1. Processes are occurring every day that make people poor. So, it is legitimate to ask: Where is the end of ‘survival’ and where the beginning of ‘living’?
  1. Being poor, changes people’s incentives and the set of constraints under which they operate; it results in a prolonged sense of helplessness.
  1. The bare fact is that poor people are excluded from their share in the wealth they help to create. That is why the distribution of wealth is as important (if not more) as its creation.
  1. Because individuals experience poverty and the violation of their rights differently –according to their gender, age, caste, class and ethnicity– injustice has to be seen through the eyes of ‘those-who-are-farthest-behind-on-the-road’ in all of those categories. (Halfdan Mahler)
  1. Some are of the opinion that poverty is a rather static concept; they prefer using the concept of vulnerability which, they say, is more dynamic and is also found at individual, household and community level.
  1. Furthermore, poverty and inequality are actually a source of economic inefficiency since both waste human potential.
  1. For us in human (people’s) rights (HR) work, poverty is related not only to its economic aspects, but is multi-dimensional. It is related to powerlessness, to not-being-counted, to not-being-considered, to being-excluded, to being-unheard. Poverty is related to exploitation, oppression, victimization and violence. It is also related to migration, forced displacement, rising urbanization and loss of livelihoods. (AIFO, Italy)
  1. As regards health, in our societies, much of health has become a ‘medical-repair-industry’ of the damage-done-by-poverty (H. Mahler); this so much so that, in fact, WHO has created a new category of disease actually called “Extreme Poverty”. (ICD 10, No.Z 59.5)
  1. A sustainable approach to poverty reduction is complex and requires that three types of measures be taken to ensure: a) that the improving poor continue to improve; b) that the coping poor graduate out of their precarious state; and c) that the declining poor have an opportunity to reverse their condition. (U. Narayan)
  1. Poverty being forced on individuals and families who do not have any other choice is unequivocally linked to injustice –and potentially to rebellion. It represents a-denial-of-human-rights-on-a massive-scale. Should this fact not make a difference in (y)our everyday work?

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

schuftan@gmail.com

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