- ATD Fourth World

From January 22 to January 28, the international colloquium: “Extreme poverty is violence - Breaking the silence - Pathways towards peace,” is bringing together people living in extreme poverty, academics, practitioners and policy makers. In the conclusion to a three-year project, they are building collective knowledge on the rarely asked question: “Faced with the violence of extreme poverty, how can each of us play an active role in searching for peace?” Through regional seminars and discussion workshops with the “merging of knowledge” methodology, this participative research and action plan has included a thousand different people in 25 countries researching two points:

• The violence of taking extreme poverty for granted: What is the violence of extreme poverty? What are the consequences of this
  Failure to recognize people living in extreme poverty as human beings.
  Fundamental rights are denied.
  Poverty eradication projects that are poorly adapted to people’s actual needs.
  Institutional violence and the violence of unintended policy consequences.

• Peace and mutual recognition: How do we resist the violence of extreme poverty? What will allow us to take the path leading to peace together?
  Self-defense strategies and protection from violence.
  Conditions needed to resist and break the silence.
  Understanding peace because of a refusal to accept extreme poverty.
  Building peace together: resources and responsibilities.

This research is essential in today’s world impacted by successive economic crises, where those who have the least are the first to suffer the consequences of national debt and austerity measures. Political leaders have decided to slash budgets in traditionally under-invested services while spending more to investigate welfare cheating. Policy makers mask their lack of long-term vision for ending extreme poverty by setting targets that seek to justify exclusion. In this troubled world that seems to turn its back on strong ideals, this research is needed for those striving toward a new form of globalization that would be guided by human dignity. This means a globalization that is not dictated by profit margins but by fairly sharing the earth’s resources, a globalization that merges collective knowledge instead of monetizing knowledge, a globalization based not on uniformity but on valuing the wealth of diversity, a globalization that takes down walls in order to open spaces where a new way of living together becomes a true possibility.

This participative research and action seminar is one of the key projects of the 2008-2012 ATD Fourth World Contract of Common Commitments