{"id":650,"date":"2007-09-12T13:52:41","date_gmt":"2007-09-12T12:52:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/wordpress\/?p=650"},"modified":"2007-09-12T13:52:41","modified_gmt":"2007-09-12T12:52:41","slug":"what-a-crazy-but-improving-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=650","title":{"rendered":"What a crazy &#8211; but improving &#8211; world"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The richest 225 people in the world earn the same as the poorest 2.7 billion or some 40% of humanity.\n<li>The annual takings of criminal gangs around the world are roughly equal to Britain&#8217;s GDP or twice the world&#8217;s combined defence budgets.\n<li>Up to 27 million people are held in slavery which is more than at the peak of the African slave trade.\n<li>Violence against women by men causes more casualties than wars with one in five women a victim of rape or attempted rape in their lifetime.\n<li>Up to 15 million children worldwide have been orphaned through AIDS.\n<\/ul>\n<p>And yet the survey from which these stark facts are taken finds that, for most people, the world is becoming &#8220;a better place&#8221;, and should continue to improve over the next decade, with generally rising incomes, life expectancy and access to health and education.<br \/>\nThe global economy grew by 5.4% in 2006, far outstripping population growth of just over 1%. &#8220;At this rate, world poverty will be cut by more than half between 2000 and 2015, meeting the UN millennium development goal for poverty reduction, except in sub-Saharan Africa,&#8221; it predicts.<br \/>\nAccording to the WHO, the world&#8217;s average life expectancy is expected to increase, from 48 years for those born in 1955, to 73 years for those born in 2025.<br \/>\nSo where does this report come from? It is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.millennium-project.org\/millennium\/sof2007.html\">&#8220;State Of The Future 2007&#8221; survey<\/a> by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wfuna.org\/\">World Federation of United Nations Associations<\/a>. More information on the main messages <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/frontpage\/story\/0,,2167270,00.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The richest 225 people in the world earn the same as the poorest 2.7 billion or some 40% of humanity. The annual takings of criminal gangs around the world are roughly equal to Britain&#8217;s GDP or twice the world&#8217;s combined defence budgets. Up to 27 million people are held in slavery which is more than [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}