Water Wars: Ethiopia and Kenya
Notable Entry, Interactive Narratives. 2008 Knight-Batten Awards for Innovations in Journalism.
Pulitzer Gateway: Water Wars
Visit the interactive Water Wars Web Portal, sponsored by the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting.
Kibera: Not a Drop to Drink
The long rainy season in Kenya has begun and sudden storms regularly burst over Nairobi. Many welcome the downpours, which signal the end of another dry summer and wash the steamy crowded capital clean each morning.
As featured in Women's eNews, 1h2o.org, and Living on Earth. Produced in association with the Pulitzer Center On Crisis Reporting.
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Country Fact Sheets from the CLP
Because we believe that good journalism must be contextualized, we've decided to share with our readers some of the more interesting and lesser known facts about the countries we've reported on. While these are in no way comprehensive descriptions of these complex places, this is the information that we've found most helpful in placing these countries in a global framework and underscoring the broader implications of the issues we've covered. In developing these Fact Sheets, we've worked to incorporate both the official facts and statistics reported by government sources as well as our own observations through reporting in each country. If you have any suggestions or requests for information you'd like to see included, write to us at info@clpmag.org
Mexico
Though it is one of the largest, most populous and economically powerful countries in the world, Mexico continues to be closely tied to, and often overshadowed by, its northern neighbor. The country experienced political upheaval in 2006 with accusations of fraud in the closely contested victory of presidential candidate Felipe Calderon, and civil unrest in the southern state of Oaxaca in response to corruption in local politics.
Size: Slightly less than three times the size of Texas.
Population: Over 107.4 million. Population Growth at 1.16%. At 19.23 million people, Mexico City is the third largest metropolitan area in the world.
Languages Spoken: Spanish is the Primary language, but numerous Indigenous languages like Mayan, Nahuatl and Mixteco are spoken by 6% of the population. Mexico has the largest Spanish speaking population in the world.
Type of Government: Federal Republic similar to the US. The victory of Vicente Fox of the National Action Party (PAN) was the first time since the 1910 Mexican Revolution that control of the government was wrested from the ruling Institutional Revolution Party (PRI), though problems like corruption largely continued as before. Mexico ranks 70th out of 163 on the corruption perceptions index, a ranking it shares with China, India and Egypt.
Religion: Nominally Roman Catholic at 88%, Protestant at 7%. While the numbers of Catholics are decreasing, numbers of Protestants are growing, especially in Indigenous populations in the south, where Protestant numbers can reach 30%. There is also a small but growing Muslim population in the south
Gender and Health Issues: Abortion is legal only to save the woman's life and in the case of rape or incest. As of 2003 there was a 4% gap in literacy between men and women. Domestic abuse is a widespread problem that has only recently been exposed and tackled by NGO's and social services. Passive racism against darker skinned, more ethnically indigenous Mexicans is widespread.
Environment and Resources: There is a scarcity of hazardous waste disposal facilities. Raw sewage and industrial effluents pollute rivers in urban areas. Natural fresh water resources are scarce and polluted in the north, inaccessible and poor quality in center and extremely polluted in the southeast. Mexico is currently involved in a dispute with the United States over water resources along the border. There is serious air and water pollution in the national capital and urban centers along US-Mexico border partly due to the heavy concentration of foreign owned factories or maquiladoras and the lack of well enforced environmental regulations.
Economy: Per captia GDP is $10,600, though the top 10% earns 35.6% of national income. Beginning in the 1980's Mexico abandoned past protectionism and adopted a "neoliberal" economic model, signing on to NAFTA and more than forty other free trade agreements. The benefits of free trade for the population have been widely debated: though general economic indicators like GDP have improved, real wages remain low and the economy is overly dependant on the US. Remittances from Mexican emigrants in the US are a large and growing part of the economy, totaling $18 billion in 2005.
International Aid Received: In 1995 Mexico received $1.166 billion in aid funds. Today the national debt is $178.3 billion.
Receives US Counterterrorism Assistance: Yes
Death Penalty: Abolished in 2005, yet the last person executed was in 1961.
Top Five Industries: Food and beverages, tobacco, chemicals, iron and steel and petroleum.
Poverty Rate: 40% of population below the poverty line (2003 est.)
McDonald's Restaurants: Established in the late 80s, features the McBurrito a la Mexicana. Coca-Cola (the featured beverage of McDonald's) in Mexico is sweetened with beet sugar rather than corn syrup thanks to a trade dispute with the US over corn.
Military Spending: 0.8% of GDP – near the lowest percentage in the world. Human Trafficking Situation Though Mexico is a source, transit and destination country for trafficked persons, most trafficking is related to the larger criminal industry smuggling immigrants from Central America and Mexico itself into the US.
Currency: Mexican Peso (MXN) – about 10 to the dollar.
Media: Mexico is the largest exporter of television programming, supplying thousands of hours of programming to the Hispanic and Spanish speaking population in the United States and Canada. Mexico has recently been considered the 2nd to Iraq as the deadliest country for journalists and reports in the world. In 2006, 8 journalists were murdered, while 3 more went missing after reporting on drug trafficking and crime. There were 18,622,500 internet users in Mexico as of 2005 – roughly 17% of the population.
Posted: 2007
Country Fact Sheet Sources
- General Statistics - CIA World Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/
- Abortion Legal Status, Maternal Mortality, Infant Mortality, Contraception: http://www.medicationabortion.com
- Abortion Legal Status: http://www.crlp.org/pub_fac_abortion_laws.htm
- Contraceptive Use: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/contraceptive2005/WCU2005.htm
- Maternal Mortality: http://www.childinfo.org/areas/maternalmortality/countrydata.php
- McDonald’s Country List: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_McDonald%27s_franchises
- Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index: http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19388
- The Economist Intelligence Unit Quality of Life Index: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf
- Human Development Index: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index
- 2005 Environmental Sustainability Index: www.yale.edu/esi/
- General Statistics - World Atlas: http://www.geographyiq.com
- Counterterrorism Funding Information - State Dept. Country Reports: http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/crt
- Death Penalty Status: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-countries-eng
- Human Trafficking information: http://www.state.gov/g/tip/rls/tiprpt/2006/
- BBC Country Profiles: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/country_profiles/default.stm
- Department For International Development: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/countries/allcountries.asp?view=region
- United Nations Development Programme: http://www.undp.org/
- The World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/
Note: Population growth projections are often controversial. To calculate them for these fact sheets, we simply used the current population and population growth rate provided by the CIA World Factbook.