The Insufficient Policies in Eradicating Poverty
The role of policies in poverty eradication, in close co-operation with other social sector is crucial. No country would succeed if it has not developed policies on eradicating poverty and for the well being of its people. The recognition of the issue of eradicating extreme poverty gave its collective commitment to work towards the aim such as social policy maker recognized poverty as unethical. According to Arjun Gupta, a commitment to poverty eradication is also one of the most important outcomes of the Copenhagen Declaration of the World Summit for Social Development in 1995. It identified poverty eradication as an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humanity. It clearly stated that poverty has various manifestations, including lack of income and productive resources enough to ensure sustainable livelihood: hunger and malnutrition: ill health: minimum and lack of access to education and other basic services increase morbidity and mortality from illness and social domination and exclusion. (P. 5, General Assembly). This paper would argue that poverty should be considered a severe injustice and a violation of human rights. There should be policies and the action program should propose to support livelihood systems and survival skills to help poor people to combat poverty. The notion of poverty as the fault of people or their own choice should be rejected.
In World Poverty and Human Rights, Pogge discusses the four important reasons people in developed West have for being unconcerned with the persistence of poverty abroad. The first one is that world poverty cannot be eradicated by “throwing money at the problem”. (p. 7) I, totally disagree with this notion. In actuality the money does not go to program initiated for poor, but goes to the organization and the cost of the implementing the program itself. Another reason that does not seem to be working to eradicating poverty is the “redistribution of the money”, as Pogge brings out, “a politically feasible project of egalitarian redistribution of wealth requires there to be enough money around to insure that, after the redistribution, the rich will still be able to recognize themselves-will still think their lives worth living” (p. 9) This is what causing 2.5 billion people living in severe poverty because of 1 billion in high income countries are not ready for the redistribution. This brings the issue of social inequality playing a major role in poverty and causing a barrier to eradicating the severe poverty.
Another reason and barrier to eradicating poverty is the wrong but optimistic view that “world poverty is disappearing any way ”(P. 10) which is totally misleading to the governmental policies.
A social perspective on eradicating poverty requires addressing poverty in all its dimensions because it promotes a people-centered approach to poverty eradication, advocating the empowerment of people living in poverty through their full participation in all aspects of political, economic and social life, especially in the design and implementation of policies that affect the poorest and most vulnerable groups of society. An integrated strategy towards poverty eradication necessitates implementing policies geared to more equitable distribution of wealth and income, as well as social protection coverage. As Arjun Sengupta mentions, the Rawlsian principal of justice stresses on taking care of the most vulnerable segment of the society and this way “the number of people suffering from extreme poverty will be small” ( P. 10). Poverty needs attention and recognition as an integral part of the mainstream society. Poverty is inextricably interwoven in the social fabric of society. This mandates governments along with international community to make poverty alleviation a top priority in their development strategy.
It is true that the continual migration of poverty leads to hopelessness and to fatigue, “ it requires the more affluent and governments to rally to the cause again and again…for just a more always save yet further children from sickness or starvation( Pogge, p. 218) Poggy is trying to say that NGO’s and Government will have to work towards this goal of saving people from poverty. We will have to change the notion that poverty is inherited from the previous eras and so will continue. It requires a policy, programs such as Global Resources Divided ( GRD) proposed by Pogge. (p 202) For example as discussed in class “if 0.9 of products were attributed to poverty alleviation, it will reduce 1 billion people living on $1.00 a day”.
As Pogge feels in World Poverty and Human Rights that “we should work together across disciplines to conceive a comprehensive solution to the problem of world poverty, and across borders for political implementation of this solution” ( p 221). I strongly feel that to this end, poverty eradication should be recognized as an ethical, social, political, and economic imperative of human beings. The states and government should be responsible to address the issue related to poverty and absolute poverty to find out the root causes of it. Governments should be able to provide for the basic needs of all. The emphasis should be on the equal access to the resources. The most important part should be educating and training people on how they can best be able to fit into the changing world. Creating resources and equal access must be integrated into national policies and actions.
References:
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Alfred A. Knof, New York, 1999.
Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2nd ed., 2008.
Report of the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty, Argun Sengupta, UN Doc. A/HRC/5/3, 31May 2007.
© 2010, muzammil18. All rights reserved.
[...] The Insufficient Policies in Eradicating Poverty | World Poverty … [...]