France: The farce continues!

Today a colleague was supposed to be meeting President Sarkozy, alongside numerous other NGOs, at the Elysée ahead of his participation in the G8 and G20 in Canada next week. Among other things on the agenda was France's position regarding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), decisions on the progress of which are due to be taken following the September High-level summit at the UN in September.

However, "Sarko" has cancelled as he has more pressing matters to discuss, notably with Thierry "la main" Henry, who was granted a meeting with the President yesterday to discuss the farce which is French football.

Far be it from me to question the priorities of a President, but I happen to think that the millions of people whose lives and livelihoods are dependent on the extent to which Heads of State are properly informed of progress on the MDGs, would probably have prioritised differently.

If you are in any doubt as to the urgency of achieving the Goals that 189 Heads of State set themselves in 2000, then read this Time magazine article. 

Has anyone got Thierry Henry's email so that he can read the article out loud to Sarko?

Farewell to a champion of Human Rights (... and rugby, catapults and 2CVs)

Yesterday, people living in extreme poverty lost a great friend. His name won't appear in newspapers. It won't even appear on his grave. In solidarity with all those whom he accompanied in over 40 years of combat for extreme poverty to be recognised as a violation of human rights, our friend asked to be buried alongside those whose passing, in death as in life, goes unrecognised.

My friend had a knack for engaging people from all backgrounds in his combat, myself included. I was fortunate to have spent a month sharing an apartment with him in Brussels and found his enthusiasm for human rights contagious (not to mention rugby, catapults and 2CVs).

I was not alone. In the English city of Hull, he gathered around him people intrigued as to how they could support this effusive Frenchman: some marked by long-term poverty themselves, others drawn to this cause by such demonstrative displays of conviction that poverty can and must be eradicated.

In 2002, he stood alongside elected officials and members of ATD Fourth World from Hull, other cities across the UK and from other European cities, to inaugurate, in the city's Northern Cemetery, a commemorative headstone for all those who had died and had been buried in nameless graves.



Henri Bossan: your name may not be engraved in your final resting place. But it will be forever remembered by all of us whom you inspired to fight for the human rights of every person condemned to live in extreme poverty.

Le "vivre ensemble"

For the last few days I've been working and welcoming members of the organisation I work for who have come to France for our AGM. It's riveting to hear the diversity of their experiences, coming from as far afield as Peru to Philippines and Dublin to Dar Es Salam.

One of the main themes discussed was that of the right of people living in extreme poverty to participate and have a place at the table on discussions that directly affect them at the local, national and international level. We were fortunate to be able to attend a seminar on a French project concerning "Working, Learning and Living Together." A particularly dynamic expression of participation came from 3 women who are neighbours in an inner-city housing estate in the Parisian suburbs. Two were rehoused there with their families from having lived in bed and breakfasts and hostels. One chose to live there, as part of her commitment as a "full-time volunteer" to share and better understand the lives of people living in long-term poverty.

What was so interesting about this exchange was how genuine it was - an expression of the encounter between 3 women from diverse backgrounds but with a shared commitment to overcome extreme poverty. A positive expression of what the French call "le vivre ensemble" (poorly translated as "community relations"). The mums who'd previously been homeless before arriving at this housing project spoke of how initially they were just relieved to finally have a place to call their own. "Even if there had been a huge hole in the floor, I was just so happy to have my own front-door key and not have to worry about where we could cook a meal, what the social workers were thinking and whether they'd come to take the kids away." This was then a first step to getting involved in the community and having the courage to attend local participatory forums to speak out about issues that affect their lives - schooling, parenting, but also wider issues such as work or the environment.

Eradicating poverty doesn't only have to be about time-limited projects with concrete outputs and outcomes. It also passes through a coming together of people willing to learn and spend time to get to know people living in poverty. The local authority in this Paris suburb now wants to pull down the housing estate and build houses for "the poor".

Is the solution to build a new ghetto? Or to find news ways to promote and support efforts for a more sustainable and harmonious "vivre ensemble"?

After the bulldozers

In my last post I spoke of how people living in extreme poverty are often displaced from their homes and livelihood in the name of "development". Surfing the blogosphere, I just came across on the Africa is a Country blog this short film by Charles “Stretch” Ledford, a University of Miami communications student and working photographer. Sadly, it illustrates all too well how the rights of people living in poverty can be so easily dispensed with. It makes the campaigns of organisations such as Amnesty International to raise awareness of the one billion people in the world who live in slums all the more pertinent.


Ajelogo: After the Bulldozers from Stretch Ledford on Vimeo.

The World Cup is approaching, but not for the poorest

My 3 year-old son asked to put on his England football top on today after seeing our neighbour's son with his Brazilian football shirt on this afternoon. It seems World Cup fever is heating up with less than 2 weeks to go now. I asked a Burkinabé colleague recently who he'd be supporting given that his country would not be there. "Whichever African team is playing of course!" This sense of pan-African solidarity is utterly foreign to the majority of Europeans. It is difficult to imagine a Scot supporting England or a Belgian supporting France. Anyone but more like!

This sense of solidarity and excitement about the World Cup is not universal, particularly among some of those on whose  doorstep it will take place. For many of South African's poorest citizens, who sustain their livelihood through street vending, the World Cup should have been a windfall opportunity to provide for themselves and their family. Instead, as the BBC recently reported, street vendors will have to apply for expensive permits, for which, in the words of one street trader,

"We are being made to jump through hundreds of hoops so we can do for a month what we have been doing here for years - and that's selling at the stadium. Now I know it is just a reminder that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer."

Of course, creating conditions that discriminate against the poorest is not unique to the staging of a World Cup, nor to South Africa. The most vulnerable people and groups frequently miss out on the benefits of development because they need extra support in order to claim their rights and take advantage of the opportunities on offer.

Relocation projects from shanty or squatter settlements frequently fail to benefit the poorest families as it places them too far their source of income for it to remain feasible for them to remain, forcing them to return to illegal, and indecent dwellings. Or employment training which spend weeks on giving job seekers such skills such as preparing a CV - the problem being that those in most need of finding work have no formal work experience to add to their curriculum vitae.

In this case, a solution could have been found for those have been earning a living from this trade prior to the World Cup by easing the rules and expense to obtain permits.

South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world in its recognition of social and economic rights. Unfortuntely, it appears these do not apply from 11 June to 11 July.

Beware: hacks at work!

It's impossible to live in France and work in the poverty field without hearing at least twice a day about the economist Esther Duflo. If you haven't heard of her, she's best known for her work in showing which kinds of policies work best to eradicate poverty. Her evaluation of the impact of removing user-fees to access basic services are much quoted by those advocating their removal.

So it was quite a surprise to read on Amanda Taub's excellent blog Wronging Rights that research she's published, quoted by the influential NY Times contributor, Nicholas Kristof, reports that if the poorest families spent as much money educating their children as they do on wine, cigarettes and prostitutes, their children’s prospects would be transformed.

This article particularly struck me as a colleague only just recently mentioned Kristof as a journalist with whom it may be possible to work given his interest in poverty issues.

I won't go any further in order to encourage you to read Taub's blog. But be warned of influential journalists with a cause to push misinterpreting research to suit their arguments!

Will we learn from the lessons of the past

I was listening on the  BBC World Service the other day to a Kenyan journalist talking about the Eurozone crisis. When asked about what the Kenyan people thought about the austerity measures being brought in under pressure from the IMF, he said that it brought an ironic chuckle to many. Kenya, like many of the poorest countries around the world,had re-introduced user charges in the 1980s for education and healthcare under IMF backed structural adjustment programmes. These measures naturally disproportionately affected the poorest people.

Such as Walter, 12, and his younger brother Charles. When they're sick, they wait for it to finish because they can't afford the hospital fees. "Sometimes  there is not enough food so we go to sleep hungry; The other problem is clothes- we don’t have clothes to wear to church.. or shoes. And sometimes we can’t afford the fees for our exams at school."

Already in Europe, it is the poorest people who are seen as the easiest target for budget cuts. In Ireland, there's been talk of cutting the minimum wage. Child benefit was already cut in 2009 to make savings.

To preempt budget cuts disproportiantely affecting people experiencing poverty in the UK, Church Action on Poverty is encouraging people to write to David Cameron to ensure that people in poverty do not pay the price of a defecit they did not cause.

photo: MSF