Haiti completely devastated by earthquake

In the January 13, 2009 article "Quake-stunned Haitians pile bodies by fallen homes," Associated Press writer Jonathan M. Katz reports that the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has been completely devastated by an earthquake.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Haitians piled bodies along the devastated streets of their capital Wednesday after a powerful earthquake crushed thousands of structures, from schools and shacks to the National Palace and the U.N. peacekeeping headquarters. Untold numbers were still trapped.

It seemed clear that the death toll from Tuesday afternoon's magnitude-7.0 quake would run into the thousands. The Roman Catholic archbishop of Port-au-Prince was among the dead, and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission was missing.

International Red Cross spokesman Paul Conneally said a third of Haiti's 9 million people may need emergency aid and that it would take a day or two for a clear picture of the damage to emerge. The United Nations said the capital's main airport was "fully operational" and open to relief flights.

Aftershocks continued to rattle the capital of 2 million people as women covered in dust clawed out of debris, wailing. Stunned people wandered the streets holding hands. Thousands gathered in public squares to sing hymns.

People pulled bodies from collapsed homes, covering them with sheets by the side of the road. Passers-by lifted the sheets to see if loved ones were underneath. Outside a crumbled building, the bodies of five children and three adults lay in a pile.

The prominent died along with the poor: the body of Archbishop Joseph Serge Miot, 63, was found in the ruins of his office, said the Rev. Pierre Le Beller of the Saint Jacques Missionary Center in Landivisiau, France. He told The Associated Press by telephone that fellow missionaries in Haiti had told him they found Miot's body.

The United States and other nations — from Iceland to Venezuela — said they would start sending in aid workers and rescue teams. The international Red Cross and other aid groups announced plans for major relief operations in the Western Hemisphere's poorest country.

Many will have to help their own staff as well as stricken Haitians. Taiwan said its embassy was destroyed and the ambassador hospitalized. Spain said its embassy was badly damaged.

"Haiti has moved to center of the world's thoughts and the world's compassion," British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said.

Tens of thousands of people lost their homes as buildings that were flimsy and dangerous even under normal conditions collapsed. Nobody offered an estimate of the dead, but the numbers were clearly enormous.

"The hospitals cannot handle all these victims," said Dr. Louis-Gerard Gilles. "Haiti needs to pray. We all need to pray together."

An American aid worker was trapped for about 10 hours under the rubble of her mission house before she was rescued by her husband, who told CBS' "Early Show" that he drove 100 miles (160 kilometers) to Port-au-Prince to find her. Frank Thorp said he dug for more than an hour to free his wife, Jillian, and a co-worker, from under about a foot of concrete.

An estimated 40,000-45,000 Americans live in Haiti, and the U.S. Embassy had no confirmed reports of deaths among its citizens. All but one American employed by the embassy have been accounted for, State Department officials said.

Even relatively wealthy neighborhoods were devastated.

An AP videographer saw a wrecked hospital where people screamed for help in Petionville, a hillside district that is home to many diplomats and wealthy Haitians as well as the poor.

At a destroyed four-story apartment building, a girl of about 16 stood atop a car, trying to see inside while several men pulled at a foot sticking from rubble. She said her family was inside.

"A school near here collapsed totally," Petionville resident Ken Michel said after surveying the damage. "We don't know if there were any children inside." He said many seemingly sturdy homes nearby were split apart.

The U.N.'s 9,000 peacekeepers in Haiti, many of whom are from Brazil, were distracted from aid efforts by their own tragedy: Many spent the night hunting for survivors in the ruins of their headquarters.

"It would appear that everyone who was in the building, including my friend Hedi Annabi, the United Nations' secretary-general's special envoy, and everyone with him and around him, are dead," French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on RTL radio.

But U.N. peacekeeping chief Alain Le Roy would not confirm that Annabi was dead, saying he was among more than 100 people missing in its wrecked headquarters. He said only about 10 people had been pulled out, many of them badly injured. Fewer than five bodies had been removed, he said.

Brazil's army said at least four of its peacekeepers were killed and five injured, while Jordan's official news agency said three of its peacekeepers were killed and 33 injured. A state newspaper in China said eight Chinese peacekeepers were known dead and 10 were missing — although officials later said the information was not confirmed.

Much of the National Palace pancaked on itself, but Haiti's ambassador to Mexico, Robert Manuel, said President Rene Preval and his wife survived.

The quake struck at 4:53 p.m., centered 10 miles (15 kilometers) west of Port-au-Prince at a depth of only 5 miles (8 kilometers), the U.S. Geological Survey said. USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano called it the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.

Most Haitians are desperately poor, and after years of political instability the country has no real construction standards. In November 2008, following the collapse of a school in Petionville, the mayor of Port-au-Prince estimated about 60 percent of buildings were shoddily built and unsafe normally.

The quake was felt in the Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, and in eastern Cuba, but no major damage was reported in either place.

With electricity out in many places and phone service erratic, it was nearly impossible for Haitian or foreign officials to get full details of the devastation.

"Everybody is just totally, totally freaked out and shaken," said Henry Bahn, a U.S. Department of Agriculture official in Port-au-Prince. "The sky is just gray with dust."

President Barack Obama offered prayers for the people of Haiti and said the U.S. stood ready to help. Rajiv Shah, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, said a disaster response team would fly in Wednesday.

Edwidge Danticat, an award-winning Haitian-American author was unable to contact relatives in Haiti. She sat with family and friends at her home in Miami, looking for news on the Internet and watching TV news reports.

"You want to go there, but you just have to wait," she said. "Life is already so fragile in Haiti, and to have this on such a massive scale, it's unimaginable how the country will be able to recover from this."

___

Fewer free countries in 2009: Freedom House

In the January 12, 2010 Reuters article "Fewer free countries in 2009: Freedom House," Daniel Trotta reports:

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Civil freedoms around the world lost ground for the fourth straight year in 2009 with Iraq improving, Afghanistan falling back and China acting as if it were under siege by its own citizens, Freedom House said on Tuesday.

Bahrain, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Yemen moved into "not free" category, raising the total to 47 from 42 in 2008. The number of electoral democracies fell from 119 to 116, the lowest since 1995.

Eighty-nine countries were designated "free" and 58 "partly free" in the report issued by the U.S.-based advocate for democracy and human rights.

The four-year deterioration marked the longest decline since Freedom House began its annual survey in 1972.

Yemen, the Arab world's poorest nation, saw political rights deteriorate in the face of rapidly worsening security and the "increased marginalization of the parliament and other political institutions," the report said.

The report cited also "growing paranoia of even the largest and most headstrong" of the world's authoritarian powers.

"No country can compete in this respect with China, which -- despite its waxing economic and military prowess -- behaves as if it were under siege by its own citizens," the report said.

China's growing economic influence abroad helped repressive countries by providing investment free of the conditions often imposed by the West, the report's lead researcher said.

"As long as China can get strategic minerals or some kind of economic gain, they will invest in those countries," said Arch Puddington, director of research for Freedom House.

"It's a problem, especially in Africa. Some of these authoritarian countries have an option -- they don't have to carry out reforms that the United States or Europe might be demanding," he said.

While Asia was cited as a region of modest improvements, the report cited diminished freedom in Afghanistan, where a "deeply flawed presidential poll exacerbated an already unstable security situation and exposed the prevalence of corruption within the government."

Iraq, by contrast, showed improvement as the rest of the Middle East and North Africa region "suffered a number of significant setbacks."

"Iraq's political rights rating improved in light of provincial elections, which were generally regarded as fair and competitive, and due to the government's enhanced autonomy as the phased withdrawal of U.S. troops got under way," the report said.

The World's Friendliest Countries

In the December 1, 2009 Forbes article "World's Friendliest Countries," Rebecca Ruiz reports on a survey of 3,100 expatriates that ranks countries by friendliness.

The Middle East has long had a reputation for being one of the world's perennial trouble spots. But for expatriates, the tiny Persian Gulf county Bahrain ranks as one of the most welcoming places to work.

That's the surprising result of a new survey of 3,100 expatriates conducted by HSBC Bank. Bahrain ranked first in one key measure of how easy it is for expatriates to set up a new life for their families. It received high marks from expats who like the country's easy access to modern health care, decent and affordable housing, and network of social groups that expatriates can join.

Canada, which ranked first in a similar survey last year, fell to second place on HSBC's integration score, which measures how easily foreigners and their families can settle into a new country. Australia, Thailand and Malaysia rounded out the top five. Foreign workers in these countries found it easy to make local friends and said they enjoyed a higher quality of life than in their native countries.

Behind the Numbers

HSBC's Expat Explorer survey was conducted between February and April 2009. Survey respondents were from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere and lived in more than two dozen countries and on four continents. They ranked their new homes based on 23 factors, including food, entertainment, health care, commute and education. Of those measures, HSBC selected eight to create its so-called "integration score," a snapshot of which countries are most welcoming to expats.

It is possible that Bahrain's first-place finish is a fluke. Only 31 expats working in Bahrain participated in the survey, vs. more than 450 respondents from the United Kingdom. Bahrain ranked as the best country to join local community groups and coordinate health care. Respondents found it less easy to make local friends and learn the languages (Arabic, Farsi and Urdu), but the country ranked in the top five when it came to finding a home, setting up finances, and finding good schools.

The United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom received some of the poorest scores on the integration scale. Expats in the Emirates reported finding it difficult to join local community groups; only 39% of respondents made local friends compared to 76% of respondents living in other countries. Foreign workers in England complained about the challenges of finding affordable housing.

Suzanne Garber, COO of the Americas Region for International SOS, a firm that provides medical and logistical assistance to overseas employees, says surveys like these give potential expats an overarching view of living in various countries.

But she says that family life is the leading indicator of whether or not an expat assignment will be successful. Many overseas stints end prematurely because an employee's family feels disconnected from the new country and has trouble handling basic tasks like refilling prescriptions, driving around town or dealing with the local police.

"The concerns are pretty much the same no matter where you are," says Garber. "You have to make sure the family's life is stable and secure."

Click here to see full list.

Rank - Country - Making Friends - Making Local Friends - Joining Community Groups - Organizing School For My Children - Organizing My Finances - Organizing My Health Care - Finding Somewhere To Live - Setting Up Utilities
1 Bahrain 5 20 1 5 3 1 2 4
2 Canada 11 2 3 6 7 8 5 2
3 Australia 10 6 9 7 1 7 11 5
4 Thailand 1 16 18 4 11 2 1 9
5 Malaysia 4 14 19 1 3 3 4 13
6 South Africa 6 2 8 3 14 6 3 14
7 Hong Kong 3 17 12 17 2 5 8 3
8 Singapore 7 18 24 13 6 4 13 1
9 Spain 12 8 13 18 10 9 7 8
10 United States 15 7 4 12 20 24 10 7

Methodology

The Expat Explorer survey was commissioned by HSBC Bank International and conducted by the research company FreshMinds. More than 3,100 expatriates were surveyed between February and April 2009.The respondents were asked to rate 23 factors related to their quality of life, including food, entertainment, transportation, health care, finances, education and their ability to make friends. Each criterion is equally weighted to arrive at a score. The overall ranking is based on the average score for a country across the criteria. Eight measures were also selected to comprise the integration score: organizing school for my children; organizing my finances; organizing my health care; finding somewhere to live; making friends; making local friends; setting up utilities; and joining local community groups. The integration score was used to determine the friendliest countries.

Study: Australians Have the World's Biggest Homes

In the December 1, 2009 Reuters article "Study: Australians Have the World's Biggest Homes," Belinda Goldsmith reports that "Australia has overtaken the United States, the heartland of the McMansion, to boast the world's largest homes, according to a report by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia."

Research commissioned by the bank's broking arm, CommSec, shows the Australian house has grown on average by 10 percent in the past decade to 214.6 square meters (2,310 sq ft) -- nearly three times the size of the average British house.

By contrast, the average size of new homes started in the United States in the September quarter was 201.5 square meter (2,169 sq ft), down from 212 square meter (2,282 sq ft), with the average U.S. home shrinking for the first time in a decade due to the recession.

In Europe, Denmark has the biggest homes, which takes into account houses and flats, with an average floor area of 137 square meter, followed by Greece at 126 square meter, and the Netherlands at 115.5 square meter.

Homes in Britain are the smallest in Europe at 76 square meter. But according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistic issued by CommSec, while Australian houses are getting bigger, so are the families.

The number of people in each household has risen to 2.56 from 2.51, the first such rise in at least 100 years.

"It makes sense. Population is rising, as is the cost of housing and the cost of moving house, so we are making greater use of what we've got," CommSec's Craig James said in a statement widely reported in the Australian media.

"Children are living at home longer with parents and more people are opting for shared accommodation ... Generation Y is already baulking at the cost of housing, choosing to stay at home longer with parents."

The 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index

Click on the map above to enlarge it.

In the November 17, 2009 Fast Company article "Infographic of the Day: The 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index," Cliff Kuang says "Transparency International releases the 2009 edition of its signature study of international corruption--this time with infographics. How does the U.S. fare? Not great, actually." He goes on to explain:

Transparency International has just released its 2009 Corruption Perceptions Index, the preeminent, annual study of governmental corruption levels around the world.

This time, they've added a nice little interactive map--not much too it, besides the fact that mousing over the country gives you the numeric value. But it does give you a great indication of what countries do well, relative to their neighbors and what countries are basically sinkholes of graft and fraud. For example, Uraguay and Botswanna do far better than the countries around them--no wonder that Botswanna in particular is a prime example of economic development that works.

The CPI is a survey of surveys, which combines indexes found in 13 feeder studies with the expertise of academics who follow these issues. (Experts are polled on questions like how well a country's courts work, and the effectiveness of its watch dog agencies.)

If you're new to the study, the most surprising thing will be how poorly the U.S. does, relative to its first world peers. We're basically just a shade above some pretty dicey governments. The reasons are complex, but you can point to the influence of lobbying on our lawmaking and the ongoing controversy over how we've prosecuted the war on terror, among other things.

Want prosperity? Index ranks Finland as place to be

In the October 27, 2009 Reuters article "Want prosperity? Index ranks Finland as place to be," Miral Fahmy and Ron Popeski summarize the findings of a 2009 report on global prosperity.

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) – For those who value their freedom of expression as much as health, wealth, and prosperity, then Finland is the place to be, with an index ranking the Nordic nation the best in the world.

The 2009 Legatum Prosperity Index, published on Tuesday and compiled by the Legatum Institute, an independent policy, advocacy and advisory organization, ranked 104 countries which are home to 90 percent of the world's population.

The index is based on a definition of prosperity that combines economic growth with the level of personal freedoms and democracy in a country as well as measures of happiness and quality of life.

With the exception of Switzerland, which came in at number 2, Nordic countries dominated the top 5 slots, with Sweden in third place followed by Denmark and Norway.

The top 10 were all also Western nations, with Australia (6th place) and Canada (7th place) both beating the United States, ranked 9th. Britain came in at number 12.

In Asia, Japan was the region's highest ranked country at number 16, followed by Hong Kong (18th place) and Singapore (23rd place) and Taiwan (24th place).

Dr. William Inboden, senior vice president of the Legatum Institute, said the lower rankings for Asian nations were largely due to their weak scores for democracy and personal freedoms.

"Many Asian nations have good economic fundamentals, but the Index tells us that true prosperity requires more than just money," Inboden said in a statement.

"Democratic institutions and personal freedom measures are letting some Asian nations down. Furthermore, countries which have low levels of economic stability, such as Cambodia, finish even further down in the overall rankings."

Cambodia came in the 93rd slot while China, with its tight political controls, came in 75th despite booming economic growth.

And the world's least prosperous country? According to the Legatum Index, it is Zimbabwe, with Sudan and Yemen close runners-up.

The index combines objective data and subjective responses to surveys. More details can be found on http://www.prosperity.com.

The World's Best Countries - complete rankings

Human Development Report 2009 - Human Development Index (HDI) rankings

Very High Human Development

1. Norway
2. Australia
3. Iceland
4. Canada
5. Ireland
6. Netherlands
7. Sweden
8. France
9. Switzerland
10. Japan
11. Luxembourg
12. Finland
13. United States
14. Austria
15. Spain
16. Denmark
17. Belgium
18. Italy
19. Liechtenstein
20. New Zealand
21. United Kingdom
22. Germany
23. Singapore
24. Hong Kong, China (SAR)
25. Greece
26. Korea (Republic of)
27. Israel
28. Andorra
29. Slovenia
30. Brunei Darussalam
31. Kuwait
32. Cyprus
33. Qatar
34. Portugal
35. United Arab Emirates
36. Czech Republic
37. Barbados
38. Malta

High Human Development

39. Bahrain
40. Estonia
41. Poland
42. Slovakia
43. Hungary
44. Chile
45. Croatia
46. Lithuania
47. Antigua and Barbuda
48. Latvia
49. Argentina
50. Uruguay
51. Cuba
52. Bahamas
53. Mexico
54. Costa Rica
55. Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
56. Oman
57. Seychelles
58. Venezuela (Bolivarian Rupublic of)
59. Saudi Arabia
60. Panama
61. Bulgaria
62. Saint Kitts and Nevis
63. Romania
64. Trinidad and Tobago
65. Montenegro
66. Malaysia
67. Serbia
68. Belarus
69. Saint Lucia
70. Albania
71. Russian Federation
72. Macedonia (the former Yugoslav Republic of)
73. Dominica
74. Grenada
75. Brazil
76. Bosnia and Herzegovina
77. Colombia
78. Peru
79. Turkey
80. Ecuador
81. Mauritius
82. Kazakhstan
83. Lebanon

Medium Human Development

84. Armenia
85. Ukraine
86. Azerbaijan
87. Thailand
88. Iran (Islamic Republic of)
89. Georgia
90. Dominican Republic
91. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
92. China
93. Belize
94. Samoa
95. Maldives
96. Jordan
97. Suriname
98. Tunisia
99. Tonga
100. Jamaica
101. Paraguay
102. Sri Lanka
103. Gabon
104. Algeria
105. Philippines
106. El Salvador
107. Syrian Arab Republic
108. Fiji
109. Turkmenistan
110. Occupied Palestinian Territories
111. Indonesia
112. Honduras
113. Bolivia
114. Guyana
115. Mongolia
116. Viet Nam
117. Moldova
118. Equatorial Guinea
119. Uzbekistan
120. Kyrgyzstan
121. Cape Verde
122. Guatemala
123. Egypt
124. Nicaragua
125. Botswana
126. Vanuatu
127. Tajikistan
128. Namibia
129. South Africa
130. Morocco
131. São Tomé and Principe
132. Bhutan
133. Lao, People's Dem. Rep.
134. India
135. Solomon Islands
136. Congo
137. Cambodia
138. Myanmar
139. Comoros
140. Yemen
141. Pakistan
142. Swaziland
143. Angola
144. Nepal
145. Madagascar
146. Bangladesh
147. Kenya
148. Papua New Guinea
149. Haiti
150. Sudan
151. Tanzania, U. Rep. of
152. Ghana
153. Cameroon
154. Mauritania
155. Djibouti
156. Lesotho
157. Uganda
158. Nigeria

Low Human Development

159. Togo
160. Malawi
161. Benin
162. Timor-Leste
163. Côte d'Ivoire
164. Zambia
165. Eritrea
166. Senegal
167. Rwanda
168. Gambia
169. Liberia
170. Guinea
171. Ethiopia
172. Mozambique
173. Guinea-Bissau
174. Burundi
175. Chad
176. Congo (Democratic Republic of the)
177. Burkina Faso
178. Mali
179. Central African Republic
180. Sierra Leone
181. Afghanistan
182. Niger

Note: This 2009 HDI represents statistical values for the year 2007.

The World's Best Countries

The October 5, 2009 article "Norway is best place to live, China moves up: UN" reports on the United Nations' rankings of the best countries in which to live:

PARIS (AFP) – Norway takes the number one spot in the annual United Nations human development index released Monday but China has made the biggest strides in improving the well-being of its citizens.

The index compiled by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) ranks 182 countries based on such criteria as life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

Norway, Australia and Iceland took the first three spots while Niger ranks at the very bottom, just below Afghanistan.

China moved up seven places on the list to rank as the 92nd most developed country due to improvements in education as well as income levels and life expectancy.

Colombia and Peru rose five spaces to rank 77th and 78th while France -- which was not part of the top 10 last year -- returns to the upper echelons by moving up three places to number 8.

The UNDP said the index highlights the grave disparities between rich and poor countries.

A child born in Niger can expect to live to just over 50, which is 30 years less than a child born in Norway. For every dollar a person earns in Niger, 85 dollars are earned in Norway.

This year's index was based on data from 2007 and does not take into account the impact of the global economic crisis.

"Many countries have experienced setbacks over recent decades, in the face of economic downturns, conflict-related crises and the HIV and AIDS epidemic," said the UN development report's author Jeni Klugman.

"And this was even before the impact of the current global financial crisis was felt."

Afghanistan, which returns to the list for the first time since 1996, is the only Asian country among the bottom ten which also include Sierra Leone in the 180th spot, just below the Central African Republic.

The top ten countries listed on the index are: Norway, Australia, Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan.

The United States ranks 13th, down one spot from last year.

World Health Organization (WHO) Assessment of the World's Health Systems

[For just the list of rankings, see "Listing by Rank" or "Alphabetical Listing."]

According to a 2000 World Health Organization (WHO) report "World Health Organization Assesses the World's Health Systems":

The World Health Organization has carried out the first ever analysis of the world's health systems. Using five performance indicators to measure health systems in 191 member states, it finds that France provides the best overall health care followed among major countries by Italy, Spain, Oman, Austria and Japan.

The findings are published today, 21 June, in The World Health Report 2000 – Health systems: Improving performance*.

*Copies of the Report can be ordered from bookorders@who.ch.

The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance, the report finds. The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18 th . Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy.

WHO Director-General Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland says: "The main message from this report is that the health and well- being of people around the world depend critically on the performance of the health systems that serve them. Yet there is wide variation in performance, even among countries with similar levels of income and health expenditure. It is essential for decision- makers to understand the underlying reasons so that system performance, and hence the health of populations, can be improved."

Dr Christopher Murray, Director of WHO's Global Programme on Evidence for Health Policy. says: "Although significant progress has been achieved in past decades, virtually all countries are under- utilizing the resources that are available to them. This leads to large numbers of preventable deaths and disabilities; unnecessary suffering, injustice, inequality and denial of an individual's basic rights to health."

The impact of failures in health systems is most severe on the poor everywhere, who are driven deeper into poverty by lack of financial protection against ill- health, the report says.

"The poor are treated with less respect, given less choice of service providers and offered lower- quality amenities," says Dr Brundtland. "In trying to buy health from their own pockets, they pay and become poorer."

The World Health Report says the main failings of many health systems are:

-Many health ministries focus on the public sector and often disregard the frequently much larger private sector health care.
-In many countries, some if not most physicians work simultaneously for the public sector and in private practice. This means the public sector ends up subsidizing unofficial private practice.
-Many governments fail to prevent a "black market" in health, where widespread corruption, bribery, "moonlighting" and other illegal practices flourish. The black markets, which themselves are caused by malfunctioning health systems, and low income of health workers, further undermine those systems.
-Many health ministries fail to enforce regulations that they themselves have created or are supposed to implement in the public interest.

Dr Julio Frenk, Executive Director for Evidence and Information for Policy at WHO, says: "By providing a comparative guide to what works and what doesn't work, we can help countries to learn from each other and thereby improve the performance of their health systems."

Dr Philip Musgrove, editor-in-chief of the report, says: "The WHO study finds that it isn't just how much you invest in total, or where you put facilities geographically, that matters. It's the balance among inputs that counts – for example, you have to have the right number of nurses per doctor."

Most of the lowest placed countries are in sub-Saharan Africa where life expectancies are low. HIV and AIDS are major causes of ill-health. Because of the AIDS epidemic, healthy life expectancy for babies born in 2000 in many of these nations has dropped to 40 years or less.

One key recommendation from the report is for countries to extend health insurance to as large a percentage of the population as possible. WHO says that it is better to make "pre-payments" on health care as much as possible, whether in the form of insurance, taxes or social security.

While private health expenses in industrial countries now average only some 25 percent because of universal health coverage (except in the United States, where it is 56%), in India, families typically pay 80 percent of their health care costs as "out-of- pocket" expenses when they receive health care.

"It is especially beneficial to make sure that as large a percentage as possible of the poorest people in each country can get insurance," says Dr Frenk. "Insurance protects people against the catastrophic effects of poor health. What we are seeing is that in many countries, the poor pay a higher percentage of their income on health care than the rich."

"In many countries without a health insurance safety net, many families have to pay more than 100 percent of their income for health care when hit with sudden emergencies. In other words, illness forces them into debt."

In designing the framework for health system performance, WHO broke new methodological ground, employing a technique not previously used for health systems. It compares each country's system to what the experts estimate to be the upper limit of what can be done with the level of resources available in that country. It also measures what each country's system has accomplished in comparison with those of other countries.

WHO's assessment system was based on five indicators: overall level of population health; health inequalities (or disparities) within the population; overall level of health system responsiveness (a combination of patient satisfaction and how well the system acts); distribution of responsiveness within the population (how well people of varying economic status find that they are served by the health system); and the distribution of the health system's financial burden within the population (who pays the costs).

"We have created a new tool to help us measure performance," says Dr Murray. "As we develop it further and strengthen the raw data used for these measures in the years to come, we believe this will be an increasingly useful tool for governments in improving their own health systems."

Other findings in the annual WHO report include:

-In Europe, health systems in Mediterranean countries such as France, Italy and Spain are rated higher than others in the continent. Norway is the highest Scandinavian nation, at 11th .
-Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica and Cuba are rated highest among the Latin American nations – 22nd, 33rd, 36th and 39th in the world, respectively.
-Singapore is ranked 6th , the only Asian country apart from Japan in the top 10 countries.
-In the Pacific, Australia ranks 32 nd overall, while New Zealand is 41st .
-In the Middle East and North Africa, many countries rank highly: Oman is in 8 th place overall, Saudi Arabia is ranked 26th , United Arab Emirates 27th and Morocco, 29th.

In 1970, Oman's health care system was not performing well. The child mortality rate was high. But major government investments have proved to be successful in improving system performance. "Oman's success shows that tremendous strides can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time," says Dr Murray.

Information in the WHO report also rates countries according to the different components of the performance index.

Responsiveness: The nations with the most responsive health systems are the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden. The reason these are all advanced industrial nations is that a number of the elements of responsiveness depend strongly on the availability of resources. In addition, many of these countries were the first to begin addressing the responsiveness of their health systems to people's needs.

Fairness of financial contribution: When WHO measured the fairness of financial contribution to health systems, countries lined up differently. The measurement is based on the fraction of a household's capacity to spend (income minus food expenditure) that goes on health care (including tax payments, social insurance, private insurance and out of pocket payments). Colombia was the top-rated country in this category, followed by Luxembourg, Belgium, Djibouti, Denmark, Ireland, Germany, Norway, Japan and Finland.

Colombia achieved top rank because someone with a low income might pay the equivalent of one dollar per year for health care, while a high- income individual pays 7.6 dollars.

Countries judged to have the least fair financing of health systems include Sierra Leone, Myanmar, Brazil, China, Viet Nam, Nepal, Russian Federation, Peru and Cambodia.

Brazil, a middle-income nation, ranks low in this table because its people make high out-of-pocket payments for health care. This means a substantial number of households pay a large fraction of their income (after paying for food) on health care. The same explanation applies to the fairness of financing Peru's health system. The reason why the Russian Federation ranks low is most likely related to the impact of the economic crisis in the 1990s. This has severely reduced government spending on health and led to increased out-of-pocket payment.

In North America, Canada rates as the country with the fairest mechanism for health system finance – ranked at 17-19, while the United States is at 54-55. Cuba is the highest among Latin American and Caribbean nations at 23-25.

The report indicates – clearly – the attributes of a good health system in relation to the elements of the performance measure, given below.

Overall Level of Health: A good health system, above all, contributes to good health. To assess overall population health and thus to judge how well the objective of good health is being achieved, WHO has chosen to use the measure of disability- adjusted life expectancy (DALE). This has the advantage of being directly comparable to life expectancy and is readily compared across populations. The report provides estimates for all countries of disability- adjusted life expectancy. DALE is estimated to equal or exceed 70 years in 24 countries, and 60 years in over half the Member States of WHO. At the other extreme are 32 countries where disability- adjusted life expectancy is estimated to be less than 40 years. Many of these are countries characterised by major epidemics of HIV/ AIDS, among other causes.

Distribution of Health in the Populations: It is not sufficient to protect or improve the average health of the population, if - at the same time - inequality worsens or remains high because the gain accrues disproportionately to those already enjoying better health. The health system also has the responsibility to try to reduce inequalities by prioritizing actions to improve the health of the worse-off, wherever these inequalities are caused by conditions amenable to intervention. The objective of good health is really twofold: the best attainable average level – goodness – and the smallest feasible differences among individuals and groups – fairness. A gain in either one of these, with no change in the other, constitutes an improvement.

Responsiveness: Responsiveness includes two major components. These are (a) respect for persons (including dignity, confidentiality and autonomy of individuals and families to decide about their own health); and (b) client orientation (including prompt attention, access to social support networks during care, quality of basic amenities and choice of provider).

Distribution of Financing: There are good and bad ways to raise the resources for a health system, but they are more or less good primarily as they affect how fairly the financial burden is shared. Fair financing, as the name suggests, is only concerned with distribution. It is not related to the total resource bill, nor to how the funds are used. The objectives of the health system do not include any particular level of total spending, either absolutely or relative to income. This is because, at all levels of spending there are other possible uses for the resources devoted to health. The level of funding to allocate to the health system is a social choice – with no correct answer. Nonetheless, the report suggests that countries spending less than around 60 dollars per person per year on health find that their populations are unable to access health services from an adequately performing health system.

In order to reflect these attributes, health systems have to carry out certain functions. They build human resources through investment and training, they deliver services, they finance all these activities. They act as the overall stewards of the resources and powers entrusted to them. In focusing on these few universal functions of health systems, the report provides evidence to assist policy- makers as they make choices to improve health system performance.

The World Health Report 2000 consists of a message from the WHO's Director-General, an overview, six chapters and statistical annexes. The chapter headings are "Why do health systems matter?", "How well do health systems perform?", Health services: well chosen, well organized?", "What resources are needed?", "Who pays for health systems?", and "How is the public interest protected?"

Comparative Economic Development

Why do some countries have a high standard-of-living while others do not?

Do prosperous countries have something in common?  Do policy choices make a difference?

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel provides insight into the vast differences in the standard-of-living around the globe by photographing what a typical family eats over the course of a week.

National Public Radio (NPR) featured the book in an audio story on November 9, 2005 (Click to listen.).

Chad: 2008 GDP per capita = $1,600.


Mongolia: 2008 GDP per capita = $3,200.


Egypt: 2008 GDP per capita = $5,400.


Bhutan: 2008 GDP per capita = $5,600.


China: 2008 GDP per capita = $6,000.


Ecuador: 2008 GDP per capita = $7,500.


Mexico: 2008 GDP per capita = $14,200.


Poland: 2008 GDP per capita = $17,300.



Italy: 2008 GDP per capita = $31,000.

Japan: 2008 GDP per capita = $34,200.


Germany: 2008 GDP per capita = 34,800.


Great Britain: 2008 GDP per capita = $36,600.


United States: 2008 GDP per capita = $47,000.


United States: 2008 GDP per capita = $47,000.


Kuwait: 2008 GDP per capita = $57,400.

The book, Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, is available from Amazon.com.

The Amazon.com review states:

It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly.
We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers.

Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm

The Publishers Weekly review adds:

For their enormously successful Material World, photojournalist Menzel and writer D'Aluisio traveled the world photographing average people's worldly possessions. In 2000, they began research for this book on the world's eating habits, visiting some 30 families in 24 countries. Each family was asked to purchase—at the authors' expense—a typical week's groceries, which were artfully arrayed—whether sacks of grain and potatoes and overripe bananas, or rows of packaged cereals, sodas and take-out pizzas—for a full-page family portrait. This is followed by a detailed listing of the goods, broken down by food groups and expenditures, then a more general discussion of how the food is raised and used, illustrated with a variety of photos and a family recipe. A sidebar of facts relevant to each country's eating habits (e.g., the cost of Big Macs, average cigarette use, obesity rates) invites armchair theorizing. While the photos are extraordinary—fine enough for a stand-alone volume—it's the questions these photos ask that make this volume so gripping. After considering the Darfur mother with five children living on $1.44 a week in a refugee camp in Chad, then the German family of four spending $494.19, and a host of families in between, we may think about food in a whole new light. This is a beautiful, quietly provocative volume.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait

Material World: A Global Family Portrait by Peter Menzel is available from Amazon.com.

It provides insights into the differences in economic growth around the world by photographing the material possessions of a typical family in various countries.

A few of the families were highlighted on the PBS website:

Mali: The Natomo Family
It is not unusual in this West African country for men to have two wives, as 39-year-old Soumana Natomo does. More wives mean more progeny—and a greater chance you will be supported in old age. Soumana now has eight children, and his wives, Pama Kondo (28) and Fatouma Niangani Toure (26), will likely have more. How many of these children will survive, though, is uncertain: Mali's infant mortality rate ranks among the ten highest in the world. Some of the family's possessions are not included in this photo—another mortar and pestle for pounding grain, two wooden mattress platforms, 30 mango trees, and old radio batteries that the children use as toys. (Note: The Natomos appear on the adobe roof of their house in Kouakourou. An infant son is nestled in his mother's arms. One daughter is absent.)

Mali Stats
Population: 12 million
Population density: 9.1 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 7.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 23 years
Percentage urban/rural: 26% urban, 64% rural
Per capita energy use: 22 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 118.7 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 48 (male), 49 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 64% (male), 84% (female)
Internet users: 30,000

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India: The Yadev Family
At age 25, Mashre Yadev is already mother to four children, the oldest of whom was born when she was 17. Each morning at their home in rural Uttar Pradesh, she draws water from a well so that her older children can wash before school. She cooks over a wood fire in a windowless, six-by-nine-foot kitchen, and such labor-intensive domestic work keeps her busy from dawn to dusk. Her husband Bachau, 32, works roughly 56 hours a week, when he can find work. In rough times, family members have gone more than two weeks with little food. Everything they own—including two beds, three bags of rice, a broken bicycle, and their most cherished belonging, a print of Hindu gods—appears in this photograph.

India Stats
Population: 1.0 billion
Population density: 318 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 3.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 36 years
Percentage urban/rural: 28% urban, 72% rural
Per capita energy use: 494 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 66 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 62 (male), 64 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 32% (male), 55% (female)
Internet users: 7 million

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China: The Wu Family
The nine members of this extended family—father Wu Ba Jiu (59), mother Guo Yu Xian (57), their sons, daughters-in-law, and three grandchildren—live in a three-bedroom, 600-square-foot dwelling in rural Yunnan Province. While they have no telephone, they get news and images of a wider world through two radios and the family's most prized possession, a television. In the future, they hope to get one with a 30-inch screen as well as a VCR, a refrigerator, and drugs to combat diseases in the carp they raise in their ponds. Not included in the photo are their 100 mandarin trees, vegetable patch, and three pigs.

China Stats
Population: 1.3 billion
Population density: 627 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 1.7 children per woman
Population doubling time: 67 years
Percentage urban/rural: 37% urban, 63% rural
Per capita energy use: 905 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 32 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 69 (male), 73 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 7.9% (male), 22.1% (female)
Internet users: 46 million

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Japan: The Ukita Family
Like many Japanese women, 43-year-old Sayo Ukita had children relatively late in life. Her youngest daughter is now in kindergarten, not yet burdened by the pressures of exams and Saturday "cram school" that face her nine-year-old sister. Sayo is supremely well-organized, which helps her manage the busy schedules of her children and maintain order in their 1,421-square-foot Tokyo home stuffed with clothes, appliances, and an abundance of toys for both her daughters and dog. She and her husband Kazuo, 45, have all the electronic and gas-powered conveniences of modern life, but their most cherished possessions are a ring and heirloom pottery. The family's wish for the future: a larger house with more storage space.

Japan Stats
Population: 128 million
Population density: 336 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 1.3 children per woman
Population doubling time: 289 years
Percentage urban/rural: 79% urban, 21% rural
Per capita energy use: 4,316 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 3 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 78 (male), 85 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 1% (male), 1% (female)
Internet users: 56 million

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United States: The Skeen Family
Rick and Pattie Skeen's 1,600-square-foot house lies on a cul-de-sac in Pearland, Texas, a suburb of Houston. The fire hydrant in this photo is real, but not working—a souvenir from Rick's days as a firefighter. Rick, 36, now splices cables for a phone company. Pattie, 34, teaches school at a Christian academy. To get the picture, photographers hoisted the family up in a cherry picker. Yet the image still leaves out a refrigerator-freezer, camcorder, woodworking tools, computer, glass butterfly collection, trampoline, fishing equipment, and the rifles Rick uses for deer hunting, among other things. Though rich with possessions, nothing is as important to the Skeens as their Bible. For this devoutly Baptist family, like many families around the world, it is a spiritual—rather than material—life that matters most.

U.S. Stats
Population: 292 million
Population density: 29 people per sq. km.
Total fertility rate: 2.0 children per woman
Population doubling time: 116 years
Percentage urban/rural: 78% urban, 22% rural
Per capita energy use: 8,148 kg. oil equivalent
Infant mortality: 6.7 deaths per 1,000 births
Life expectancy: 74 (male), 80 (female)
Adult illiteracy: 3% (male), 3% (female)
Internet users: 165 million

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The Importance of Economic Growth – from a photographic perspective

Two excellent books by Peter Menzel provide photographic evidence of the importance of economic growth.

Material World: A Global Family Portrait (1995)
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (2005)

Economic Growth - Topics

Equatorial Guinea: Significant Oil Resources Do Not Guarantee Economic Prosperity

In the January 1, 2005 Mother Jones article "A Touch of Crude," Peter Maass reports how the dictator of Equatorial Guinea is using his country's vast oil reserves to enrich himself, his family and friends, but not to improve the standard-of-living or quality of life for the citizens.

The red dirt of the jungle meets a paved road on the outskirts of Ebebiyin, where a national celebration is about to begin. Women are singing and swaying in an African rhythm that is hard to resist, even though their lyrics are not of a can’t-stop-dancing variety: “We await you, Mr. President,” they sing in Fang, the main language in Equatorial Guinea. “We are happy to see you; you are the people’s president.” In the distance, a cloud of Martian dust heralds the arrival of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The president is accompanied by 40 vehicles and enough firepower to start a small war. In the lead are army-green trucks, with soldiers clad in black ninja outfits. Because the president doesn’t entirely trust his military, the jeeps in front of his Lexus SUV bear his Moroccan security guards, many of them perched on the running boards, clutching Heckler & Koch assault rifles as they scan the horizon.

The motorcade halts at the edge of the town and its chickens-in-the-road squalor. Obiang strolls up the street, shaking hands with people who line the uneven sidewalks, many clad in T-shirts and dresses bearing his image. His bearing is regal. If he has any anxiety because of a recent coup attempt, which involved a gang of couldn’t-shoot-straight mercenaries from South Africa and Britain (allegedly financed by the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher), he does not betray it. And if his mind is troubled by a recent U.S. Senate investigation detailing how he siphoned millions from his country’s treasury with the help of Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., and how he and members of his inner circle extracted large and unorthodox payments from American oil companies, that, too, does not show.

Obiang has traveled to Equatorial Guinea’s mainland from his palace on the island capital of Malabo to celebrate the 36th anniversary of independence from Spain. The three-day gala is replete with references to the 1979 overthrow of Francisco Macias Nguema, the nation’s first dictator. Macias, who once tortured and killed political opponents in a soccer stadium, drowning out their screams by playing “Those Were the Days” on the loudspeakers, was ousted and executed in a coup led by a senior military aide who was also his nephew -- Teodoro Obiang.

For “El Libertador,” as Obiang allows himself to be called, the highlight of the October celebration is a parade down Ebebiyin’s finest stretch of asphalt. About a hundred goose-stepping soldiers lead the way, and through bouts of equatorial heat and showers, delegations from seemingly every town and organization in the nation march by with banners saluting the president and ruling party.

The heat, the soldiers, the jungle, the out-of-tune band -- I was starting to feel I had fallen into a tin-pot time warp. Then I noticed the American flags. These were carried by a delegation from Mobil Equatorial Guinea, Inc., a subsidiary of ExxonMobil. They also carried white Exxon flags and placards bearing ExxonMobil’s name. Behind them came delegations with signs announcing Halliburton, ChevronTexaco, Marathon Oil.

In the past few years, Equatorial Guinea, population 500,000, has become the third-largest oil exporter in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria and Angola. Per capita, it is one of the richest countries on the continent; rated by how much money ends up in the pockets of people not related to the president, it remains one of the poorest. Oil is the reason the desperate-looking cafés and shops in Ebebiyin use ExxonMobil signs as decorations. It is why, although his regime once sent death threats to the U.S. ambassador, Obiang now meets with senior administration officials and even with President Bush. And it’s why no one spoke out as Obiang treated his nation’s treasury as his own private bank account.

Equatorial Guinea sometimes seems a parody of an oil kleptocracy -- a Blazing Saddles of the world of petroleum. Yet it has emerged as an all-too-real example of how a dictator, awash in petrodollars, enriches himself and his family while starving his people. His conduct has been aided by American companies: As detailed in Senate and Treasury Department documents, Riggs Bank helped Obiang shuttle millions into offshore accounts. Oil companies, meanwhile, made payments to his regime that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is now scrutinizing under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.





If America’s interest in foreign countries were predicated on human rights, Equatorial Guinea would have seized our attention long before its 1995 oil boom. Francisco Macias Nguema, whose self-bestowed titles included “Leader of Steel,” “The Sole Miracle of Equatorial Guinea,” and, of course, “President for Life,” was a morph of Idi Amin and Pol Pot. He killed or forced into exile nearly a third of the population, decimating in particular the small educated class. Some of his victims were crucified on the road leading to the airport. It was one of the 20th century’s most brutal genocides, but no foreign power except for Equatorial Guinea’s former colonial ruler paid attention to it, and the fascist regime of Spain’s Francisco Franco was not overly troubled by human rights abuses. Obiang’s coup was a welcome event, and his rule has not been nearly as ruthless as his uncle’s. Of course,that’s not much of an achievement.

Recent State Department reports define Equatorial Guinea as a nominal democracy but note that “in practice power is exercised by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.” In the latest election, Obiang was reelected with 97 percent of the vote in an election “marred by extensive fraud and intimidation.” “Corruption among officials is widespread,” one report adds; the distribution of oil revenues, meanwhile, has “lacked transparency despite repeated calls from international financial institutions and citizens for greater financial openness.” And finally, “There is little evidence that the country’s oil wealth is being devoted to the public good.”

Human rights abuses continue unchecked. An oil company employee was recently beaten unconscious by gendarmes when he refused to pay a bribe. In 2002, more than a dozen security officials at the airport in Bata, the country’s commercial center, were arrested after they allowed an opposition leader to board a plane for Gabon. If you happen to be a member of the opposition, or even a suspected member of the opposition, you live precariously.

For an intimate portrait of what “torture” and “abuse” mean in the context of Equatorial Guinea, I consulted Tropical Gangsters by Robert Klitgaard, an economist who worked in Malabo during the late 1980s. The book ends with Klitgaard protesting the torture of a local colleague who was taken to the presidential compound above Malabo’s harbor, blindfolded, and had his hands tied behind his back. He was then hung by his ankles -- as Klitgaard writes, “like a marlin at the weight scale” -- and lowered into a barrel of soapy water and kept there until he choked. He was pulled out, questioned, and submerged again. This went on for several hours. Later, electric shocks were administered to his genitals. He was eventually released.

Even foreign officials have not been excluded from thuggery. John Bennett was the U.S. envoy to Equatorial Guinea from 1991 to 1994, and his outspokenness about such abuses angered Obiang. One evening he received a death threat at the U.S. Embassy. When I talked with Bennett recently, he recalled meeting the country’s president after the incident. “Obiang said he couldn’t believe anyone would threaten the American ambassador,” Bennett said drolly. “It was pretty low comedy.” Soon after, in 1995, the embassy was closed because of concerns over corruption and human rights.

The country might have disappeared from our geopolitical radar had Mobil not struck oil in the waters off Malabo later that year. It quickly became clear that the Zafiro oil field was world-class. After a decade of development, oil production in Equatorial Guinea stands at more than 300,000 barrels a day, which at current prices translates to nearly $5.5 billion a year. A gas field owned by Marathon Oil has also become a major producer, and the ocean beds off Equatorial Guinea are being combed for additional deposits. Energy companies have invested several billion dollars in Equatorial Guinea, and Marathon is building a major liquefied natural gas facility. It is now possible to fly nonstop from Malabo to Texas on a weekly flight known as the “Houston Express.”

Equatorial Guinea is not the only country in the region to have emerged as a major oil supplier for the United States. West Africa is central to America’s effort to reduce dependency on Middle East oil. The region currently supplies 15 percent of America’s energy, and that figure is expected to rise to 25 percent within a few years. A report prepared by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG), a panel of U.S. government and energy industry officials brought together by the Jerusalem-based neoconservative Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, proposed that the Gulf of Guinea be declared a “vital interest” in U.S. national security policy. The report, unveiled at a press conference in 2002 by several congressmen, proposed that the U.S. military presence be enhanced to include a unified military command for Africa and a home port in São Tomé, an island state in this gulf. Three months later, President Bush convened a meeting with Obiang and nine other Central African leaders at the United Nations to discuss military and energy security. And in a sign of Equatorial Guinea’s new strategic role, a lieutenant colonel in the Special Forces -- the U.S. military attaché from neighboring Cameroon -- represented the Pentagon in the grandstand at the independence parade in Ebebiyin.

U.S. corporations are now investing more in Equatorial Guinea than in any other African country except for Nigeria and South Africa. In 2003, the Bush administration reopened the embassy, a move sharply criticized by human rights groups as a favor to the oil companies and to Obiang. Frank Ruddy, U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea in the mid-1980s, decries current U.S. policy, saying that Bush administration officials are “big cheerleaders for the government -- and it’s an awful government.”

Obiang has few friends. He has alienated the Spanish -- and through them the entire European Union -- by accusing Madrid of involvement in the March 2004 coup attempt. Aside from the Chinese, only the Bush administration seems to like Obiang. No senior administration official has issued a public word of criticism against his regime. Instead, in June 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham each met privately with Obiang in Washington. When I interviewed Gabriel Nguema Lima, Obiang’s son, he warmly saluted the Bush administration: “The United States, like China, is careful not to get into internal issues.”


Equatorial Guinea exemplifies what is known as the “resource curse,” the paradox by which countries rich in oil, gas, or minerals tend to suffer rather than benefit, because the abundance of “easy money” undermines healthy economic and political development. In Nigeria -- to cite a classic example -- total oil revenues have topped hundreds of billions of dollars, but poverty is worse than it was before the oil rush began more than 20 years ago; corruption is a national sport, and the country is fissuring along ethnic lines.

In Equatorial Guinea, nearly half of all children under five are malnourished. Even major cities lack clean water and basic sanitation. A health consultant who recently visited Equatorial Guinea for the first time since 1993 wrote with dismay in the International Herald Tribune: “Despite the oil boom, I was unable to see any improvements in the living standards of ordinary people.” (Obiang is not among the ordinary: In 1999 he paid $2.6 million -- cash -- for a mansion outside Washington, D.C. One of his wives had a $10,000 daily limit on her Riggs Bank debit card.)

On my way to Ebebiyin, I was stopped several times by underpaid or rarely paid soldiers who demanded bribes -- in their parlance cerveza, or beer money. In the town itself, the main hospital is a place for dying, not healing. The wards are dingy rooms with soiled mattresses and no medical equipment except for a couple of IV drips. By contrast, the town’s sparkling conference hall is air-conditioned and had, during a reception for Obiang’s cabinet the evening before the parade, a 25-foot table stocked with bottles of Johnnie Walker, Smirnoff, and Spanish wine. Apart from such showcase buildings, even government facilities can be decrepit. When I interviewed the minister of education in his office, only one of the two light fixtures had a bulb and I could not tell whether it worked because the power was out.

Yet to Western oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is an ideal partner. Nearly all of its oil and gas reserves are offshore, which means securing the fields is relatively easy. ExxonMobil and Marathon workers live in gated compounds that operate their own electrical, water, and communication systems. Unlike in Nigeria or Saudi Arabia, foreign workers do not face major security threats, and the government’s brutish security apparatus has kept the violent-crime rate low. Expats freely cruise the rutted streets of Malabo in their pickup trucks and hang out at the most popular bars, like La Bamba and Shangri-La, among an abundance of professional women, known as “night fighters” because they bicker over prospective clients.

Most important for oil companies, Equatorial Guinea is a profitable place to do business. According to a 1999 report by the International Monetary Fund, oil companies received “by far the most generous tax and profit-sharing provisions in the region.” The state received only 15 to 40 percent of the revenues from its oil fields, while the norm in sub-Saharan Africa was 45 to 90 percent.

Even so, the government is expected to reap $1.5 billion in oil revenues this year, or about $3,000 per capita. But that figure is deeply misleading; for the average Equatoguinean, scraping by on roughly $2 a day, $3,000 is an unimaginable fortune. So where does the money go?

A basement-level warren in the Russell office building in Washington, D.C., houses the minority staff of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which focuses on terrorism and money laundering. Its cramped suite is stacked with documents and investigative detritus. In March 2003, responding in part to an exposé by Ken Silverstein of the Los Angeles Times, the subcommittee began investigating Riggs Bank’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws. It soon uncovered a range of improper activity involving accounts opened by Equatorial Guinea (and unrelated accounts belonging to former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet).

The Senate inquiry wasn’t the only government probe of Riggs’ dealings: In a parallel investigation begun in 2003, the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) started looking into the bank’s Equatoguinean and Saudi accounts. In May 2004, the Treasury Department fined Riggs $25 million for “systemic” violations of anti-money-laundering laws -- the largest fine ever imposed under the Bank Secrecy Act of 1970. While offering scant details, Treasury documents refer to “hundreds of thousands of dollars transferred from an account of the country of Equatorial Guinea to the personal account of a government official,” and to “millions of dollars deposited into a private investment company owned by an official of the country of Equatorial Guinea.”

The Senate investigation proved to be much more revealing. Using their subpoena power, investigators obtained records showing that as much as $700 million had been deposited in Equatoguinean accounts at Riggs. The committee also discovered that U.S. energy companies, including ExxonMobil, Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil, and ChevronTexaco, made questionable payments directly to Riggs Bank accounts held by members of Obiang’s regime and his family. What emerges from the committee’s final report, released in July 2004, is an intricate exposé of how Obiang enriched himself and his family, and how oil companies, wittingly or not, helped him do so.

Although Riggs is only a medium-sized bank, it has been a D.C. institution for more than a century. Riggs has always been well connected -- 21 presidents have used its services -- and Jonathan Bush, the president’s uncle, is CEO of its investment arm. Riggs has also long been the banker to Embassy Row, and in recent years, embassy banking accounted for 20 percent of its revenue. Its client list, Senate investigators wrote, included many countries “with high risks of money laundering and foreign corruption.”

Riggs also has a reputation for not asking too many questions. As the committee report notes, “Riggs has repeatedly been cited for having weak anti-money-laundering controls.” Indeed, the document went so far as to call the bank’s program “dysfunctional.” This certainly held true in Riggs’ treatment of Obiang’s money: “Riggs was fully aware of the corruption risks associated with the E.G. accounts,” Senate investigators reported, yet the bank “failed to exercise enhanced scrutiny of the account activity, even for transactions involving large cash deposits or international wire transfers.”

Obiang’s relationship with Riggs began in 1995, and by 2003 his regime had become the bank’s single largest customer. In all, Riggs held more than 60 accounts belonging to Obiang, his government, and his ruling circle. The primary Equatoguinean bank account, known as the “oil account,” was where energy companies would deposit their royalty payments, and it often contained tens of millions of dollars at a time. There is no suggestion that those payments themselves were tainted, but Obiang’s handling of the account raised eyebrows. Among other suspicious activity identified in the report, the regime wired -- without objection or scrutiny from Riggs -- $35 million from the oil account “to two unknown companies” with accounts in nations with strict bank-secrecy laws.

Then there were the “investment accounts.” In 2003, the value of these accounts fluctuated between $300 million and $500 million. It is unusual for funds tantamount to a country’s treasury to be held in a private bank, especially a relatively minor one like Riggs, and even more unusual for transfers from such accounts to require only one signature -- the president’s. That’s just one of the reasons Obiang is believed to have treated the public treasury as his own.

The handling of the accounts might have been comical if a nation’s wealth hadn’t been at stake; the manner of deposits was, on occasion, Chaplinesque. The Riggs official who managed the accounts from the bank’s DuPont Circle branch, Simon Kareri, twice went to the Equatoguinean Embassy, a mile away on 16th Street, and picked up suitcases that, as detailed in the Senate report, weighed 60 pounds and contained $3 million in plastic-wrapped stacks of $100 bills. He ferried them back to Riggs and deposited them into one of Obiang’s accounts. The bank also received cash deposits of more than $1.4 million into accounts belonging to Constancia Nsue, one of Obiang’s wives. In those cases -- as with other cash deposits that larded accounts controlled by Obiang and Nsue -- Riggs did not file “Suspicious Activity Reports” to the OCC as required whenever a bank suspects, or should suspect, that a transaction might involve illicit funds or the laundering of illicit funds.

(The oil account, as well as the others, was closed after the Senate investigation began, and Obiang’s government says that the funds are currently deposited at the Bank of Central African States, a regional institution based in Cameroon that holds treasury accounts.)

The committee reported a litany of other unorthodox activity. Riggs helped Obiang set up Otong S.A., an offshore shell corporation in the Bahamas to which he deposited $11.5 million in cash. Reporting these transactions to U.S. officials, Riggs “repeatedly mischaracterized” Otong as a “timber export company.” Riggs also issued a $3.75 million loan to Obiang’s eldest son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang, to purchase a penthouse apartment in California. (Teodoro, owner of a fleet of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Bentleys, started a rap label in Beverly Hills.) But not all of the transactions were to Obiang’s benefit: The bank “exercised such lax oversight” over Kareri, the manager of the Equatoguinean accounts, that he was able to “transfer more than $1 million in E.G. oil revenues to an account he controlled at another bank.”

As the Senate report concluded, “Riggs Bank serviced the E.G. accounts with little or no attention to the bank’s anti-money-laundering obligations, turned a blind eye to evidence suggesting the bank was handling the proceeds of foreign corruption, and allowed numerous suspicious transactions to take place without notifying law enforcement.” Riggs officials declined to comment for this story.

The committee’s rebuke did not end with Riggs. “Oil companies operating in Equatorial Guinea,” Senate investigators wrote, “may have contributed to corrupt practices in that country by making substantial payments to, or entering into business ventures with, individual E.G. officials, their family members, or entities they control, with minimal public disclosure of their actions.” Those conclusions triggered the current inquiry by the SEC into oil company transactions. Although the SEC won’t comment on ongoing investigations, it is understood to be probing possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from making direct or indirect bribes. (The oil companies deny wrongdoing and say they are cooperating with the SEC.)

Among the payments were more than $4 million that American oil companies, including ChevronTexaco, ExxonMobil, Marathon, and Amerada Hess, provided to fund the tuition and living expenses of Equatoguinean students in the United States. According to the Senate report, most of these students “appeared to be children or relatives of wealthy or powerful E.G. officials.”

The Senate report also describes payments the oil companies made to Obiang and his inner circle. About half of the 60 Equa- toguinean accounts at Riggs belonged to members of Obiang’s family or government (who were often the same, as in the case of Armengol Ondo Nguema, Obiang’s brother and the director of national security). Between 1995 and 2004, millions of dollars from U.S. oil firms were deposited into these accounts -- for what appeared to be real estate or business deals -- and some of these funds were transferred to offshore accounts. Such payments were made to, among others, the president’s wife, the interior and agricultural ministers, and at least one well-placed general.

In 2001 Exxon paid $175,000 to Constancia Nsue -- as a representative of Obiang’s personal company, Abayak S.A. -- to rent a compound that houses Exxon workers and offices. Exxon also rented a house from the nation’s minister of agriculture and paid $236,160 to a firm owned by the interior minister. The prize for the most unusual lease goes to Amerada Hess, which rented property for $445,800 from a 14-year-old relative of Obiang. Overall, Hess paid nearly $1 million in rent to Equatoguinean officials and their relatives, though the company told the Senate committee it planned to cancel those leases in 2004.

How much is too much to pay in rent to a teenager, to a general, to the president’s wife? There’s no easy answer. Equatorial Guinea is not a normal country: One resident remarked of the ruling elite, “Everything you see that attracts your attention is owned by them.” A foreigner who knows the country well described it to me as “a ranch” owned by Obiang. If the president or his relatives don’t happen to own something you want, they will likely acquire it before you do and then sell it to you at a tidy profit. As the Senate report notes, this type of “economic dominance” means that almost any business deal is likely to enrich a member of the president’s clan. “How oil companies can and should respond to this situation,” the report notes, “raises a number of difficult policy issues.”

Unfortunately, the Bush administration is setting an abysmal example. The building it settled on to house the reopened embassy is owned by Manuel Nguema Mba, who is the minister of national security, a relative of Obiang’s, and an accused torturer. The State Department and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have both documented cases in which Nguema supervised the torture of political opponents. In one case the victim was beaten to death. Now Nguema collects rent from the U.S. government.



After issuing its report, the Senate committee held a hearing in which the head of Riggs Bank, as well as senior executives of ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, and Amerada Hess, testified under oath.

Kareri, the Riggs official who oversaw the accounts, took the Fifth. But the bank’s president and chief executive officer, Lawrence Hebert, did speak, voicing regret that Riggs did not “fully meet the expectations of our regulators.” He blamed the absence of suspicious activity reports on a subpar computer system.

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the ranking minority member, was amazed. “Mr. Hebert,” he said, “you don’t need a computer system to realize suspicious activity when you’ve got 60 pounds of cash there being walked into the door with a suitcase.”

Levin was just warming up. He noted that Riggs hosted a lunch for Obiang in Washington, and that Hebert and three other executives had followed up with a letter expressing the bank’s “gratitude” for Obiang’s time and saluting his “prudent leadership.”

“How do you write that stuff to a man as abominable as this guy?” Levin asked. “How do you basically live with yourself?”

“We took prudent steps to be very careful with this gentleman,” Hebert replied.

“Who you calling a gentleman?” Levin shot back. “Let’s call him a dictator.”

Next were the oil executives. Andrew Swiger, then an executive vice president at ExxonMobil, was first to testify. “The business arrangements we’ve entered into have been entirely commercial,” Swiger said. “They are a function of completing the work that we are there to do, which is to develop the country’s petroleum resources and, through that and our work in the community, make Equatorial Guinea a better place.”

“Make it what?” Levin asked.

“A better place,” Swiger replied.

“I know you’re all in a competitive business,” Levin said in closing. “But I’ve got to tell you, I don’t see any fundamental difference between dealing with an Obiang and dealing with a Saddam Hussein.”



Obiang's personal investment vehicle is Abayak S.A., and it was to Abayak that the oil companies made a number of their questionable payments. The company is mysterious -- nobody seems to know how big it is, or exactly what it does. But an internal Riggs memo unearthed by the Senate describes it as “a significant earner of income for the President.” So I decided to make inquiries once I arrived in Equatorial Guinea.

According to the Senate report, Marathon Oil has negotiated a deal to purchase land from Abayak for more than $2 million; although much of the sale, as of June 2004, was pending, the oil company had already delivered a check to Abayak for $611,000, made out to Obiang. Marathon is also involved in a joint venture to operate two gas plants with GEOGAM, a quasi-state firm in which Abayak controls a 75 percent stake.

ExxonMobil operates an oil-distribution joint venture, called Mobile Oil Guinea Ecuatorial, in which Abayak owns 15 percent, based on a mere $2,300 investment. ExxonMobil has not disclosed the company’s revenues or current valuation.

What did Abayak offer its American partners other than the name and blessing of the president? I thought the answer could be found in Bata. The recently completed seven-story Abayak building is the biggest building in Bata -- indeed, the largest one in the country. I asked a Ministry of Information official to take me to see Abayak’s headquarters so that I could talk with an executive or two.

At the ground-floor reception area, we were told the firm’s offices were on the top floor. When we went there, we found that four of the six offices on the floor were empty and not even furnished. Doors to the two remaining offices were locked and unmarked. If these were Abayak’s headquarters, they seemed unfathomably modest for a firm that had been selected as a partner by the largest oil companies in the world.

Perhaps the receptionist was wrong; maybe Abayak’s offices were on another floor. I checked every floor and saw that the offices were either empty -- most were -- or occupied by other entities. Even the Ministry of Information official who accompanied me was flummoxed. Where was Abayak? And more to the point, what was Abayak?

There were answers back in Malabo. I talked with two people who follow the nation’s financial affairs closely (and who asked not to be identified because they would face retribution from the government). One told me that, as far as he knew, Abayak conducted some legitimate business but functioned mainly as a vehicle through which payments were made in exchange for the president’s approval of business projects. The other person called Abayak a “holding company” and said it had no administrative offices that he knew of. Indeed, there is no Abayak building or administrative offices in Malabo that I could locate. It was not possible to ask the president about this or any other matter -- my requests for an interview were declined. So I went to the next-best source, his son Gabriel Nguema Lima, who, in high Equatoguinean tradition, is also the vice minister of mines and energy.

Obiang has several wives and many children -- some accounts put the number at 40 -- but the two children who count the most are Teodoro, the eldest son of Constancia Nsue, and Gabriel, the eldest son of Obiang’s second wife. Due to his playboy habits, Teodoro has faded somewhat in the past year while Gabriel, who is smart and hardworking, has taken a larger public role even though he is not yet 30 years old.

His Malabo office is in the ministry headquarters, a modest two-story building where, on the day of my interview, a rooster was pecking around the front yard. The office, though it has a flat-screen computer, is not large -- in most governments it would house a mid-level civil servant. Adorning the wall is Nguema’s diploma from Alma College and his varsity soccer letter from prep school Cranbrook Kingswood, both in Michigan.

Nguema has become a spokesman for his father on financial affairs, so I asked about the Riggs controversy. “If Equatorial Guinea wanted to do something illegal,” he said, “the easy thing would be to do a Swiss account or a Bahamas account where nobody will know what happens.” He claimed his government used Riggs because the U.S. State Department had recommended the bank: “We wanted to make sure that American companies feel comfortable.”

When I asked Nguema about Abayak, he described it as an industrial concern with experience in the cement and cocoa businesses. I told him that I had been trying to locate the company’s headquarters.

He scratched his head.

“Uhm, headquarters of Abayak, that’s a good question,” he said, pausing uncomfortably. “I don’t think they have a headquarters here. I know they work from here, but they don’t have a headquarters here. The headquarters would be” -- he paused again and looked at his feet -- “maybe my father’s house.”



As with most dictatorships, Obiang’s regime does not like reporters nosing around. I let the authorities know that I was working on a book about oil, and they had not seemed particularly concerned about my presence until I took a stroll with the Spanish ambassador, Carlos Robles Fraga. What ensued provided an unexpected lesson in the clout the U.S. government carries in Equatorial Guinea.

I happened to meet Robles while I was in Ebebiyin for the celebration. We walked around the town square, an area thick with security officials, and had an innocuous 10-minute conversation. The next day, an adviser to Obiang called my cell phone and demanded I leave the celebration because I had met “the enemy.” After a few hastily arranged meetings and many reassuring words, the problem seemed to have blown over. But two days later the minister of information, Alfonso Nsue Mokuy, came to my hotel with a presidential aide in tow.

“Peter, you have caused us enormous problems,” he said. “The president has called me three times, and him,” nodding to the presidential aide, “four times.”

I was startled that the president would concern himself so intimately with my case.

“Was he angry?” I asked.

“We are all angry,” the minister replied. I would have to leave the country.

I was driven by the adviser to the airport, where my passport was taken and I was told to wait in the international departure lounge. When I tried, an hour later, to send an email, I was taken to a security office, where the minister of information soon appeared, sweating like a boxer in the 10th round. He was yelling at me, a bit incoherently.

“You are a spy,” he said, waving his finger at me. This was nonsense, I replied, and, remembering the call-the-bluff strategy of a colleague in Baghdad who was accused of espionage by Saddam Hussein’s security service, I said that if he believed I was a spy he should take me to prison straightaway.

“Let me see your computer,” he demanded. Apparently I was not quick enough to open my bag because the minister slapped at my forearms and told me to hurry up.

“If any harm comes to me, there will be a big problem between your government and my government,” I said sternly.

“Are you threatening me?” he asked, mentioning that in a week or so he would be visiting Washington for official meetings.

“If you do anything to me, you will not be going to Washington,” I warned.

He backed down. If what I said was true -- and I had as little idea of that as he did -- he would be doing something worse than angering his own president; he would be angering the president’s all-powerful friend. He didn’t touch me again.

Two days after my expulsion, President Obiang met with the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy, who had come to the airport to make sure I was treated fairly before I was made to board a turboprop to Cameroon. Obiang apologized for my expulsion, saying there had been a misunderstanding, and he invited me back as his personal guest. His apology was surprising: Presidents, in democracies and dictatorships alike, don’t like to say they made a mistake. But Obiang did, and the most reasonable explanation is that he fears displeasing the U.S. government, his indispensable ally.



Unless something changes, Equatorial Guinea is cursed; it is ruled by an elite that has shown little conscience or judgment in the realms of economic and political development. It is a safe bet that much of the oil money will be stolen or squandered by Obiang’s regime, even if the American government and oil companies do what is within their power to do. Yet that margin of difference -- reducing the curse from total to partial -- is well within reach.

It is not a radical agenda. The report by AOPIG, the neoconservative group of government and energy industry officials, argues that it is against U.S. interests to support unsavory regimes, and that the solution is to engage them “in a way that fosters and encourages the development of a middle class, rather than allowing petrodollars to flow into the hands of a small number of corrupt leaders and their associates.” In other words, don’t go into business with the Abayaks of the world.

The Senate recommendations are more aggressive. “To further reduce opportunities for corruption, U.S. oil companies should not participate in future business ventures in which individual E.G. officials or their family members have a direct or beneficial interest,” the report concludes. “Congress should also amend the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act to require U.S. companies to disclose substantial payments to and business ventures entered into with a country’s officials, their family members, or entities they control.”

The bottom line is that Equatorial Guinea is a country in which the Bush administration -- which proclaims a vast interest in promoting democracy around the globe -- could make a difference, if it wished. When it makes a demand, Obiang listens because he must. Militarily and politically, he’s a paper tiger. Last March, a gang of fewer than 100 inept mercenaries came close to killing him, which is why he has reinforced his Moroccan security detail and paid an estimated $50 million for several Ukrainian attack helicopters. Yet he knows it is well within the power of the U.S. government to depose him -- or, at least, curb his kingly ways.

For people in Equatorial Guinea, the U.S. government may be their only and perhaps last hope. While in Malabo, I would often take an evening stroll from my hotel and sit on the steps of a building overlooking an intersection with a colorful whirl of activity. The street lights worked only occasionally, but a nearby bar played irresistible music from the Ivory Coast, and vendors sold snacks to the men and women who talked and flirted in the near-darkness.

Almost every time I visited that spot, I met a man on the steps. He was an ordinary Equatoguinean, which means he was jobless and struggled to feed his family, yet he was hopeful that things might improve because Americans had taken an interest in his country. We always talked, and because I never asked his name, he talked freely.

“Obiang doesn’t care about the people, only his family,” the man said. “He doesn’t want to share the money. He says he wants democracy, but if I say to him these things, I will go to jail and be killed. It is our brother who is killing us. The whites, they should help us. Saddam Hussein, he was a dictator, and the whites decided to get rid of him. They should help us, too.”

By “whites” he meant “Americans.” We are the ones offering jobs to a lucky few workers. In his eyes, we are the ones who stand for democracy and a future that is not filled with theft and violence by a government mafia. We are a good people who will do what is right -- or should do what is right.

“Don’t forget me,” I heard him shout, after our last conversation, as I walked away.