POVERTY IS A VIOLATION OF OUR HUMAN RIGHTS

My Own Perception of Poverty

Question No.1

"Wherever we lift one soul from a life of poverty, we are defending human rights.
And whenever we fail in this mission, we are failing human rights."
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan

When discussions turn to poverty, its main idea would often be the lack of secure
access to sufficient quantities of basic necessities, such as food, water, clothing, shelter and
minimum medical care’ or sufficient income or purchasing power to have control over basic
necessities. Poverty in this sense has existed throughout human history, it has become a
persistent struggle up until now and removing or alleviating poverty—helping the poor and
improving their living conditions—has been recognized as a universal moral value in
practically all societies. So, Gods and saints were supposed to look after the poor, good kings
were expected to protect the poor, and all virtuous people were enjoined to help the poor.
In spite of all that, poverty persisted and moral values alone are not sufficient to motivate a
society to take the required steps to remove poverty.

In every religion, civilization, and community, there are people that have bad
conscience about other human beings that are suffering the indignity of poverty. Labeling
the underprivileged as lazy, uneducated, and lousy. These pre-existing judgements have
characterized a bad image not towards the degrading situation itself but to the victims of it.
As if poverty is a person’s choice, and to suffer from it is one’s own fault.

However, we should not view poverty as only an individual’s problem. Poverty is the
reality of the majority of our world. The lack of these basic necessities creates life without
any self-respect, and freedom, or in short without any human rights. Poverty is a profoundly
damaging violation of human dignity. The poor cannot lead a life commensurate with the
standards of civilized existence. They are afflicted with hunger, malnutrition, ill health,
unsanitary housing and living conditions, and often lack education. They do not have the
resources to overcome these afflictions. Nor does society provide the means for them to
overcome them. They lose their self-respect and ability to participate in any kind of fulfilling
social life.

Because when we talk about poverty, we don’t only talk about lack of access, lack of
resources, deprivation of capabilities and lack of power nor do we talk about groups or
classes in society. We talk about masses, about figures, about people who are voiceless and
hence invisible, in other words people who are denied their individual dignity. When you
take that away you exclude those people from the human family. We are therefore talking
about inequalities –violations of our human rights. Those that do not see these are people
who are distant in the realities of our society.

Poverty cuts off individuals, their families, and their entire communities, from the
lifeline of universal human rights. Poverty is a full-scale attack on universal human rights,
eroding a person’s right to health, to food, to education, and to housing. Poverty reduces a
person’s effective access to justice, to equitable political participation, and to social mobility.
Moreover, poverty can jeopardize the very safety and stability of an individual, their family,
and their community.

Availability of these would not necessarily fulfill human rights. It is the access to
these necessities in a manner consistent with human rights standards of equity, non-
discrimination, participation, accountability, and transparency, together with availability,
that make them satisfy human rights. A society of slaves having all these basic necessities
will not be reckoned as enjoying human rights, not just because they lack the right to liberty
but because those necessities are not provided in a rights-based manner. Any program of
action aimed at providing these necessities as human rights must be formulated to conform
to these human rights standards.

Of the five families of human rights – civil, political, cultural, economic and social –
proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, poverty violates the fifth, always;
the fourth, generally; often the third; sometimes the second; and even the first. As was
recognized at the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993, there is an
organic link between poverty and the violation of human rights.

It is the state that is the primary duty-bearer of this right, just as it is with all other
human rights. Indeed, all too often we care only for victims of our own creed, of our own
political persuasion. All too often we tend to explain away violations visited on the other
side. But the state or the government of the country to which the poor belongs would have
the responsibility of formulating and implementing development policy, because it has the
power and authority to frame laws and regulations and adopt policies that affect all
individuals in its jurisdiction. The policies can be carried out in practice by respecting the
views of all parties that have some role to play in fulfilling the right.

The law has a duty to the poor but it doesn’t mean that socioeconomic rights ought
to be the only focus of combating poverty, but access to the courts by the most vulnerable
in the society can play a significant and important role within a broader eradication of
poverty strategy. Ineffective law enforcement, lack of transparency, lack of awareness of
legal procedures, and a familiarity with the daily injustices which occur despite
constitutional guarantees discourage interest in using law and litigation to help combat
poverty. However, though the use of legislature, justice can be served for these people. Let
me quote Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago: “Were such justice to exist, there would no longer
be a single human being dying of hunger or of diseases that are curable for some but not for
others. Were such justice to exist, life would no longer be, for half of humanity, the dreadful
sentence it has hitherto been. And for such justice, we already have a practical code that
has been laid down sixty years ago in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a
declaration that might profitably replace, as far as rightness of principles and clarity of
objectives are concerned, the manifestos of all the political parties of the world.” Such
violations must be abolished; poverty therefore must stop.

ARE WE MOVING FORWARD?

Poverty Statistics in the Philippines, is it good and realistic?
Question No.1
 According to a report released by the Philippine Statistics Authority, 5.9 million
Filipinos were lifted out of poverty in 2018. However, 17.6 million Filipinos, or around 3
million households, struggled to afford basic needs and still lived below the poverty
threshold as of last year. The country’s statistics agency estimates that a family of five
needed an average of P10,727 per month to make ends meet in 2018. Adoracion Navarro,
officer-in-charge of National Economic and Development Authority, even said, “We are
pleased that the official poverty statistics for the full-year of 2018 reported by the Philippine
Statistics Authority show significant progress, not just in terms of increasing overall income
but also reducing inequality”, on her preliminary report of the 2018 full-year official poverty
statistics of the Philippines.

While this may seem appealing to the ears of some, that we are progressing and
apparently “near” towards the goal of minimizing poverty –the claim sounds way too
detached. There is nothing to smile at in distress, misery, dereliction and death, which
march in grim parade with poverty. We should, indeed, be ashamed. We are far from
achieving a world of zero poverty, and the longer we get there will only risk the lives of
millions.

Most of the poor in the Philippines live in rural areas and work in the agriculture
sector, mainly in farming and fishing. Urban poverty, however, has been increasing in recent
years. Migrants without jobs or with low-paying jobs are unable to afford decent housing. As
a result, Philippine cities have high proportions of informal settlers who are among the
poorest of the poor.

Moreover, as much as we want that poverty be isolated, it doesn’t. If we don’t

eradicate it immediately it will move from places. It passes to one generation to another.
Which makes poor families more vulnerable. Their kids, their grandchildren, and the next,
will also experience the same deprivation.

In addition, we cannot measure poverty by just affording basic needs or in matters of

money, it is more than that. Poverty is multidemnesional. According to the data of
Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) showed on November 2018, the agency revealed for the
first time its Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which captures deprivations on various
dimensions. The index takes into account 13 indicators, which are clustered under 4
dimensions: (1) Education dimension: (a) School attendance and (b) Educational attainment;
(2) Health and nutrition dimension: (a) Hunger, (b) Food consumption, and (c) Health
insurance; (3) Housing, water and sanitation dimension: (a) Ownership of assets, (b) Toilet
facility, (c) Source of water supply, (d) Tenure status of dwelling, (e) Housing materials, and
(f) Electricity; and (4) Employment dimension: (a) Underemployment, and (b) Working
children not in school. A Filipino is identified as multidimensionally deprived if he or she is
deprived in at least one third of the indicators or at least four of the 13 indicators. Thus, in
order to say that poverty is declining, we must also take into account if these indicators are
improving.
 The data shown of having 5.9 million people being lifted from poverty in our country
doesn’t really show the actual number of people living in poverty. For all we know, it might
actually be more than that.

PSA, WORLD BANK, AND IBON MEDIA

Which is more realistic?

The poverty threshold of PSA is downright discrimination. Measuring poverty by the

government-set threshold of P10,727 per month for a family of five is honestly an insult to
the underprivileged and the whole Filipino Community. This threshold indicates that our
government has a low ambition for poverty eradication by setting it to a minimum. This
amount is not decent and results in tens of millions of Filipinos not meeting minimum
standards of well-being. It will not be enough in a country that does not pay its people right,
it will not work in a country whose neighbors with climate calamities, nor will it survive to a
country that has no sufficient educational and medical systems.

Based on government computations, Php7,528 must be set aside for food. They even
provided a sample menu, which consists of: breakfast (Scrambled eggs, rice, and coffee with
milk); lunch (Boiled monggo with malunggay and dried dilis, steamed rice, and a banana);
dinner (Fried tulingan, steamed kangkong, and rice); and snacks (Pandesal or boiled root
crops). For the remaining Php3,199 in the budget, officials said it can go to non-food items
like clothing, fuel, light, water, rent, house repairs, medical care, education, transportation,
and personal care –which is far from enough. A family has more expenses that what is
indicated in this. They deserve more than just eggs and coffee in the morning. The budget
for non-food items is also not enough considering that prices in fuel and other expenses
keep on rising. Quality education cannot also be achieved with this amount even with the
existence of RA 10931, or Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education because students
still have a lot of fees to pay during school and need to buy materials to meet the
requirements of each class.

The data presented by the IBON Media is more realistic compared to the other two.
It recognizes that a family should not only be able to have food to eat but must also have
the proper amount intake of nutrients and how non-food items increase through time
because among Philippine citizens, the poor are most vulnerable to financial and price
shocks and natural disasters. Often their efforts to cope with these shocks and make up for
lost livelihoods and income result in deeper levels of indebtedness.
 HYPOTHETICAL MONTHLY FAMILY BUDGET
Family of five: - Mother, Father, and 3 children.

ITEM EXPLANATION BUDGET

FOOD, BEVERAGES, AND OTHER COMSUMABLES
According to Militant group Partido ng
Manggagawa National Chairman
Renato Magtubo, “NEDA alleges that
P959 out of the P10,000 is allotted for
rice. Such a budget can only buy 30
kilos of P32 NFA (National Food
Rice Authority) rice – which is hard to find
P 1,600.00
40 kilograms (P 40.00/ kilo) in the market – for one month or 1
kilo per day to be shared by five
people.”

PSA data shows that a Filipino family

consumes 8.9 kg of ordinary rice a
week in 2006.
According to the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD), a Filipino
consumes about 14.2 kg of pork, two
kg more than the world’s average
Meat pork consumption. Next to pork, the P 1,100.00
average Filipino consumes about 11.6
kg of chicken and 3 kg of beef or veal.

In total, a Filipino consumes about

28.8 kg of meat yearly. 
Fish P 900.00
According to World Health
Organization (WHO), the
recommended amount of vegetable
and fruit intake is at the average of
400 grams each day. This serving may
Vegetables help prevent non-communicable P 1,000.00
diseases such as heart disease, cancer,
diabetes and obesity, as well as
prevent and alleviate several
micronutrient deficiencies, especially
in our country.
The general rule of thumb is to store
one gallon of water per person per
day, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention. They
Beverage (non-alcoholic) also suggest that, in an emergency P 1,500.00
situation, you should drink two quarts
(half a gallon) of water a day – more if
you're in a hot climate, sick, pregnant,
or a child.
NON-FOOD
Clothing and Footwear P 900.00
Housing (Maintenance) P 2,000.00
Water Bill P 1,500.00
Electric Bill P 2,000.00
Education Philippine public schools do not P 2,500.00 x 3 Children
 charge tuition fees, but it’s not the
only financial consideration. School
supplies, uniform costs, meals and
(Including uniform, materials, transportation add up to the costs as
books, and etc.) well. When an emergency occurs, = P 7,500.00
such as a family member falling ill, or
a parent losing his job, it also usually
forces the child to drop out of school.
Internet Access and
P 1,500.00
Communication
Transportation P 1,500.00
Fuel for Cooking P 850.00
Leisure P 700.00
Health (Medication and
For injuries, diseases, and accidents. P 3,000.00
etc.)
A family should also set aside money
in case of emergencies such as
Emergency medical fees, car repairs, daily P 2,000.00
expenses brought by unemployment,
and other emergency situations.
TOTAL P 29,550.00

REFERENCES:
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000151826?posInSet=1&queryId=48910a2c-02ee-4ef2-98de-680046a15e79
https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000187613
https://www.foi.gov.ph/
https://psa.gov.ph/poverty-press-releases/nid/138411
https://psa.gov.ph/content/filipino-family-consumed-89-kg-ordinary-rice-week-2006-results-2006-family-income
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/10/06/1957698/rice-prices-continue-decline
https://www.who.int/hdp/poverty/en/
https://www.rappler.com/business/166870-fast-facts-meat-chicken-pork-filipino-consumption
https://www.pressreader.com/philippines/philippine-daily-inquirer-1109/20160415/281861527670337
https://www.rappler.com/brandrap/advocacies/105019-real-cost-education-ph
https://businessmirror.com.ph/2018/08/30/snapshot-of-rice-consumption-data-remains-grainy-as-pinoys-grapple-with-supply-prices/
https://cnnphilippines.com/life/culture/2018/6/12/filipino-families-poverty-line.html