POVERTY WITHOUT BORDERS…
article by Anna KARAMANOU, MEP of PASOK	17. 10. 2002

It is something… One of the 365 days of the year, today is dedicated to the eradication of poverty. Obviously, so that we don’t feel guilty about our well-being, since today we can freely reflect, express our pious wishes, and contemplate that billions of our fellow humans live under conditions of unimaginable poverty, that in Sub-Saharan Africa the average life expectancy is under 50, that millions of children die from starvation and lack of medicine, that on planet Earth, capitalist comfort coexists with the barbarity of absolute poverty.

Unfortunately, after half a century of promises, analyses, and development aid plans, most of the so-called “developing” countries, not only are they not on the path to development, but they are sinking even further into the quagmire of poverty, underdevelopment, and corruption. In this horror, violence is often added, turning them into ungovernable and chaotic entities. The examples of many countries in Africa, Asia, as well as the Balkans and Latin America are very characteristic. In most of these countries, the dream of national independence was not accompanied by viable economies capable of participating in the harsh global competition.

Despite what the gurus of globalization tell us from time to time, that prosperity and development will be achieved through the free market, the one billion unemployed refutes every optimistic prospect. The anarchic, socially unprotected globalization, the Darwinian jungle of relentless competition and the survival of the fittest, globalizes poverty and not wealth, exacerbating contradictions, inequalities, and the consequent violence.

Reading the book by the Peruvian Oswaldo de Rivera, *The Myth of Development*, one cannot help but feel melancholic from the analyses and bleak predictions of a UN official who knows the global reality like few others. He specifically refers to what the ancient Greeks considered to be the basic elements for human survival: first, the earth that produces food, the water, and the fire that produces energy. Today, in many poor countries, these basic goods for survival have become rare and extremely expensive.

However, sustainable development and social cohesion are not only goals for the so-called Third World countries. Third-world phenomena of poverty also persist in the developed countries of the West, with the UK, the USA, and Canada leading the way in the shrinking of the welfare state. One and a half million Britons, in 2001, were working under temporary contracts, two million children live in families with unemployed parents, while half of single mothers cannot find paid employment.

For some time now, an alarm has been raised in the European Union, which, in view of its enlargement with ten more countries, is called upon to address the multidimensional nature of poverty, which concerns not only access to the labor market but also the education system, healthcare services, housing, transportation, social security systems, equality of opportunities, care for children and the elderly, and the social integration of migrants and people with disabilities.

The initiatives of Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou and her “Social Agenda” seem to have found willing recipients, as for the first time, the member states of the Union committed at the European Councils of Lisbon, Nice, and Stockholm to promote sustainable development and quality employment in order to reduce the risk of poverty and social exclusion. Special action programs are already being implemented throughout the territory of the European Union.

The European Parliament, in view of the Spring Summit in March 2003, under the Greek Presidency, is calling for greater emphasis on social cohesion. However, the most important thing is that it demands significant improvements in the key mechanisms for the redistribution of resources and opportunities – the labor market, tax systems, education, vocational training, lifelong learning, social security, gender equality, healthcare, housing, and universal services.

Beyond this, however, I believe that revisions and profound changes are needed in the systems of our values on which modern civilization has been built, a civilization that deifies material wealth, that reproduces and tolerates discrimination, inequalities, social Darwinism, racism, violence, and that glorifies and uses war as a means of resolving conflicts. With such a philosophical foundation, how can we seriously expect the eradication of poverty, as the UN reminds us today?

Anna Karamanou

European Parliament Member of PASOK

President of the Committee on Women’s Rights

and of the Committee on Gender Equality and Equal Opportunities of the European Parliament