Afghanistan's Society

Afghanistan's society seems to be pretty diverse when it comes to ethnic groups, however when it comes to religion, pretty much the entire nation is Muslim. In 1979 about 90% of the population was illiterate, meaning they could not read or write. This was the time of the Soviet invasion, so most of the teachers fled the country leaving a huge lack of education. The Taliban is what really brought the society down, as they did not allow women to be educated, and the mosque school became the main source of education. a few years after they overthrew the Taliban, many schools were up and running again, although it would take a while to decrease the percentage of illiterate people living in Afghanistan. During the time of the Taliban, just like most teachers, most doctors also fled the country. Health conditions were very poor at this time. A quarter of the population had no access to health care. In 2003 it was estimated for it to take at least another decade for Afghanistan's health indicators to improve. Something important for Afghanistan to focus on now is providing more aid to women and children as they are very far behind and have a lot of catching up to do following the reign of the Taliban. It is also important to make sure that Afghanistan's human rights are not being violated anymore to make it a better place to live overall for everyone.

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Thailand's Economy

Thailand is going through a big industrialization period right now. They are focusing strongly on expanding investment in education, increasing agricultural output, and promoting import-substitution industries. The government in Thailand does an overall good job at reacting quickly and efficiently to economic problems like the world wide recession. What has really helped the Thai government grow in the past years is exporting. Thailand also grew a lot with tourism. A big thing in almost any part of the world is competition, which didn't seem to help the economy in Thailand. It turns out that relying so much on exporting wasn't probably the smartest thing to do. When exporting came to a stop, Thailand was in a great deal of trouble as they hit a huge recession in 1997. Thailand did what they had to do, they made a plan to rebuild and re-stabilize the economy. In 2002 they were back on their feet again, and what really helped with this was the recovery of internal and external demand. Overall Thailand's economy is not very steady, it is constantly moving up and down so it is hard to say what will happen in the future.

Here is a link to an article that talks about what may happen to Thailand's economy.

http://www.thailand-travelonline.com/thailand-travel-news/thai-economy-on-the-road-to-recovery/1406/