- ATD Fourth World

Our workshop identified a number of reasons for not creating further international legal instruments, but also pinpointed many reasons why it is important to continue using legal instruments in our campaign and perhaps to develop them further.

First among the reasons that led some of us to think that action was unnecessary, was our recognition of the importance of using human rights in ATD Fourth World's general strategy. Considering poverty as a denial of human rights remains an appropriate and, it would seem, effective approach for tackling the issue in a political and legal context.
On the one hand, it is true that human rights have a universal application, which means that there is no real reason to develop these instruments for specific categories.
On the other hand, there have been numerous occasions on which international law has indeed come to the aid of national legislation that has been deficient or has had the effect of excluding some groups (for example everything people have managed to say and do about not discriminating). There have also been court rulings favourable to Fourth World causes and to the fight against poverty (for example the case law of the European Court of Human Rights on the protection of adopted children or the right to live as a family superseded British law).
At European level, despite it being an additional instrument, we acknowledged the value of the Charter of Fundamental Rights announced at the Nice summit in 2000, since it refers to other international instruments and supports them. It includes a non-regression clause in relation to these international texts. 

However, a series of valid arguments led us to conclude that our legal campaign has to continue or be more creative. For instance, we brought up the fact that international legal instruments are still not used to their full advantage and that people, even magistrates themselves, are sometimes not nearly familiar enough with them. These interpretations, which have on occasion been favourable in some circumstances, are not necessarily favourable in others. We also noted traditional interpretations which give the impression that the debate is closed. Countries are desperate not to apply these international conventions. 
In terms of the European Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights, we feel primarily that it lacks legal value insofar as at the moment it is no more than a declaration.
On the other hand, we highlighted the fact that these texts (treaties or legislation) have not been effectively implemented, a situation that can sometimes have major consequences in certain Third World countries. Many people are continuing to fall victim to different forms of discrimination.

Several speakers, in reminding the ATD Movement of the need to develop rights that are enforceable in a court of law, acknowledged that this would perhaps eventually be the most effective method: the right to water, housing, food, to live as a family, etc. Indeed these rights have their basis and a point of reference in the UN Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In relation to these specific situations of people being the ongoing victims of discrimination, we also wondered whether it might be necessary to place a specific text aimed at eliminating poverty on the international agenda.

I have already mentioned the factors that influenced our responses in our forward-looking process. We took as our starting point  the concept of citizenship.

We can intuitively sense that the concept of citizenship is an important one and that within the European Union it could prove very promising in the fight against poverty. European law already fleshes out this concept to some extent via its own body of law. In spite of everything, we are still perplexed because we could do a lot more: might it not be a good idea to introduce a programme of education on citizenship by taking our own approach based on our own concerns?
Moreover, actual situations also inspired the line of thinking of our workshop, the members of which comprised working and retired professionals and representatives of the ATD Fourth World Movement and other organisations involved in political reflection. We discussed the effectiveness of international law in the context of children, who unlike adults, do not have acquired rights and are often at the centre of conflicts of interest. As such, children wanting to live with their parents who are resident in a country of which they are not nationals find themselves in an illegal situation. So we feel that certain laws do not take sufficient account of such situations. Why is it that the law and these institutions are driven to make this distinction with regard to children? We then focussed on the concept of human dignity, a subject that was raised on several occasions in our workshop. We believe that legislation is probably dominated by an ethical principle, but in actual fact the law too often relative this concept in certain situations. 

We took some time to reflect upon Roma populations and felt that they embodied or represent clearly a group of people that continue to fall victim to discrimination, even in areas where legislation condemns this. 

In the face of all this then, what role do the players have? We sought to identify the possible courses of action.
There are several ways of tackling these legal shortcomings. There is still room for legal action, for more innovative and more creative jurisprudence in areas where texts are contradictory and where we feel that interpretations of them are lacking. 

We noted the availability of the UN system and of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural rights. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, who was represented in our workshop, led us to discuss the effectiveness of fundamental rights in relation to extreme poverty: texts are already under discussion, but dialogue with governments is proving difficult since they seem extremely hesitant to go any further. In addition, debates are planned and an appeal was made to union organisations to become involved in the fight against social exclusion, without limiting their action amongst their individual members. Meanwhile, the respective countries must strive to ratify certain texts at both European and national level.
The European Union is itself a player. It also has an area of competence, a sphere of action, where a great deal can be done to respect rights.
We maintain that, as the revision of the treaties continues, the European Union is a community of rights; indeed we can see that the European Community ought to strike a better balance between its economic and social policy. One speaker illustrated this idea by suggesting a fifth criterion with reference to the existing convergence criteria, even though this proposal could prove controversial. Furthermore, in its policy-making, the European Community could take initiatives, which are slowly taking shape elsewhere, to measure the impact of all these proposals on the fight against poverty. The tasks in which the Community is already involved regarding indicators in the fight against poverty could be of interest for developing a common parlance for referring to poverty. Several speakers highlighted as a precondition the idea that these indicators should not be specifically quantitative, since poverty is not quantifiable. Above all, it would be totally unacceptable to make do with a quantitative goal, which, once achieved, would nonetheless leave us with an intolerable situation. I should point out in passing that the Council of Europe also plans to work on developing indicators of social cohesion.

Nor should we forget the goals of the fight against poverty as defined at the Nice European Council. Indeed, these are fundamental, for they form the basis of the structure and co-operation of the European Union with its Member States as well as pushing NGO to become involved in this dialogue.

We also recognised the very useful role played by NGO such as ATD Fourth World in driving the process forward and submitting proposals. These organisations are capable of listening to those who are extremely poor and giving them a means of taking action.

The experiences of two members of our group showed that in England and France the ATD Fourth World Movement had managed to initiate dialogue with the powers that be.
In England for example, the dialogue was set in motion in connection with a reform of the law on the forced adoption of children. It was demonstrated that the respective institutional or political will, whilst starting out with good intentions, does not necessarily match the deep-seated desire of parents to hang on to their children.
Mr Ludo Horemans of the European Anti Poverty Network (EAPN) spoke of the structured civil dialogue currently going on within the European Union, citing the current Belgian experience of the general joint report on poverty drawn up by the government and NGO, which goes to prove that co-operation is possible. However, the dialogue between NGO and governments falls down on issues of vocabulary and real understanding. Do those who work for institutions take enough time to tune in to what ATD Fourth World has to say?
The conclusions of the Fourth World Partnership programme gave some very useful methodological insights into the question of the 'crossroads of knowledge'. As such, we can say that institutional players still have the opportunity to continue this fight against poverty in order to promote greater effectiveness of fundamental rights.