I am thinking of the families uprooted from their villages
in the southern Sahara. Extreme poverty has forced
them to take to the paths, byways and highways. They
now camp on the outskirts of towns, with no means of
settling. They can’t fulfil their traditional responsibilities
and customary rights, to provide for themselves through
work, and protect their children with a stable
home and traditional education.
Unable to enjoy a social and community life, these
families are not just poor. They are in extreme poverty,
which pushes them outside the reach of development
programmes. When urbanisation reaches the outskirts
of towns where they have erected their makeshift
shelters, they are forced to move on again. Again
unable to exercise their rights or responsibilities,
they’re too weakened to take advantage of urban
development. Nor will they share in the changes or the
new benefits that come with it.
I am thinking too of the men, women and young people
facing long-term unemployment in industrialised
countries. With neither qualifications nor significant
physical or social reserves, they are reduced to relying
on social assistance. Poorly housed, unequipped to
support their children’s schooling, the vocational
training programmes for tomorrow’s jobs never reach
them. In industrialised countries, those in extreme
poverty cannot exercise their responsibilities as parents
or their rights as workers and citizens. Except as
welfare recipients, they will be also denied any real
place in the information and communication society.
And I’m thinking of the children and young people in
extreme poverty on the streets of some Latin American
cities. They have no settled home life, whether in its
traditional form or in its process of change. They’re
denied the cultural grounding and sense of future
responsibility that family, neighbourhood and social
belonging can provide.
Throughout the world, people, families and social
groups living in abject poverty are unable to assume
responsibility for their lives and for the life and socio-
economic, cultural and political changes taking place in
their countries. Those who don’t contribute to it gain
nothing from it. No benefits, no new rights, not now, not
ever. And the socio-economic progress others make
does nothing to break the vicious cycle that keeps them
trapped.
This is where the real challenge of Human Rights lies.
Under what conditions will these families and
communities be able to take responsibility for
themselves and their households, and share
responsibility for the future of both their nation and the
international community, as they should?
They will be able to, beyond everything that might
otherwise divide us, if we are willing to come together,
uniting hands, hearts, and minds to serve the children
and families who have so far been most the abandoned.
They will be able to, if we recognise them as people of
their time, families with lived experience they urgently
need to share with us. They will be able to if we
recognise that they carry within them a vision of
today’s society and of their fellow human beings. They
will be able to if we take seriously their determination
to build a future for their children, and for all the
children who are about to enter the twenty-first
century.
Only then, will they teach us an indispensable lesson we
cannot afford to ignore: their lived understanding of the
universality and indivisibility of Human Rights.