- ATD Fourth World

Naturally, we see connections between the tragedy that has struck Haiti and the launching of the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion. One fact has become starkly evident through the current situation in Haiti: even when the richest nations implement the most ambitious aid programmes, the means invested arrive only with great difficulty in the most impoverished areas. What has enabled surviving Haitians to persevere is their moral strength, the strong faith that many hold, and their sense of community and sharing, ensuring that those who have little strength and few means are not abandoned. International aid is absolutely crucial. However, its efficiency increases significantly when it is implemented in a way that builds on existing strengths: the intelligence of the Haitian population, their understanding of the situation and context, and their pride. This pride was shaped by a rigorous, profound awareness that the quality of relationships among human beings and the future of the planet depend on our ability to recognize that we are equal in dignity and in rights.

As we publicly launch this European Year 2010, will we be audacious enough to choose such a challenge as a priority for Europe as well? Whichever programmes are implemented to combat poverty and social exclusion, they must be guided by a rigorous ethics of leaving no one behind, of wanting those who have the least to hold the same rights as others, so that they can live in dignity and fully participate in building Europe today and in the future.

A European Year of that kind does not just magically appear! Starting in the 1970’s, Joseph Wresinski started questioning European institutions (representing only six countries at the time!), asking them to launch a European programme to combat poverty, the first of which began in 1976! He expressed a concern at the time that seems to have foreshadowed what was to come: “Whenever the future of a country or the international community is planned, The Fourth World must be active partners. If they are not at the planning stage, they will not either be present at times of change.”

The combat against poverty was progressively taken into account by European institutions - to lesser or greater degrees - and they also took into consideration the gradual expansion to economically poorer countries; Spain, which currently holds the presidency, was a country that still had a high level of poverty when it joined in 1985, and since then it has seen extraordinary growth! ATD Fourth World has been present there since 1989, and we can testify to significant efforts made to reduce unemployment and to set up essential, decentralized social services. The standard of living of the Spanish population increased significantly. We observed the re-housing of the populations of numerous slums in the outskirts of large cities, sometimes under conditions that set the standard because no family was left behind without access to decent housing. However, it is quite clear that this growth did not in itself enable the eradication of the processes and mechanisms of exclusion and injustice that are the causes of poverty in Spain. No more than it did elsewhere in Europe or the world for that matter.

At the beginning of the 2000s, the Liston Strategy had hinted at the introduction of stronger measures in Europe’s efforts to combat poverty. Very quickly, however, and in sync with the dominant economic framework, we have seen the perspectives and means assigned to this European policy reduced to building “the most competitive knowledge economy in the world”! The economic and ecological crises have put the spotlight on something that was already obvious to people with the hardest lives: we cannot entrust the future of our communities, our countries, Europe and the world solely to the logic of economics! What a great opportunity, then, that this European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion is underway. It could become a powerful catalyst for the

In Copenhagen, the participating nations did not succeed at taking the necessary joint measures that would truly put the world on the track towards a better future. Despite the efforts made by ATD Fourth World and many other actors, we did not succeed at making the connection between economic development, respect for the Earth, building peace between peoples, and the urgent necessity to end extreme poverty.

What if we made this European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion - which coincides with the preparation of the European Strategy for 2020 - an opportunity to seriously begin functioning differently? Let’s stop relegating the eradication of extreme poverty in Europe and worldwide to the position of secondary objective. Let’s choose to make it a primary objective - for the long-term and not just one year - to be addressed alongside the other main objectives: respect for the Earth, implementation of an economic development that takes into account social factors, respect for human rights, and respect for the environment. A Europe committed in such a direction would become a credible and respected partner alongside individuals and families living in the most extreme situations of denial of rights, discrimination and exclusion. These families question, uncompromisingly, our collective way of living, thinking, and acting together towards a common future within our countries.

A Europe guided in such a way would be definitively freed from a past that created much suffering, humiliation and exploitation, and would become a credible partner alongside all those peoples who, like the people of Haiti, require us to set our sights much higher and to be much more ambitious than we have been up to now.