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ATD Fourth World Colloquium “Extreme Poverty is Violence – Breaking the Silence – Searching for Peace” - NGLS Interview

·   29 February 2012 - The International Colloquium “Extreme Poverty is Violence – Breaking the Silence – Searching for Peace,” organized by the International Movement ATD Fourth World, was held from 24 to 26 January 2012. It brought together 80 participants from academia, practitioners, policy makers and people living in extreme poverty to exchange views on the outcomes of three years of research on the links between extreme poverty, violence and peace that was undertaken by ATD Fourth World. On the final day, a public event at UNESCO House in Paris presented the participatory research to a public of 300 people. Subthemes during the three-day Colloquium included: the non-recognition of people living in extreme poverty as human beings; institutional and political violence; the weaknesses of projects intended to fight poverty; and how extreme poverty violates fundamental rights. Participants also shared their experiences on overcoming such violence, building mutual recognition, and creating peace.

NGLS: Could you explain the main results of the long-term research undertaken by the International Movement ATD Fourth World in relation to extreme poverty?

The findings show that people living in extreme poverty are confronted with different aspects of violence in their daily lives. Participants analyzed the violence of not being recognized as human beings in their own right. The denial of fundamental rights when one is living in chronic poverty was discussed, as was the institutional and political violence that people living in extreme poverty are submitted to. The research also demonstrated the violence of extreme poverty eradication projects that are ill-adapted to people’s needs. From these analyses of violence, the crucial significance of mutual recognition in order to build peace was also examined. The importance of working in partnership with people in extreme poverty, through projects that allow all participants to learn from one another, was underscored.

The Colloquium is, we hope, a starting point for disseminating the findings of this research, and a concluding report from this event will soon be available. The findings of how extreme poverty is violence, as illustrated above, will contribute to action-research ATD Fourth World is carrying out on the impact of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on people living in extreme poverty. This includes inviting the research participants to contribute to a process of pooling their knowledge with that of development “experts” from national and international bodies to draw out proposals for what should emerge in terms of a successor framework after the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) deadline in 2015. Some of it will be submitted to the United Nations for its collecting of best practices in the area of achieving the MDGs. The findings of the research will also be used in ATD Fourth World’s project for the evaluation of the MDGs, with people living in extreme poverty.

People living in extreme poverty are often not recognized by others in more fortunate circumstances as human beings. Instead of being seen for what they contribute to society, contempt and indifference pushes them further out of society, it crushes them. The importance of being able to speak out, of being listened to, and shown that your opinion counts, is empowering. Indeed, research undertaken by the International Movement ATD Fourth World is always based on the life experience and expertise of people living in extreme poverty.

NGLS: Joseph Wresinski, the founder of ATD Fourth World said that it is “the violence of contempt and indifference [that] causes chronic poverty.” Could you explain this in more detail?

Joseph Wresinski considered that “the violence of contempt and indifference causes chronic poverty, since it inevitably leads to exclusion, to the rejection of one human being by other human beings.”

The victim of contempt and indifference is deprived of the links and relationships necessary to any human being to grow and to develop. This reinforces the lack of basic security that people living in extreme poverty experience. Wresinski’s definition of extreme poverty was recognized by the UN Sub-commission for human rights in 1996, citing this lack of basic security that “leads to chronic poverty when it simultaneously affects several aspects of people’s lives, when it is prolonged and severely compromises people’s chances of regaining their rights and reassuming their responsibilities in the foreseeable future.”

Participants in the research programme talked of being trapped in poverty. Joseph Wresinski wrote about how this violence of contempt and indifference traps people in poverty in mechanisms that break down confidence, trust, resistance. When people are trapped in poverty, they lose hope of ever escaping from their situation in which harsh working conditions often just barely allow for their survival [1]. One participant’s contribution related to the barriers preventing people in poverty from communicating with social services in the United Kingdom: “to complain was seen as non-cooperation; to protest, as aggression; to explain, as making excuses [2].” Other participants spoke of ways to eke out a living that are considered shameful and attract blame.

From such treatment, a person has little other solution than to withdraw, to become an outcast, and to cease believing in oneself or in others.

NGLS: During the event, participants noted that, in general, the projects to eradicate extreme poverty are not sufficiently adapted to the needs of people experiencing such poverty. Could you explain why this is the case?

Several examples were given of the unintended consequences of projects meant to be beneficial to people living in chronic poverty. When projects are set up without involving the people concerned, from the start and throughout the development of the project, they are doomed to fail, whether in cases of re-housing, urban development, or foster-care.

Moïse Compaoré, from Burkina Faso, gave one example of this: a project was set up for a lady who lived in the street, near the mosque, subsisting by begging there. A group of well-meaning youths built a house for her at a distance from the town center and helped her set herself up to sell vegetables. However, they then saw that she was becoming sad and depressed. In this new neighbourhood where they had set her up, she knew no-one and no-one knew her. Nobody bought her vegetables because people ignored her, or treated her with contempt. Whereas when she was living in the street by the mosque, she was well-known and looked to by others for advice. The well-intentioned young people had not taken enough time to think through their plans with her.

The problem with many development projects is that they are not set up in partnership with the people living in extreme poverty. Even when there is some participatory action, it usually takes place with those that are not in the most desperate situations, as these people usually have a fear of speaking out, or live in the most isolated areas.

In Haiti after the earthquake, in the severe emergency of the situation, there were projects that were set up with specific targets, based on statistics rather than the people in need, such as for example an objective to deliver X number of food parcels. Such objectives can generate situations of violence and division that force people to compete for survival. The ATD Fourth World team worked with Action Contre la Faim on food parcel delivery with the aim that a parcel would be received by each family in a specific isolated neighbourhood. They discussed the distribution with key figures in the neighbourhood, and these people took on the responsibility of delivering the parcels so that each family would receive subsistence. By working in partnership and respect, violence was avoided, and equal treatment was received by those in need.

NGLS: Another theme addressed during the event was “peace.” Participants discovered that peace is defined differently by those that are living in peace and those that are not. Could you explain the main differences? What does this mean in terms of policy-making?

Peace was defined as a common peace, a peace that stems from not being in fear or want. For some of those whose lives are a constant struggle to find food to put on the table, find a job for some subsistence, peace was regarded as having enough to eat, having proper health care, and access to education. With your life in a turmoil of worries due to the lack of these basic necessities, you cannot feel at peace. Furthermore, participants also said you need to be able to feel at peace internally before being able to reproduce it and build it with others. Such definitions would tend to show that our communities will not truly be at peace for as long as extreme poverty exists.

Several academics realised that in their work they were not examining things from the angle of peace, but rather from the angle of violence. For example in the area of education they tended to analyze situations of violence in classes, and how to manage them, rather than to try to develop peace-building initiatives.

Policies designed to prevent violence often focus on adding barriers and walls to separate low-income and high-income populations from one another. But in fact the more widespread and entrenched these barriers become, the more they spread the violence of leaving generations of children to grow up knowing that they are not trusted and unwanted. Policies that build peace would instead reinforce the efforts already made by people living in extreme poverty by supporting fewer barriers and more places like community centers where people who are different can get to know, appreciate and support one another.

NGLS: More than one thousand people from 25 countries were consulted by ATD Fourth World for its research on the violence of extreme poverty. During this research, were there also encouraging testimonies with regard to the fight against such violence? If yes, could you provide some examples?

There were many contributions on the resistance to violence! We can give here several such examples that demonstrate the courage and resilience of people living in extreme poverty when faced with violence.

Resistance to the violence sometimes takes form in communal actions: the community generates energy and positive action by getting together to fight a problem of floods in a neighbourhood in Dakar for example, or to rebuild homes in Port-au-Prince, in the most forgotten neighbourhoods.

There are also individual victories. A participant in the USA was charged with a crime he did not commit, and was jailed. In order to fight against the violence of this unjust decision, he devoted his time to law studies. Thanks to his efforts, several people similarly unjustly imprisoned were released. With others, he organized protests against the inhuman conditions of the prison. As a consequence of his involvement, authorities investigated the matter, and the situation improved. The participant ended up serving a five-year sentence. He now fights the anger this has made him feel by doing voluntary work, giving legal aid and assistance.

One participant said, “peace doesn’t always happen with a big bang [3],” referring to daily victories that may appear small but are crucial and show enormous courage. Thus a participant from Guatemala spoke of the constant violence in her neighbourhood, which has destroyed three of her friend’s children, all under the age of 15. In spite of this heartbreak, this mother has not given up and continues in her daily struggle to bring up her other children. She fights for their education, and for them to have better opportunities in life.

NGLS: One participant said that “solutions in themselves are not important, but that it is the process of finding solutions together that counts.” What concrete outcomes did the Colloquium bring? What were the solutions that were “found together”?

More and more development projects are based on what is called the “participation of the poor.” However, far too often this consists of personal testimonies of individual situations being used to illustrate policies that have been planned and implemented by others. This Colloquium and the three years of research leading up to it created the conditions necessary for people living in extreme poverty to express their thinking and analysis and to pool their knowledge with that of policy makers and academics. This is what was meant by the participant who spoke about the process of finding solutions together. People are fed up with having their experience reduced to anecdotes propping up ill-adapted policies. Furthermore, the research has served to develop an awareness on the violence that people living in extreme poverty have to fight against on a daily basis, as well as demonstrating the devastating impact of this violence.

A concrete outcome is a transformation in how we understand and address violence and peace. In general when people hear the words “violence” and “poverty”, there is a stereotypical assumption that people living in poverty are the source of violence, those who must be kept away from others as our world builds ever more gated communities, walls, borders and metal detectors. This Colloquium highlighted the ways in which violence is done to people living in poverty, and shows the many unseen and unheralded ways in which these people act to create peace. Knowing more about the lengths to which young people, adults and children go in order to reach out to and look out for others in harm’s way is an inspiration, and gives us tools to be able to reinforce these existing efforts.

The process by which the research was carried out illustrates that given the right environment, it is possible for people in extreme poverty to fully participate in projects and programmes aimed at finding solutions to the challenges they face. Creating this environment involves elements such as: an awareness that policies and programmes implemented until now have failed to reach the most vulnerable and excluded people; recognising the unique knowledge each person possesses to make a valuable contribution to the project; a focus on the valuable insight gained from life experience held by people in extreme poverty, rather than focusing on what they lack or need; participation should give people living in extreme poverty the opportunity to secure links to others living in similar circumstances as well as the space and time to discuss and reflect as a group; and lastly each person must feel that they are an equal participant in the participatory process and be able to play an active role in all aspects of it, from conception through to evaluation.

An invitation has been opened to all stakeholders within the UN system to contribute to the UN Secretary-General’s annual MDG progress report by “sharing examples of good practice of programmes and policies which address inequalities for the benefit of those living in extreme poverty and promote the active participation of those living in extreme poverty in the design and implementation of such programmes and policies, with the aim of accelerating progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals and informing the discussions on the way forward after 2015,” (as quoted from General Assembly resolution A/RES/66/215). ATD Fourth World intends to share the process by which people were able to become equal agents of knowledge through the action-research on extreme poverty, violence and peace.

NGLS: In June 2012, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Considering the results of the research undertaken by the International Movement ATD Fourth World, what is your main message for those delegates that will be negotiating a more sustainable future in Rio? Which crucial element do they need to take into account as regards extreme poverty, social justice and the right to a healthy environment?

Our key message is that eradicating extreme poverty is a necessary condition to realizing sustainable development. For this to occur, the three dimensions of sustainable development – environmental, economic and social – have to be addressed equally and holistically. What our action-research has shown us is that people in extreme poverty do not compartmentalise the challenges they face. When floods leave them homeless, they often lose not only the roof over their heads but their livelihood and sources of income. The shocks they experience are proof of the indivisibility and interrelated nature of human rights. Outcomes, therefore, from the Conference should be based on internationally agreed human rights principles and standards. A rights-based approach ensures that specific attention is given to the poorest and most vulnerable people who have been historically, and remain at present, most affected by both environmental degradation, and social and economic exclusion.

Participation underlies a human rights based approach, ensuring that all sectors of society, including people living in extreme poverty, are able to participate in the conception, implementation and assessment of sustainable development policies and programmes. This requires relevant decision-making bodies at all levels to establish specific mechanisms and institutional arrangements through which persons living in extreme poverty can effectively and meaningfully participate in all stages of decision-making processes.

Finally, a sustainable development framework must build on local knowledge and capacities. In this it is vital that the process to devise Sustainable Development Goals, as proposed in the zero draft outcome document, is informed by the knowledge and expertise of those directly concerned by the challenges of sustainable development. This can only come about if the process is participatory, inclusive and transparent, and includes a formalised and meaningful framework for civil society engagement.

[1] Contribution of Donald Lee, UNESCO House, Paris, France, 26th January 2012

[2] Contribution of Moraene Roberts, ibid.

[3] Contribution of Deirdre Mauss, workshop, Pierrelaye, France, 25th January 2012.