U.N. Expert
by Haider Rizvi
OneWorld.net
Dec 04, 2005
Despite enormous wealth and various federal and social welfare schemes at work,
the United States is failing to help millions of its people trying to get out of
poverty, according to an independent United Nations rights expert.
"Resource constraints have limited the reach of the assistance programs and social
discrimination has aggravated the problems in many situations resulting in poverty
clearly seen as a violation of human rights," Dr. Arjun Sengupta declared after
visiting the United States last month.
"If the United States government designed and implemented the policies according
to human rights standards much of the problem of poverty could be resolved," he
added.
Dr. Sengupta, an expert on human rights and extreme poverty of the world body's
Commission on Human Rights, said he chose to visit the United States because he
wanted to illustrate that extreme poverty was not only prevalent in developing
countries, but a phenomenon that is found in most nations in the world, according
to U.N. officials.
"The case of the United States was particularly interesting as it presented
an apparent paradox: as the wealthiest country on Earth, with higher per
capita income levels than any other country, the United States has also had
one of the highest incidences of poverty among the rich industrialized
nations," Dr. Sengupta said.
The official statistics released in his report to the U.N. show that over 12 percent of
the United States population--or about 37 million people--lived in poverty in 2004,
with nearly 16 percent--or about 46 million--having no health insurance.
The report indicates that more than 38 million people, including 14 million children,
are threatened by lack of food.
Dr. Sengupta's report also shows that ethnic minorities are suffering more from
extreme poverty than white Americans. Compared to one in ten Whites, nearly one
in four Blacks and more than one out of every five Latinos are extremely poor in
the United States.
Moreover, despite the overall U.S. economic recovery, the report says the incidence
of poverty, including food insecurity and homelessness, has been on the rise over
the past years.
During his two-week fact-finding mission, Dr. Sengupta visited neighborhoods in
New York, Florida, Washington, D.C., and in many other cities, including New
Orleans, where he met with a number of civil society groups and constitutional
lawyers.
U.N. officials say the purpose of the visit was to "consider and learn from
experiences" of the United States in addressing the different aspects of extreme
poverty: income poverty, human development poverty, and social exclusion.
The independent expert noted that a multitude of federal and state benefit
systems and means-tested programs have been designed to provide assistance to
poor people, but noted that there were "significant gaps" in the current system.
The report identifies high costs of healthcare, inadequate access to quality
education and vocational training, low wages, limited protection of tenants, and lack
of low-cost housing as major factors that pose "serious obstacles" to people
struggling to get out of poverty.
"Poverty is not only deprivation of economic or material resources, but a violation
of human rights too," according to the Geneva-based U.N. Commission on Human
Rights.
"No social phenomenon is as comprehensive in its assault on human rights as
poverty," it says. "Poverty erodes or nullifies economic and social rights such as the
right to health, adequate housing, food, safe water, and the right to education."
In addition to Dr. Sengupta's findings, a similar report is also under circulation at
the world body, which point to human rights abuses in the United States.
In response to the U.S. State Department's annual documentation of human rights
violations worldwide, the Chinese government released its own report on the
subject with scathing criticism of Washington's economic and social policies.
"Black people have not only fewer job opportunities, but also earn less than white
people," says the Chinese report, "The Human Rights Record of the United States
in 2004," noting that some fifty years after the landmark Brown v. Board of
Education Supreme Court decision, "white children and black children in the United
States still lead largely separate lives."
"About a third [of southern Black students] attend schools that are at least 90
percent minority," the report points out, citing a Washington Post article.
"The Declaration of Independence said all men are created equal, so the gap
between black and white people is simply an insult to the founding essence of the
United States," the report said.
