Tag: poverty

Human rights urgency

Posted on by kathiemm

December 10 is Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. In 1993, the World Conference on Human Rights (source of  the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action) created the United Nations post of High Commissioner for Human Rights. Internationally, there’s still much work to be done.

Here in the United States, the most urgent human rights problems include:

Sexual trafficking. The FBI notes that “Human sex trafficking is the most common form of modern-day slavery,” that it is the fastest growing business of organized crime, and that “The United States not only faces an influx of international victims but also has its own homegrown problem of interstate sex trafficking of minors.”

Mass incarceration. This national disgrace violates, among other human rights, the right of freedom from discrimination. See these articles in:

Capital punishment. States that maintain the death penalty violate many human rights—as does the federal government which permits such violations. Moreover, conditions on death rows constitute torture—another major human rights violation.  See this (pdf) fact sheet or watch the video.

Poverty. Income inequality and its handmaiden, poverty, are both causes and effects of human rights violations—including  economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for human  dignity (Article 22 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights).

The U.S. is marketed as home of the free and the brave, but members of the privileged class who view rights solely as freedom to pursue their own wealth and power at all costs (i.e., costs to the less privileged) are neither free nor brave. Rather, they are the slaves of their own greed and the perpetrators of their own worst nightmares.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Violence in your backyard: Poverty in America

Posted on by kathiemm

Recent posts have linked poverty to violence in Greece and Africa. But poverty means violence here in America, too, and the forces that breed poverty and violence can reach into every home if they are ignored.Homeless campsite

A few examples of the link between poverty and violence in the United States:

  • Gun deaths are higher in states with higher levels of poverty and lower incomes
  • Poverty is a major contributor to domestic violence (opens in pdf)
  • Deaths due to poverty-related factors are as common as deaths due to heart attacks, strokes, and lung cancer
  • On average, in Camden, NJ, the poorest city in America, someone was shot every 33 hours in 2012.

We can afford to do better.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, has the largest number of billionaires in the world, and has the highest gross national product.

It also ranks first (opens in pdf) in defense expenditures and military weapons expenditures.  Indeed, the military budget is so large, the Pentagon had a surplus of $105 billion at the end of FY2012.

A small portion of this money could reduce the violence of poverty—and the costs of that violence– dramatically.

UNICEF has shown that nations can lift children out of poverty and nations around the world are doing just that.

The U.S., however, is lagging in this effort.  We have the second highest rate of child poverty among developed nations. This is indefensible.

For more faces of poverty, check out these photos.

Poverty is violence.  It costs money. It costs lives. We must do better. To address violence, we must address poverty.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Poverty: A terrible terrorist, Part 2

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Charikleia TsatsaroniBegging

Mahatma Gandhi said, “Poverty is the worst violence.” Poverty is also a terrorist.

Poverty means threats of or actual loss of jobs, loss of pensions, loss of one’s home, loss of hope. It means living under the heavy shadow of a big national financial debt, constantly terrorized by the risk that your country will be bankrupted, fearful of reprisals if you protest austerity programs that bring no relief to poverty. After three years of austerity in Greece, freedom from such terror feels unattainable.

All these violent expressions of poverty can have serious consequences to people’s health and psychological well-being. For example, currently the Greek health care and education systems lack adequate materials and personnel, and have become more difficult to access, as well as less egalitarian. Unemployment has reached record-breaking rates.

Greek people seem increasingly distrustful. Such social distrust can sometimes take the form of violent social conflicts. For instance, racist attacks on immigrants and refugees are more common since the financial crisis, because some people consider immigrant groups and refugees to be the cause of unemployment in Greece. Also, for the first time since 1950, the infant mortality rates went up in 2012, as well as suicide rates and psychological problems (e.g., stress, panic attacks).

Poverty is a nearly global problem hurting individuals and communities well beyond the borders of my own country. For decades, many organizations around the world have tried to deal with it. Do they work together or compete or undermine each other? Where do their interests lie–with ordinary people or the power elites?

What can ordinary people do to stop this form of violence? Are there effective ways to help? Are there peaceful ways to protest against poverty and the terror it produces?

I have sought answers and inspiration in different places such as the thought-provoking films from the project “Why poverty?” that aim to inspire people to ask questions about poverty, become part of the solution, and bring positive change. More significantly, I try to remain mindful and engaged.

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.

Poverty: The worst violence, Part 1

Posted on by kathiemm

By guest author Charikleia Tsatsaroni

Adult and child begging
Photo by Michael Coghlan used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Mahatma Gandhi said it: “Poverty is the worst violence.” More and more people around the world must recognize the truth of his words.

In the fall of 2008, when banks collapsed and the financial crisis struck with hurricane force, I was starting my doctoral studies in Boston. In spite of the media’s dramatic broadcasts about ordinary people’s losses due to the crisis, I was full of excitement for this new chapter in my life. For months, I mindlessly passed people begging for money or searching for a safe shelter for the night, usually outside churches in the center of Boston.

Soon reality took me out of my mindlessness. At a quiet corner at the entrance of one of the metro stations in Boston, a man in his forties, with a small boy hugging his knees, displayed a sign saying he had lost his job and he and his child were hungry and homeless. Their faces were the faces of people like me. They could be my neighbors, my relatives, my friends. It was a painful enlightenment, a reawakening of mindfulness.

Returning in 2012 to my home country, Greece, a country in great financial turmoil for the last three years, I experienced the devastation caused by the financial crisis directly and painfully. Images like the ones I had seen in Boston are common in Athens–on the streets, in the trains, in the stores. The great majority of the Greek people become poorer every day, battered by the violence inherent in loss of jobs, lack of income, inaccessibility of resources, and inability to care for children, the ill, and the elderly.

Poverty’s violence is viral; the costs of this form of violence are global. Where are the world leaders who will put the protection of ordinary men, women, and children ahead of the interests of banks and international corporations?

Charikleia Tsatsaroni, MSc., EdM., from Greece, is the former head of the Department of Human Resource Training and Development of the Greek Organization Against Drugs (OKANA), and is a member of GIPGAP.