make poverty history

“The theme for this year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, ‘Working together out of poverty,’ highlights the need for a truly global anti-poverty alliance, one in which both developed and developing countries participate actively.” _source

And some related links:
*Poverty as a denial of human rights
*Breaking the cycle
*Poverty reduction

I’m not sure how it works out this year, though… you know, with the air filled with a fear of depression.

“A two-day-old baby girl in India has survived after being buried alive in a field by her maternal grandfather in the south of the country” (source). And, the grandfather says he could not afford keeping her! It’s beyond comprehension what poverty makes people do.

“[Indian] government figures suggest that around 10 million girls have been killed by their parents – either in the womb or immediately after birth – over the past two decades.”

“Poverty is the absence of all human rights. The frustrations, hostility and anger generated by abject poverty cannot sustain peace in any society. For building stable peace we must find ways to provide opportunities for people to live decent lives.”

“We get what we want, or what we don’t refuse. We accept the fact that we will always have poor people around us, and that poverty is part of human destiny. This is precisely why we continue to have poor people around us. If we firmly believe that poverty is unacceptable to us, and that it should not belong to a civilized society, we would have built appropriate institutions and policies to create a poverty-free world.”

- Mohammad Yunus, in his Nobel lecture.

You can find the complete lecture (video and text), here.

I saw this somewhere, and thought it’s worth sharing. It’s one of many ways that poverty affects lives.

5 seconds, and one more child is dead of malnutrition. I don’t get it, is there anything affecting our lives more than 6 million children dying of poverty each year? The first thing that I need to fight is my own indifference.