Alberta, November-December 2007
16
ALTERNATIVA Latinoamericana
ENGLISH SECTION
EDITORIAL:
By Nora Fernández, RSW
Human Rights, Structural Violence,
Poverty and Health
"T
he neoliberal era," says Paul Farmer in
Pathologies of Power, Health, Human Rights
and the New War on the Poor, "has been a time
of looking away, a time of averting our gaze
from the causes and effects of structural
violence". His book focuses mainly on the
oppression people from the Third World face
daily -in Haiti, Guantanamo, Chiapas and in
Russia's prisons, but he draws also on his
experience while working as a doctor with the
poor in the United States.
As social workers we know, that contrary
to proclamations made by gurus of
neoliberalism, this ideology and economic
system has contributed to lower standards of
living for people everywhere in the world, at the
time that it benefits the small powerful
minorities of the very rich. The gap between
haves and have-not has expanded, while most
vulnerable people everywhere are made
invisible in the media by focusing on people
with high incomes and their life styles.
Consumerism and high levels of indebtness are
constantly encouraged while those who can not
achieve minimal standars of living -appropriate
nutrition and housing, access to clean water
and to medicine, are patently ignored
everywhere. Thus, although we may have a
sense that "things are not as they are shown,"
or as television portrays them, our perception
of reality is still quite unrealistic.
In Canada 1.7 million people need to rely
on welfare, nearly half of them are children.
The average low income family is living deep in
poverty and would need an additional $10,400/
year to bring them up to the poverty line. Child
poverty rates are high among vulnerable social
groups about 52% of low income children live
in single-mom families.
In Canada, child poverty rate varies by
province while Quebec is the only province
where these rates have been consistently
declining since 1997 although there are still at a
high 15.6%. In Alberta, our richest province, child
poverty is 14-15%. In British Columbia child
poverty rate is 23.5%; in Saskatchewan is 20.1%;
in Manitoba is 19.2%; in Ontario is 17.4%; in New
Brunswick is 16.5%; in Nova Scotia is 18.1%, in
Prince Edward Island is 10.8%, in Newfoundland
and Labrador is 23.1%. Among aboriginal
children the poverty rate is 40% while among
immigrant children is 40.4%, and it is even higher
among those immigrant who had immigrated in
1996-2001 period which have a child poverty rate
of 49%, according to the 2006 Report Card on
Child and Family Poverty in Canada.
Also in Canada, the researcher Armine
Yalnizyan, in "The Rich and the Rest of us,"
discusses the growing income gap that exists
between 90% of canadian families and the
families that occupy the 10% at the top of the
income scale. "Canadian families are
experiencing greater inequality and polarization
of incomes compared to families raising children
a generation ago," she says. The report notes
that over the past two decades "a social
experiment," by which governments have actively
pursued policies that support market dynamics
while willingly decreasing their role as a "buffer,"
is showing its effects. Yalnizyan argues that the
data underscore the critical importance of the
"buffer" role of government in ensuring the well-
being of all Canadian families.
Poverty is an issue, even if not one
benefiting from much popularity in our
government agenda. In the US, Michael Sandel -
a professor of government at Harvard, talks
about the "historical puzzle" we need to figure
out, that is, today's accumulation of enormous
wealth -unparalleled since the last Gilded Age of
a century ago, existing without the wave of
progressive reform and public investment -- in
parks, libraries, schools, and municipal projects,
of that age, of previous times. "Today's gilded
age", in contrast to the past, "hasn't generated
any comparable resolve to ease the effects of
inequality by strengthening public institutions."
If poverty is an issue in First World
countries, such as Canada and the United
States, it is a far more pressing problem in Third
World Countries. In that light it seems rational,
and relevant, to consider Cuba's proposal in
redefining human rights, to include not only
political rights but also economic and social rights
for people, in our everyday understanding of
human rights.
For more than 50 years, social and
economic rights have been included in the UN
Charter, some of them are already being
implemented in many countries. But, in particular,
the right to "a standard of living adequate for
food, shelter, clothing, medical care, and social
services" seems to be an issue even today, when
even in Canada close to two million people
receiving social assistance, need to make due
with benefits well below what these families need
to meet their necesities; thus, they live well below
the poverty line.
Last March, in The Economist it was argued
against the inclusion of social and economic
rights -"Stand up for your rights. The old stuffy
ones, that is: newer ones are distractions." The
article I am discussing was written in response to
the public stand Amnesty International took in
favour of including economic and social rights as
well as political rights in their agenda. The article
argued that such an approach would "dilute" the
work of Amnesty and could risk its broad base of
support because of its new selected broader
focus. It also argued that as food, jobs and
housing are necessities of life, it serves no
purpose to call them rights as it would be
confusing, could cost to taxpayers, and, because
as these necessities are connected to political
questions they would be best settled in the ballot.
Interestingly enough, politicians are not
including these issues in their discourse and, if
they do, they soon forget them once they are in
power. Thus, if discussing the issue of
"necessities of life" and poverty is not taking
place in the political arena maybe we should be
best served by including them in the field of
human rights and human rights violations and we
deal with poverty with tools similar to the ones we
use in dealing with discrimination. It may or may
not take us farther but it is worse giving it a try.
The neo-liberal/neo-conservative agenda that
continues to dominate the political arena, and
that has contributed greatly to the increase of
poverty and polarization, it also frames issues
in terms of "markets" and "consumers" rather
than in terms of "citizens" and "rights," leaving
us, citizens, almost out of the political debate.
Then, bringing citizens and rights back into the
debate, through the door of "human rights"
may be an alternative worse trying. Maybe
then, those in power will not so comfortably say
that this and that country fails to respect the
political rights of its citizens merely because
they do not hold elections every four or five
years as we do, without also having to confront
the reality of their high levels of poverty and
inequality and their own trampling on human
rights.
I believe it may not be such a bad idea
given the reaction of the dominant press, so
concerned with Amnesty's decision. If the
dominant press is against the idea, and
representing as they do they interest of power,
it may indeed not be a very bad idea and we
should consider this approach more seriously.
Let's politicize human rights by actively
pursuing economic and social rights
everywhere and at all times. Let's stop the
attempts of the rich and powerful to depoliticize
human rights -let's stop them from trampling on
human rights starving women and children,
privitizing health, education, pension plans.
As Paul Farmer writes, "whatever term we
use to describe our times, we cannot avoid
looking at power and connections if we hope to
understand, and thus prevent, human rights
abuses;" thus, "when we look at and listen to
those whose rights are being trampled, we see
how political rights are intertwined with social
and economic rights, or, rather, how the
absence of social and economic power empties
political rights of their substance."
Hiding the suffering caused by poverty, he
says, the denial of economic and social rights of
people and the persistence of such suffering is
rooted in structural violence and concerns all of
us. We no longer can ignore the plea of people
affected by poverty and structural violence at
home;and, neither can we ignore it elsewhere. In
Farmer's view talking about victims of "structural
violence" is appropriate. It is apt, he says,
because "such suffering is `structured' by
historically given (and often economically driven)
processes and forces that conspire-whether
through routine, ritual, or as is more commonly
the case, the hard surfaces of life- to constrain
agency." For many, he adds, choices, both large
and small, are limited by racism, sexism, political
violence, and grinding poverty
Being a doctor, Farmer focus on much of his
book is on medicine; he argues for medicine that
"opts for the poor" as the only ethical choice. In
Canada when powerful interests continue to push
towards privatization of health, Farmer's
argument is powerful against such a trend.
Medicine, he says, is a service much more than a
science, and, many caregivers are finding
themselves "selling" their "wares and services
only to those who can afford them", rather than
to those who need them the most. Thus, by
allowing "market forces" to define "the outlines of
modern medicine," he adds, these trends will
continue: "we are forced to conclude that even
the practice of medicine can constitute a human
rights abuse." "There is a market ethos and
growing social inequality, having direct effects on
the practice of medicine and these effects, he
says, cannot be ignored."
In Canada, Farmer's voice is also prophetic:
he argues in favour of health as human right
while our public health care system faces the
challenge raised by powerful interest groups
focused on making private profits from personal
suffering. Primer Minister Harper was at one point
president of an organization favouring the
privatization of our health care system -the
National Citizen Coalition, founded by Colin M.
Brown the insurance millionaire. Thus, Canada's
public health system is not safe yet from the
reach of privitizing powers.