The Social Problems of Contemporary World

Social Problems of Today’s World
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We all know than although we live in developed and modern world, there are plenty of grave problems all over the world. Several of the weightiest and the best known: wars and terrorism, poverty, diseases, famine, population increase, the production and taking of illegal drugs but also legal (e.g. alcohol and cigarettes), racism, crime, counteracting of human rights, abuse children, conflicts of religions and so on. There are some of those problems explained more in detail.

Drugs, and Smoking

It is a serious health problem that more and more teenagers have taken up smoking. Even though these teens are aware that they will probably develop health problems like cancer, heart disease, and other respiratory problems, they still smoke anyway. Most teenagers start smoking in order to look cool in front of their friends but unfortunately they wind up addiction. Many tobacco companies have been blamed for making advertising, which is designed to appeal to young people. It is a tragedy but cigarette smoking kills 2.5 million people every year.

Drug use in the world is increasing and more young people than ever are addicted. Drugs can be divided into three categories: hard, soft and legal. All three types can cause addiction, illness, or even death. Hard drugs include heroin, cocaine and the typical Czech drug “pervitin”. Drugs like marijuana, hashish, and solvents are considered to be soft drugs. Legal drugs include tobacco, alcohol, prescription and non-prescription medicines.

Famine and Hunger

It is quite obvious that our world is going to be overcrowded. As a result, 2 billion people suffer from famine and every year many people die of hunger, mainly in the developing countries. One reason of this reality are the former colonial policies of The United Kingdom, France, Spain and other colonial states, which used colonies only as sources and did not support their economy. However, there are also great local problems, mainly in central Africa. There are conflicts among tribes that often finish like a bloody war.

Now developed states are trying to help to supply money for food and the basic needs of the people but I think the most important thing is that people from Africa and other poor states should realize that work is more important than war.

Increasing population

The world’s population is over 6 billion people today. Every year a further 90 million people are added to this total. This is the same as the combined population of The United Kingdom, Belgium and the Netherlands together.

Recent intense growth of the world’s population has awoken fears concerning the consequence of overpopulation. Many people are trying to argue that birth-rate control is inevitable if we want to prevent damage to the Earth as a whole. More than 80 states began to advertise and support provisions to control birth-rates (for example Japan and China) because of the problem of population explosion.

Population explosion began in the 1920s, when the world population was over 2 billion. In 1991 world population caused a lot of worry because the number amounted to 5.4 billion. Experts estimate that by 2025 the world’s population will come to 8.5 billion people.

Diseases

There are many diseases that give us trouble all over the world. We can divide them into many categories such as curable and terminal or infectious and hereditary and so on. Diseases are a big problem mainly in developing countries because there are not as good and available health services as in developed countries and it means disease like influenza, which is not difficult for us and we can cure it, is often terminal. But there are many really dangerous diseases (e.g.: AIDS, Leprosy, TBC, Malaria, Cancer, Cholera and so on). There is only one warranted way how to remain healthy. This way we call prevention. We should try to live a healthy way of life, which means we should have a good proportion of work to free time. We should practice sports, at least swim or go for walks, we should eat healthy food with lots of vitamins and we should not smoke or drink too much alcohol because it is true that prevention is better than a cure.
Human rights

Human rights are rights of everybody, which make us possible to live like a human. This idea has many social and political consequences. Human rights, because they rest on being human, are universal, equal and inalienable. They should be held for every person against the state and society. Human rights include e.g.: the universal right to vote, freedom of speech, right to education, right to nationality, right to creed of religion, right to work connect with the right for fair wages. This rights were described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was accepted on the 10th of December 1948 by the UN General Assembly.

Help

There are lots of organizations (charity or benefaction), which try to help people who need it. Probably the most known organization all over the world is the Red Cross (the Red Croissant in Asia) but there are many other benefit organizations e.g.: Doctor Without Frontiers or Adra. A very known organization is also Amnesty International. It is a worldwide organization, independent of any government or political party. This organization tries to protect the observance of human rights. It fights mainly opposite the governments, which keep in prison men and women not because they have broken the law, but because of their ideas, color, language or religion. The organization tries to get fair and early trials by putting pressure on their governments to practise basic human rights.