- ATD Fourth World

Preparation document for the Forecasting study days organised on 24-25 January 2002 at the Economic and Social Committee by the ATD Fourth World Research Institute and the Futuribles group^[1]

"Isn't the Movement's strategy to look 20 years ahead and find out what the Fourth World wants for its children 20 years from now? How can we know what life will be like for the poor in 20 years' time if we don't know what their situation in society is right now?" - Joseph Wresinski, founder of the ATD Fourth World Movement^[2]

1.  GLOOMY PROSPECTS IN EUROPE BY 2010
For several decades now we have noted a number of 'gloomy' trends, though some progress has been made. The degree of inertia varies from one area to another, being great in the demographic domain and weaker in others. The list below leans heavily on "Scenarios for Europe in 2010", a document produced by the European Commission's Forward Studies Unit (published by Apogee in November 1999) and report no. 38 by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville entitled "Europe 2010: Futures and Scenarios", which is available on the Internet at www.jrc.es.

Demographic trend (Europe)
Stagnation and ageing: the population of the European Union as it stands today will level off at 385 million inhabitants in 2010, in other words it will account for half the population of the European continent and just 5.6% of world population. The ageing of the population will exert additional pressure on social security and education systems. By around 2007, workers aged between 55 and 64 years old will outnumber those aged between 20 and 29 years old. Companies will no longer be able to inject new skills by replacing older workers with younger ones. The education and training systems will have to be reoriented towards continuing training.

Enlargement: the candidate countries^[3] for EU accession total roughly 106 million inhabitants. Nearly all of them have experienced a decline in their population for some years now.

Demographic trend (world)
Growth in world population: the world population, which is currently close to 6 billion is set to reach 6.9 billion by 2010. Nine out of every 10 births in the world between now and 2010 will occur in developing countries. Hence the strong pressure of immigration on rich countries and the decline of Europe's demographic weight in the world. Today, European countries frequently apply a policy of selective immigration, taking in only the most highly qualified applicants and rejecting the rest.

Globalisation
Globalisation is characterised by increasing international trade (the development of New Information and Communication Technologies, or NICTs), foreign investment, an increase in capital flow in the quest for financial profitability) and the lack of any body capable of global regulation. The 'triad' - the USA, Japan and the emerging countries of Asia - are making most of these investments and conducting much of this trade.
The standard of living in the industrial countries is generally higher, the level of education has also clearly risen, social protection is more and more highly developed, but illiteracy and extreme poverty are persisting at different - though often high - levels depending on the country in question. In Eastern Europe there has been a massive increase in poverty associated with the transition to a market economy. Some developing countries, particularly those in Asia, are benefiting from the new situation and growing wealthier. Others are becoming poorer, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In its present form, one consequence of globalisation is a growing gulf between rich and poor countries and increasing inequality even within one and the same country. The fiscal competition in which these countries are engaging is leading to a drop in taxes on capital and higher taxes on labour in the European Union.

Technology and productivity
The acceleration of technological progress over the last 200 years is leading to difficulties in adapting to the speed of change. The explosion of NICTs and the technological revolution in medicine and the biotech sector are changing people's behaviour. A more personalised form of medicine is developing, involving more targeted medication in conjunction with genetic testing. On the labour market, employers are demanding more and more highly qualified staff, resulting in the impoverishment of the least well qualified workers in industrial countries.

Environment
Current economic growth is based on the exploitation of natural resources at an unsustainable rate, as reflected by global warming, pollution, the shrinking of tropical forests and arable land in the Third World, a decline in biodiversity, the scarcity of water, and so on. Recently a concerted international approach has been made to combat this deterioration of the environment and global warming (Kyoto Protocol). The problem of sharing the costs of this between the industrialised countries and the developing countries is a thorny issue.

Changing values
For several decades now we have witnessed an increasing trend towards 'universal individualism', characterised by the refusal to subordinate the individual to the group, the decline of traditional (political, administrative and religious) authorities, a drop in the prestige of science and its limited, overly rational approach, greater importance attributed to freedom of choice for the individual and equal rights for all (development of a human rights movement). In religion, we have seen a decline in traditional practices and a quest for 'à la carte' spirituality. The family remains the most important focal point in people's lives, but its structure and practices have changed vastly (more independence for women, more single-parent families, and so on). Work has increasingly become viewed as a means of personal accomplishment.

Security and new threats
The geopolitical context has been greatly modified by a large rise in the number of recognised countries (44 in 1850, 191 in 1995), the end of the Cold War, changes in the nature of conflicts and threats (from inter-state to intra-state with an ethnic component), the headway made by exclusive forms of nationalism, and the emergence of "mass terrorism" organised by private groups. Organised crime is becoming increasingly international and is using the new technologies to engage in the trafficking of human beings, narcotics and arms, as well as money laundering and other criminal activities. Recently we have witnessed the emergence of a concerted international approach aimed at fighting organised crime.

EU enlargement
The populations of Central and Eastern Europe have suffered a great deal from the transition to something approximating a market economy. The collapse of social welfare systems has triggered "an unprecedented increase in poverty in the region... There is a hard core of the population that is very poor and stands every chance of being left by the wayside, even if there is powerful economic growth"¹. The specific values applied in these countries have to be taken into account by the European Union, which will have to either export its stability to them or import their instability.

Democracy and governance 
Representative democracy is in crisis and new players (NGOs) are now emerging and seeking out more participatory forms of democracy. EU enlargement raises the question of reforming its institutions: the European summit in Laeken has assigned a Convention the role of making proposals. There is growing recognition of the need to seek out new forms of global governance.

2. KEY QUESTIONS IN THE FIGHT AGAINST PRECARIOUSNESS AND EXTREME POVERTY

Development consists of increasing the freedom and capabilities of all (Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize for Economics). How can we create the conditions for sustainable development for everyone while respecting human rights? How can we make the eradication of poverty a priority of the European Union in terms of its legislation and deeds? What legal instruments are needed? What alliances are needed?
The Lisbon summit set the EU the objective of becoming "the most competitive knowledge economy in the world". How will the production, recognition and exploitation of everyone's skills be organised? Will life experience be recognised?

Democracy and governance
"When our children are taken away from us, it's like losing the essence of life". "It's time people listened to what we have to say" say the mothers of French and British families whose children have been placed in care¹ and whose self-esteem has been shattered. During the 20th century, policies aimed at breaking up very poor families were conducted in all European countries, with forced sterilisation in the Nordic countries, the "cultural genocide" of Roma families in Switzerland, the deportation of British children to colonies of the Empire² for more than three centuries, and the list goes on. How can we change family policies and the way that greatly disadvantaged families are viewed in order to boost their capacity to resist extreme poverty and suffering?

Education and culture for everyone
"Knowing how to read and write means liberating oneself from shame"³. "I've me three different types of teacher: those who have decided that nothing can be done with people like us; those who thought that something could be done with our children, but not with us, their parents; and those who sought to fight alongside us for the future of our children. The third type are the only ones who gave my daughters any appetite for learning", noted one mother from a highly underprivileged background.⁴ What can be done to make schools and different bodies offering public education more like 'learning organisations' for the most disadvantaged members of society? How can NICTs be made more accessible to the poor, not only in Eastern and Western Europe, but also in the South?

A decent job and suitable social protection for all
"Poverty will not be stopped if we continue to consider the most disadvantaged people as stand-ins, if we only give them minor, precarious, underpaid jobs. We are demanding that all these sub-standard jobs become real jobs which give them the same rights as other workers. To do that we are asking for the support of the social partners who have the power to ring in these changes in the regulations"⁵.
A ‘second class right' of social integration has been developing for the last 20 years in the European Union, while jobs are becoming more and more precarious. Changing social legislation is essential if we are to reconcile economic performance and human development⁶. How can we link up mobility, vocational training for the least well qualified, the protection of acquired rights and the continuity of social rights?

Reconciling security and liberty
The countries of Europe with the most generous social protection often impose tough, pernickety social checks on the disadvantaged members of their population, as if there was no way of guaranteeing them both security and liberty. Policies on security are spreading throughout Europe⁷, as are watered down forms of training or forced labour ('workfare', 'activation' of social benefits). The liberalisation of euthanasia could have a perverse impact on the most discredited groups in society by facilitating their 'gentle elimination'. "There is no need to be a foreigner to suffer racism. When you are poor, you are not considered as being like everyone else, you are considered to be nothing at all". How can the poorest members of the population be enabled to invoke their fundamental rights without impinging on their freedom?

The role of the European Union in the world: protectionism or solidarity?

• Immigration: the highly selective immigration policies implemented by the countries of the European Union are contributing to a 'brain drain' from the countries in the South, and forcing into an underground limbo large numbers of people who are threatened with impoverishment and who therefore constitute a "locally available transplanted workforce".

• Development cooperation: Over the last 10 years, public subsidies earmarked for development by the industrial countries have dropped by 29%. In 2000, the 15 Member States of the European Union set aside an average of 0.32% of their Gross National Product  for this purpose, as opposed to the 0.7% which they had pledged for more than 30 years¹. Aid has not succeeded in making the populations receiving it engines of their own development. Third World debt is continuing to place an unbearable burden on the most destitute population groups. Over the last few decades, international monetary institutions have imposed "programmes of structural change" on the poorest countries, renamed "programmes of structural impoverishment" by the NGOs in these countries.

• Trade and the environment: the rich countries are imposing unfair trade by levying substantial customs duty on imports from poor countries and by flooding their markets with products, especially largely subsidised agricultural produce from the North, thereby contributing to the destruction of agriculture in countries in the South. Global warming, which poses a particular threat to the poorest countries, is mainly the result of emissions of pollutants by the richest countries.

What role could the European Union play in ensuring that the growth of the wealthier countries does not occur at the expense of the poorer ones²?

Taking the most destitute populations as partners of democracy
The most destitute countries are not only leading experts on poverty, on the basis of their own experiences, but also experts on humanity. How can we create the conditions needed to involve them as partners in building on knowledge³ and defining the action to be taken⁴ at the local level (in schools, neighbourhoods, etc.), at the regional and national level (devising and assessing policies), at the European and international levels (democratising the institutions and ensuring that everyone's interests are taken into account)?

[1] This aide-mémoire written by Françoise Coré, Marie-Paule Rozec and Xavier Godinot at ATD Fourth World's Research Institute benefited from comments by Hugues De Jouvenel, the director of the Futuribles group

[2] Taken from a letter sent to the ATD team on Réunion island on 13 October 1981

[3] These include 10 Central European countries and two Mediterranean countries (Cyprus and Malta)

1 "Making transition work for everyone. Poverty and inequality in Europe and Central Asia" World Bank, 2000, p. V

1 Fourth World Journal "Children placed in care", no. 178, May 2001, pp. 6 and 16, and "In focus: adoption", in Dignity, Fourth World Journal, Summer 2001

2 On this topic, see "Exclusion, from blindness to clear-sightedness" by Xavier Godinot, Futuribles Journal, May 1999, pp. 5-18

3 "We are all involved in human rights", Minutes of the 6th European session of Fourth World People's Universities at the Economic and Social Committee, Brussels, 1999

4 Fourth World Journal "Passions to learn", no. 174, June 2000, p. 27

5 Fourth World Journal "The right to work and a secure existence", no. 172, December 1999, pp. 22-23

6 On this topic see "Breaking out of forced inactivity", Files and documents from the Fourth World Journal, September 1998, 81 pages

7 Loïc Wacquant, "The prisons of poverty", Raisons d'Agir, 1999, 190 pages

1 "Aid: always talking about it, never thinking about it", Stephen Smith, Le Monde, 23-24 December 2001

2 "Globalisation and poverty", Fourth World Journal no. 175, September 2000.

3 "The crossroads of knowledge. When the Fourth World and the University think in unison", Fourth World University research group, Editions de l'Atelier and Editions Quart Monde, 1999, 550 pages

4 "Artisans of democracy", Jona Rosenfeld and Bruno Tardieu, Editions de l'Atelier and Editions Quart Monde, 1998, 304 pages.