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17th October 2003
Messages of Support, Official Appeals and Statements

[messages in french] [messages in spanish] [in german (Zeugnis)]

Messages of Support

London (United Kingdom)

Everybody needs the same treatment from the government. Inequality in treatment creates a division, with people looking down upon others.  Until classes are disbanded, there is always going to be poverty. No matter where you live, you all need the same basics to survive.  People should not get a different pay for the same job.

Many people I know have been afflicted by alcohol. No child should know what alcohol is. Alcohol and drugs are an easy way out of poverty; when a bill comes through the door, and you do not know how you will pay for it, alcohol helps to escape. If poverty were eradicated, on a certain level, alcohol and drugs would also be eradicated. If only people living in poverty could see their way out of it, they would be less inclined to drink or take drugs.

I used to think that poverty was only money based, people living in the streets because they did not have enough money to have a roof over their heads. I now realise, since I have had children, that poverty covers a whole range of things in life.  Poverty is when you are just surviving, day after day, instead of living. It is when you have barely enough money to pay for your electricity, gas and food bills, but you cannot afford anything else.  For instance, your child needs another pair of shoes, or another jacket, but you cannot afford it. Poverty is when you simply survive, and that is wrong.

When I asked why certain members of my family could not read, or why none of them had been to University, the lack of money was always the answer. I have now decided to join a pre-access course for university, even though no one in my family ever went to University.  With this course, I am trying my hardest to better myself so that maybe, somewhere along the line, I can help others.  If I can do it, then I’ll be able to say to others that if they put their mind to it, then they can do it.

Poverty is when there is no hope of anything waiting for you, when you cannot see tomorrow. Hope transforms everything.  I also know that if I have hope, my children will have hope.  Poverty is like being in a vicious circle. If you break the circle, then others around you, in your family, will start breaking it to. All it takes is one member of that family.

By Lorraine M.

Kielce (Poland)
Testimony by Patricia B. (UK) for 17 October 2003 at Kielce, Poland

We want social work students to help families living in poverty and to help them get a better life. We’re bringing together a group of families and professionals to come up with ideas on how university lecturers and family members can work together to teach the students how to support families and not to look down on them.

The reason that I want to be involved in Social Work Training is that it would be good to be listened to. I have not been listened to before. Social Workers need to understand what people in poverty are going through. I have a 14 year old daughter who has special needs and slight behavior problems. No one would listen to me and I got no help or support and I want things to change for Myself and for others.

I also have a 21 year old daughter and she has a 8 month old daughter and at the moment the baby is in foster care but social services want the baby to live with Adopted parents. My daughter is still going to court to fight for her baby .She has court on the 30th and the 31st of October also she is back in court on the 4th of November 2003. The 4th will be the finally hearing when the court will decide. Where will the baby be living? Social services have said to my daughter that she can still see her daughter but she said no because she doesn’t think that it is fair because when her two other daughters went to live with adopted parents she could not see them. If the other two find out that my daughter has continued seeing her youngest, they’ll want to know why she didn’t carry on seeing them. She can only write letters to them and send gifts at Christmas and on their birthdays we had a final contact with them before they went to live with the adopted parents.

What I would like at the end of the social work training is for the new social workers to understand about people living in poverty a lot better than they do now.

New York

October 17, 2003 - United Nations, New York
Testimony on behalf of families living in poverty
By Maria Clara Chet de Rivera and Marta Zoila Caballeros Ruiz, 
Delegates of the International Movement ATD Fourth World

 We come today to this meeting place of nations and cultures to share with you a history of life, a message of hope, and a dream.  This history, this hope, and this dream are called Guatemala, our homeland. Humberto Ak´abal, a Maya- K'iche writer, says:
“Every once in a while, I walk backwards.
It is my way to remember.
If I walked only facing forward,
I could tell you
About oblivion.”

On this day in which we commemorate overcoming poverty in the world, we hope that everyone of us walks a few steps backwards to see the faces, to get to know the paths of struggle, to remember those who confront oblivion and indifference every day.  Perhaps overcoming poverty starts there: struggling against oblivion and indifference.
The voice of our histories comes from Guatemala.  Of the 11.2 million people who live in the country, three out of every five live in conditions of poverty, and one out of every five in extreme poverty.

We want to speak for those who suffer from not having a roof to protect them from the rain.  Not being able to count on a place to go, to meet in dignity with one’s family.  This means being used to being uprooted from one place to another, always waiting for a day when one can finally put down roots.  It means dreaming of having your own land, dreaming of safe land that is free of floods and of landslides that bury those who are alive. 

To be poor in Guatemala means not being able to read a book or write a letter.  It means being left out of school and having no access to written communication, to computers or to libraries. And, sooner or later, it means that you suffer the pain of not having enough food for the children, of barely making do with a pile of tortillas with salt and chile. It means sickness that cannot be cured for lack of money for medicine. It means enduring the cold of scorn. It means that three out of every five people in Guatemala suffer from inequality, violence, insecurity.  They are marked from birth and largely excluded from life, generation after generation.  But despite this horizon devoid of opportunitites, we also have cherished hopes and dreams.

In this context, we can ask ourselves: What is it that helps people keep going? What is the fountain of hope that feeds the spirit of the poorest? What is it that allows us, in spite of everything people endure, to be able to stand up and keep walking?

The lives of the poorest speak to us, in each word, of a path of hope. Doña Dorothea and her daughter live below the Belice bridge, very far below it. In the past, Doña Dorothea was a carrier in the Central Market. She carried packages for people shopping in the marketplace and carried them on her back to the vehicles of the shoppers. Over time, she grew old and began going bling. Her only daughter has a mental impairment. Every day, mother and daughter go out to earn their living. They leave the shack at the bottom of the cliff. To avoid falling in the river, they clutch the girders of the iron bridge over which the train used to pass.  They cross the river of black water, which rises every winter, threatening to wash away their shack.  Somehow they climb a makeshift rope ladder to get up the cliff, holding on so they do not slip and fall into the abyss.  

Step by step, this is how Doña Dorotea walks to work  On the way, they touch hands with many people, surely just as poor as they are.  One of them looks at her and gives her some bread. Doña Dorotea often says, “Today, my daughter and I have nothing, but each day I go out with faith that we will get through the day.” Doña Dorotea’s vision and her strength have faded with age, but she has not lost her hope. Doña Dorotea climbs up and down the cliff every day; her path is the path of hope.

All Guatemalans have a story to tell.  Three out of every five Guatemalans have a similar history of struggle.  Three out of every five Guatemalans can speak of how they face each new day, hoping to work and earn a living with dignity. These histories of struggle from one day to another constitute the population’s contribution toward the human development of the country.  But the price of development and of peace for very poor families, as well as the country, is a very high price.

All these families leave signs of pain and suffering along the path of their lives.  Sometimes these signs are humiliations, other times, it is the death of their loved ones, and even their children.  On some occasions, it is family relationships that unravel.  Sometimes a person is overwhelmed, frozen in time, you can’t think, your head hurts–this is the meaning of despair.

This individual human suffering is also the suffering of the community and society in general: the history of internal conflict in the country, the process of building peace, the cost of dialogue, the cost of changing the conditions of existence, of dignity and of justice for everyone.  In Guatemala we know the cost of the dead, of pain, of fear.    Despite the fact that the democratic process is marked by suffering, it has also served to underline our strength to confront suffering with our yearning for justice, and our hope for a better future.

Humberto Ak’abal tells us:
“When I was born
They put two tears
In my eyes
So that I could see the vastness of pain of my people.”

When we see what very poor families live, there are tears.  But, our eyes can also see the real riches, the human capital for the development of our country.  Once we see the dream of the very poor to leave their children a better house to live in, we can understand the desire of all Guatemalans to have a better homeland.  The sum of the struggles of the poorest is reflected in the struggle of one country to overcome to great deficiencies, to overcome the adversities of nature, to construct peace. The struggles of the poorest are reflected in our country’s struggle to increase the opportunitites that would put us on equal footing with other countries in the world.

Guatemala is a country which is economically poor, but it is a land fertile with great women and men who, being sons and daughters of poverty, have been able to shine their own light on the world.  These children of poverty are the great builders of peace in the middle of terrible violence.  Writers come out of illiterate communities.  We have great thinkers, painters who learned to paint without a brush.  Among these children of poverty, we have good women and men to lead us.  We have builders of hope who love their homeland and their families.

Sometimes poverty seems hopeless.  However, hope is part of being human.  That is why we can transform poverty.  Despite everything, the very poorest continue to hope.  Poverty does not erase the dream of  solidarity with others.  Doña Dorotea’s daily efforts tell us that the hope for a better future is something very concrete.  If she can keep hoping, we all can. 

If we unite the hopes of the men and women who believe in the equality of people, 
if we unite the hopes of those who believe they can free themselves from the chains of misery,
if we can make a commitment of brotherhood with the poorest people around the world,
then we can leave our children a world with no more indifference, a world where no one is forgotten. 
We will walk backwards to see a better future.

Let us take on once and for all the commitment of educating girls and boys around the world so that they never forget the weak, the vulnerable, or the rejected, and so that we don’t forget a single person.  Let us support the institutions that are already committed to ending poverty, and let us make world peace a reality. 

The poorest invite us to build hope with them, beginning with respect, dignity and brotherhood.  The poorest invite us, on this day, which is their day, and every day hereafter, to build a world for our children in which no one is left out.

Today we remember Doña Dorotea, with her we remember, with her we walk backwards the better to see the future of Guatemala and of the world.  For this reason, we remember her hope.  Today we think of our homeland and we borrow the words of Luis Cardoza y Aragón to say: 

We don’t love our land because it is big and powerful,
or because it is weak and small,
or for its snows and white nights or its flood of sunlight
We love it simply because it is ours.

Official Appeals and Statements

Message from the UN Secretary-General on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, 17 October 2003 (on UN web site).

Message by Mark Malloch Brown, UNDP Administrator, New York, 17 October 2003 (or .pdf file : english, french, spanish)

Statement  of the United Nations Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, on the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October).

Speech  by Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe: The Council of Europe's commitment to combating extreme poverty and inequality and building more cohesive societies

Message by the Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October 2003 - .pdf)

Message from the Director-General of ILO on the Occasion of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty
17 October 2003

Today the world marks International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. For us in the ILO, the observance of this day touches the core of our mission.

Statement of Amnesty International on the Occasion of World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty

In fact, it is enshrined in the ILO Constitution: Poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere. And amongst so much wealth, it is a moral indictment of our times.

The current path of the global economy is not stopping the growth of unemployment and poverty in too many parts of the world. If you ask people living in poverty what they need, they will say it is a decent job. But jobs remain the missing link in the global strategy to wipe out poverty. If we are to truly get on the track of cutting extreme poverty in half by 2015, efforts must be scaled up-locally, nationally regionally and internationally-to put the promotion of more and better jobs at the heart of development strategies. Work is the way out of poverty.

This was the message of my report to the 2003 International Labour Conference, "Working out of Poverty". The report was based on three fundamental points.

First, the poor do not cause poverty. Poverty is the result of structural failures and ineffective economic and social systems. It is the product of inadequate political responses, bankrupt policy imagination and insufficient international support.

Second, poverty is expensive. It hinders growth, fuels instability, and keeps poor countries from advancing on the path of sustainable development. Poverty, quite simply, is something we cannot afford.

Third, there is another face to poverty. People living in conditions of material deprivation draw on enormous reserves of courage, ingenuity, persistence and mutual support to keep on the treadmill of survival. Simply coping with poverty demonstrates the resilience and creativity of the human spirit. In many ways, the working poor are the ultimate entrepreneurs. And our work together is about tapping that spirit of enterprise, hope and possibility.

The effort to link poverty eradication and employment creation is being heard and acted upon in every region. Just recently there was an important breakthrough in Africa. The African Union Heads of State and Government agreed to convene a first-of-its-kind special summit on Employment and Poverty next year. The AU has called on the ILO to assist in the preparation. This month, we have launched a series of national consultations throughout Africa to focus on practical action and concrete ways to expand employment opportunities.

Eradicating poverty is the biggest social challenge we face today, but it is also the biggest economic opportunity. The ILO and its tripartite constituents-labour ministries, employers and workers - are committed to face this common challenge. Together, we can help people overcome poverty through dignity and decent work.

transmit by : INFOBRU@ilo-org.be
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2003 9:11 AM
Subject: Message from the DG - International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

International Movement Atd Fourth World
Message of the Director General
October 17th, 2003

On this World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty, this day that brings us together here, what kind of world are we living in ?
A world where desperate acts of violence  destroy human lives by the thousands,
A world where  millions of children start out in life already marked by hunger, homelessness, sickness and separation from loved ones…

Have we become prisoners of a world where terror and human misery keep pushing peace even further away ?
Are we living in separate worlds. Are we dealing with one another through tiny windows where we cannot see one another –not the faces of those who struggle to survive or the hands of those who pay to ensure a safe future for their children ?

Sixteen years ago, Fr. Joseph Wresinski bore witness to those who, although empty handed, refuse to give up, to those who resist the  hunger and violence that can never be accepted ;
He bore witness to the people who get the full brunt of the violence of a world that does not take each person, country or people into account when trying to understand our history, when speaking of our lives today or planning  our common future.

From deep down inside their lives, men, women, children and young people faced with the injustice of poverty know right away that peace imposed by force is not a strong peace. It is weak because it is not the fruit of people looking together for a common understanding. It is not the fruit of  a fair sharing out of our economic resources nor is it the result of a life where we are freely united to one another.

Today in this world assaulted by a violence that affects everyone,
today we renew our commitment to consolidating  our hope and cultivating day in and day out, brotherly relations in our communities. This we can learn from those who face each day seeking the courage to get past the violence and who appeal to all of us to live together in a new way.

Eugen Brand
Director General