Populations at Risk in Pakistan

The northwestern region of Pakistan has been hit by its worst deluge and flooding in many decades, killing at least 1,200 people and leaving about 2.5 million people homeless, according to reports. There is now concern that cholera and other water-borne diseases will kill many others in the aftermath of the flooding, since thirsty people are lacking access to clean water. This is an area in the Himalayan foothills in Pakistan, adjacent to the border with Afghanistan, where people were already at risk from threats of terrorism, and the flooding will undoubtedly set the economy back even further and for a long time.

Maid in Kuwait

Throughout the oil-rich Gulf States there are hundreds of thousands of women from Asia doing domestic work for wealthy families. They are legal guest workers, but there are many signs that they are not being treated as guests. The New York Times takes up the situation in Kuwait where hundreds of Asian women have sought refuge in their respective country's embassy because they have been abused by their employers. Kuwaiti families typically pay a fee to an agency that provides them with one or more women who are provided room and board and wages, with the latter usually being sent back home as a remittance to help support the girl's family in Asia (including Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka). The abuses suffered by some of these immigrants are not unlike those described among undocumented immigrants to the United States, with the difference that these domestic workers are in Kuwait legally, but have few legal protections. There are some who few the situation as nothing less than a form of human trafficking.

Will the 2011 Census be England's Last One?

Censuses are expensive data collection schemes and in rapidly changing times the data can grow stale quickly, which is why the US Census Bureau instituted the American Community Survey as a rolling survey to keep track of the US population. The Economist has reported that there is a movement afoot in the United Kingdom to replace the census with a computerized database of administrative records. However, the Economist is wrong in its statement that getting rid of censuses is "a global trend." Although censuses are often controversial, the proportion of the world's population that is counted in a census has been going up, not down. The Economist also suggests that census results are problematic because 0.7% of respondents to the religion question in the UK in 2001 reported that they were jedi knights. Less than one percent is not an alarmingly high percentage and, in all events, many countries avoid that problem by not asking about religion.