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Message by Louise Arbour, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights International Day for the Eradication of Poverty - 17 October 2005
17 October 2005
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Poverty is the greatest human rights challenge of our time. While progress has been made in some parts of the world, the overall picture remains abysmal: more than 2.5 billion people subsist on less than $2 a day, 10 million children die every year of preventable diseases and conditions, and millions live below the poverty line in otherwise rich countries.
Persisting misery and deprivation belie the commitments the community of nations has solemnly undertaken for decades now. They blight the lives of billions of human beings, but they also threaten the gains made in developing and developed countries. Eradicating poverty is desirable not only for its own sake: it also plays a key part in ensuring our collective welfare. As global leaders reaffirmed at the World Summit last month, there is an inextricable link between social and economic development – the improvement in individual and collective welfare – security and human rights.
This was understood by the founders of the modern human rights movement and the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That seminal document reflected an integrated vision of the human being as embodying all the interests and entitlements necessary for a life with dignity -- a life allowing the individual full and free expression, but also freedom from want.
This holistic approach of human development is still insufficiently well entrenched in the conduct of relations among nations. The World Summit reaffirmed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set five years ago, yet many countries have made precious little progress in reaching the MDGs, and the world is in real danger of missing those objectives altogether. We are losing the race against time to halve extreme poverty, reduce child deaths by two-thirds, and achieve universal primary education by 2015. This is all the more tragic as we have the knowledge and resources to make a real difference.
Any global human rights agenda must give priority to the problem of poverty. Our challenge as human rights actors is to contribute more effectively to efforts to eradicate poverty, moving beyond artificial divides between civil and political rights on the one hand and economic and social rights on the other. For a marked characteristic of virtually all communities living in extreme poverty is that they do not have access, on equal terms, to the institutions and services of Government that give effect to human rights. This inequality of access, in particular to justice, is often linked to discrimination on other grounds. Although commonly seen as an issue of economic and social rights, the experience of the poor is as likely to be marked by repression as by economic deprivation, and indeed the two are interlinked.
Combating deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity. For those suffering from poverty, it is a matter of rights: the right to live a life of dignity, free of despair. For the world as a whole it is a matter of ensuring our collective security. There is no excuse for indifference and there is no time to lose.
Persisting misery and deprivation belie the commitments the community of nations has solemnly undertaken for decades now. They blight the lives of billions of human beings, but they also threaten the gains made in developing and developed countries. Eradicating poverty is desirable not only for its own sake: it also plays a key part in ensuring our collective welfare. As global leaders reaffirmed at the World Summit last month, there is an inextricable link between social and economic development – the improvement in individual and collective welfare – security and human rights.
This was understood by the founders of the modern human rights movement and the drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That seminal document reflected an integrated vision of the human being as embodying all the interests and entitlements necessary for a life with dignity -- a life allowing the individual full and free expression, but also freedom from want.
This holistic approach of human development is still insufficiently well entrenched in the conduct of relations among nations. The World Summit reaffirmed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set five years ago, yet many countries have made precious little progress in reaching the MDGs, and the world is in real danger of missing those objectives altogether. We are losing the race against time to halve extreme poverty, reduce child deaths by two-thirds, and achieve universal primary education by 2015. This is all the more tragic as we have the knowledge and resources to make a real difference.
Any global human rights agenda must give priority to the problem of poverty. Our challenge as human rights actors is to contribute more effectively to efforts to eradicate poverty, moving beyond artificial divides between civil and political rights on the one hand and economic and social rights on the other. For a marked characteristic of virtually all communities living in extreme poverty is that they do not have access, on equal terms, to the institutions and services of Government that give effect to human rights. This inequality of access, in particular to justice, is often linked to discrimination on other grounds. Although commonly seen as an issue of economic and social rights, the experience of the poor is as likely to be marked by repression as by economic deprivation, and indeed the two are interlinked.
Combating deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity. For those suffering from poverty, it is a matter of rights: the right to live a life of dignity, free of despair. For the world as a whole it is a matter of ensuring our collective security. There is no excuse for indifference and there is no time to lose.