MORE HUMAN RIGHTS = LESS POVERTY
The Demand Dignity campaign aims to end all the human rights violations that drive and deepen poverty. This means that human rights violations are both a cause and a consequence of poverty. The Demand Dignity campaign includes all human rights – economic, social, cultural, civil and political – and recognises that all human rights are interdependent and indivisible.
Did you know?
* 963 million people go to bed hungry every night;
* 1 billion people live in slums;
* 1 woman dies every minute from pregnancy complications;
* 1.3 billion people have no access to basic health care;
* 2.5 billion people have no access to adequate sanitation services, 20,000 children die each day as a result;
* 4 billion people, that’s a majority of the world’s population, are excluded from the rule of law;
* 71% of children from the least developed countries are not registered by their fifth birthdays impeding their access to healthcare and education in the future;
* Many of the world’s resource rich countries are also the world’s poorest particularly when they rely on natural resources or oil production for their national income. The World Bank estimates that 37 of these countries have the world’s worst human rights development statistics.
Let’s work together to end human rights violations that keep people poor!
Which rights are codified in international law?
* The right to food, water, basic health care, education and shelter are codified in international law and universal standards. This gives all those living in poverty a tool to change the balance of power that keeps them trapped in poverty.
Won’t the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) end poverty?
The MDGs are the world plan to end poverty but they address too few of the underlying abuses that drive people into poverty, and keep them there. For example:
* The MDGs do not require governments to report on how poverty impacts different groups, even though ethnic and religious minorities, indigenous people and women and girls make up disproportionate numbers of the world’s poor;
* The MDGs do not require governments to end many human rights abuses that keep people poor and obstruct progress on MDG targets;
* There a no mechanism to hold governments to the pledges they have made.
Why is economic development only part of the solution?
Some governments demand democracy and property rights, insisting this will bring prosperity. Others want to suppress freedoms, arguing “stability” is essential to economic growth which is crucial to provide investments in health and education. Economic growth is an important component of a strategy to tackle poverty, but on it’s own it is insufficient. The lives of the poor must not be held hostage to the booms and busts of the world economy. Governments must create the conditions that allow people living in poverty to claim their human rights, to empower themselves, so that they can be masters, and not victims, of their destiny.
People living in poverty are caught in a trap of depravation; insecurity; exclusion; and denied a say or their voices ignored. Human rights are the key to releasing this trap!
Depravation
* Depravation resulting from having insufficient income, but increasing income doesn’t automatically solve the other key elements experienced by those living in poverty.
Insecurity
* Those who live in poverty are likely to face threats to their personal safety;
* Their homes, possessions and livelihoods are likely to be insecure and unprotected by the law;
* They are unlikely to be able to access social security when sick, unemployed or if their crops fail;
* People who live in poverty rarely have any power within an employment relationship;
* They have no recourse when employers, landlords, families or communities who have power over them abuse it;
* Those living in poverty are disproportionally affected by conflict, exposed to criminal violence and women to domestic violence. They are often denied the protection of the law and by the police which is available to other citizens.
Exclusion, often caused by discrimination
* Many living in poverty feel shut out by the institutions set up to deliver public services such as courts, the police, welfare bodies, city councils, utility services, education boards and healthcare services;
* Women are often excluded by both family and society from decision-making processes and power.
Voices ignored
* Those living in poverty often feel their voices are ignored;
* Their efforts to organise are often met with repression;
* Information relevant to their community is often withheld;
* Processes for consultation are rigged or ineffective;
* Whether through deliberate silencing or being rendered mute by indifference the effect is the same for those living in poverty – an overwhelming sense of voicelessness.
Issues which highlight the interplay between depravation, insecurity, exclusion and voices ignored include slums; maternal mortality and corporate accountability.
Slums:
There are more than 200,000 communities in the world that are classified as slums and some suggest that by 2030, 2 billion people will be living in slums. Not all slums are in developing countries, they can also be found in cities in Europe and the USA and in areas reserved for indigenous people in Canada and Australia.
* Most people who live in slums have inadequate housing and lack assets and resources;
* Slum residents often have insecure tenure, are at risk of forced eviction, at risk of criminal violence and in some cases at risk of police brutality;
* Residents are often excluded from access to basic services such as healthcare, education, electricity, safe water, sanitation and drainage;
* Most slum residents are not meaning fully consulted or allowed to participate in decisions about upgrading their homes or about their needs at relocation sites after they are forcibly evicted.
Maternal Mortality:
* The vast majority of the half a million women and girls who die each year as a result of pregnancy related complications would survive if they had appropriate medical treatment at the right time;
* Ninety-five percent of those who die each year live in poverty and are from less developed countries;
* Thousands of women living in wealthy countries die too because they cannot afford medical care such as African American women in the USA;
* Women and girls often face institutional discrimination which is replicated at a domestic level, they may be forced by their families into early or forced marriages and then amongst other things many face social, economic and cultural obstacles to accessing healthcare;
* Women living in poverty are often not able to control their fertility as they are denied access to contraceptives and relevant information.
Corporate Accountability:
Corporations and other businesses have an enormous impact on the rights of individuals and communities. This impact can be positive, for example the creation of new jobs and an increase in state revenue that can be used to fund basic services. However often, human rights are violated as corporations exploit the corrupt, weak or non-existent systems of regulation in countries, and the people affected have no way to hold those corporations to account.
What sort of human rights allow people to release themselves from the poverty trap?
Accountability
* National and international actors – including multilateral institutions and corporations, as well as states and individuals – are held accountable for the human rights abuses they commit that drive and deepen poverty.
* No state may undermine the rights of people under its control through corruption, indifference or direct violations.
* Human rights obligations are respected and realized across national borders.
* Economic, social and cultural rights are legally enforceable at the national, regional and international level.
Access to rights
* Discriminatory laws, policies and practices that hinder equal access to services and to redress are successfully challenged and changed.
* Concrete measures are implemented to overcome the key barriers people living in poverty face when attempting to access resources, services and justice.
* National and international poverty eradication and development processes – including the Millennium Development Goals – are based on a human rights analysis of the causes and solutions will be founded on the core of human rights.
Active participation
* Internationally, key development and poverty eradication processes and actors implement consultation and participation systems that genuinely enable people living in poverty to take full part.
* Nationally, the space for human rights defenders and social activists is protected by the state, and people’s rights to freedom of expression, of assembly of association and of protest are upheld.
* People in poverty are equipped with the tools that make their participation effective.
