Encyclopedia of World Poverty

Basic Security

Contributors: Rob Kerby

Editors: M. Odekon
Book Title: Encyclopedia of World Poverty
Chapter Title: "Basic Security"
Pub. Date: 2006
Access Date: October 23, 2013
Publishing Company: Sage Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks
Print ISBN: 9781412918077
Online ISBN: 9781412939607
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412939607.n49
Print page: 70
This PDF has been generated from SAGE knowledge. Please note that the pagination
of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412939607.n49
ECONOMIC DEPRIVATION—a lack of financial re-sources—is the basis by which most
define poverty. But how can poverty be measured in cultures that circulate no money?
Poverty figures are unavailable for the nation of Somalia since it has no government
and no official currency. Does this mean that everyone in Somalia lives in poverty?
Obviously not, as the country is ruled by local warlords with their own private armies.

Is money the only gauge of prosperity? Is the chief of a tribe in an innermost rainforest
poor because he has no money? He has 40 goats and eats his fill daily with his children
and wife, who live in the tallest structure in their village. He is guarded day and night by
the two most feared warriors in the area. The tribe lives on a ridge over a beautiful river,
safe from flood and invasion. The chief's tribe may not have income, but still enjoys
basic security.

“The lack of basic security connotes the absence of one or more factors enabling
individuals and families to assume basic responsibilities and to enjoy fundamental
rights,” wrote Father Joseph Wresinski, founder of ATD Fourth World, an international
nongovernmental organization based in France that engages individuals and institutions
to support the daily efforts of people in extreme poverty. “The lack of basic security,”
wrote Wresinski, “leads to chronic poverty when it simultaneously affects several
aspects of people's lives, when it is prolonged and when it severely compromises
people's chances of regaining their rights and of reassuming their responsibilities in the
foreseeable future.”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, drawing attention to the fundamental

link between development and freedom, emphasized that poverty must be seen as the
deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of income. Sen's vision
of poverty includes capability deprivation as well as the availability of choices, security,
and power needed for an individual or a society to enjoy an adequate standard of living
along with fundamental civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights.

“Insecurity,” wrote Confucius, “is worse than poverty.” In this point of view, even a
person born to vast wealth lives in a condition worse than poverty if he lacks basic
security—suffering constant anxiety, humiliation, and oppression inflicted by those who
wield power; being ostracized; and being continuously reminded one is inferior.

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“Human rights are about ensuring dignity, equality, and security for all human beings
everywhere,” wrote the late Sergio Vieira de Mello, United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights from 2002 to 2003. “Dignity, which reflects both autonomy and
responsibility, concerns the individual. Equality is the cornerstone of effective and
harmonious relationships between people; it underpins our common systems of ethics
and rights, whether we are discussing equality before the law or the need for equity in
how states and international systems conduct their affairs. Neither dignity nor equality,
of course, can take root in the absence of basic security.”

Rob Kerby, Independent Scholar

http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412939607.n49
See Also:

Bibliography

Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford
University Press, 1982)

Kathryn D. Talley, D. Stanley Eitzen, and Douglas A. Timmer, Paths to Homelessness:

Extreme Poverty and the Urban Housing Crisis (Westview Press, 1994)

Alan Wood, “Beyond the New Paternalism: Basic Security as Equality,” International
Labour Review (v.142 / no. 1, 2001)

Joseph Wresinski, Chronic Poverty and Lack of Basic Security (ATD Fourth World
Movement, 1994).

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