Why does the UN explore extreme poverty in rich America

Фото: Depositphotos

The United Nations Observer for Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, traveled around the coast of the United States to find explanations for the difficulties experienced by America’s most vulnerable citizens.

According to The GuardianThe tour, which started at the beginning of the month, includes stops in four states, as well as in Washington and in the United States in Puerto Rico. He will focus on several social and economic barriers that make the American dream unattainable for millions - from housing problems in California to racial discrimination in the South, homeless children in Puerto Rico and the reduction of industrial jobs in West Virginia.

41 million Americans officially live in poverty, according to data from the US Census Bureau (according to other estimates, this figure is much higher).

The UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, is a professor of jurisprudence in Australia and New York, and has experience in investigating government crimes in various countries. He criticized the regime of Saudi Arabia for limiting the treatment of women several months before the kingdom legalized their right to drive cars, condemned the Brazilian government for oppressing the poor as a result of austerity, and even the UN itself for spreading cholera in Haiti.

As part of his tour, he will look for an answer to a question that causes growing concern in troubled times: is it possible in one of the world's leading democracies to enjoy fundamental human rights, such as political participation or the right to vote if your existence does not meet basic living standards , not to mention participation, as Thomas Jefferson put it, “in the pursuit of happiness?”.

"Despite the overall wealth of the United States, there is also great poverty and inequality in the country," Alston said before the tour began.

He intends to focus on the detrimental effects of poverty, the civil and political rights of Americans, "taking into account the continued attention of the United States to the importance it attaches to these rights in its foreign policy, and considering that it ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Фото: Depositphotos

Poverty experts are closely following the UN tour, hoping that this will draw public attention to the unobtrusive but critical aspect of American society.

David Grouski, director of the Center for Poverty and Inequality at Stanford, said that the visit has the potential to mirror the country at a time when globalization combined with whole domestic politics has created a huge gap between the rich and the poor.

“The United States has an extraordinary ability to naturalize and accept the extreme poverty that exists even in the context of such extraordinary wealth,” he said.

Gruski added that the US response to Alston’s visit would be anyway. “He has the potential to open his eyes to the hidden earlier, or he will be criticized as an outsider who does not have the right to tell us what to do with internal affairs in the United States.”

Alston’s findings will be presented as a full report to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva next June.

Фото: Depositphotos

The UN Poverty Study Tour comes at an exceptionally tense time for the United States. In their survey of the nation in 2016, the Stanford Center for Poverty and Inequality placed the United States at the bottom of the 10 table of prosperous countries in terms of income inequality.

He also found that the United States has reached the bottom in terms of the security that the country offers to families in distress and is one of the worst in terms of low-income families' ability to get out of poverty - this contrasts sharply with the myth of the American dream.

The United States is of particular interest to the UN Special Rapporteur, because, unlike all other industrialized countries, it does not recognize fundamental social and economic rights, such as the right to health care, shelter or food. The federal government consistently refuses to sign an international pact on economic, social and cultural rights, arguing that these issues are best left to individual states.

This emphasis on the rights of states has created problems for low-income families across the country. States controlled by Republicans in the South provide relatively little help to those facing unemployment and a shortage of cash, while in big cities a lot of help comes.

On the contrary, high housing prices and fuel the crisis of homelessness in such liberal cities as Los Angeles and San Francisco - the first stop during the UN tour.

Translation: The idealist

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