THE WORLD SITUATION

Where are events taking us?
'1000 people dead!' 'New war situation'. 'Flood kills hundreds!' It is difficult to watch TV news, or read a newspaper, without seeing sadness everywhere.
Where is this world going? As we come to the end of the twentieth century, many are looking back over the last 100 years. What do we see? More wars than can be counted. In the biggest, the 2nd World War, it has been estimated that, including events leading to it, and indirect deaths, a hundred million people died. Right now, there are 30 serious wars in progress. Expenditure on armaments and defense around the world in 1995 was $800 billion, of which $15.4 billion was by poor developing countries!
General Lebed, Russian security chief, speaking in Moscow in September 96, estimated that 90,000 people have died in the war in Chechnya.
AIDS
Many countries struggle with pollution. The burning of fossil fuels is causing world temperatures to rise, which may have terrible effects on some countries. AIDS is sweeping many parts of the world. Maybe it does not affect your country much. But in one country recently (we are not allowed to say which one) an AIDS worker has told us privately that a test on one particular high school class gave 98% HIV infection rate!
Maybe the old slave trade has been almost closed. But the new slave trade is the sex industry. There are estimated to be 10 million children involved in sex industry around the world! The UN estimates that one million children enter child prostitution every year. The picture is shocking.
SEX FOR SALE
"Prostitution and trafficking of women and children is the third largest income-earner globally. The only two bigger are drug trafficking and arms sales." (source: Jonathan Nambu, 'Samaritana Bulletin' 1996)
40,000 of the 100,000 prostitutes in Bangkok are 14 or younger. In Sri Lanka, researchers believe there are at least 10,000 boy prostitutes, receiving as little as one dollar per day.
Although some illnesses have been beaten, others have found new resistance. Malaria kills 3 million children a year. New types of tuberculosis are resistant to drugs, and difficult to treat.
FAMILY BREAKUP
In Europe, nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. Many children never have the love of two parents. We abort at least 40 million babies a year, worldwide.
The twentieth century has been the century of the refugee. 100 million people have been forced to move from their homes by war, famine, hatred.
But does the world stop to think what is wrong? Some people and governments try to make changes. But these changes have been compared to "moving the deckchairs on the 'Titanic".
(The 'Titanic' was the famous passenger ship which hit an iceberg in April 1912, sinking with 1517 people drowned.)
Where is the world going?
What do you think?