# Redefining Human Rights-Based Development : The Wresinski Approach to Partnership With the Poorest/Part II

Source: UN Document ESA/DSPD/BP3 December 1999 Division for Social Policy and Development Department of Economic and Social Affairs UNITED NATIONS, NEW YORK

## Contents

* Introduction
* Part I - PARTNERSHIP WITH THE POOREST -TOWARDS A CULTURE FOR OVERCOMING POVERTY
* Part II - REDEFINING WORK AND HUMAN ACTIVITY TO ENHANCE SOCIAL INTEGRATION
* Part III - FURTHER INITIATIVES THE WRESINSKI APPROACH – REDEFINING HUMAN DEVELOPMENT and Appendix

#### PART TWO: REDEFINING WORK AND HUMAN ACTIVITY TO ENHANCE SOCIAL INTEGRATION

At the Copenhagen Summit, the Governments affirmed that their commitments to eradicate poverty and to promote full employment and social integration are interrelated and essential for achieving a social development contributed to by all and benefiting all. Fulfilling the Copenhagen commitments requires, at all levels, the involvement and the active partnership of all parties concerned. A key determinant of this fulfilment is the partnership to be built, in a reciprocal process, between the poorest and all other members of the societies in which they live.
But partnership for what purpose? Those living in extreme poverty show how they are prevented from assuming their responsibilities, "exercising their rights and utilising their resources." Lack of decent housing can lead to poor health, which in turn prevents people from staying in a job; illiteracy and lack of access to culture act as barriers to vocational training and participation in the community; being unemployed lessens the chances of gaining access to decent housing.
The condemnation of the poorest to this cycle raises the fundamental question: What environment will enable them to enjoy basic security and, at the same time, attain economic autonomy and fully participate in their community and in society? This question is echoed in Commitment 3 of the Copenhagen Summit.
    "We commit ourselves to promoting the goal of full employment as a basic priority of our economic and social policies, and to enabling all men and women to attain secure and sustainable livelihoods through freely chosen, productive employment and work."
However, the promotion of full employment also requires a multi-faceted strategy. Issues such as employment, job creation and training cannot be addressed independently of all other aspects of human development. Work and training should encompass education, access to cultural and creative activities, family life, one’s place in society and community life, spiritual life, and meaningful participation in public and political life.
Part Two of this paper is based on the interdependence of the right to economic participation and the right to social and cultural participation. In this part, we will propose a redefinition of human rights-based development so as to enhance social integration. Rethinking human development in this perspective implies taking on a three-fold challenge:
To strive for access to decent work for all in the labour market so that each person can contribute meaningfully to the labour force in conditions of dignity;
* To create opportunities for everyone to be creative and useful in periods when they are not in the labour market;
* To promote a harmonious distribution in everyone’s life between time spent inside and outside the labour market.
The first section of this part will address the right of the poorest people to freely chosen productive work and employment. The second part will bring to the fore various experiences of social and cultural development that involve very poor people in fields of human activity other than productive employment. The third part will elaborate ways to attain, in the course of a lifetime, a harmonious distribution of time between all the fields of work and other activities, with a view to enhancing social integration and fostering vibrant societal participation.

### The right of the poorest to freely chosen productive work and employment

For the poorest to be able to choose productive work freely, society faces the challenge of making a profound change in economic life and the employment environment. This change should address all sectors of work, remunerated formal jobs and informal work alike, as well as what the Programme of Action called "other forms of atypical employment." As a basis for action toward full employment, the Programme of Action of the Copenhagen Summit Declaration stressed that "productive work and employment are central elements of development as well as decisive elements of human identity." It also affirmed that "adequately and appropriately remunerated employment is an effective method of combating poverty and promoting social integration."

#### a. The quest of the poorest for economic autonomy and personal and social identity

The right to work is a profound aspiration of those who are excluded from employment. As the poorest constantly express it, work not only makes it possible to secure resources but also to obtain recognition of one’s dignity, particularly in the eyes of one’s children. What is commonly called the informal labour market is based largely on the fierce desire of the poorest to work at all costs. They accept any job or themselves create opportunities in order to survive. Those who may have other means of survival, in countries with a social safety net for example, will also accept degrading and dangerous work in order to break out of their isolation and anxiety.
Young men in Senegal exhaust themselves in street vending with no assurance that they will earn any profit. They do not give up – seeking to be a guard for a village festival one day, or helping to paint a municipal fence another day. They say, "We seize any opportunity to work, and still we are seen as idle and lazy." In Peru, a man walked kilometres only to find a temporary job so far away that he could not return home for two weeks because his daily earnings did not suffice for even one bus ride. "I put all my time and energy in that job, and still I cannot afford even my children’s school supplies. That is the most unbearable thing for me." Fathers endure very hard work for a pittance, or accept being paid in kind, in order to bring home something for the family. Mothers look everywhere for some way to feed their children. Those efforts carry a meaning, a human value, that no welfare benefit would be able to convey.
The poorest people’s search for work by the poorest brings home the fact that, all over the world, they share a common thought and hope – they want to be considered as workers. This is what a man in Belgium said when he was enlisted in a training scheme after several years of unemployment:
    "When you are unemployed for a long time, it’s hard to get back to work. Being jobless gets on your nerves. When I have a job, I am better at home. There are also other responsibilities – a family to bring up, children who want to see their father working and are interested in what their father does. It’s important. Children give us an incentive; when we work, we are doing it for them. At school, when my son is asked what his father does for a living, he can say his father has a job. Sometimes we are workers who have no job; we want to be viewed as workers, even if we are unemployed."
From the standpoint of the poorest, freely chosen productive employment and work remain essential in providing means for economic autonomy and personal and social identity. How has their quest been supported?

#### b. Current responses to unemployment and their impact on the poorest

Policies aimed at tackling unemployment have traditionally followed two approaches. The first approach deals with unemployment as a social problem. The second approach looks for economic solutions.
* Social welfare
Income redistribution through social welfare policies or social safety nets continues to be considered the typical way of attempting to establish social justice in a market economy. Increasing pressure is put on welfare benefits, however, both by the need to reduce public expenditure, and by the realisation that financial assistance is often not enough to enable people to contribute to the economy. Moreover, coercion and control associated with distribution of benefits have reached an alarming level, making it impossible for recipients to be both independent and useful to those around them. For instance, in some European countries, a public phone line was opened so that anyone can call anonymously to accuse people suspected of cheating on unemployment benefits, thus denying the poor the right to confront their accusers. "Social controller staff" is hired to track benefit earners (See box.) Social assistance designed to assist those most in need is at risk of turning into a tool to impose "forced inactivity" on unemployed workers.
* Workers with no job… and no rights
* An unemployed man in a European country was summoned by the "social inspectors." They had photographed him carrying wooden planks bought at a "do-it-yourself" shop. He said he was repairing something at his mother’s home where he resided. The controllers suspected him of making furniture at home and carrying it out at night for sale. His unemployment benefits were suspended for 13 weeks.
* Source: Revue Quart Monde, Dossiers & Documents, No 8, Paris 1998. (Excerpt translated from French)
* Welfare-to-work programmes and various «integration schemes»
In many industrialised countries, the current thought is that all medically fit people must do some work in compensation for any welfare benefits they get. There is a positive aspect in the intention to avoid dependence and the conviction that the poor have something to contribute. The pitfall of these "workfare" programs, however, is that the jobs assigned as a condition of receiving any social benefits rarely lead to permanent employment. Furthermore, when people in workfare programs are working side-by-side with regular employees, doing the same work, they usually do not receive the same pay, and they are often treated in a manner so demeaning that it undermines any hope of integrating them into the workplace. In other cases, beneficiaries are trapped because the little income resulting from workfare programmes is deducted from the benefits they usually receive.
People’s organisations and civic groups rightly denounce these coercive measures because they impinge on dignity and individual freedom. Nevertheless, many of the poorest adults do not rush to criticise them. For once, they are being offered ways to participate, and they are hopeful that they may not always be viewed as being on the receiving end. This attitude of dignity is worth noting; it shows that the poorest expect to be involved and useful.
The present situation of the labour market is also characterised by a separate, secondary employment sector totally segregated from mainstream employment. People are recruited for short periods, and often put in stop-gap, dead-end activities. Their wages are below the standard minimum salary and they are not entitled to a regular worker status. Participation in some form of productive employment without enjoying a level of subsistence and protection according to standards within society is typically the situation of the "working poor" in the United States and of workers hired under "integration schemes" designed for the unemployed in some European countries.
One of the most unbearable injustices in all the above mechanisms is that, in return for social welfare, human beings are tossed between busy work – sometimes as meaningless as moving piles of rocks back and forth from one side of a park to another – and periods of forced inactivity.
* Economic solidarity
Economic solidarity comprises not-for-profit enterprises set up to offer employment and work experience to the most marginalised people. They account partly for the creation of new jobs. They are run as conventional businesses, selling their products and services on the regular market. Those most likely to succeed involve partnership with local public authorities, as well as trade unions, associations and, increasingly, other private-sector enterprises.
Nevertheless, owing to their primary focus on employment for disadvantaged individuals and groups, few of these initiatives have reached total financial self-reliance and can face the competitiveness of the market. In many countries, legislative and regulatory support are required to grant these enterprises of economic solidarity a specific status and a suitable level of subsidies to achieve their aim. Workers in this sector should be given full worker status, with the associated adequate social protection and income.
* Training
Training plays a key role in employment policies. However, most policies regarding training have not substantially reduced unemployment. There is much room for improvement, especially concerning those people living in chronic poverty who experience long-term unemployment.
First, training offered to these unemployed workers rarely allows acquisition of real professional qualifications. For example, the short duration of the training schemes implemented over the last ten years in many countries of western Europe is a severe limitation. These programs do not take due account of the obstacles the most excluded workers face. Because many excluded workers have previously failed at school, they are reluctant to study mandatory courses that they have not chosen. Thus, they adapt with difficulty to the requirements of the workplace. Training schemes of longer periods have yielded better results. They allow time for remedial education, for strengthening the confidence of trainees, and for building on trainees’ specific learning abilities.
Second, most of these training schemes, although originally intended for the most vulnerable members of society, have in fact benefited more skilled workers because of the highly selective recruitment procedures.
Third, they do not necessarily lead to job opportunities, owing to the situation of the labour market. In this regard, recent world-wide analysis of employment noted the worrisome situation of "growth without jobs".
Innovative training methods well tailored to the needs and learning abilities of the most excluded are being launched, but these experiences are not widely enough known.
Whatever the economic situation, the enabling environment integrating underprivileged workers into employment depends on two factors. First, this integration is more likely to succeed if it is based on the conviction that all persons, whatever their qualifications, can be employable if they are trusted and supported in developing their own abilities. Second, broad-based mobilisation and strong will of all participants in the process are essential. These two points are demonstrated in the experience of Tefal, Inc., profiled below.
* The business sector and social integration
* Tefal, Inc., is a world leader in non-stick kitchenware exported to more than one hundred countries in the world. During the time span of this training program, 1989-1994, it employed 1,350 people in France. Through the program, it hired fourteen people previously considered unemployable. How did this come about and who were the people behind this experience?
* The Chief Executive Officer, who had been managing the company for twenty years, had started at 16 as an apprentice mechanic in the firm and had gone through various posts. He sums up his philosophy: "It’s the workers who are essential, not the management. The workers determine the quality of the company." The company had long supported job integration for the most excluded people through appropriate training. However, in the late 1980s, accelerated technical changes owing to fierce competition threatened to lead to downsizing part of the staff, mainly the low-skilled and particularly the illiterate.
* This prospect outraged a technician, who refused to accept that technological innovation be equated with "survival of the fittest." He got the support of a union representative and of management to start a literacy programme to train those workers most in need. The foremen, despite reluctance in the beginning for fear of disruption to the work schedules, gradually admitted that it helped workers adapt to new machines and procedures and improved morale overall.
* Following this impetus, the company agreed to take on 20 long-term unemployed workers referred by non-profit organisations. This represented about one percent of the total workforce. An initial training scheme was organised. The manager assessed the success rate of the 70% eventually hired: " A great part of the staff is proud of this programme. It has helped us to keep the human touch, and company morale has benefited…. The loss of production caused by these new workers in the beginning was made up for by their colleagues. The most important thing is to offer personal support to the people we are trying to integrate, both in and out of the workplace. If this is missing, we are wasting our time."
* The originality of this training programme lay in the refusal to prejudge the "employability" of the most deprived workers and in allowing them to prove themselves in work situations. It was also important to convince other staff members to adhere to the spirit of the programme and support the adaptation process of the new workers. Also, conventional wisdom claims that highly competitive sectors cannot afford the risk of lower productivity by employing unskilled staff. The experience of Tefal, Inc., shows that there is no proven economic basis to this assumption. Any fiscally sound company has a margin of freedom in which to promote social integration, provided that management and the workforce agree to cooperate. It is this consensus that is usually lacking, not the economic justification.
* Source: Xavier Godinot, Institute of Research on Human Relationships, Pierrelaye, France.
* Development of the informal economic sector
In developing countries, the majority of the poorest people earn their living by conducting various activities in the informal sector. Salaried work represents only about ten percent of the total labour force. Informal work is also very present in economies in transition, and even in certain industrialised countries, it remains an important resource for the survival of some of the worst off.
Unemployment, underemployment and inadequate employment are situations common to low-skilled workers of the informal sector. The latest World Employment Report noted that the mechanisms preventing acquisition of appropriate qualifications are often rooted in the deprived environments and inadequate living conditions of the poor.
    "For the low-skilled workers, [among] the factors that make it very difficult to move into better employment (…) is the poor access to training opportunities (...). The poor evaluation results [of training programmes] highlight the fact that the skills constraint is only one of the problems facing vulnerable groups of workers and that training as a single-intervention approach is likely to be insufficient to overcome exclusion."
* Sharing work locally
* Two years ago, Huadan was elected head of his village, located in the high mountains of a Southeast Asian country. Huadan, a humble and quiet man, has studied little, but his villagers recognise him for his generosity and wisdom. Not only is he concerned about the maintenance of the mountain roads around his village for which he is in charge; he is also particularly caring toward the men in his village who feel more and more uprooted from their ancient customs and values, or who feel inferior compared with those living in the plain who have succeeded in their integration.
* Huadan is also very concerned about youngsters who have left school too early, sometimes because they felt obliged to help their families. In other cases, because of great difficulties at home, they could not find the peace and stability or the determination to concentrate on their studies.
* Huadan knows well those discouraged men and those uprooted young people who hang out. As inactivity gnaws at their dignity, he suffers with them. Therefore, when it comes to maintaining mountain roads, he rarely calls upon professionals. The head of the village prefers to take on the job himself in order to give work to the men of his village who have difficulty finding jobs and to the youngsters who have left school. A lot of patience is needed in order to train and work with unskilled workers. Sometimes the village council pressures Huadan when the work advances too slowly. But he persists. Today, several of the young people trained by him have already succeeded in finding a well-paid job in the plain.
* Source: ATD Fourth World
* Micro-finance programmes
Micro-finance programs providing small loans to poor individuals have the capacity in some cases and some regions to create new business opportunities in the informal sector. They do not, however, "constitute an alternative to the mainstream growth processes, but recognise the existence of a potential for initiating a relatively independent growth process from the activities of the poor."
There is growing awareness that microcredit initiatives, despite the real opportunities they offer, are often ill-adapted to the needs and possibilities of the very poor. In research conducted in Bangladesh for the World Health Organisation, the authors note that "the vulnerability in raising crisis-coping money is much greater in the case of the poorest than for [moderate and non-poor] groups, the former being cut off from the option of soft credit mobilisation and deprived of the advantage of possessing some tangible assets." Microcredit does not by itself respond to the needs and possibilities of the poorest – they cannot afford the risk of being indebted, or they cannot repay the loans because of unforeseen circumstances and emergencies.
If microcredit alone is not a sufficient solution, this is not to say that it does not offer real opportunities for people in vulnerable situations. In fact, some micro-finance institutions are linked to capacity-building and literacy training; others offer retail outlet facilities for the products of their clients. Nevertheless, if micro-finance is to be more fully instrumental in poverty alleviation, it should be associated with appropriate mechanisms to provide the basic social services, especially education and health care, that are needed to improve the quality of life of the poorest families and communities.
The UNDP Poverty Report 1998 states that "despite its undoubted successes, microfinance is not a magic wand for poverty reduction. The poor have long been used to taking out small loans for consumption – to tide them over a drop in income, or until a crop has been harvested (...). Supplying credit for emergencies offers some security, but it is more difficult for microcredit schemes to help poor people start significant new income-generating activities."
The International Year for Microcredit scheduled for 2005 will constitute an important step for reviewing and refining microfinance initiatives based on experience.

#### c.A different perspective on human development that starts with the poorest

Because employment should enable everybody to become truly equal, independent, creative, and useful to others, it is important to strive for universal access to the labour market, so that each person can contribute meaningfully to the labour force in conditions of dignity.
It is heartening to note that the International Labour Office has reaffirmed that its primary goal "in this period of global transition is securing decent work for women and men everywhere. (...) [It] is not just the creation of jobs, but the creation of jobs of acceptable quality. The quantity of employment cannot be divorced from its quality. (...) Decent work means productive work in which rights are protected, which generates an adequate income, with adequate social protection. It also means sufficient work in the sense that all should have full access to income-earning opportunities"
Meanwhile, from the standpoint of people living in extreme poverty, ensuring respect for the right to work must be accompanied by promoting the realisation of their rights to social and cultural participation. At present, both "forced activity" and "forced inactivity" experienced by the poorest place them in a vicious circle. Lack of social and cultural participation prevents them from seizing opportunities for decent work and capacity building. Inversely, chronic unemployment reduces their resources and hampers their possibilities of participating in social and cultural life. This constitutes a waste of human resources and a hindrance to social integration.
One of the lessons learned from the poorest is that every human being strives to be useful to his or her family and community. This sheds new light on the following question: How can each person be given opportunities, throughout his or her life, to make use of times for training and for creative and useful work in all the fields in which humankind must progress?

### The right for everyone to be creative and useful

In various forms, grassroots groups, NGOs and other organisations in civil society have long initiated opportunities for very poor individuals and families to meet people from other backgrounds and try their hand together at creative activities. Contrary to projects setting up services specifically for the very poor and thus maintaining them on the fringes of society, these initiatives bring to the fore the desire of the very poor to contribute to society.
Evidence of this social and political participation is found in the way that the poorest and their organisations have mobilised around the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, October 17, an officially recognised United Nations day. In many places throughout the world, they symbolically choose the 17th of every month to organize their gatherings. These are opportunities for people of diverse backgrounds to come together, meet, build friendship across social barriers, and renew a common commitment to overcoming poverty and social exclusion. On these occasions, messages of encouragement are written to similar groups – their "friends around the world" – and exchanged via the Internet. The following is an excerpt of a letter written on one such occasion by very poor parents from a rural community in Côte d’Ivoire to very poor adults in Senegal.
    "It is thanks to our children, who attend the Street Libraries, that we are now meeting on the 17th of every month. At these meetings, together with the Street Library facilitators, we read testimonies, share our comments and reflections, and think of people we are in touch with. These gatherings make us move forward, they stimulate our ideas for getting out of poverty. (...)
    For instance, the women of our group have discussed and decided to start a livelihood project to make soap. Thanks to a loan obtained through a group of friends, we have started learning how to make soap. We later had another training session on accounting, co-operative management. (...) We, who did not know each other before, are now united in solidarity, for the benefit of all."
In this example, very poor people are reaching out to develop solidarity from one country to another. In their own way, they are putting into practice the new concept of a global citizenship that focuses on the rights and responsibilities of citizens living in a global society.

#### a. Creative social and political action

To foster exchanges between very poor people and people from other backgrounds, with the goal of learning from one another, a number of projects have been carried out by ATD Fourth World. The Fourth World Open University programme is one such project. In these sessions, carried out in many countries, participants share their life experiences and develop common analyses of social situations. For people who have rarely, if ever, been told that their opinion matters to anyone, this programme includes opportunities to practice expressing their thoughts publicly. It also offers opportunities for them to dialogue with those who influence major local, national and international political issues.
One contribution made by the Fourth World Open University programme was its active participation in the process leading to the Law Against Social Exclusion, adopted in July 1998 in France. (See box.) The most important lesson from this experience was that the poorest showed that they are eager and able to take part in policy-making as partners in their own right. To ensure that the law is fully and successfully implemented however, the practice of involving people in policy-making must continue even more strongly.
* Partnership with the poorest in crafting a law
* In July 1998, the national Law Against Social Exclusion was adopted by France. It was the outcome of eleven years of campaigning and policy-crafting during which people living in poverty, backed by their organisations, played a central part at every step. The process began in 1987 with the French Economic and Social Council’s adoption of the report Chronic Poverty and Lack of Basic Security, which advocated a comprehensive national poverty eradication strategy. It immediately inspired several anti-poverty measures, although the government did not at that time adopt a comprehensive approach to radically tackle the root causes of poverty through a framework law.
* In 1992, a far-reaching evaluation of all public policies designed to combat poverty was conducted, comprising for the first time direct opinions of people in situations of extreme poverty collected where they live (in shelters, welfare hotels, trailer camps, etc.). During the same period, thirty non-profit organisations united their voices and campaigned for a national pact against exclusion. Subsequently, a draft bill was proposed in 1996. Although people living in poverty were not formally consulted, they made a point of taking part in the process indirectly. For instance, young people met in their Clubs of Knowledge and Solidarity to scrutinise the bill concerning the military draft. They reacted to many provisions of this bill regarding education, vocational training and job opportunities.
* Members of the Fourth World Open University in France also gathered regularly for this purpose, They were eager to be heard and understood because "in the end, all we are asking is decent housing fit for human beings, and that we not be rehoused in a slum, like dogs or rats." They also recalled that all rights complement each other. Whether it is a matter of housing, employment or health, the absence of one of these rights can upset the security of a family. For them, a comprehensive policy is one which takes their plans into account and "which leads somewhere," rather than being limited to training without job opportunities, without housing, without inclusion in society.
* Those concerns and comments were passed on to local and national governmental bodies. Some of the people’s views were subsequently reflected in the adopted law. It is worth highlighting one provision – it pertains to training of social workers, teachers, police officers and lawyers in the knowledge of very poor individuals and families and in building partnership with them. The law also sets up a monitoring body to gather information concerning the implementation of the law and provides for a regular assessment of progress in which "those in a precarious situation, and grassroots stakeholders" are involved.
* Throughout this process, the poorest warned time and again against drafting specific provisions limited to so-called "high-risk categories" of the population. Instead, they expected the law to guarantee the rights of everyone without exception. This fundamental requirement was reflected in the wording of Article 1 of the law: "The struggle against exclusion is a national necessity based on respect for the equal dignity of all human beings and a national priority for all the country’s policies. The present law seeks to guarantee the access of all to fundamental rights in the areas of employment, housing, health protection, justice, education, training, culture, family and child protection."
* Initially, members of parliament and local elected bodies assumed that the poorest wanted their individual issues resolved. As the process progressed, it was recognised that the very poor were speaking on behalf, not of themselves, but of others in similar situations. That is the most important aspect of this experience.
* Source: Fourth World Journal, United Kingdom, Summer 1999, London.

#### b. Art and cultural activities

Long-term unemployed workers are cut off from working relationships, just as people overwhelmed by a hand-to-mouth livelihood are prevented from enjoying harmonious social relations. Whereas poverty means isolation and exclusion, artistic and cultural activities can instigate relationships among people who are otherwise cut off from one another.
A theatre project in rural India described here is one of these initiatives that create enabling conditions where one can meet the disenfranchised outside the context of their everyday problems, as they share from their innermost selves. In Tamil Nadu, widespread unemployment and rampant emigration to cities affected the poorest agricultural labourers – especially among the Dalits, an outcast population – aggravated by occasional outbursts of violence between the castes and the untouchables. Three young Dalit women took it upon themselves to form a theatre group with members of the community. They put on a play expressing their real-life situation as untouchables. Enacting before the whole community the story of the life of the excluded introduced the latter into the collective memory. This experience shed a new light on each person’s identity and status and provoked a rethinking of social norms. Now a growing number of Dalit women, who traditionally do not have access even to school, have asked to join the theatre group.
The importance of access to cultural enrichment for overcoming poverty has been inscribed from the outset in the approach of the International Movement ATD Fourth World. Its founder, Joseph Wresinski, recalled that, during the hunger and destitution of his own childhood, his mother received a musical instrument.
    «My mother had her heart set on keeping it. Maybe one of her children would like music and that would help get one off to a good start. Then came the day when people began to say, ’If these folks have an instrument, then they have money, and it’s not worth the trouble to give them any assistance.’ That was how my mother was forced to sell it for an absurdly low price. In exchange for help, she had to sell hope. The instrument had enabled her to cherish an illusion about my sister’s future. It was a way to love her children and to show them her love that people were tearing away from her in the name of helping the poor. Deep poverty separates people from things that are vital to them because they provide their hands, their eyes, their tongues, and their hearts with habits – habits that open them up to a culture of the hands, the heart and the mind, and that enable them to build relations with others. Such constant, intense deprivation prevents people in the long run from thinking like everyone else. Even their spiritual life is affected by it.»
In 1956, upon moving to the emergency camp of Noisy-le-Grand where 250 homeless families were sheltered, Fr. Wresinski’s first projects promoted access to culture. He opened a library, a pre-school and a women’s community centre, as well as sports clubs and dance classes for the young people. Precisely because these families’ horizons were confined to nothing but overcrowded shelters, ugly huts and muddy roads, Joseph Wresinski was determined to offer them access to the best artistic achievements of their time. He invited well-known artists (Picasso, Miro, Jean Bazaine, Jacques Brel and many others) to share their art with these families. Later, he found the importance of culture in fighting poverty confirmed in the experience of the pianist Miguel Angel Estrella, who grew up impoverished in South America, and who devotes his career today to bringing great music into prisons and other places where people are cut off from culture.
As ATD Fourth World began working in other countries, both industrialised and developing, most of its projects were based on creating forums where educated people and those with less access to education could engage in creative work together, learning from one another.
Not everyone in the world has the talent to become a great artist; far from it. But the possibility to create is a right of each and every person. Deep poverty too often excludes people from any hope of unleashing their own creativity. Making sure that the very poor have the means to express themselves creatively opens the path to undiscovered treasures of potential that can greatly enrich all humankind.
Furthermore, in the experience of ATD Fourth World, very often it is art that acts as a safeguard to prevent partnership from sliding toward paternalism. When the very poor have the possibility of expressing both the depths of their suffering and the hopes embedded in their imagination, their relationship to people of other backgrounds changes. The age-old barriers between milieus can begin to blur.
This initial thrust by Joseph Wresinski – to give art and creativity full-fledged status among more traditional forms of anti-poverty actions – continues to find resonance today in many parts of the world where people share this ambitious vision for building bridges from one person to another. For example, in Cuzco, Peru, ATD Fourth World has in recent years invited artists, both renowned and less known, to join poor families in contributing works of art and mounting an exhibition of oil paintings on the theme of extreme poverty. This initiative involved local public authorities, funding institutions, the artistic community in Cuzco and beyond, and the international community (embassies and international organisations). The date for presenting this exhibition was chosen to coincide with the observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (17 October). The message was conveyed to all visitors that every human being thrives by expressing his or her artistic sensitivity and by vibrating to other human beings’ artistic sensitivity. A similar initiative was developed by ATD Fourth World in La Paz, Bolivia. The people running these two initiatives decided to reinforce each other in order to expand. This led, in 1999, to a first-class artistic event, today sponsored in this sub-region by Unesco.
At a symposium on «Culture and Poverty» in 1985, Joseph Wresinski insisted on the link between culture and human relations: "Any cultural action in deprived areas should lead to a sense of unity among the families of the neighbourhood and the community and various neighbourhoods. It should strengthen the rejection of poverty. […] All cultural action should give people the resources to bring their convictions forward and opportunities for making them credible to a wider social environment." It is in this respect that cultural projects are a key determinant of human development as people forge links among themselves, share cultural resources, take possession of history and, together with others, build on the past to shape the future.
The role of the arts, and of creativity and culture in the formation of human abilities and in human development is fundamental. Is it fair that the poorest, who are consistently prevented from doing productive work – as a consequence of long-term unemployment – lack opportunity for fulfilment in other fields? Cultural participation is one way out of this injustice, if it is conceived as a process of mutual sharing. A very poor man in Senegal saw it this way: "Culture is realising that the greatest thing in one’s life is knowledge. That is what culture means, especially for the poor. All this is summed up in one of our African proverbs: ’The remedy for humanity is humanity.’ Culture is knowing about one’s past and present; it is the quest to penetrate the future for the good of humankind."
Partnership with the poorest is in itself a culture, an important pathway toward the International Year for the Culture of Peace about to dawn in 2000, and for the efforts that will follow over the decade to come. Are we ready to take on this ambition through a genuine partnership with the poorest, thus transforming their periods of "forced inactivity" into times of human and cultural enrichment, for them personally and for the benefit of the community?
* An unknown actor in social development
* Noé is a 26-year-old Honduran. Although a man of small stature, he is very strong because his childhood and his youth were spent doing very heavy work. He lives with his mother and grandfather. As a child, he was a shoeshine boy in town. Today you can see him gathering wood in the mountains, for his mother to cook tortillas to be sold by his young sisters in the streets, for the neighbours as well. On Saturday mornings he unloads lorries and vegetable barrows in the peasants’ market.
* Sometimes he sits by the roadside with a vacant look, ruminating on his own personal thoughts. In meetings he keeps to himself and remains silent. Because of his long silences, which can last for several days, because of his singing in the streets or his sudden shouts, just for the pleasure of it, some say he is witless. People avoid him.
* Noé spent a few years at school where he learned rudimentary reading and writing. In 1990, when ATD Fourth World volunteers first arrived in Noé’s district in Tegucigalpa, they invited Noé and other young people to help run the Street Library for the children. Later, Noé said this had changed his life. At first, he was afraid that he would frighten the other children, or that he wouldn’t know how to read a book. Nevertheless, he came – just to see – like all the other young people who started at the Street Library. And then a child came and snuggled up to him; so he opened a book and began to read out of curiosity. He then realised that he too could give pleasure to a child. He continued to attend the Street Library.
* When I arrived there, not knowing anyone or anything, not even the language, Noé was a great help to me. He was the only one who came with me to set up a Street Library in a shantytown, outside the district of Rio, on the banks of a river. Later, he told me he had met the children from there at the Saturday market where, like him, they unloaded lorries – work much too heavy for them. I also found out later that Noé needed great courage to come with me because it added to the mockery and jokes the others made about him. In the bus, he wouldn’t sit next to me and in the street he walked ten metres in front of me. When I left Tegucigalpa some years later, Noé insisted that the Street Library should continue in the shantytown. He even went there alone sometimes because he thought that the children there were most in need of it.
* Last year when Hurricane Mitch devastated a large part of Central America, and Honduras in particular, the young people of ATD Fourth World organised themselves. Together with ATD Fourth World volunteers from Guatemala who joined them, they went to meet families in the shelters to tell stories to the children, trying to help them get over the shock of the hurricane. Noé was there, even though he had just spent several days in the south to help an uncle dig out his house, which had been covered with mud. The small shantytown on the riverbank in Rio had disappeared completely from the face of the earth; the families who had lived there were scattered around different shelters. Some families came back quite quickly to their districts and, by leaning a few planks against any walls still standing, had made makeshift shelters. On our first visit there, a mother asked us one thing: to hold a party for the children once the Street Library was in place again.
* A short time before we left, Noé told us that he was going to work as a labourer; a job he had occasionally held between long periods of unemployment. He told me that after several months of this work with pick and shovel, he would "return to the Street Library, to read books with the children, dance and tell stories… because they need this. I too, need this. It is better than loafing around the streets doing nothing."
* Source: François Jomini, ATD Fourth World
Presently, opportunities for involvement in spheres of activities other than the economic field are unequally distributed. To develop and enjoy cultural, social and political participation, one must attain secure and sustainable livelihood. The fact is that exclusion from employment deprive the poorest of the unemployed of the resources and possibilities to participate in the activities of civil society. Similarly the most exploited and underpaid workers, although they may hold a job, hardly have any resources and opportunities for living a satisfying life and for exercising their right to participate in society. Redefining human rights-based development calls for a reorganisation of time spent in and out of productive employment.

### Towards a harmonious distribution of opportunities in all fields of human endeavour

It has become vital to go beyond the predominant economic conception of work, according to which work is equated with employment. As early as the 1980s, Joseph Wresinski envisioned the three-fold challenge of universal access to work and livelihood, of re-valuation of unemployment time and of an equitable distribution of time and activities. His vision had already anticipated the prospect of work in the future, taking into consideration the consequences on the labour force of rapid technological changes. Today, analysts and policy-makers foresee a slowing down of job creation that will not be stemmed by higher economic growth; while the disappearance of traditional trades will not yet be offset by the new highly skilled jobs of the information age.
The ideal is human development. To this end, there is an urgent need to seek a new blend of economic, social and cultural development that would reconcile healthy economies with the right of everyone to contribute to society. This should consequently reconcile economic growth not only with solidarity but also with partnership for all. Therefore, while universal access to work must absolutely be pursued, a cohesive and forward-looking redefinition of human development calls for the promotion of a harmonious distribution in everyone’s life of the times spent inside and outside of productive employment.
This vision of human development is all the more up-to-date as it is echoed by recent findings advocating the right to occupation. «More people everywhere are finding it necessary or desirable to combine several work activities, to move in and out of employment, to indulge in their work-based enthusiasms, and to define themselves in ways not easily captured by statistics.« Redefining human development therefore implies seeking a balanced distribution between time spent at work and time invested in different fields of one’s life – personal and family life; educational, cultural and creative activity; working life, comprising formal or informal work; social activity; community life; and spiritual life.
How can the culturally privileged be induced to make a move towards the very poor who are on the fringes of any right to cultural assets? How can those who are busy with both economic and socio-cultural activities be enabled to make free time in either of these fields in order to involve in them those who are excluded? In today’s working life, possibilities of sabbatical time, of leaves of absence devoted to freely chosen retraining, or to voluntary work, have become more and more familiar and practised. They claim and obtain, quite rightly, time that is not for more advanced training strictly in their own field of work but for a significant broadening of their more general cultural education. How can these times for cultural enrichment be geared towards social development?
Meanwhile, the numerous workers who actually do not have access to freely chosen productive work and employment are also entitled to cultural enrichment. Depriving this part of our population from contributing to and enjoying all aspects of society’s wealth impoverishes the whole of humankind. The poorest are quick to contribute to the well-being of others; but are we ready to welcome their contribution? (See box.)
* Is this how a caring society for all ages is promoted?
* Every Friday, Marie went to visit Pierre, an elderly man whose right arm is handicapped. She helped him do his housework, and cleaned the windows and the sidewalk. This act of caring, which deserves recognition, was instead penalised, because Marie was on the dole.
* An ill-disposed neighbour gave word to the National Employment Agency (NEA) that Marie worked every Friday at a man’s place who had offered her as a «salary» not less than two cars! The NEA looked into the matter only to find out that the two cars did not exist. But Marie admitted that when she gave Pierre a helping hand, he offered her sandwich snacks. For this «crime» of having worked while being registered as jobless, the NEA demanded that Marie return the unemployment benefits for all the Fridays of 1995 and, as a punishment, cut four entire weeks from her benefits in 1996.
* Thanks to legal advice by a trade union, Marie appealed to the Labour Court and the sanction was lifted. So is all well? Not quite. The trouble is that Marie was punished by the NEA in 1996 with immediate effect. And the sanction was lifted only in 1999. For three long years Marie’s life has been in upheaval because of financial problems and the scathing violation of her privacy.
* Source: Excerpt from «Syndicat,» periodical of the Federation of Trade Unions in Belgium (FGTB), 22/10/1999.
For a long time now, this redistribution of opportunities in terms of time or activities has been initiated by the work of civil society organisations. For example, the International Movement ATD Fourth World has been built by various forms of commitments made by people of diverse backgrounds and from several continents. Adults, themselves from very disadvantaged backgrounds, have dedicated their time and energy to seeking out very excluded people and helping them break free. Toward that aim, they spend their free time receiving training and building their capacities. In this process, they become partners with others from different walks of life. The commitments of the latter take another form. They devote their skills and part of their time to projects carried out in partnership with the poorest at a grass-roots level or to consciousness-raising within their milieu. Others make a full-time commitment to the Fourth World Volunteer Corps, living and working alongside the most downtrodden individuals and families over the long term.
The double exclusion of so many of our fellow human beings – from decent work and from other forms of human fulfilment and participation in society – continues to jeopardise social integration and unravel the social fabric. Redefining human development is imperative. This redefinition depends on affirming the right of every person to be useful and to participate fully in creating the economic, social, cultural and spiritual wealth of society and humankind. To put into practice a harmonious distribution of opportunities in all fields of human activity requires a specific partnership – one that the poorest have taken the lead in creating. As we stand at the threshold of a new millennium, may this partnership inspire a world-wide undertaking that harnesses resources and inventiveness across all nations, in order to build a culture for overcoming human poverty.
* ↑ Paragraph 9 of the Copenhagen Declaration committed Governments "to enhancing social development throughout the world so that all men and women, especially those living in poverty, may exercise their rights, utilize the resources and share the responsibilities that enable them to lead satisfying lives and to contribute to the well-being of their families and communities and of all humanity. "
* ↑ This information concerns Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
* ↑ This is based on interviews and conversations with very poor adults in several countries by the Fourth World Volunteer Corps.
* ↑ cf. Studies of the European Business Network for Social Cohesion, European Commission: Directorate-General V – Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs, Brussels.
* ↑ Input by a German Working group on «Unemployment/Employment: New activities and professions (Berlin Declaration: Halving unemployment by the year 2000), Council of Europe, Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe, Strasbourg, 10 January 1995 [CG/GT/EMP (1) 1].
* ↑ Decent Work, Report of the Director-General, ILO, June 1999, page 21.
* ↑ cf. pilot projects published in On voudrait connaître le secret du travail, under the direction of Xavier Godinot, Paris, 1995. (Available in an English summary: "Finding Work: Tell Us the Secret")
* ↑ ILO. World Employment Report 1998-99. Employability in the Global Economy: How Training Matters. Chapter 7.
* ↑ World Employment Report, p. 170
* ↑ Sen, Binayak and Sharifa Begum, Methodology for Identifying the Poorest at the Local Level, Technical Paper Number 27, "Macroeconomics, Health and Development" series, ICO and World Health Organisation, February 1998.
* ↑ Overcoming Human Poverty, UNDP Poverty Report 1998
* ↑ Decent Work, Report of the Director-General, ILO, June 1999.
* ↑ Source: Bernadette Pinet, ATD Fourth World, Senegal.
* ↑ Reading and art activities for children, as described in Part One.
* ↑ cf. explanation on page 19 .
* ↑ Source : Joseph Wresinski House, Baillet, France.
* ↑ Summer Street Festivals of Learning, Street Libraries, Cultural Centres, Art and Poetry Clubs, Computer Workshops, the Fourth World Open University, Courtyards of 100 Trades and other projects.
* ↑ Excerpts from a speech by Joseph Wresinski at the symposium "Culture and Poverty," Evreux-sur-l'Arbresle, France, 1985.
* ↑ Cf, explanation on page 13.
* ↑ Outcome of the Independent Commission on Population and Quality of Life, published in Caring for the Future: Making the Next Decades Provide a Life Worth Living, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Great Britain, 1996.
* ↑ Guy Standing, »From Labour to Work: The Global Challenge,» in World of Work, the magazine of the ILO #31, Sept./Oct. 1999, Geneva.
catégorie:United Nations