By Irene Khan
Secretary General, Amnesty International
18 November 2009
It is a great pleasure to be back at the National Press Club again. I was last here in March 2002 during my first visit to Australia as Secretary General of Amnesty International. I came here during a dark moment in the history of human rights, just months after the attacks of 9/11, as government after government, including the Australian government of the time, was following the lead of the then US Administration to roll back human rights in the name of counter-terrorism. In Australia, the politics of fear was compounded by a harsh policy of detention of asylum seekers which did little to deter arrivals and much to cause human suffering. A country known for its contribution to multilateral diplomacy and the rule of international law had turned its back on the world, rejecting the Kyoto Protocol, defying international refugee law, and turning a blind to the injustice, discrimination and deprivation faced by its own indigenous peoples.
Seven years later I have come back to what seems a very different country – optimistic, upbeat and professing its readiness to engage with the world and set straight the tarnished record of the past.
Woomera is closed, the Pacific solution in Nauru and Papua New Guinea is gone, the temporary protection visa regime has been removed and the shameful practice of detention debt has been set aside. International engagement on climate is back on the agenda. The UN Declaration on the Rights of the Indigenous Peoples has been endorsed and an apology to the Stolen Generation and other Indigenous Australians made by the government.
These are measures for which Australia deserves applause. It raises hope and expectations but I temper my enthusiasm with some degree of caution as there are still many questions unresolved and challenges to overcome.
In the lead up to Copenhagen, where will Australia put its marker down on the climate change debate?
How far and how quickly – in terms of concrete change in the lives of the people concerned – will the Australian government go in its promise to reset the relationship with the Aboriginal peoples?
Similarly, on asylum, as the media and politicians whip up frenzy over the arrival of boats carrying Sri Lankan asylum seekers, is there a risk that the humanitarian obligation to protect those fleeing persecution could be eroded in the race to prove which political party is tougher on border control? I urge the government to resist the temptation to look for quick fixes and instead take leadership on opening multilateral solutions based on international standards and principles of refugee protection.
In many ways, Australia is at a defining moment in its history. Every challenge is an opportunity to rethink past responses – how confidently, courageously and creatively will the government move forward to turn crisis into opportunity?
World’s worst human rights crisis
It is against this background that I want to set out my talk today on the challenges of global poverty, and explain why human rights is deeply relevant both in defining the problem and in finding solutions to it. I will also speak about the problem plays out in Australia and what Australia could do to fight it at home and abroad. I stress abroad along side home because a country as rich and fortunate as Australia can afford to do both.
Let me begin with the story of Elsie.
She was squatting in the raw dirt of an open field, surrounded by all her belongings, which bore the dents and scratches that I have seen inflicted on scant possessions when people have to flee, for example from flood, war or forced evictions. I walked down the desert track, past the filthy and worn mattresses set out in the open air that were used as beds by Elsie’s mates, past the wooden crate perched on a rough hewn bench that is their kitchen, stepping over the tangled extension cord that brought electricity – unsafely, I must add – to their single lamp. I squatted beside her in the slight shade cast by the blue plastic slung over the sticks that marked her living space. She and I did not share a common language but through an interpreter she said: “Lady, I pay rent to the government for a sleeping on a mattress in the desert, I have no home, I don’t have a voice, no one is listening to me or my family. No one wants to know what we see, what we think, what we know that would make this right.”
Did I meet Elsie in Sudan, Sri Lanka or Afghanistan? No. The political leaders responsible for Elsie’s situation are not to be found in Khartoum, Colombo or Kabul. They are in Canberra and Darwin. I met Elsie in Utopia in the Northern Territory.
In the heart of the first world I saw scenes more reminiscent of the third world, of countries torn by war, dominated by repressive regimes, wracked by corruption. How is it possible that in 21st century Australia – in the land of the fair go – its own First Peoples should be the first among those living in abject destitution, in such appalling poverty?
Australia is one of the world’s rich countries with most scales ranking Australia among the top 30 countries by GDP per capita. By other measures, such as health, longevity, community life, political stability and political freedom, the world’s quality of life indexes rate Australia quite differently. On these scales Australia leaps well up the world’s league table and into to the top ten. I did not expect to see abject poverty to this degree in the lucky country. Quite simply it is unacceptable – unacceptable anywhere and more so here.
Utopia is a microcosm of what is happening on a larger scale around the world. In a period of unprecedented economic growth globally, the real numbers of people living in poverty has increased, as has the gap between the richest and poorest groups of people in every country of the world. Billions of people are living in poverty. Why is it so hard to end poverty?
Because despite extensive research findings, government officials, policy makers and international financial institutions too often tend to define poverty in terms of income. But economic analysis does not capture the full picture of poverty and economic solutions cannot fully address the problem of poverty.
Poverty is the world’s worst human rights problem. That is the premise of my book, The Unheard Truth, and that is the message of Amnesty International ’s campaign to Demand Dignity.
Unless and until we address the human rights abuses that impoverish people and keep them poor we will fail to eradicate poverty. That is as true in Australia as it is in Somalia.
Deprivation, discrimination, insecurity and voicelessness
People are poor not just because of how little they earn but because they are discriminated and deprived, because they live in insecurity and are marginalized and excluded, and because their voices are not heard. It is important to consider each of those elements but it is also important to recognize that these elements reinforce each other in a downward spiral that traps people in poverty. The answer to tackling poverty lies not in enrichment but the empowerment of the poor.
The poor live in deprivationand this is the most visible feature of poverty: they often lack access to health, education, housing and opportunities which are essential to a live a dignified life – with disastrous consequences. At birth indigenous people in Australia are twice as likely to be low weight, as they age they get sicker and die younger. The life expectancy of indigenous people in Australia is 17 years lower than that of the Australian population. The rate of infant mortality is twice as high. Similar statistics are repeated across the world between those living in poverty and others.
Why do the poor live in deprivation? The answer often lies in a mix of discrimination, insecurity and exclusion and powerlessness of the poor, each factor reinforcing the other and dragging people down into a poverty trap.
The poor live with discrimination.Women, ethnic minorities and Indigenous populations are disproportionately represented among the poor.It is no mere coincidence that 70% of the world’s poor are women and that proportion is growing – a phenomenon which has been called the feminization of poverty.
Discrimination can be overt, e.g. when the law discriminates against women in some countries. Discrimination can be covert when equality laws are in place but not put into policies by governments. Discrimination can be in denial when laws and policies are in place but social discrimination is fed by deep-seated prejudices. And sometimes despite government policies and efforts social discrimination, continuing prejudices and paternalistic policies are compounded by historical injustices to leave the minority disempowered and entrenched in poverty. The tendency then is for the mainstream community is to blame the minority for their own condition of poverty or exclusion. This reflects in many ways the situation of the indigenous communities in Australia. Many of those to whom I met in Utopia and Alice Springs spoke of the prejudice and stigmatization they feel they continue to be subjected, for instance by the compulsory income management scheme in Northern Territory – which they say has left them feeling discriminated, disempowered and disillusioned.
The poor live in constant insecurity.As we all know, war torn countries are among the poorest in the world. But insecurity for the poor extends across a wide spectrum – from physical insecurity to job insecurity to lack of land tenure, to high levels of crime in poor neighborhoods and police brutality. In the favela slums of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo in Brazil, entire communities are criminalized by the police. From prostitution to trafficking, from rape and to high rates of maternal mortality poor women face higher levels of gender based violence because they are more exposed to it and have far fewer options to escape violence. In Australia Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalized due to domestic violence, and ten times more likely to die as a result of assault. Little Children are Sacred report highlighted the level of violence, abuse and neglect of children in Indigenous communities.
The poor have no voice – they have no political clout – they are not heard – they are shut out. That is not what the poor themselves say, for instance in the World Bank’s Voices of the Poor report which collected testimony from 20,000 people living in poverty in a number of countries from across the world.
The government can build a dam and drown your village without your consent or even knowledge. An oil company can build a pipeline through your land and displace you. Your landlord can evict you without any due process or compensation. Millions of people are forcibly evicted from slums every year, often to make way for urban beautification or other development projects. Three hundred thousand people were evicted in Beijing by the Olympic Games construction projects with no remedy, and if they complained they were sent to re-education camps. A number of them were adopted as Prisoners of Conscience by Amnesty.
If you and your community try to organize yourselves, you may be beaten up and thrown into prison. One of AI’s best known prisoner of conscience in recent years was Magdalena Duran, an indigenous woman in Mexico, a street vendor who protested the arbitrary way in which the laws were being applied by the authorities. She was released after two years of campaigning by AI. If you are poor, you cannot afford lawyers to plead your case and the judicial elite do not understand your language, recognize your experience or have sympathy for your cause. Your government does not care about you because you have no political clout. They do not give you the information you need and they do not listen to you.
Elsie’s words in Utopia are echoed by poor people everywhere. No one hears us, we have no voice. We are told what will be done. Consultations are not real. If we don’t comply with their plans we do not get help.
This is what poverty is about: the stuff of real human insecurity; this is the stuff of real terror: the stuff of marginalization, of voicelessness, of degradation, of inequality and of injustice. These are human rights abuses. And so, respect for human rights is deeply relevant to the solution of poverty. Economic and social rights address basic needs and seek to ensure secure livelihoods (e.g. right to decent work and social security). The right to non-discrimination and equal protection seek to end exclusion. The right to physical protection promotes security and an end to violence. Human rights promote political participation, information, and accountable government which go to the heart of the issue of exclusion.
In other words, the solution to poverty lies not in enrichment but in the empowerment of people.
Obstacles to a human rights approach
What I am saying is not new. The Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen said it in Development as Freedom, freedom as the tool to promote development and freedom as the end goal of development.
So why isn’t the truth being heard? I would give at least three reasons:
First, the belief that markets will solve the problem of poverty, in other words the answer to poverty lies in economic growth. Open markets will float all boats – so the argument goes. I do not disagree with the importance of economic growth in addressing poverty – but I do not believe it is the full or even the most crucial element. On the contrary, economic growth leads to growing inequalities. The poor are the last to benefit from a boom, first to suffer in a bust.
Furthermore, economic investment by itself cannot correct the underlying injustices and inequalities that keep people poor: such as land tenure, gender equality, and other forms of discrimination. Building a school by itself does not ensure that girls have equal access. Investing in agriculture can increase crop yields but will not give a landless peasant security of land tenure. By the same logic, additional money will not solve by itself the problems of communities like those living in Utopia.
Second, the “bread before ballots” argument: in other words the argument that economic development is most efficiently secured through authoritarian imposition. This is not unlike the argument that in order to gain security we must be ready to sacrifice such liberties as the right to a fair trial or the right not to be tortured. Well, we know how wrong that argument is. Equally wrong is the approach that economic development must come before we can have civil liberties.
The strongest proponent of that line of argument is China. But there is no evidence to show that China’s impressive economic development was in any way linked to its ruthless suppression of civil and political rights. There is no proven cause and effect relationship. Suppression of human rights is not an economic necessity but a policy choice. On the contrary, suppression of human rights, discrimination and growing inequalities between China’s urban and rural populations and within the urban population – including urban migrants – are leading to deepening social unrest. This is the latest in the long litany of disastrous outcomes of China’s “bread before ballots” strategy, such as the Great Famine. Its characteristic lack of transparency and absence of public accountability has delivered – in fact – deep inefficiencies, hampering and stultifying China’s capacity to address and correct the mistakes that have occurred. The HIV scandal, the SARs debacle, the human disaster of melamine in milk powder, the natural disaster of an earthquake revealing corruption in the building of schools: the inability of people to speak out deepened these problems, and hampered development.
Even in open democratic societies, participation of poor people in development processes is often seen as a technical issue, a bureaucratic matter of ticking boxes in forms and holding meetings under the euphemism of consultations. True participation however means much more. It means access to information, and the possibility to understand, challenge and engage with the process. It means being heard, it means being able to hold governments accountable, so that “voice” becomes more than protest.
The third critical barrier which hampers genuine incorporation of human rights in poverty solutions is the construct that economic, social and cultural rights are not real rights: they are not fair dinkum, as you would say here. The US is the strongest proponent of this position, refusing to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child because it protects a child’s right to health and education. I should point out that the proposal currently on the Australian Human Rights Act does not include economic, social and cultural rights, even though they are recognized in international law and Australia is a party to the UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Looking at the appalling shanties which go for housing in some of the outstations, one wonders if there would be more pressure to get them fixed and less concern about the government getting leases for the land before doing so, if Australia acknowledged the right to housing in its laws.
This paradoxical situation – that there is no shared vision of human rights among the world’s leading nations – is the outcome of unfortunate history that saw a bifurcation of human rights. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, no such distinction was made nor intended. At that time, Western democracies and socialist states alike subscribed to both sets of rights. Indeed, US President Roosevelt spoke of freedom from want along side freedom from fear even before the Declaration was drafted. The unfortunate bifurcation was the result of the “Cold War” ideological battles that pitted economic, social and cultural rights versus civil and political rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects all rights. For the poor, free speech is as important as access to education, because without it they cannot speak out against oppression. To the poor, the right to live has no meaning if there is no right to health care. To the poor Indigenous communities the right to live on their land is as important as the right to conscience, for their conscience demands they care for their land of their ancestors. The point that I am making is that is that rights are indivisible and inter-dependent. They must be applied holistically, not sequentially, nor selectively, nor partially.
How is this relevant to Australia?
I would point out two key ways in which this issue of poverty and human rights is relevant to Australia: first in relation to the Indigenous communities and second in relation to its (position) as a member of the G20, the emerging club of world leaders.
First, looking at the Indigenous communities, the deprivation and discrimination to which Indigenous Australians are subjected is a base violation of their human rights. That these violations occur on a continent of such privilege is a moral outrage. The moral imperative to eradicate poverty is no less strong than the moral imperative to eliminate torture. Just as government policies – and choices – can perpetuate torture, they can also perpetuate poverty.
I see at the heart of this historically intractable problem, not just a failure of conscience but also a failure of comprehension and a failure of vision.
For Australia, this is the most pressing frontier for human rights on its own soil and the question is can human rights as Peter Allen sang still “call Australia home”? Bringing rights home is the central duty of the Australian government and the opening act on this critical stage must cast the very first Australians as its lead players.
Yesterday, I had the privilege to meet Minister Jenny Macklin whose portfolio is shaping the current government’s response to the humanitarian crisis that is facing Aboriginal Australia and surely shaming the rest of Australia. We of course discussed what I have seen this week in Utopia and elsewhere. The Minister laid out for me in some detail the financial and other resources that the Government has committed in order to “close the gap” and lift indigenous Australians out of poverty.
At the same time, having met with Aboriginal elders, having talked to old people, young people, having sat with women, I have also heard their distress – even as they acknowledge the advantages they have gained from some of the measures such as the placement of police in their communities – and their deep sense of disempowerment, robbed of their dignity, threatened with the loss of their identity and attachment to their ancestral lands.
An enormous opportunity for change could be squandered if there is not a profound shift to engagement with and empowerment of indigenous people – in mutually respectful, responsible and accountable partnership with the rest of Australia. This emphasis on promoting and achieving ownership of solutions must come to the fore of the strategies for healing, for recovery; must displace the current policies of imposition and blunt blanket approaches. Into the mix, the government must introduce an explicit agenda for the preservation and celebration of traditional culture.
NTER was born out of fear and in response to a crisis. Now the Government needs an approach that builds a path out of crisis and fear to sustainability and to hope.
Minister Macklin assured me yesterday that the government is determined to reinstate the Racial Discrimination Act and respect the obligations of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. That would be a very important step. It will be equally important to ensure that any special measures not only respect international standards but are genuinely designed and implemented with community support and with a view to upholding all human rights for all.
By separating out and comprising one set of human rights – for example through the ongoing suspension of the RDA – in order that another set of rights be better protected: women and children’s rights to live free from violence, their right to education, their right to shelter, the Government has fallen into the same trap as that the US and China, which I explained earlier: the false argument that progress on some issues requires human rights issues. We heard that in the context of the War on Terror: that our right to be safe required us to violate the rights of others not to be tortured or detained arbitrarily. That was a false argument then. It is a false argument now to argue that protecting women’s and children’s rights means ignoring the right of others not to be discriminated against. Pitting the rights of one group of people against the rights of another group usually leads to undermining the rights of both eventually. As I said, no strategy to fight poverty can succeed if rights are sequenced or only partially respected.
For the sake of the rights of first Australians, the Government must move out of the knee jerk emergency measures and lift its policy approach on to more stable and sustainable ground in which there is integration and involvement: communities are fully and properly involved and all human rights are upheld simultaneously – not merely some human rights.
The participation of Aboriginal communities themselves is crucial in addressing the discrimination and exclusion they experience, in accessing their rights and in upholding the spirit and letter of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This Government must move rapidly and comprehensively to remove the barriers that are preventing the active participation of Aboriginal people. It must give true meaning to “empowerment” – if long lasting local solutions are to be found to longstanding local problems and if it is to genuinely confront the legacy of decades upon decades of what some have called Australia’s dirty little secret – its racist underbelly.
A recent landmark study by the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development concluded that, when Indigenous people make their own decisions, they consistently outperform external decision-makers in areas such as natural resource management, economic development, health-care and social service provision. So there is both a utilitarian as well ethical argument for an empowerment approach.
This is not a matter for one government minister alone nor even for a select number. It is a responsibility of the whole government and it demands a whole-of–government response. And it is a matter in which every Australian too has their part to play – perhaps the greatest challenge lies ahead – How to convince the general public to confront something that they will tend to deny – that the poverty of Aboriginal Australia is a moral burden on all Australians.
The pathway out of poverty for Aboriginal people must have the hallmarks of respect for human rights: voice must matter, equality cannot be compromised, security must be delivered on a human scale and active engagement must be made perennial. That is the pathway out of the shame that I know so many non-Aboriginal Australians feel.
Moving now to Australia’s international role, I believe success in fighting poverty and racism in its own country will give Australia greater credibility to lead internationally. As a member G-20, placed in the global South geographically, and with its strong commitment to multi-lateral approaches and human rights principles, Australia has a unique opportunity to make change the debate on poverty and bring to it a human rights dimension.
The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are the most significant international anti-poverty commitment right now. Australia funds developing countries, particularly in the Pacific to reach the targets set by these goals While the MDGs have many advantages, it is clear that none of the goals will be fully met by the end date of 2015, and that some will be disastrously under-achieved, e.g. the goal to cut maternal mortality. The statistics have not budged on that in the last two decades, with one woman dying every minute. There are many reasons for the poor performance of some MDGs, but one, surely, is the failure to acknowledge human rights as the breakthrough strategy for development.
The Goals are silent on discrimination and do not even ask for disaggregated data – so if the goal is halve the numbers of poor, the question is which half is being left behind? Given the role that discrimination plays in entrenching poverty, who is being counted, and who is not, is a deeply political issue. The MDGs seek to end gender discrimination and achieve gender equality but they do not speak about gender-based violence which hold’s back women’s ability to get out poverty. The MDGs seek to end poverty but say nothing about the participation of people. It is silent on empowerment and accountability.
As a major donor, Australia should take an active role in shaping the MDGs within a human rights framework. It can do so at the UN Review Summit in September 2010.
As a member of G20, Australia can also play a key role in developing a shared vision of human rights among world leaders. The US does not recognize economic, social and cultural rights, and China does not acknowledge civil and political rights. The G-20 includes also countries with serious under-performance of human rights. There is a risk that the global values of human rights could be undermined as a diverse group of G20 leaders gain prominence on the world stage. Australia could play an important role in building global acknowledgement that human rights matter. To do so, however, Australia must itself incorporate economic, social and cultural rights in its proposed national Human Rights Act. Doing at home what one promotes abroad is the key to credible leadership.
To conclude, translating human rights into Australian means giving a fair go to all people, fair enough. Thank you.