Amnesty International’s Khan: Poverty is the world’s worst human rights crisis

Ending poverty has become the rallying cry of international organization, political and business leaders, philanthropists and of course celebrities. But the fight against global poverty is almost certainly doomed to fail if it is driven solely by the imperative of boosting economic growth through investment, trade, new technology or foreign aid, argues Irene Khan in her new book “The Unheard Truth”.

The author, Irene Khan, is a human rights trailblazer. Khan joined Amnesty International as Secretary General in August 2001. She is the first woman, first Asian and first Muslim to head the world’s largest human rights organization.

Prior to joining Amnesty International she served with the UN High Commissioner for refugees. Khan has led Amnesty through the challenging time of the aftermath of 9/11, confronting the backlash against Muslims and human rights in general; broadening the work of Amnesty in areas of economic, social and cultural rights; and also bringing a strong focus to the issue of women’s rights and violence against women.

Khan argues with eloquence and passion, backed up by serious analysis, that fighting poverty is about fighting deprivation, exclusion, insecurity and powerlessness. People living in abject poverty lack material resources, but far more than that, they lack control over their own lives.

The core of Khan’s convincing argument is that to tackle global poverty, we need to focus on the human rights abuses that drive poverty and keep people poor.

Giving people a say in their own future, and demanding that they are treated with dignity and respect for their rights is the only way to make real progress, according to Khan.

Through the case-studies in her book, Khan shows why poverty is first and foremost not a problem of economics but of human rights. As the numbers of people living in poverty swell to upward of 2 billion, and it could get worse with the current severe global recession, Khan argues that poverty is the world’s worst human rights crisis.

Slums are growing at an alarming rate condemning a billion people to live in dismal conditions. The commodity boom is pushing oil and mining activities into lawless zones impoverishing millions of people. The perfect example of this is Nigeria, where the booming oil production has benefited international oil companies, such as Shell, but has made living conditions for the vast majority of Nigerians even worse than before.

By raising the issue of human rights in the fight against global poverty, the Unheard Truth is providing some answers for sustainable and equitable solutions, and will hopefully give some people the means to change the power imbalance that keeps people poor.

The two critical issues of rising global poverty and climate change are the biggest challenges and threats of our era. The time to act and address them with urgency was yesterday. Irene Khan tackles one of them in her book, let’s hope politicians, especially the ones from the G20, are paying attention.

(Source: newsjunkiepost.com)

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