According to calculations by Dr Gideon Polya, over 17
million ‘avoidable deaths’ occur every year as a consequence of
life-threatening deprivation, mainly in low-income countries. As the term
suggests, these preventable deaths occur simply because millions of people live
in conditions of extreme deprivation and therefore cannot afford access to the
essential goods and services that people in wealthier countries have long taken
for granted.
46,500 lives are needlessly wasted every day – innocent men, women
and children who might otherwise have contributed to the cultural and economic
development of the world in unimaginable ways. This annual preventable death
rate far outweighs the fatalities from any other single event in history since
the Second World War, and around half of those affected are young children.
Given today’s technological advancements and humanity’s combined available
wealth of $263 trillion, it’s perhaps no exaggeration to suggest that the
magnitude of these avoidable deaths is tantamount to a global genocide or
holocaust.
The World Bank’s definition of what constitutes ‘extreme’
poverty is now based on an international poverty line of $1.90-a-day (previously
$1.25-a-day).
The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD) argue that only by using a higher threshold of $5-a-day would it be
possible to fulfil the right to “a standard of living adequate for… health and
well-being” – as set out in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights more than 65 years ago. Poverty at this slightly
higher level of income has consistently increased between 1981 and 2010, rising
from approximately 3.3 billion to almost 4.2 billion over that period.
If the Millennium Campaign had used this more appropriate
poverty threshold, MDG-1 would clearly not have been met: rather than halving
the number of people living without sufficient means for survival, there are
14% more people living in $5-a-day poverty now than in 1990.
ActionAid and others rightly suggest, however, a $10-a-day
benchmark may be a far more a realistic measure of poverty when comparing
lifestyles in rich and poor countries, which would mean that an alarming 5.2
billion people live still in poverty today.
No comments:
Post a Comment