- ATD Fourth World

We are very pleased to be able to hold this session here today at the Economic and Social Committee, where for many years now we have gathered to reflect on the situation of the poorest people as well as other issues, at the European sessions held by the Fourth World People's University. 

Mr Polen and I will, each in our own way, speak to you about the fears of and expectations for the future of the poorest people in Europe and provide some possible answers to the question that Father Joseph Wresinski, founder of the ATD Fourth World Movement, asked us for many years: "Isn't the Movement's strategy to look 20 years ahead and find out what the Fourth World wants for its children 20 years from now? How can we know what life will be like for the poor in 20 years time if we don't know what their situation in society is right now?"

Mr Polen, over to you
Frans Polen: 

Herman van Breen:

Thank-you for your introduction. What you have just said about making sure not to miss the point when seeking to keep making headway with people whose lives are more difficult than your own, reminds me of what Mrs McAleese, the President of the Irish Republic, said in her millennium speech before the Irish parliament:

"The shadows of the past are lifting…For Ireland, old fears are creeping in again. Today's Ireland is a first world country but with a third world memory, a memory to keep us humble, to remind us of the fragility of it all, a memory to remind us that too many people across the world waken up each day to lives of sheer terror and dread. They too need dreamers to imagine a day when their shadows will lift. They too need friends to help make those dreams happen. We have a long and proud history of being just such a friend, a champion of the poor, the oppressed, the ignored and the neglected."

At this point I would like to reiterate what both of you have said, namely, that remembering our roots is crucial to how we see ourselves within Europe and in particular to how we view our relations with the countries that will soon be joining the European Union. We must not look down on them, but rather regard them with humility.

Thank you again for your introduction. 

Ladies and Gentlemen,  

Without wanting to go into too much detail, I will try to outline four areas in which very poor families explain their fears and expectations regarding the future of Europe.

1. When asked 'what is your main expectation for the future?', very poor people immediately give one clear answer: "That our children will have a better future than us." This is what gives them the strength to get up in the morning and face the world. This is what they long for and what inspires them to look to the future. As one young mother said, "After everything I've been through and seen, I can't imagine ever being able to look others in the eye and feel that I am their equal. But I hope it will be different for my children. If I didn't have my children to fight for I would have already given up a long time ago".

Or as one illiterate Belgian worker commented, "finding a job is almost impossible for me, but this won't be the case for my children if they do well at school". A Roma (gypsy) refugee who fled Romania said: "I want my children to go to school so that they don't end up like me and have to beg like I do."

If there is one thing that is a source of hope and motivation for people often considered unfit or incapable parents, it is surely the happiness of their children. And if there is one thing that pushes mothers and fathers over the edge (i.e. onto the street or into psychiatric care), or leaves them wandering around in total desperation (often for many years), it is seeing their family unit destroyed by having their children taken away from them. Mr Polen placed great emphasis on this. And it is no coincidence that 18 months ago members involved in the ATD Fourth World Movement, both rich and poor, who came together from some 10 European countries, expressed the main aim of their joint actions and concerns in the following way: "We want to make sure that everyone has the right and the means to live as a family. We want to make headway in Europe to ensure that all families living in difficult circumstances are entitled to support... Parents must be able to participate fully in the development of their children and every effort has to be made to ensure that children can grow up with their family…".

2. The second question about where our societies are headed concerns the fundamental choices we make as people and as societies. Do we want to liberate the poor from their destitution or manage their lives under conditions of poverty, enabling them to survive or live with a sense of dignity and pride? This issue was raised by the father of a 21-year-old boy who had just received his first guaranteed minimum income. The father said this: "For some time now, my son has had a girlfriend. Everything was going fine. They love each other very much. But now she has left him. Who would want to marry a young man whose wallet only fills up a bit at the end of each month and who has no prospects? How can his girlfriend or his future family be proud of him?" The father's words make it clear that even the guaranteed minimum allowance, which has been introduced in most EU countries and represents an enormous step forward compared with the daily insecurity of people and families who lack other resources, is no long-term solution. 

In several countries, we are seeing the long-term unemployed put under tremendous pressure by society to get back to work. Their leading public representatives are also facing flak in this respect. For instance, some Under certain rules and regulations, grants are only awarded to families and people whom the social services have managed to wean off their reliance on benefits. In the wake of this, one social services director told us that several colleagues of his from local authorities in the same region had been made redundant by their town councils for not having sufficiently reduced the number of people entitled to receive benefits and for having consequently made their local authority miss out on major subsidies. As he put it to us: "In this way we are being pushed harder and harder to pursue the poor, to check up on them and to punish them if there is the slightest suspicion that they are abusing the system. This climate of suspicion prevents us from carrying out our main duty, which is to relay information between the citizens and authorities in question."

Mr Polen has already stressed how an approach geared towards monitoring, supervision and efficiency at all costs constitutes a blind alley. He has also emphasised just how badly the poorest people need real dialogue partners who are willing to act in their interests. At the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the European Community in June 1987, Father Joseph asked Europe the following question:

"Dear friends, please ask yourselves the following question: am I helping to build a Europe that is for everyone? Will all that I do, say and suggest be enough to create a Europe in which the poorest people are finally free? Will it make way for a Europe based on the principles of human rights?"

3. The poorest people's third expectation I would like to mention has to do with this very notion of freedom and human rights. Speaking of poverty in terms of human rights highlights the fact that the men, women, young people and children who live in poverty are people first and foremost, that they comprise families who refuse to be reduced to their problems, and that they are real people who think, dream, pray, love and dance just like us but who suffer from not being considered fully-fledged, worthy human beings.  

On 17 October, in several different areas of Poland, homeless people and their friends handed out leaflets on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. On this little piece of paper were written the words:  "Dear friend, today is World Day to Overcome Extreme Poverty. The person you have just passed  in the street, whether rich or poor, is - like you - a human being. By respecting him you respect yourself. Both of us have the right to lead a dignified life. As long as there is poverty in the world, a part of you will also be missing. Nobody is so poor that he has nothing to offer. Don't be indifferent, look upon us with sympathy."

The poorest people make us understand that overcoming poverty is not about resolving problems or improving legislation or measures but is above all a personal issue. They are asking us to fight against poverty at a completely different level, at the level of the community. In this sense we can state that fundamental texts, such as the Declaration of Human Rights, truly reflect the desire of the poorest people to be considered as brothers and sisters of the same human family. 

However, some ideas are cropping up more and more in EU texts. For example, the declaration that all human beings are born equal in dignity as a key element in the fight against poverty, the importance of incorporating within the community those who have been scorned and excluded for too long and efforts to actively include the poorest people in building a future for us all. The ATD Fourth World Movement was a forerunner of this trend when, in February 1987, it drew up a report for the French Economic and Social Council based on 30 years of commitment to, knowledge of and action for and with the poor. In the meantime, that report has given rise to the passing of a law in France which has set in motion an ambitious, coordinated, overall policy to overcome poverty. At EU level, the Nice Summit of heads of state adopted objectives to combat poverty and social exclusion, emphasising in objective number four the need to encourage the victims of social exclusion to participate actively and express their views and to establish a partnership between all the public and private players involved, i.e. the social partners, NGOs and social services departments, companies and citizens.

These tactics for combating poverty and the national plans for social inclusion, the debate on the future of Europe launched in Laeken which will involve civil society, and the EU Charter of fundamental rights which acknowledges every person's right to inviolable human dignity are all powerful tools which we must think about seriously, both today, tomorrow and in the years to come.

4. I would like to finish my presentation with two small, but most striking examples which I think really show how a story of poverty and social exclusion can turn into a story of solidarity and fraternity that spans borders and even continents:

-    A few years ago a young couple from the Netherlands, Willem and Ina, both from families which for three generations had had their children placed in institutions or sent to foster families because of their extreme poverty, asked the service that provided their income to send 45 guilders (approximately €22) of their minimum allowance each month to an international sponsoring organisation, to allow a Colombian child to live with his mother. "Our children may already have been taken away from us", they said, "but perhaps we can help this child to live a happy life in its family". The social worker administering their budget refused to allow this symbolic act of cross-border solidarity, arguing that the couple already found it difficult enough to make it through the month. And it is true that towards the end of the month their meals had to consist primarily of bread and pasta. But Willem and Ina did not give in. With the help of their parents, brothers, and sisters, they managed to get the €22 together every month for 2 years and send it to Colombia. "We may not have very much, but they undoubtedly have even less than us". The same family regularly cut out newspaper articles recounting the situation of poor children throughout the world. One evening the grandmother of the family told me: "There are so many children living on the streets. Some children are even sold for their organs! And in some countries children are dying in orphanages because of neglect. Even in Europe there are families that live in the immediate vicinity of rubbish dumps. Sometimes it reduces me to tears, but I only cry in the evenings because otherwise my husband gets too depressed."

-   Three weeks ago I came across another very similar historical fact, though this one dates back to the spring of 1847, when a group of Choctaw Indians from America collected $170 to help the victims of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland. They did this less than 20 years after being driven away from the land of their ancestors, a journey which caused the deaths of thousands of their people. This money, taken from their meagre resources, is equivalent to €5,000 today. Here again poor people came to the aid of others in another continent. In preparing to broadcast this story, ethnologists, historians and experts on the customs of Indian tribes asked themselves what could possibly have made a group of people that had suffered so much want to help others so far away. One writer has given the story a fresh slant by telling the story of a young Choctaw Indian who was refusing to help the white people who treated his people so inhumanely and driven them off their land. The evening before the final decision was made, to help him understand, his great-grandmother told him the story of the tribe's long journey which had taken place 20 years earlier. She told him how his mother had lost one of her children during the journey, a fate which befell many families, and that this little boy would have been his older brother. The youngster, who had always dreamt of having an older brother, suddenly understood. The next day he told the elders of his tribe that "money must be sent to help the people who are today going through what we experienced before." 

I hope that by pooling our methods, knowledge and beliefs we will spend two days full of such fellow feeling during which the poorest people in our societies are calling upon us to display what is best in us.

We know that if we really put our minds to it, the story of poverty and social exclusion in our countries can shift from being a source of shame to a source of pride, from being something to hide in shame to Europe's greatest strength, leading to our continent finally being reconciled with all its citizens in all their tremendous diversity.  

Thank you.