Extreme Poverty

The World Bank defines extreme poverty as living on US $1 or less per day, and estimates that 1.1 billion people currently live under these conditions,having minimal or very limited access to basic necessities, such as food, clothing, shelter, education and health care. Eradication of extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 is set as one the 8 Millennium Development Goals.

• Each year, more than 8 million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive.
• Over 1 billion people—1 in 6 people around the world—live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 800 million go hungry each day.
• Over 100 million primary school-age children cannot go to school

It is estimated nearly 3 billion people—half of the world’s population—are considered poor. But poverty isn’t simply a numbers game. It’s about the immense multitude of men, women and children enduring unimaginable obstacles that keep them from fulfilling their most basic human rights and achieving their individual potentials.,
The United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, proclaiming that all people have the right to education, work, health and well-being, but today, millions around the world are too crippled by poverty to fulfill these basic rights. Millions continue to go hungry. Scores of children never step inside a classroom. Families watch their loved ones die from largely preventable causes because they do not have access to the most basic medical care. In essence, poverty is a denial of human rights.Six million children under five die every year as a result.
It is difficult to accurately put across the immensity of this ongoing problem facing the world at present ,this injustice to humanity on the grandest scale, But perhaps an example, a sample taste of what affects millions of other individuals like ourselves, every minute of every day, would suffice.

Imagine a child, a young girl of the age of 5, in sub Saharan Africa, she is an orphan, her mother killed by the unmerciful disease HIV/AIDS just following her birth, she is now alone left to fend for herself, to find her own nourishment in the dry, arid lands of Africa, she faces the never-ending battle of the search for food and water to keep alive, in a country where everyday, thousands of men woman and children die from starvation and dehydration. Walking miles and miles in the intense heat in search of her basic rights which have so cruelly been denied to her. She is unlikely to last long, chances are she is already affected with HIV/AIDS or malaria even at this tender age and with no basic medical facilities she would perish, along with so many others like her before she even reaches her next birthday. Even more likely to strike is the dehydration, with no access to clean drinking water it will be only a matter of days before she collapses, along with countless others due to the lack of this basic necessity.

Now even if this young girl, miraculously manages to keep herself alive, possibly by stumbling upon an Aid camp thus obtaining vaccinations and nourishment, enough to keep her going till adulthood. With the desperate lack of schools and educational institutions to educate even at the basic primary level, she, like many others her age will be unable to gain any skills or knowledge needed to obtain work of any sort in her later years. Thus the cycle continues, this vicious cycle of poverty. Her future years hold little promise, what is likely,if she is lucky to have not succumbed to the wrath of HIV/AIDS by adulthood, she would eventually give birth to her own child. A child brought into a world of bitter cruelty and constant battles for survival, set out to endure the harsh struggles of life, starvation and diseases. Thus the cycle continues.

This is not just a sad story, it is the harsh and inhumane reality of what faces millions of lives in the third world countries every-day! These are the disastrous affects of extreme poverty, pain and suffering to men woman and children. Why do these innocent lives have to suffer this injustice? Something must be done, action must be taken. The power to bring about reform lies in the hands of the world leaders, but we the public have the voice, it is up to us to make a stand against this merciless way of life facing millions around the world today. We can help, we can a difference. Wear the whiteband, join the campaign and join in the fight to once and for all Make Poverty History.

‘’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.”
Kofi Annan
United Nations Secretary-General