October 17, The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

An Afghani woman, filmed for the UK’s Channel Four TV news, finds herself once again fleeing from her home. Deprived by successive governments and foreign policies of security, food, education, health care and all other basic human rights, she knows only that the Americans are coming, to attack.

She does not know why. She does not know that on September 11th massive loss of life and enormous devastation in the US were caused by attacks from four hijacked planes. No-one, it seems has remained untouched by the events of that Tuesday.

Shock, sorrow, anger, vengeance, fear are all emotions which have been expressed by people from every continent. And a certain incredulity – how could human beings have done such a thing to others? Seeing this woman in the wastes which were Afghanistan, it is perhaps easier to understand. There are some people in this world who have nothing left to lose, the last vestiges of humanity have been battered out of them.

Of course, some would argue that these people were just plain evil. Such a discussion is not one I wish to have here. If the perpetrators were evil or not is one question, but, what is clear, is that the groundswell of support they can rely on - and which allows them to continue to act - is rooted in poverty, exclusion and the denial of the basics for human life which most of us reading this take for granted.

Calls for action have been many and varied. What to do? Something must be done! But sometimes the only thing open to us is to bear witness and to listen to those who are suffering. October 17th, the World Day for Overcoming Poverty, is one opportunity for doing this.

Anti-poverty rhetoric was being given some kind of priority. In his first term of office, UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair, committed himself to ending child poverty. His and other European governments agreed to draw up anti-poverty strategies at their summit in Nice last December (see website www.dss.gov.org). Half way through the first United Nations’ Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1996-2006), the UN’s Millennium Assembly Declaration set the rather insubstantial goal of halving by 2015 the world’s population whose income is less than $1 a day.

Words must now be superseded by deeds, which increase world peace and stability rather than undermine it. There has been much talk of attack and war. Could we use this October 17 to start a war - against poverty - which includes, as fighters, the people who live with poverty’s consequences? Why not a global rallying call for an attack on the abuses to people’s human rights wherever and however they occur. This is surely the only way the powerbase of those wedded to violence will be destroyed, instead of being further strengthened.

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