Thirty years ago, on 17 October 1987, Father Joseph Wresinski, one of the first to highlight the direct link between human rights and extreme poverty, called for a fight against this scourge by encouraging the commemoration of the World Day for Overcoming Extreme Poverty. On that day, more than one hundred thousand people gathered at the Place du Trocadéro in Paris, where the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights had been signed in 1948. Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to pay tribute to the victims of extreme poverty, violence, and hunger. Five years later, the General Assembly, inspired by this call, declared 17 October as the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (resolution 47/196 )..
This International Day, therefore, represents an opportunity to recognize the efforts and struggles of people living in poverty, an opportunity for them to raise awareness of their problems.
Poverty is, in short, a broad range of circumstances associated with difficulty accessing and lacking the resources to meet basic needs, which lead to a deterioration in people's standard of living and quality of life. This is reflected in the lack of health, housing, income, employment, equality between men and women, stable agriculture, nutrition, technology, education, and livelihoods.
For this reason, we must stop viewing poverty solely as a lack of income. It is a multidimensional phenomenon. Poverty is in itself an urgent human rights issue and is both a cause and consequence of human rights violations, as it is characterized by multiple and interconnected violations of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and people living in it are regularly exposed to the denial of their dignity and equality. Reducing and eradicating poverty is therefore an obligation of all societies, as its consequences are at the root of situations such as drug trafficking, death, prostitution, child exploitation, and so on. As such, it must be addressed from all spheres of society: government, the third sector, society at large, and, of course, with the full participation of those affected.
For this reason, the Department of Social Policies of the Cieza City Council carries out various projects aimed at combating poverty in our municipality. These programs are aimed not only at alleviating situations of economic hardship but also at working alongside people who suffer from social vulnerability, supporting them in their processes of change, leading to their recovery. Among these projects are the Energy Poverty Eradication Project; the Child Poverty Combat Project; the Social Work Program; the Support Program for Social Inclusion; the Family Program; the Home-Delivered Meals Project; and grants for school cafeterias and books.
We join in this commemoration, mindful of the difficulty of eradicating poverty, but without forgetting or overlooking those who suffer from it. A situation of poverty should never take away the dignity of those who suffer from it.