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DEVELOPMENT: People Are Not Poor by Choice, Says ILO

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 6 2003 (IPS) - The International Labour Organisation (ILO) is striking a blow to stereotyped notions about the origins of poverty, stressing that the poor are not to blame for this phenomenon that affects nearly half the world population, and that "work is the solution."

Poverty is the result of structural failures and inefficient economic and social systems, ILO director-general Juan Somavía says in a report he will present Monday to the International Labour Conference, meeting in Geneva.

The document outlines the grave situation of poverty worldwide. Some three billion people live on less than two dollars a day, and at least a billion "struggle along on one dollar a day or less."

"As things stand today, the Millennium Development Goals for reducing extreme poverty by half in 2015 will not be reached," says Somavía’s report. The target for slashing poverty rates was established by the United Nations Millennium Summit three years ago.

Behind this failure is "a perverse interaction" of several factors, including inequitable national and international income distribution patterns, Somavía states.

Other variables undermining efforts to achieve the poverty reduction goal are the "governance problems from the local to the global level in the public and private spheres, and a model of globalisation incapable of stopping the growth of unemployment and the informal economy."

For example, most of the least developed countries (LDCs) "are heavily dependent on exports of non-oil commodities, which in 2001 registered prices averaging half of their level 20 years earlier," says the ILO chief.

"Can you imagine the resources that would have been available for them had appropriate policies kept commodity prices at stable levels?"

The world poverty panorama goes hand-in-hand with official figures on unemployment: there are 180 million people without work, and this already unprecedented total continues to grow, according to Somavía.

And there is an "even larger cadre" of more than a billion people who are working but "without fully utilising their creativity or maximising their productive potential," says his report.

Furthermore, some 50 million people are added to the world’s labour force each year, more than the number of those who retire. And 97 percent of this in-flow takes place in the developing world.

More than a billion youths, today ages five to 15, will enter the working age population over the next decade, but the global economy is not organised efficiently enough to make full use of their skills, energy and ambition, according to the ILO text.

And as far as income distribution, the gap between the wealthiest 20 percent and poorest 20 percent of the global population continues to expand. The ratio of income between these two groups in 1960 was 30 to one, and by 1999, it had more than doubled to 74 to one.

No country is immune to poverty. In the mid-1990s, more than 10 percent, on average, of the population in 20 industrialised nations lived below a poverty line of less than 50 percent of median income, according to ILO research.

"The poor have enormous reserves of courage, ingenuity, persistence and solidarity that helps them get through the each day on less than the equivalent of two dollars," comments Somavía.

"In many ways, the working poor are the ultimate entrepreneurs," and that potential should be tapped, with a strategy that poses an alternative to "waging war on poverty from the top down."

"The persistence of poverty is a moral indictment of our times," says Somavía, and the fact that it continues to be accepted "expresses a loss of fundamental human values, of international will."

In the conclusion of the ILO report, Somavía states that there must be a strong tripartite commitment – amongst governments, the private sector and workers – to put an end to poverty.

"We have a solution – the way out of poverty is work," says the ILO director-general.

A mechanism that involves the state, the business community and wage earners is the most important tool that societies have for ensuring national control of poverty-reduction strategies, says Somavía.

The ILO’s commitment to fighting poverty, he said, entails promoting public policies, rights, institutions and market solutions that allow all people to earn a decent living, and incomes so that they can meet the needs of their families, overcoming poverty through work.