タイトル：基幹研究「アフリカ文化研究に基づく多元的世界像の探求」平成 24 年度第 1 回公開講演会
日時：平成 24 年 7 月 4 日（水曜日） 午後 5 時 40 分より午後 7 時 10 分
会場：東京外国語大学 研究講義棟 115 番教室
報告者： Pierre Sané 氏 (同志社大学特別招聘教授)
報告タイトル：Poverty: The Next Human Rights Challenge（貧困―人権のための挑戦課題）
共催：日本アフリカ学会関東支部
報告要旨：別紙参照*当報告の内容は、それぞれの著者の著作物です。Copyrighted materials of the authors.

Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA),Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Poverty as a violation of human rights
By Pierre Sane
Distinguished Visiting Professor
Doshisha University (Kyoto)
04 July 2012

Dear friends,My assertion tonight is quite simple. It is that poverty should be considered as a Humanright violation and as such abolished. This is the most effective way to eradicate it.
Why do I say that?
stFirst if there is a central challenge to be addressed at the beginning of this 21 century it is
the realization of the right proclaimed in article 28 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights:“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights andfreedoms set forth in this declaration can be fully realized”.
Secondly my own professional background and life commitments have been in HumanRights through development research for 15 years at the International Development
Research Centre of Canada, through advocacy for 10 years as Secretary-General ofAmnesty International and through standards development and policy formulation for 10years at UNESCO. In other words I have been actively campaigning for global justice forthe past 35 years. This has led me to the conclusion that campaigning for Human rights isthe best strategy for attaining peace and justice in the world.
Article 28 of the UDHR: The Goal of Global Justice
Article 28 of UDHR is ultimately about global justice, global development and globalgovernance. Art. 28 indeed anticipated globalization by providing it with an ethicalgrounding. And in this respect, I think we can all agree here that the effectiveness ofgovernance, justice and development should be measured in the end from the perspectiveof the communities and the individuals and how their rights, welfare and wellbeing areaffected. ALL of their rights. And not just by the performance of the balance of paymentsor the transparency of the electoral systems, or the independence of the justice system.
These are means to an end.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

This raises therefore 3 interrelated questions, which I would like to address briefly
throughout my remarks.
1

Can we have global development without global ethical governance?

2

Can we have global justice in an unequal world i.e. without global development?

3
Can we have global governance and global justice (i.e. global development)
without global citizenship? i.e. global Human Rights.
These are the issues raised by the challenge of Art. 28.
These 3 questions are difficult because they take us from one political space, which is thenation state to another one, which is the global space. When we refer to development andcitizenship historically the reference has been the domestic market and the nation state,
and the State as the dominant actor. Development has been historically a project of theState providing protection behind borders to nascent industries, using monetary policies
to direct investments, consumption and savings, organising the education system,
integrating research to production engaging in trade diplomacy. Further, citizens havebeen the citizens of the State with democracy and solidarity limited to those recognizedby the State as its citizens. At the global level you may have a global market but not aprocess of global development because the latter requires redistribution of a mandatory
nature in other words it requires ethical governance at the global level. The same applies
to global citizenship and global solidarity. This would require that democracy andaccountability be organized at the global level. It requires transcending the egoism ofnations, allowing the free flow of people alongside the free flow of goods, capital andprofits. It requires organizing the sharing of the resources of this planet among all its
inhabitants.
The Human Rights revolution
In my view it requires the relentless pursuit of the only strategy, which will allow us tobuild such a world from below, the only strategy, which today provides the vision anddirection to arrive at that, which is universal Human Rights.
The Human Rights revolution has been long in the making but it has entrenched thenotion of individual freedom, it has defeated institutionalized racism, it has provided themoral impetus to end slavery, colonialism, and the oppression of women, the practice oftorture. Step by step it is entrenching in the minds of peoples the equal worth of every
human being and the need to organize society and international relations around thatimperative.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

I am not saying it is a linear path. There are obvious set backs = genocides, wars ofaggression, violence against women still exist. But they are considered today for what
they are – they are violations of Human rights.
One central challenge today to Article 28 that could bring us close to global
development and global citizenship is the struggle against and the victory over global
poverty and the involvement of as many people as possible in that global struggle.
Poverty figures
We should all be aware that the striking feature of our civilization, as it globalises
around the aspiration of unprecedented prosperity, is the persistence and even increaseof poverty. It is an overwhelming fact: poverty affects half of the world’s population. It
is spreading: the vast majority of the 2 to 3 thousand millions human beings by which
the world’s population will increase before the end of this century will be exposed topoverty. It is putting an alarming pressure on the environment and global equilibrium.
The figures are apocalyptic: 11 million children die each year before the age of 5 due topoverty, 150 million children under the age of five suffer from extreme malnutrition,and 100 million children live in the streets. And our world puts up with it.
What we must note is that nearly three billion people receive only about 1.2% of world
income, while one billion people in the rich countries receive 80%. An annual income
transfer of 1% from one group to the other would suffice to eliminate extreme poverty.
In fact, the transfer continues to operate in the opposite direction, despite efforts
towards debt reduction and development aid.
Causes of poverty
We know by now or at least we should know that poverty is not a fate to be alleviated byinternational charity or aid. It is not a question of economics only. We know that poverty
does not just reflect poor peoples’ lack of self-reliance or their inability to compete in afree-for-all of supposedly equal opportunities. Poverty does not persist solely because ofincompetent, corrupt governments that are insensitive to the fate of their population. No.
Fundamentally, poverty is at once the cause and the effect of the total or partial denial of
human rights at the global level. It is a question of global justice.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

As was recognized at the International Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna, in1993, there is an organic link between poverty and violation of human rights.
You may ask how we link them. What is the nature of this articulation? How do weassess the effectiveness of the articulation in the struggle against poverty? How do weanalyze poverty from a human rights angle but more importantly how do we analyze
human rights from the perspective of the poor? What are the implications for action?

Poverty as a human right issue.
Well let me call your attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This
Declaration points us to what should be if we want peace and justice in this world. You
see, when we talk about poverty we talk about lack of access, lack of resources,
deprivation of capabilities, lack of power for some in societies where others do haveaccess, do have resources, capabilities and power. We are therefore talking aboutinequalities. Inequality is a human right issue. Art. 1 of the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights says we are all born free and equal in dignity and right. For the children of
the poor this statement of fact made 60 years ago is STILL a gross fraud.
When we talk about poverty we do not talk about groups or classes in society. We talkabout masses, about figures, about people who are voiceless and hence invisible, in otherwords people who are denied their individual dignity. Now the preamble of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights starts by recognizing that dignity is inherent to all membersof the human family. When you take that away you exclude those people from the humanfamily, here again we are talking about human rights.
The preamble further states that the highest aspiration of humankind is the attainment ofa world freed from terror and misery. That aspiration is blatantly defiled by thepersistence of poverty. Here again we are talking of human rights.
The issue therefore is not poverty. The issue is human rights, all human rights, politicaland social. It is about achieving universality in the regime of implementation so that noone is excluded (Art. 7). It is about monitoring and combating violations so that all can
get protection and redress under a regime of law (Art. 8). It is about exercising reasonand conscience and act towards each other in a spirit of brotherhood (Art. 1). It is about
creating a social and international order that makes possible the enjoyment of all therights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 28). It is about
effective implementation of Art. 30 which stipulates that nothing in the Declaration canbe interpreted as giving a right to anyone to take an action aimed at the destruction of therights and freedoms contained in the Declaration. It is about Art.25:

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and wellbeing of himself and of his family,
including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the eventof unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond hiscontrol.”The violations of human rights here are the policies, legislations and actions (or lack of)that constitute breaches of the state’s obligations encapsulated in the international humanrights treaties it has ratified. I am talking here of any policy, legislation or public action(national or international) which plunges whole categories of people in situations ofpoverty, maintain them in that state or prevent them from overcoming that condition. Iam talking here about global governance.
Abolition.
Such violations must be abolished; poverty therefore must stop. The claim sounds naive;and may even bring a smile to many lips.
Condescension would however be misguided as well as inappropriate. There is nothing
to smile at in distress, misery, dereliction and death which march in grim parade withpoverty. We should, indeed, be ashamed. But the issue is also substantive: the abolitionof poverty is the only fulcrum that offers the leverage to defeat poverty.
Leverage, in this case, comes from investments, national and international reforms, andpolicies to remedy the deficiencies of all kinds that are the backdrop to poverty.
Fortunately, humanity now has the means to answer the challenge: never have we been
so rich, so technically competent and so well informed. But in the absence of a fulcrum,
these forces cannot act as effectively as they might, and without this fulcrum political
will cannot be galvanized to organize redistribution on a global scale.
If, however, poverty were declared to be abolished, as it should with regard to its status
as a massive, systematic and continuous violation of human rights, its persistence would
no longer be a regrettable feature of the nature of things. It would become a denial ofjustice. The burden of proof would shift. The poor, once they have been recognized as
the injured party, would acquire a right to reparation for which governments, theinternational community and, ultimately, each citizen would be jointly liable. A strong
interest would thus be established in eliminating, as a matter of urgency, the grounds ofliability, which might be expected to unleash much stronger forces than compassion,charity, or even concern for one’s own security, are likely to mobilize for the benefit ofothers.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

Abolish in order to eradicate.
By endowing the poor with the rights they are entitled to, the abolition of poverty would
obviously not cause poverty to disappear overnight. It would, however, create theconditions for the cause of poverty to be enshrined as the highest of priorities and as thecommon interest of all – not just as a secondary concern for the enlightened or merely
charitable. No more than the abolition of slavery caused the crime to vanish or theabolition of political apartheid ended racism and discrimination, no more than theabolition of domestic violence or genocide have eliminated such violations of the humanconscience, the legal abolition of poverty will not make poverty disappear. But it willplace poverty in the conscience of humankind at the same level as those past injustices
the present survival of which challenges us, shocks us, and calls us to action.
The principle of justice thus implemented and the force of law mobilized in its service
are of enormous power. This, after all, is how slavery, colonialism and apartheid wereended. But while colonialism and apartheid were actively struggled against, poverty
dehumanises half the planet to a chorus of utter indifference. It is, undoubtedly, the mostacute moral question of the new century to understand how such massive and systematic
violations, day in, day out, do not trouble the conscience of the good people who lookdown upon them. While equality of rights is proclaimed, growing inequalities in thedistribution of goods persist and are entrenched by unjust economic and social policies atnational and global levels
To deal with poverty as a violation of human rights means going beyond the idea ofinternational justice – which is concerned with relations between states and nations– towards the creation of global justice and global development, which applies torelations between human beings living in a global society and enjoying absoluteand inalienable rights – such as the right to life – that are guaranteed by theinternational community. Such rights do not belong to the citizens of states but,universally, to human beings as such, for whom they are the necessary conditionsof life on the planet. The principle of global justice thus establishes the conditions
for a fairer distribution of the planet’s resources between its inhabitants in the lightof certain absolute rights, thus making global development possible.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

Human Rights in a violent way
At the end of the day, there is a simple choice. Not between “pragmatic” approaches,
based on aid granted by the rich to the poor, and the alternative sketched here. The real
choice is between the abolition of poverty and the only other way for the poor to obtainrights, which is for them to take them by force. Needless to say, the latter solution
usually causes misery for all: social strife, rampant crime, fundamentalism, mass
uncontrolled migration, smuggling and trafficking are the only things to flourish. But
what moral basis do we have to demand moral behaviour from people to whom we denyany opportunity to live a healthy life? What rights have we to demand that they respect
our rights? The sombre option will become increasingly likely if nothing is done – or too
little, as tends to be the case with pragmatism, however deserving.
And what are the threats of this sombre perspective? We are all familiar with them:security states established to control migrations and migrants, with those controls
eventually extended to citizens; security laws to confront “terrorists” that eventuallycurtail freedoms of all; mounting xenophobia, political alignment with blood, race andreligion which eventually undermine democracy; “preventive” wars to grab and control
natural resources leading to chaos, lawlessness and insecurity for all. Such a global world
obviously is undesirable for the majority of the world population. The options thus
reduce to a single choice, which is the only one compatible with the categoricalimperative to respect human rights: to abolish poverty in order to eradicate it and to draw
from this principle all the consequences that free acceptance of it implies. The
proclaimed abolition must, first, create rights and obligations, and thereby mobilize thetrue forces that can correct the state of a world plagued by poverty and injustice. By
simply setting an effective and binding priority, abolition changes the ground rules andcontributes to the creation of a new world. Such is the price to pay to give globalisation ahuman face; such is also the greatest opportunity for global development that we canhope to grasp
A human rights strategy
Ultimately, the way is to mobilize public opinion and the global citizenry for a universal
human rights regime that is within our grasp. Its emergence has been lengthy – verylengthy. From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the Rome Conference that
established the International Criminal Court and to the emerging norm on the“Responsibility to protect”, the emergence of universal justice has been defiled by acts ofbarbarity that have grossly infringed human dignity. Now, however, the legal instruments
are there, and step-by-step experiments and initiatives give hope. It remains to energize
political will by unceasing mobilization, true thinking, the contributions of experts andsupport for the victims.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.

What promises does such global justice bear? Let me quote Nobel Laureate Jose
Saramago: “Were such justice to exist, there would no longer be a single human being
dying of hunger or of diseases that are curable for some but not for others. Were suchjustice to exist, life would no longer be, for half of humanity, the dreadful sentence it hashitherto been. And for such justice, we already have a practical code that has been laid
down sixty years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a declaration thatmight profitably replace, as far as rightness of principles and clarity of objectives areconcerned, the manifestos of all the political parties of the world.”
Globalization and Universal Human Rights
So to come back to my three questions:
Is global development possible? Yes, on condition that we realize that we only have one
planet not six; that we all understand and accept that all human beings have the sameaspirations to live decently and in peace and that this planet belongs to all of them.
Is Global development necessary? Yes because the alternative unequal development is
too bleak to consider. We have to choose: Global development or global barbarism?
As for global solidarity it will only exist when we all adhere to the Manifesto of Human
Rights, when we join the planetary party of Universal Rights, when we make the earth
our nation and derive from these pledges the ethical, moral and legal imperatives for ourdaily action.
Universal human rights are the most promising route to achieve a just world order thatis all rights for all and through all.
And global governance can only be legitimate and for that matter desirable if it isfounded on these premises.

References
Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right, 4 vols., Paris: UNESCO Publishing &Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007-2009.
Vol. 1. Thomas Pogge (ed.), Who Owes What to the Very Poor?
Vol. 2. Thomas Pogge (ed.), Theory and Politics.
Vol. 3. Bard A. Andreassen, Stephen P. Marks, Arjun K. Sengupta (eds.), Economic
Perspectives.
Vol. 4. Geraldine van Bueren (ed.), Law’s Duty to the Poor.

Copyrighted Material of the Author.