- ATD Fourth World

Subject: “In a world marked by the “irreversible” upsurge in individualism, what is the best way to promote solidarity in Europe and with the rest of the world?”

The workshop members were astonished by the wording of the subject for this workshop:

• individualism is an ambivalent term. Every individual is a separate person capable of being a social actor and endowed with reason;
• irreversible seems a sceptical word in terms of the future outlook, since it implies only one assumption. 

The workshop heard 3 speakers

The first – Jean LECUIT reconstructed the work of the “Globalisation and Poverty” Group of ATD-Quart Monde Brussels which, over a 2 year period, received testimonies and information on certain aspects of Development Co-operation.

Two priority themes provided food for though during the debates:

• immigration and asylum policies and the situation of the people concerned;
• the content and application of the European Union’s Development Co-operation programmes.

These debates highlighted 3 key areas of action:

1. the need for more open and humane European policies, vis-à-vis immigrants and asylum seekers;
2. the obligation to legalise the situation of all migrants and refugees, who have resided for a certain time in the EU Member States.
   This should be accompanied by, on the one hand, an ambitious plan on a concerted basis in order to provide initial and vocational training to ensure access to employment and, on the other hand, a clearly-defined framework for social integration allowing the application of the implementation of effective rights relative to working conditions and living conditions and social security cover. The workshop is aware that this is a complex question which must be addressed with caution but ... there is a need for action;
3. a clearer perspective of national and European development co-operation policies, to allow action to be taken with regard to the consequences and causes, in particular, in three areas:

• the satisfaction of essential needs, in relation with the dignity of people and groups of people;
• access for these people to universal, civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights;
• participatory democracy, ensuring that the capacities of the actors are strengthened.

Moreover, these rights appear in the Cotonou Accord (following on to the Lomé Conventions) between the EU and 77 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries, including 39 of the world’s 49 poorest countries.

 

The second speaker, Benoit Ven der Meerschen, from the Belgian League of Human Rights illustrated, using numerous facts, the situations existing in most European countries as regards the living conditions of economic migrants and asylum seekers and their families (including children) and which are an affront to their dignity.
These people become “problems” for political leaders and are presented as such to public opinion.
The intemperate language used is indicative and stigmatises such people: foreigners are different, suspicious, often profiteers and potentially dangerous.
Their situations – and the perceptions which are conveyed of them – are used to justify security measures, controls and even restrictions on freedoms in society.
There is a sharp contrast between the constraints imposed on these people and the laxness which exists with regard to white collar crime or the abuses of financial speculation. These people are interned (closed centres in Belgium, retention centres in France). They spend long periods living in precarious situations or ”underground”, during complex “reception” procedures or while legalising their situation.

All these facts, these realities, these perceptions debase solidarity in society.

Other than the need for other more open and humane practices, which its seems the EU is beginning to understand, rigorous, citizen actions are indispensable, with a view to ensuring the respect of “our values” which we delight in reiterating, in order that “all these human beings are equal in dignity and in law”.
This is all the more necessary given that the immigration and asylum pressures are hardly likely to decline in view of the ills of development in their country of origin. 

 

Gérard Karlhausen, the third speaker, on behalf of a Development NGO, reminded participants of the key elements of ill-considered development:

Ill-conceived development is not only the fracture between the North and the South, but all the societies of the North and South are experiencing an enormous growth in inequalities and insecurities.

• The world produces 8 times more wealth than in the 1960, but that is accompanied by an unfair distribution of wealth, resources, knowledge and power.
• Debt, amongst other things, is an infernal mechanism which “drains” an important part of the resources of countries ... which repay 6 times more through debt interest than they receive in public aid.
• The Third World debt is a mechanism very similar to the indebtedness or over-indebtedness of people with problems in our society. It is the intermediaries – notably the lenders – that benefit from this situation.
• The growing trend in the EU to replace development co-operation policies with free trade policies, which “one” hopes will play a decisive role in eradicating poverty (!!!).

Therefore, the following requirements must be added to the key areas of action for the renewal of development co-operation polices referred to above:

• the re-conversion of the debt into social development programmes;
• targeted actions to be implemented in countries or regions of emigration in order that people or groups have fewer reasons for wanting to leave;
• wide-ranging, ongoing actions to achieve a fairer distribution of resources, wealth and knowledge through the democratic supervision of globalisation (with precise multilateral rules). In this regard the EU should lead the way in Europe in order to contribute – as one of the global powers – to global regulation.

The debates within the workshop, highlighted closely related problems and ideas for solutions;

1. The question of the poverty of young people (often of foreign origin), misfits, excluded from society, and sometimes delinquents.
   Two experiments carried out in Belgium and France seem to prove that young people, all of whose attempts to reintegrate society had failed, could once gain gained a foothold in society, by participating actively in supervised Development programmes (constructed of schools, community clinics, community facilities, etc.) with young people from these countries. When they returned something had changed and they could make a success of their insertion into society.
   Proposal:
   Could we not envisage forms of European civilian service from two aspects: extending the participation of young people misfits in European Development co-operation programmes? We could thus link objectives financed by the European Social Fund with co-operation programmes.
   
   The creation of an ERASMUS-SOUTH which would allow European university students to immerse themselves at least during a term, in the realities of the South. This active presence in co-operation programmes – if possible in relation with their studies (economics, the environment; communication, law, social sciences, sociology, higher technical training) – would be covered in specific theses, integrated in their university programme.
2. the question of vocabulary, its manipulation, its excesses (we have all experienced it) which fuel fear, intolerance, justify and give legitimacy to security measures and controls over citizens.

In this battle for public opinion, great care should be paid to the evolution of the media and to the content that they disseminate. Commercialisation and/or “political correct” approaches encourage stupidity, mediocrity and simplification.
Although we have highly advanced communication technologies, they are only used to a limited extent for the “reciprocity of knowledge” at a global level:

• How do others persons and groups live and what do they aspire to?
• What kinds of experience do they carry in them?
• What are the daily gestures made by countless citizens throughout the world that make life possible and help millions of human beings to survive?

That could contribute to understanding the interdependence of situation and solutions.
For example, in the world of education, at the level of actions carried out by associations, we must:

• progress, by deepening the multicultural approach;
• progress, in a similar way, in the teaching of the management of the complexity of human being and things.

 

General proposal

All these observations, their analyses, future guidelines for action should be the basis for all the European actors for their commitment in the period of reflection and proposals up to 2004 with a view to overhauling and establishing a broad Europe (in its historical dimensions).
What European project? What internal and external policies should be adopted to regulate the social framework and ensure a participatory democracy. With what values?

The essence of the matter is the need to rehabilitate the political function, at all levels of government. The fundamental role of politics is to guarantee of the dignity of all human beings, living in a territory. The means of accomplishing this should be assured by all citizens.

In this reconstruction, special attention should be paid to:

• the quality and functioning of public services of general interest (education, health, communications, transport, distribution of energy and water). Public services will be subject to liberalisation operations, initiated by the Doha Conference. Whatever the forms chosen, the functioning of these services must be transparent and democratic and guarantee the access of all – in particular the poorest people – without discrimination to these services of general interest;
• the need to pursue the promotion of interrelated rights: civil, political, social, cultural and economic and the effective access to these rights, in particular for the most disadvantaged populations.
  There is still a great deal to be accomplished by the actors to ensure the awareness, full comprehension and use of national and international systems of standards.

 

General conclusion – Recommendations

One question in particular was to the fore throughout the debates during the workshop: “What should be done”? One recommendation is inescapable.

If we (wherever we are as actors) want to combat insecurities or poverty, here or elsewhere, if we want to create the conditions for a world that is fairer and more humane, we must work together, trying at all times to establish partnerships and coalitions. 

Partnerships above all between the actors (NGOs, associations, trade unions) that have chosen not only to work for but WITH people in precarious situations, poor people, actors of their own emancipation. The aim of such partnerships is to share knowledge. It is by combining our reciprocal skills, our respective know-how that we will be able to influence events, develop relationships of strength, oblige “decision-makers” to integrate” all those that we want to represent.

Once again care must be taken regarding the choice of vocabulary: partnership is a strong, but very often hackneyed concept. It can be used only if the partnership candidates agree that they have true common interests.

Are we really “partners” of the poorest people?

 

Gérard Fonteneau
25.01.2002