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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Human Rights Reader 116<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">POVERTY DOES NOT PERSIST SOLELY BECAUSE OF INCOMPETENT,
CORRUPT GOVERNMENTS <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">INSENSITIVE TO THE FATE OF THEIR POPULATIONS!
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">NO, IT IS AT ONCE THE CAUSE AND THE EFFECT
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center"
align=center><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">OF THE TOTAL OR PARTIAL DENIAL OF HUMAN
RIGHTS.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Poverty is spreading and our world puts up with
it.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Ethical double standards lead us to accept the poverty
<B>manufactured</B> by our societies. To address this question is essential for
the preservation of our own humanity. As human rights activists, we must
mobilize the forces that can decisively set out to correct the state of a world
plagued by poverty.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">1. Standards of ‘decency’ are changing and this means
that poverty will only cease when it is recognized as a violation of human
rights (HR). And this is thoroughly missing in the MDGs with their bogus time
horizon.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">2. Of the five families of HR --civil, political,
cultural, economic and social rights-- (proclaimed by the Universal Declaration
of HR as inherent to the human person), poverty violates the 5<SUP>th</SUP>;
generally the 4<SUP>th</SUP>; often the 3<SUP>rd</SUP>; and sometimes the
2<SUP>nd</SUP> and even the 1<SUP>st<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></SUP>family. The systematic violation of anyone of these rights rapidly
degenerates into poverty.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">3. HR are not a
regrettable-inconvenience-endured-by-distant-neighbors. Poverty is undoubtedly
the most acute moral question of the new century.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">By endowing the poor with rights, the abolition of
poverty will obviously not cause poverty to disappear overnight. Moreover, after
poverty is eventually abolished, the poor will still have a right to reparation
for which governments and the international community will be jointly liable.
<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">4. Poverty is poorly defined by the law. Poverty is about
material wellbeing, bodily wellbeing, social wellbeing, psychological wellbeing,
security, and freedom. Legal language refuses to consider the poor directly,
choosing rather to designate them in a fragmented way: the homeless are people
of no fixed abode; the poor are the economically vulnerable; the unemployed are
the job seekers. Law makes begging an offense. The poorest and the destitute
become objects rather than legal subjects endowed with rights. In today’s
neoliberal society, the aim is to conceal the sources of underprivilege; the aim
is to prevent dealing with poverty as a whole; the aim is to deal with the poor
“as silent as things” (R.M.Rilke).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">5. The struggle against poverty demands more pressing
legal actions --which, so far, have proven to be less than
successful.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">6. The legal discourse in HR work is essentially
concerned with deficiencies. For this reason, the laws do little more than
record exclusion and offer some remedies to avoid its worsening and preventing
its spread. In the legal language, the poor are ‘those who have insufficient
resources or income’.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">It seems that the laws treat poverty as ‘always having
existed’ so that laws only provide palliative measures to address it. In other
words, legal language points to a resignation of fate of the underprivileged and
poor. What it is, is that legal thinking has fallen within the sphere of
influence of economic logic and has thus become subjected to the imperatives of
capitalist globalization. As a consequence, poverty is now regarded as an
unavoidable fact. States no longer have the objective of eradicating it, but
eventually of dealing with the most visible situations which flow from
it.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">7. The reluctance to take into consideration the
differences in wealth, income and resources between individuals ignores the
concept of social classes.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Poverty, set in the neoliberal reading, makes it seem no
longer being a problem to be solved, but rather an accepted fact. This is, of
course, totally opposed to the HR paradigm. In capitalist globalization, the
requirements of HR are also forgotten; consumers matter foremost. The right to
subsistence is, for example, interpreted minimally (having barely enough to
subsist, e. g, the $2/day the MDGs aim for, is not enough to live under decent
conditions). Further, the logic of profit-making generates the rise of
unemployment and under-employment, exclusion, impoverishment and social stress.
[For M. Gandhi, commerce without morality was one of the seven social
sins].<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">Whereas formerly the poor were those who did not have a
job, nowadays even those who have employment at low wages are to be regarded as
poor.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">8. Therefore, the realization of all HR for everyone is
urgent, EVEN if the means recommended to reach that goal go against the
neoliberal dynamics…. and (constructively) against the MDGs.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Right-less people must reach the point
from where to effectively claim their right to non-poverty, i.e.,
the-right-not-to-be-poor.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">9. To recall, poverty is a violation of HR and hinders
the satisfaction of other HR. Poverty maintains the poor in a state of
dependency and increases their resignation to their
fate.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">10. Because of the sanctity conferred on property has an
influence on the fight against poverty, the purpose of our struggle for equal
rights is to combat undue privilege and arbitrary hierarchies. The moral and
political right of ownership of those that are already affluent is not of the
same nature as that of those that do not have sufficient for a decent
living.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> </FONT></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Claudio Schuftan,
</SPAN><?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1:place><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Ho Chi Minh City</SPAN></st1:place></st1:City><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<DIV
style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-BOTTOM: 1pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0in; BORDER-BOTTOM: windowtext 1.5pt solid">
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0in; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0in; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0in; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0in; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 1.0pt 0in"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><A href="mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn"><FONT
face="Times New Roman">claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn</FONT></A><FONT
face="Times New Roman"> <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P></DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman">Mostly adapted from
International Social Science Journal, No.180, UNESCO,
2004:<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">P.
Sane, Poverty, the next frontier in the struggle for HR; G. Koubi, Poverty as a
HR violation. </SPAN></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>