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Established: 2005
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The World Bank |
Life was originally created by the Television Trust for the Environment (TVE) to document the projects and initiatives working towards the Millennium Development Goals around the world. Over the past 2 years, EEMP has collaborated with TVE, The World Bank, UK's Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and ICE A-V to bring the Life programmes to China.
There are now two series of Life in Chinese, a grand total of 59 programmes have now been translated and versioned into Chinese. Both series examine the issue of globalization and its effect on people and communities around the world. Produced for BBC World, the series takes us to India, Africa, Asia, Brazil, Mexico, Europe, the Pacific Islands and the United States.
Individual programmes focus on economics, women's issues, public health, human rights, poverty and development.
The Life series in Chinese on DVD is now available. Please contact alex@eempc.org or ICE A/V to order.
Thanks to The World Bank and the UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) for its support of the Life series in China.
Films in the Life Series
Listed below are the 26 Life programmes most recently brought to China and which will be broadcast on Chinese TV during 2007. For full transcripts of Life films please visit: Life Online (English) or contact alex@eempc.org (Chinese)
1. Reel to Real Balancing Acts
Life visits women in four countries to explore what has, and hasn't, changed since the Cairo International Conference on Population and Development ten years ago. In Pakistan, seventeen-year-old Hina is challenging tradition to complete her education. In Afghanistan, returning refugees like Maa Gul want the government to honour their right to shelter. In Kenya, Rose Ð who's HIV-positive - is championing widows' rights to independence. And in Nigeria, market trader Tematayo is demanding the government acknowledge her worth as a successful businesswoman.
2. Between War and Peace
Liberia, West Africa. Over half of the population fled their homes in terror during its long and bloody civil war. After fourteen years of anarchy, the international community has arrived in force in an attempt to stabilise the country. Many see this as Liberia's last chance. With more than 59,000 fighters (some of them children) demobilised in the last three months and another 15,000 waiting to follow, this Life programme reports on Liberia's attempts to find a way of engaging the former fighters in rebuilding their country Ð to sustain the peace.
3. Blue Danube?
In the year when Hungary and Slovakia have joined the EU and Romania and Bulgaria wait for accession, Life tracks the course of the Danube through the heart of Central Europe. The programme examines the legacies of communist rule and conflict in the region, and asks when more than one country shares what a river has to offer, what are the consequences? This is the story of how the Danube has become a new battleground in the conflict between the EU's transport and agriculture lobbies, and environmentalists fighting to preserve the river's unique ecology. Can the EU stick to its own commitment to environmental sustainability?
4. Brazil's Land Revolution
In Brazil, almost half of the agricultural land is owned by just one per cent of the population. The government estimates that land reform would benefit some 4.5 million families - both agricultural workers and city slum-dwellers. Although the policy has been backed by successive governments, political opposition has so far prevented any real progress. Now Brazil's President, Luiz Ignazio Lula da Silva, has announced plans to resettle more than 100,000 landless families this year, and promised an extra US$500 million towards agrarian reform over the next two years. Life visits the Northeastern state of Bahia to report on an initiative which encourages the landless to club together to buy up land, with low-interest government loans.
5. Educating Yaprak
The eastern Turkish province of Van is home to Turks, Armenians and Kurds. Conflict between these communities has exacerbated poor living conditions. Now, the Turkish government has extended compulsory education for all children, including girls, up to the age of 14. Where traditionally education is taken Ôout' to remote villages, the Turkish approach is to bring the children to the schools. But now children are instead being transported into towns and cities or even sent to boarding schools. The reasoning is that the standards of remote education centres are difficult to monitor and maintain. In addition, by bringing children together from different communities it is hoped cultural and social differences will be overcome. Is this a workable solution? Parents are often reluctant to send their children, particularly girls, on arduous and often dangerous journeys just to attend school. How will they be convinced that this is a good idea?
6. Reel to Real Holding Our Ground
Holding our Ground focuses on one of the most contested of the agreements hammered out at the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994 - reproductive rights. The programme features reports from: the Philippines, a country with an average of over five children per family, and now at the epicentre of the battle over efforts to restrict access to family planning; Latvia, one of the new members of the EU, where taboos surrounding the subject of sex still hamper efforts to provide information for adolescents; Japan, where the falling birthrate is focusing attention again on the problems of childcare for working women; and India, where - despite laws designed to protect the girl child - the practice of selective abortion of female fetuses appears to be growing. The stories are linked by an interview with Thoraya Obaid - Executive Director of the UN Population Fund.
7. How Green is my Valley?
In this programme, Life visits the Valleys of Wales, where the coal and steel industries have left a legacy of ill health and unemployment. For every statistic on health and poverty, the Welsh Valleys top the charts for Western Europe. The highest rates for chronic emphysema, cancer, heart disease, asthma, poor housing and sanitation, low birth weight and accidental death combine to mean that people living here suffer the highest mortality rates in Western Europe. Coal and Steel were the lifeline of the Valleys - but today these industries are all but gone. Their legacy is a polluted pocket of poverty - 180,000 people nestled in the steep-sided windswept valleys of Caerphilly County. There are schemes to regenerate the entire area Ð health projects, with incentives, working groups, investment and employment strategies Ð but are these really working and what more can be done to lift this community out of its depression?
8. In The Wake of War
Burundi, the small land-locked country in the Great Lakes Region of Africa, which has been at the heart of one of Africa's most intractable ethnic conflicts, is finally beginning to see the benefits of a peace process. Using traditional mediation systems and peacemakers, the country is introducing innovative peace and reconciliation projects. The aim is to start a grass roots movement to bring a lasting peace to the Burundi and its long-suffering citizens. With the country's first post-conflict elections scheduled at the beginning of November, this timely programme examines the future for Burundi, for power sharing and for a rapprochement between warring factions.
9. Returning Dreams
What happens to the millions of children caught up in the world's conflicts? Some are forced to fight and kill, others are used as slaves and 'wives'. Those that survive are left brutalised and traumatised. How do you rehabilitate children who have gone through these kinds of experiences? To mark the 15th anniversary of the International Convention of the Rights of the Child, Life returns to Sierra Leone and Liberia, to assess the fate of children caught up in the recent civil war. Life goes to the refugee camps, the diamond mines and the border villages and towns to find out what is happening to these children and what the future now holds for them.
10. Return to Srebrenica
In 1995 the small town of Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia was home to the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two. Now international aid, and the burials of victims of the massacres, are part of a process allowing the town to move forward, and begin to build a new future. The story of Srebrenica today, a town slowly reconciling itself to its past, unfolds through interviews with returning refugees, and those who can't face ever going back; with the International Commission on Missing Persons; with EU Ambassador Michael Humphries; and with Lord Paddy Ashdown, internationally appointed administrator of Bosnia.
11. Roma Rights
Roma communities in Europe have been subjected to centuries of persecution and racism. They are one of the most excluded groups in the world. They are denied the chance to work, proper housing, healthcare and their children refused a decent education. But a new initiative Ð the Decade of Roma Inclusion Ð was launched on 2nd February in a concerted attempt to help and break the desperate cycle of poverty in which so many Roma live. 'Roma Rights' looks at the hard living conditions but it also examines the richness and energy of Roma culture, especially the music. TVE has been given rare access to film Roma communities in Bulgaria and Romania where ordinary families talk openly about discrimination and their suffering.
12. Slum Futures
Life goes to Mumbai to investigate the city's extraordinary slum culture. There is poverty and suffering but Mumbai's slum dwellers are a vibrant and proud community. The city is also an important microcosm of how slums are developing around the world. Life introduces us to Sagira, a veteran of the streets. She's lived on the city's pavements for 32 years making do in two tiny rooms where her family of 16 sleep in shifts. They have no electricity, an illegal supply of water and no toilet. Globally one in six people live in slums and at the current rate of growth, that proportion's going to double by 2030 to one in every three. "Slum Futures" looks at how the authorities will deal with such a massive influx.
13. The Hospice
To mark International AIDS Day, Life presents a powerful and intimate film into the work of a hospice in Zambia, a country on the front line in the world fight against HIV/AIDS. This is a country where one in five of the population are HIV-positive; most are under 40 years old. All of the eleven million population has been touched by HIV/AIDS in some way. The Mother of Mercy Hospice on the edge of the capital, Lusaka, was the first of its kind in Zambia. It has just 22 beds and was founded by an inspiring woman of extraordinary courage, a Polish nun called Sister Leonia. The film follows the work of the staff and volunteers both at the hospice and in the local villages and communities and is an extraordinary account of the human face of AIDS in modern Africa.
14. This Hard Ground
Away from the idyllic, tropical paradise beaches of Sri Lanka, a civil war has been raging for the last twenty years. Jaffna, once a thriving port in the north of the island, is now a decimated skeleton of a city: buildings have been flattened by bombs, homes shot out and deserted. During the course of the war, around 800,000 people were forced to leave their homes and all their possessions. Even though they were displaced within their own country, they have lost everything: their livelihoods, their community and often their families. This Life programme examines the fragile peace and what it means to people who have fled because of the fighting. We talk to the Sri Lankan army, the government and NGOs and ask what are the prospects for a long-term political settlement and lasting peace.
15. Warming Up in Mongolia
This Life film looks at how Mongolia is powering itself-is the current situation sustainable and can anything be done to introduce new, cleaner technology to improve people's quality of life? All electricity produced in Mongolia comes from fossil fuels. What can be done to repair environmental damage and introduce sustainable alternatives to burning wood? Life visits the remote region of Urtuu Mukhar as well as the capital Ulan Baatar and examines the long-term environmental implications of exhausting Mongolia's natural resources. What clean technological solutions are there to Mongolia's problems and are these feasible, financially and logistically?
16. Back in Business?
Eleven years of civil war between 1991 and 2002 has left Sierra Leone in ruins. According to the United Nations it's the second poorest country in the world. Tens of thousands of people were killed and many more injured and displaced during the war. In May 2002, stability was restored when the former ruling party were returned to power in democratic elections. Now, after three years of peace, the rebuilding has begun, and Sierra Leone is looking for outside investment to kick start its economy. Sierra Leone has miles of beautiful beaches-in a country that was once a war-zone, could tourism be one of the new industries that moves the country into the future?
17. Cash Flow Fever
There have always been economic migrants Ð people who swap regions, countries Ð even continents Ð to find better wages to pay for a better life. One out of every ten people on the planet either sends or receives money from abroad. And unlike all other forms of financial aid that travels into developing countries, remittances go directly to poor people. Worldwide it's estimated that amounts to a staggering two hundred billion dollars a year. What impact can it have in the fight against poverty? To find out more, Life has travelled to the United States and El Salvador to uncover this hidden economy.
18. For Richer, For Poorer
Sao Paulo is Brazil's biggest city and the business hub of the country. Nestling between the sky scrapers are the favelas or urban slums housing the poor. Life went to the favela Coliseu, in the heart of one of the richest parts of Sao Paolo. It epitomizes a stark fact that has come to characterise Brazil today. The gulf between the rich and the poor is one of the biggest in the world. Almost half the country's wealth is concentrated in the hands of just twenty thousand families Ð and that's out of a population 184 million. Life assesses what progress has been made in two and a half years by Lula, the worker President.
19. Kill or Cure
For over a decade, India has been the powerhouse behind low cost drugs for the developing world, especially Africa and Asia. India's $4.5 billion pharmaceutical industry is now at a crossroads following a new law introduced in January 2005. It's opened a highly charged debate, with opinion split right down the middle. Life has been to India to investigate.
20. Killing Poverty
For over a decade, India has been the powerhouse behind low cost drugs for the developing world, especially Africa and Asia. India's $4.5 billion pharmaceutical industry is now at a crossroads following a new law introduced in January 2005. This law has opened a highly charged debate, with opinion split right down the middle. Life has been to India to investigate.
21. Kosovo Ð A House Still Divided
Kosovo, a land-locked province of Serbia, still bears the scars of the civil war between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians six years ago. One of the poorest regions in Europe, it's currently run by the UN's Mission in Kosovo. During the conflict homes and property were seized, ownership often determined by force. Today there is still deep resentment. To find solutions the UN created the Housing Property Directorate (HPD). But its five year mission ends this year. Will HPD's withdrawal signal new anger over land and property rights?
22. School's Out
Makoko is a shanty town on the lagoon of Lagos, West Africa's biggest city. Space is precious, so Makoko stretches out into the lagoon, with many of the houses are built on stilts. It hardly looks the place, but new research reveals that parents here are prepared to pay to get their children educated. Children can go to the free state school. Or they can pay at one of these small, private schools. But they are extremely poor. Average income in Makoko is about fifty dollars a month. School fees can be ten dollars. So why are they prepared to pay? Research by a British team claims private schools in shanties and slums around the world are doing much better than state schools. Is this hype or reality?
23. Srebenica Ð looking for Justice
This film examines the massacre at Srebrenica. This July is the tenth anniversary of what proved to be the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War. The programme examines the long and painful process of identifying the many thousands of men and boys who were slaughtered, the attempts to bring those responsible to justice and looks to the future and the possibility of Balkan states joining the European Union.
24. The Donor Circus
Zambia, southern Africa, is one of the poorest countries in the world, where one in every six children dies before reaching their fifth birthday. Its economy depends heavily on international aid. Over 40% of the Zambian government's budget comes from foreign donors. In 2003 that was $560 million. In the past, donors decided what the money was spent on and demanded a say in how the country's economy was run. Now the Zambian government hopes that way of working may soon be a thing of the past.
25. The Great Health Service Swindle
The health services of the richer countries are hugely dependent on nurses and doctors from developing countries, attracted by better salaries and the higher standard of living. For over 40 years there's been a trickle of Ghanaian nurses to the English-speaking developed world. One widely quoted source says almost two thousand nurses left the country between 1995 and 2002. Life goes to Ghana with Lydia, a Ghanaian nurse working in the UK, to see what the 'push' problems are, and find out what would make Lydia return to her homeland.
26. Trouble in Paradise
A thousand tiny coral islands scattered in the Indian Ocean, the Maldives are viewed as a paradise on earth. But their existence is threatened by rising sea levels, and they were devastated by the tsunami on 26th December 2004. One year on from the tsunami, and the tourists are back on the beaches. So why, when tourist facilities are up and running, are over 10,000 people on the isolated islands still waiting for their homes and communities to be rebuilt? Why is the Maldives the only tsunami-affected country which has not yet been promised all the aid it requested? A special edition of Life reports from the islands, and looks at the long-term social impact of the 2004 tsunami on this tiny island state.
Listed below are the 33 films in the Life series in Chinese. For film list and synopses in Chinese language please look here: Life films synopses (Chinese) For full transcripts of Life films please visit: Life Online (English) or contact alex@eempc.org (Chinese)
01
The Cost of Living
Twenty-nine year old Pramote lives in Bangkok and has AIDS. If he'd been able to afford the drugs now routinely prescribed for HIV-positive people in the West, he wouldn't be paralysed and bedridden today. Ninety per cent of the people infected with HIV today live in developing countries, and most don't have access to the drugs that could keep them alive because they are simply too expensive for their national health services. This Life programme investigates what happened when Thailand and South Africa applied to use compulsory licences and parallel importing-practices agreed under World Trade Organisation guidelines-to make their own generic versions of anti-retroviral drugs to halt the AIDS epidemic in their countries.
02
The Right to Choose
This Life programme opens with a bride in tears: she's only four years old. Another Ethiopian bride, Nibret, is 11, but she is just as traumatized by her wedding to a boy she has never met. And well she may be, since too-early pregnancy could easily cripple or kill her. That's the reality behind the right of women and girls to choice and reproductive health.
03
The Story So Far
The justification for globalisation-its means and its end-is improving the lives of planet's 6 billion inhabitants. The free trade of information, resources, goods and people should, in theory, benefit everyone in a one world economy. Current practice is somewhat in variance: today-despite, or perhaps because of, globalisation as we know it-rich and poor are parting ways, within societies and between them. The world's top three billionaires now earn more than the GNP of its 40 poorest countries.
04
Geraldo Off Line
Geraldo da Souza was sacked by his employers, Ford Brazil, along with two thousand fellow workers at Ford's Sao Paolo car plant. They'd done nothing wrong-except to entrust their livelihoods to a vast multinational employer bound to the vagaries of the global economy and the company's head-office strategists. When the Russian economy went into tailspin in early '98, international capital fulfilled its own prophecy by withdrawing from Brazil: the government was forced to raise interest rates, local consumption and production fell, and Geraldo lost his job.
05
The Philadelphia Story
The American economy is booming, with record growth and record job creation. But global economic pressures mean that some jobs are downsized and some jobs disappear-while others make fortunes. Life visits Philadelphia, the capital of Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence was once signed, to look at how the global economy is destroying some traditional employment while making others rich.
06
All Different, All Equal
This programme reports on appalling violence against women in South Africa, the trafficking of women in Lithuania for sex, and inequality in Sweden, where foreign-born wives can find themselves thrown out of their home-and the country. Five years after the Beijing Women's Conference, there's still a long way to go.
07
India Inhales
Two and a half thousand Indians die every day from smoking related diseases-one every 40 seconds. Yet these numbers will be dwarfed in the future if present trends in tobacco use continue. City Life goes to India to talk to cancer sufferers and campaigners and look at the effects of the globalization of tobacco addiction.
08
Credit Where Credit's Due
"Poverty is not created by poor people . . . Poverty is created by institutions that we build, policies that we pursue; concepts that we create." Mohammad Yunus created a concept to combat poverty-micro-credit-providing loans to the poor to whom the banks won't lend. And it works.
09
Untouchable?
Veerasamy takes in washing for his living. He lives in a small village in southern India where all the inhabitants are Dalits-outcasts or 'Untouchables' as they're known in India. But even among the dalits, there are divisions, and Veerasamy belongs to the lowest scale of the hierarchy. The only payment he receives for back-breaking work, washing and steaming and drying the laundry of the village's 19 families, is the left-overs from their meals to feed his small family. Discrimination based on caste membership has been, theoretically, illegal since India first gained independence in 1947. But it's actually an accepted part of everyday life across the continent: the Dalits are stigmatised from the day they are born.
10
Without Rights
In 1948, during the war that accompanied the founding of the Israeli State, thousands of Palestinian refugees fled to neighbouring countries. Some twenty years later, in 1967, the Israelis fought what they regarded as a defensive war-and occupied the West Bank of Jordan and the Gaza Strip. Now 1.3 million Palestinians are refugees living under Israeli laws. They are denied many human rights guaranteed to all people under international laws-laws that Israel herself has signed up to.
11
The Debt Police
In September 2000, Uganda became the first country to receive debt cancellation under a new scheme-the 'Heavily Indebted Poor Countries' (HIPC) debt relief scheme agreed at the G7 Summit in Cologne more than a year ago. But in a country where corruption is commonplace, is this relief (Uganda's been let off 60 per cent of the 120 million dollars it pays to service its foreign debt every year) really going to help the poor? Life goes to rural Uganda with the Uganda Debt Network, an NGO working to ensure that this aid reaches the poor and improves their lives.
12
Pavements of Gold
Urban poverty has been described as one of the biggest challenges facing the world in the 21st century. The figures are stark: in 1950, the number of people living in urban areas amounted to 300 million. At the start of the new century, that figure had multiplied almost ten-fold, to 2.85 billion-or almost half the world's total population. And the flow of rural migrants arriving in the world's megacities shows no signs of slowing down. With the backdrop of the growing urban slums surrounding Lima, capital city of Peru, this programme examines the enduring magnetism of big cities-and asks whether the migrants who've moved here now feel that city life is the answer to their dreams.
13
A Fistful of Rice
Nine out of every 10 children in Nepal suffer some form of malnutrition. Paradoxically, it's because malnutrition is so widespread that it's also invisible, unnoticed. This is particularly true of Protein Energy Malnutrition, or PEM as it's known-a condition officially defined as being short and underweight for age, but which, in reality, is a devastating intergenerational cycle of lost potential, both physical and mental.
14
Educating Lucia
Twelve-year old Lucia goes to primary school; her dream is to go to secondary school, and go on to train as a pilot. Her older sister Barita wants to do computer studies, but she had to leave school when their parents died of AIDS. And Portia, the youngest in the family, wants to be a dressmaker, but she doesn't go to school at all. The three sisters are AIDS orphans being brought up by their grandmother. She can only afford school fees for one girl, Lucia, to attend primary school. Tragically for these three sisters from one of Zimbabwe's large scale commercial farms, in tobacco country 50 miles outside Harare, they're more likely to end up--as their mother before them-with no formal education, working as seasonal labourers on the farm. Across Africa, the odds are dramatically against girls getting an education. This Life episode examines why.
15
City Life
Half of humanity today lives in cities. By 2030, that figure is set to increase to three out of every five people-drawn by dreams of prosperity and opportunity.
16
Together Against Violence
Bennetlands is a ghetto community in the heart of Kingston, Jamaica's capital city-home to 5,000 inhabitants-half of them under 25 and over 2,000 of them unemployed. Once, despite the poverty, Bennetlands was a peaceful place, with daily life revolving around the four main pillars of the community-its primary school, two churches and the S-Corner Clinic which provided health care, support and education for school drop-outs. But in the 1980s war broke out in the region-with rival 'corner' gangs fighting a vicious turf battle over Bennetlands' one high street, terrorising the neighbourhood and preventing children from going to school, and for most of the residents Bennetlands became a prison without bars. City Life tells how the local leaders joined forces to challenge the local gangs to heal their difference and work together to restore a sense of community in one poor Jamaican neighbourhood.
17
Paradise Domain
What's in a name? To a tiny nation in the South Pacific, plenty. The country is Tuvalu in the South Pacific: nine low-lying islands 1,000 km north of Fiji that make up one of the world's smallest, most isolated and most densely populated countries. Largely unknown to tourists, Tuvalu and its 10,500 people suffer from underdevelopment and a lack of jobs. Other than fishing, people get by harvesting coconuts - pretty much the only thing the soil will grow. But Tuvalu has one valuable asset: its coveted domain name - dot tv. In 1999 the prime minister determined to capitalize on this by selling the name to a Los Angeles dot.com company - in exchange for several million dollars and access to the new wired-up world.
18
My Mother Built This House
Victoria Mxenge was the first of the housing projects founded by the South African Homeless People's Federation in the 1990s in Khayalitsha, meaning "New Home", a huge sprawling township on a windswept, sandy flood plain outside Cape Town. A small oasis in a seemingly infinite sea of squatter settlements, the project has several streets of neat houses, a creche, an office built from old, brightly painted shipping containers and a small shop selling basic essentials. Nearly one-third of Cape Town's population of three million live in slums or squatter settlements.
19
Waiting to Go
The second programme exploring the lives of Palestinian refugees, this Life episode is set in Lebanon, where - according to the UN - there are 375,000 Palestinian refugees. Palestinians are unwanted in Israel, as we saw last week's programme; but in war-torn, sectarian Lebanon, among fellow Arabs, they hardly fare better, and most live in poverty. Barred from working, they also have limited access to medical care and higher education. Many have been in Lebanon for 50 years.
20
Patently Obvious
Protection of intellectual property - works of the mind - is the lifeblood of today's new knowledge economy. But while the benefits to the multinational pharmaceutical or telecommunication giants are plain, what relevance do international patent regulations have for developing countries?
21
It Takes a Village
In one of the poorest areas of one of the world's poorest countries, there was a devastating cyclone in 1991. The community of Chakaria in Bangladesh has never really recovered, even today, more than 10 years later, and there is still malnourishment. This programme describes a new approach to community health care tried there.
22
Danger! Children at Work
Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in Central America. Most Guatemalans exist on subsistence farming, with over 80 per cent living on less than two dollars a day.
23
Patents and Patients
Dr Yusuf Hamied thinks the Indian government should put the country "on a war footing" to tackle the HIV/AIDS epidemic that threatens to decimate his country. As evidence, he cites the three and a half thousand new HIV/AIDS cases registered every day in India - and the forecasts of 35 million HIV-infected Indians by 2003.
24
Kosovo: Rebuilding the Dream
When former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic paid his historic visit to Kosovo in 1990, he started a process that was ultimately to lead to the break-up of the multi-ethnic population of the province, and the destruction of any form of civic government for the families who'd lived there for centuries.
25
The Perfect Famine
The "Perfect Famine" is the kind of famine that happens when everything that can go wrong does go wrong, either because of natural disasters or because of the activities of man. That's what is happening in the southern African country of Malawi, where bad weather, poor governance, and probably profiteering have combined to create a desperate situation.
26
My Hanoi
Hanoi is one of the new global cities of the 21st century - a bustling centre of international trade and tourism, in competition with other fast growing cities of South East Asia and the burgeoning South China region. Growing urbanisation has led to a boom in construction: market reform and globalization have caused an influx of Western consumer goods.
27
The Other Side
Over the last century hundreds of thousands of Mexicans have migrated to the United States in search of a living wage. Particularly in the 1980s, thousands of indigenous people made the 3,000 mile trip from the southern state of Oaxaca, many illegally crossing the border, to find work in Los Angeles.
28
The Miller's Tale
The most common nutritional deficiency in the world, iron deficiency is a severe health problem that affects hundreds of millions of people around the world - causing a range of problems, from extreme lethargy to low birth weight, stunting, maternal mortality and loss of productivity on a national scale. More than half the population of Middle Eastern countries are iron-deficient - yet fortifying flour with iron costs just US$2 per person, per lifetime.
29
Doing the Right Thing
Porto Alegre - capital of Brazil's southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul - was once a run-of-the mill, dirty, Brazilian port city. With the fastest growing economy in Brazil, the state of Rio Grande do Sul attracts immigrants from many other poorer regions of the country who come in search of work and a better future. The state has a history of fierce independence, including a breakaway movement to form a separate nation.
30
The Long March
More people are on the move in China than ever before in human history. Twelve million people are leaving the countryside for the cities every year, and, within a generation, there will be more people living in the towns and cities than in the countryside.
31
The Health Protesters
Twenty-three years ago, the World Health Organization's Alma Ata conference promised to deliver basic health care for all the world's population by the year 2000, under the clarion cry of 'Health for All'.
32
In the Name of Honour
It's autumn in the mountain town of Qala Dzye, in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq - and the wedding season is coming to an end. Marriage for most Kurdish brides promises freedom and respectability. But for others, it can bring isolation, cruelty and even death. The Kurds have been in conflict with their three powerful neighbours - Iran, Turkey and Iraq - for the last 80 years. Thousands of villages were destroyed and families forced into crowded collective towns and refugee camps. This has changed the very fabric of Kurdish society, unleashing a chain of violence - often against women. Life explores how Kurdish women are working to stop the violence - and change the law which encourages it.
33
Bolivian Blues
Bolivia is at the heart of South America. It extends from the high Andes to tropical jungle. It's culturally, ethnically and geographically very diverse and potentially rich. Yet it ranks lowest of all South American countries in the UN's Human Development Index. Twenty per cent of children are undernourished. Average school attendance is less than seven years. Entrenched vested interests hamper foreign investment in the economy, while the landlocked geography of the country itself limits access to export markets. But there are signs of change. Annual inflation fell from a peak of 23,500 per cent in 1985 to less than 4.5 per cent by the close of 1998, and Bolivia's huge external debt burden has been substantially eased under new debt redemption programmes.
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