Since the turn of the millennium, over 5,000 women have been murdered in Guatemala. To give a better idea of what this figure means, consider that if Guatemala, with its population of 14 million, were the size of the United States, this would add up to 110,000 women murdered in a decade. And conditions are only worsening with the passage of time. In 2000, 213 women met violent deaths in Guatemala, compared to 720 in 2009 and 675 in 2010. Worse still, only an estimated 2 percent of these cases have received legal action.
Willful ignorance (via Amy Berg)
For African Americans, the last 50 years have been marked by extremely high unemployment occasionally interrupted by periods of merely high unemployment.
More than 80 per cent of [rape victims] said they did not report their assault to the police, while 29 per cent said they told nobody – not even a friend or family member – of their ordeal.
Unreported rapes: The silent shame (via Hannah)
At least 10 times as many girls are now trafficked into brothels annually as African slaves were transported to the New World in the peak years of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In fact, income inequality has gotten so extreme here that the US now ranks 93rd in the world in “income equality.” China’s ahead of us. So is India. So is Iran.
Here’s what the Wall Street protesters are so angry about (many more graphs at the link)
Twenty-one per cent of Sri Lankan males who were seen at a London torture treatment centre reported sexual abuse while in detention. In El Salvador, 76% of male political prisoners surveyed in the 1980s described at least one incidence of sexual torture. A study of 6,000 concentration-camp inmates in Sarajevo found that 80% of men reported having been raped.
In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.
The committee found the detention rate for indigenous juveniles was 397 per 100,000, which is 28 times higher than the rate for non-indigenous juveniles at 14 per 100,000. Indigenous juveniles account for 59 per cent of the total juvenile population in jail.
The imprisonment rate in the adult indigenous community was just as dire, with a 55 per cent increase in men in prison in the past decade and a 47 per cent rise of women in custody.
20 years on, black kids still fill jails, parliamentary committee finds
The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion.
That’s more than NASA’s budget. It’s more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It’s what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia.
In May, the number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for [six months or more]) increased by 361,000 to 6.2 million; their share of unemployment increased to 45.1 percent.
Bureau of Labor Statistics - Employment situation summary, June 3 2011
Over the past decade, real private-sector wage growth has scraped bottom at 4%, just below the 5% increase from 1929 to 1939, government data show.
10-year real wage gains worse than during the Great Depression
Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe that there are no jobs available for them. The number of discouraged workers in the U.S. increased sharply during the current recession, rising to 717,000 in the first quarter of 2009, a 70-percent increase from the first quarter of 2008. Relative to their share of the labor force, young people, blacks, and, to a lesser extent, Hispanics and men were over-represented among discouraged workers.
“Bad jobs” are typically considered those that pay low wages and do not include access to health insurance and pension benefits. As shown here, about 10% of full-time workers are in low-wage jobs, about 30% don’t have health insurance, and about 40% don’t have pensions. The graph also shows that the likelihood of being in a bad job is much worse for part-time workers, for on-call and day laborers, and for those working for temporary help agencies.
Uninsured children by poverty status, age, race and Hispanic origin
In 2007, 8.1 million children under 18 years old were without health insurance. Children in poverty and Hispanic children were more likely to be uninsured.
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