and 6 to 12km wide. Many people live in poverty, with unemployment at 45 percent in late 2010, one of the highest in the world according to the UN. The population has grown by 40 per cent in the past 10 years and is rising by about 5% every year. It is expected to double by 2030 – with family sizes of eight or more not unusual.

5) In Libya, repeated stories of ‘refugees’ - alternatively described as ‘migrant workers’ trying to leave the country were shown on TV, many of them sub-Saharan Africans. What was not reported is that an estimated one in six of Libya’s population is made up of illegal sub-Saharan immigrants trying to reach Europe. Italy eventually paid the Libyan Government to help stop them moving on to Italy. With the chaos, where are these illegal residents heading now, aided by International Refugee Agencies and how did the Libyan Government suddenly acquire so many sub-Saharan mercenaries to brutally attack its own people?

6) Pakistan. The media spent weeks looking at the late 2010 disaster in Pakistan, where one-fifth of the country was flooded by the Indus River. But you don’t hear any information that Pakistan is housing 174 million people on a flood plain and at its current birth-rate the population is set to more than double over the next forty years. That ‘core’ challenge never crosses the lips of CNN, NPR, NBC or the BBC.

7) In Yemen, a nation of 22 million and rising rapidly, grain production has fallen by two thirds over the last 20 years and 19 of Yemen’s 21 aquifers are severely stressed. Yemen now imports 89 per cent of the food it needs according to a recent EU report. World Bank projections say the area around the capital, San’a’ - home to 2 million people and one of the world’s fastest growing cities, may be pumped dry in a few years.