About 23 thousand Portuguese citizens subscribed a petition, delivered by the National Commission for Justice and Peace. The collected adhesions were delivered yesterday, October 17th International Day dedicated to the struggle against poverty, in the hands of the president of the Parliament, Jaime Gama. The document is to be debated by the legislative assembly in plenary session. The promoters of the initiative believe that "poverty is a serious denial of both the fundamental human rights and the conditions which are necessary to exercise citizenship"; it is a social condition which they consider "ethically condemnable, politically unacceptable and scientifically unjustifiable". In this respect, the National Commission for Justice and Peace stimulates the parliament to fix "an official poverty threshold, in relation to the national income level and the average life conditions in Portuguese society". Such threshold should be the compulsory point of reference for evaluating the public policies meant to eradicate poverty. According to the Commission, poverty "is a problem asking for public intervention and support for the situations with greater difficulties, but its causes may be removed only by changing the cultural, social and economic factors generating and perpetuating it: you won’t uproot poverty by means of sporadic generous gestures or interventions".
