Contemporary Issues

Essential Questions

• What are some challenges faced by the contemporary world?
• What new technologies have created opportunities and challenges?

Migration (Push-Pull Factors)

• The global movement of people
• Lack of food
• Better life for self and children
• Natural disasters
• Political freedom, speech
• Political oppression (civil wars, dictatorships, ethnic cleansing, genocide)

REFUGEE: a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.

Refugees in International Conflicts

• Large volumes of people migrate from war-torn, famine-stricken and politically unstable regions.
• Millions of immigrants have no place to go, which leads to crowded refugee camps.
• Conditions in the camps are poor: unsanitary, lack of food and medicine, clean water

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"Guest Workers"

• A foreigner who is permitted towork in a country on a temporary basis (farm or seasonal laborer)
• Understanding that they willsome day return to their country of origin
• Offset labor shortages
• Bring experience and knowledge that can help the economy
• Contribute to enriched culture

Guest workers emmigrate mainly from Eastern Europe and North Africa to wealthier Western Europe

Ethnic and Religious Conflicts

• In more recent times, regional conflicts have occurred for different reasons :
• North Ireland: Protestants vs. Catholics
• Middle East: Palestinians vs. Israelis
• Balkans: Serbs, Bosnians and Croats
• Southwest Asia: Kurds vs. Iranians
• Horn of Africa: Somali Civil War, Famine

The Horn of Africa: this region consists of the countries of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Kenya and has been torn apart by civil wars and widespread famine caused by droughts

Impacts of New Technologies

As technology has advanced, it has spread throughout the world, making real-time communication possible virtually anywhere in the world!

The Digital Divide

• Negative: widespread unequal access to computers and instantaneous communications
• Not all are benefitting from technologies and keeping up with the changes it brings
• Nor does the new “tech” improve lives for many of the people in struggling nations

Genetic Engineering and Bioethics

Improvements in Genetics

• Genetic engineering: introducing new genes into an organism to give that organism new traits
• Cloning: creating identical copies of DNA
• Mapping the DNA of diseases to help with early detection or cure
• Stem Cell research: to regenerate damaged organs or even grow new, healthy organs

Dolly the Sheep: – the world’s first cloned mammal. Born in 1996, she only lived 6 years

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• Bioethics: moral philosophy- concepts of right and wrong behavior brought on by advances in biology and medicine.
• Should humans be cloned?
• Should embryos be used to harvest stem cells?
• Should we medically alter the DNA sequence of plants and animals to make them resistant to diseases?

Hollywood Loves Bioethics!

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SUMMARY: Developed and developing nations face
many challenges. These include migrations, ethnic and religious conflicts, and the impact of new technologies.