Mortara Center for International Studies

International development is aimed to alleviate poverty among citizens of developing countries. In its approach International development is a multidisciplinary field that may impact poverty reduction, governance, healthcare, education, crisis prevention and recovery, and economic restructuring. Some of the challenges that are being confronted can be seen in the following statistics:

• 5.2 billion people, 80% of the world's population, have never traveled more than 100 miles from their home.
  
  
• Over 3.3 billion people live on less than $2.00 a day. Of those, more than 1.2 billion people live in extreme poverty -- on less than $1.00 a day.
  
  
• 37% of the world, 2.4 billion people, does not have access to clean water and adequate sanitation.
  
  
• 980 million people, 15% of the world's population, are unable to read and write, 2/3 of whom are women.
  
  
• 850 million people across the world suffer from chronic hunger.

The last five or six decades have seen the field of international development grow tremendously in both size and scope and perhaps the best way to understand what the term 'international development' means today is by looking at the Millennium Development Goals. (Source: UN MDG Report 2005)

• Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger -- Global poverty rates are falling, led by Asia. But millions more people have sunk deep into poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poor are getting poorer. Progress has been made against hunger, but slow growth of agricultural output and expanding populations have led to setbacks in some regions. Since 1990, millions more people are chronically hungry in sub-Saharan Africa and in Southern Asia, where half the children under age 5 are malnourished.
  
  
• Achieve Universal Primary Education -- Five developing regions are approaching universal enrolment. But in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than two thirds of children are enrolled in primary school. Other regions, including Southern Asia and Oceania, also have a long way to go. In these regions and elsewhere, increased enrolment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education.
  
  
• Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women -- The gender gap is closing albeit slowly in primary school enrolment in the developing world. This is a first step towards easing long-standing inequalities between women and men. In almost all developing regions, women represent a smaller share of wage earners than men and are often relegated to insecure and poorly paid jobs. Though progress is being made, women still lack equal representation at the highest levels of government, holding only 16 per cent of parliamentary seats worldwide.
  
  
• Reduce Child Mortality -- Death rates in children under age 5 are dropping. But not fast enough. Eleven million children a year 30,000 a day die from preventable or treatable causes. Most of these lives could be saved by expanding existing programmes that promote simple, low-cost solutions.
  
  
• Improve Maternal Health -- More than half a million women die each year during pregnancy or childbirth. Twenty times that number suffer serious injury or disability. Some progress has been made in reducing maternal deaths in developing regions, but not in the countries where giving birth is most risky.
  
  
• Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases -- AIDS has become the leading cause of premature death in sub-Saharan Africa and the fourth largest killer worldwide. Malaria and tuberculosis together kill nearly as many people each year as AIDS, and represent a severe drain on national economies. Ninety per cent of malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, where prevention and treatment efforts are being scaled up. Tuberculosis is on the rise, partly as a result of HIV/AIDS, though a new international protocol to detect and treat the disease is showing promise.
  
  
• Ensure Environmental Sustainability -- Most countries have committed to the principles of sustainable development. But this has not resulted in sufficient progress to reverse the loss of the worlds environmental resources. Action to prevent further deterioration of the ozone layer shows that progress is possible. Access to safe drinking water has increased, but half the developing world still lack toilets or other forms of basic sanitation. Nearly 1 billion people live in urban slums because the growth of the urban population is outpacing improvements in housing and the availability of productive jobs.
  
  
• Develop a Global Partnership for Development -- The United Nations Millennium Declaration represents a global social compact: developing countries will do more to ensure their own development, and developed countries will support them through aid, debt relief and better opportunities for trade. Increased aid and debt relief must be accompanied by further opening of trade, accelerated transfer of technology and improved employment opportunities for the growing ranks of young people in the developing world.

These and many other important issues are the challenge faced by the Inititaive on International Development. The faculty, staff and students of Georgetown University are committed to engaging these tensions in a variety of ways: learning and teaching; research and scholarship; and volunteerism and service.