Intolerable injustice

The 2007 National Conference the Portuguese Commission for Justice and Peace was held at the College of St. Brito in Lisbon on 25-26 May. Theme of the conference: “For global development and solidarity – a compromise of citizenship”. The conference voiced its concerns about the alarming social situation in Portugal. Based on Eurostat data, the Commission’s “Economy and Society” workgroup issued a preparatory document called “Characterization and evolution of poverty in Portugal”, from which it emerges that “the situation of national poverty reaches one of the highest levels in the European Union”. Some 20% of the Portuguese, almost two million people, had to make do in 2005 with a family income 60% less than the national average. The social groups most exposed to the risk of poverty are “the migrant population, the disabled, some ethnic minorities and people with low levels of schooling; to these should be added, among the working population, the situations deriving from unemployment, precariousness of work and low pay”. It’s a level of poverty that is “intolerable” according to MANUELA SILVA , who chairs the Commission of Justice and Peace. She laments the fact that “the public opinion of the richer countries has not yet recognized that the overcoming of chronic poverty is a question of justice and human solidarity indispensable for the expression of citizenship, and at the same time a challenge for sustainable global development and for the future of peace throughout the planet”. At the end of the Conference a “manifesto of hope” was issued: it “appeals to all Portuguese to take a public stance on the problem of poverty and social exclusion in the country and in the world as a whole”. DRAMATIC SITUATIONS. The signatories of the final document maintain that “these grave problems can be solved neither with monetary surpluses nor with sporadic gestures of generosity, but only by altering the economic, social and cultural mechanisms that perpetuate poverty and prevent change”. National programmes to curb social indigence, integrated in the corresponding European projects, have existed in Portugal since 1986, but in spite of these efforts, in which so many hopes were invested, dramatic situations of poverty persist: “the percentage of poverty has remained virtually constant around 20%, corresponding to roughly 2 million Portuguese”; during the period 1995-2000, 47% of “disadvantaged” families became poor in the course of one year, 72% in two or more years”, while 40% of their members were employees or self-employed; the percentage of pensioners was higher than 30%. Compared with the European context, the generational transmission of poverty is abnormally high”. In addressing this situation, “the signatories do not ignore the economic and financial problems that Portugal is going through, nor do they underestimate the significance of the supranational, European and global dimensions of some political and economic factors on which it would be necessary to intervene, but they reject the dogmatism of a ‘single’ diagnosis and maintain that there is still scope for action in which individual and collective intervention is still possible and necessary”. THREE FRONTS. In Portugal – say the signatories of the final document – “it is necessary to intervene, simultaneously, on three fronts: first, action needs to be taken to relieve the gravest situations of poverty, in order to satisfy basic human needs, overcome the cultural and behavioural blockages that persistent poverty generates in them, compromising their ability to overcome the situation, and use the available resources to help them re-gain self-sufficiency. Second, objectives, strategies and methods aimed at removing the structural causes of poverty and exclusion need to be included in public policies. And third, a change of mentality needs to be promoted in the non-poor, with the aim of overcoming prejudices about poverty and its causes, and encouraging attitudes of greater solidarity”. The document declares that “poverty constitutes a grave negation of fundamental human rights and the necessary conditions for the exercise of citizenship, a situation that is ethically deplorable, politically unacceptable and scientifically unjustifiable”. For these reasons, “the signatories appeal to all Portuguese citizens to make a collective commitment” aimed at exerting pressure on the organs of national sovereignty, on the government and on civil society, which are asked to act on the basis of their own specific fields of competence and responsibilities. Lastly, the signatories expect, “especially from the Churches, Christian organizations and communities, a particularly active and responsible commitment as testimony of the concrete expression of the ideals of love and justice by which they are animated”.