Celebrating Human Rights Day From The Eyes of Poverty in Pakistan

"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control”

-Article 25, Universal declaration of Human Rights

Hot and sweaty summer days in Karachi, the passing cars on a busy road with their desperate drivers roar past under a flyover recently built in the posh area, there under the shade of one of the giant pillars of the flyover sits a man with a huge round bowl made of hard stone in front of him while his hands frantically move up and down holding another heavy stone crushing green herbs to sell as local medicines. Oblivious of the busy life surrounding him, oblivious of the burning hot weather, he sits their crushing and mixing together herbs, makes a small pouch of it and sells it for 10 rupees worth cents. His arms do ache with waves of pain sizzling down to his fingers but he continues for another pouch and life goes on.

Passing through the main roads of Sindh towards Balochistan, near the borders of wadh, district human shadows kneel down on the unpaved path, breaking rocks for the establishment of this road. There are times when women and children join this crowd of workers and they bend towards the hard earth sweat dripping off their faces but an invisible strength keeps them going, the strength to be able to earn at the end of the day. And they do, which is sometimes 24 PKR worth dollars or 50 if they get lucky. Miles ahead them stands the road to be established and the rocks to be crushed and with their small tools they carry on, and life goes on.

With tired eyes which sometimes refuse to open when the first shine of dawn flickers past the window, majority of women in Jamshoro, Sindh forcing their painful joints, strengthen their stiff knees and open their sleepy eyes before the clock strucks 5. They milk the goats, clean the home, make breakfast, wash dishes, wash cloths until its time for making lunch for their family. But before they do they quickly take out their kits and sit down to sew with their worn out fingers giving birth to beautiful patterns on the piece of cloth until they sell this embroidery to a very keen middlemen for 25 rupees never knowing he then sells it off for 700 and life goes on.

The world has evolved in millions of ways till today, globalization standing at its heights now declares that everyone and everything is in reach to anyone around the world with the mere click of a button, rapid growth in free trade have shrunk our borders, media is ruling around us, Money discussions only talk about billions, In a way we are in a state of a booming world, we have taken a rapid flight towards growth and prosperity.

But let’s just stop for a while, stop this chase and run of development and look around us...we might not be able to see it at first since we tend to realize only things around our own shell, but focus, look clearly and you shall see in the big hazy world of our own there where the sun still burns as a piercing hot fire, where days aren’t as short as we think where at nights some small hopeful eyes with tears of hunger leaping down their innocent faces wait, they wait and they wait until the one and only hope comes home empty handed because while fighting with the mighty lion of our economic structure he had surrendered and the power of market have once again took over his attempts to sell the small mud pots which the middleman gestured as useless and waved the poor guy back....This world exists, and continues to grow rampant until the generations and generations of this man lives on. He dies but his poverty does not and when the world changes, nothing changes for him, he remains the same, stuck between the fast trends of growing markets, stronger completion, lack of awareness and exploitation.

Poor people are not idiots, nor or they completely disabled or lazy but they are unaware, they lack the concrete knowledge which would enable them enough income generation and even profit. Injustice in the form of poverty rises because of lack of awareness and thus exploitation of the poor. The first steps towards an enabling environment where we ensure the rights of poor people is to raise awareness, awareness of the growing markets, awareness of changing trends, of handling completion, of innovation and of value addition and awareness of cooperation which would definitely lead them towards much higher profit and less costs when it comes to accessing the market. Although we can’t reach out to all those millions in Pakistan who earn less than their efforts but what we can do is to step in and start with one, single approach. To shake hands with one at a time and to ensure we are really reaching out.

Participatory Development Initiatives (PDI) a nonprofit organization in Pakistan with the support of Oxfam GB have started the sphere of those efforts, to analyze where the faults are lying which cause such an increase in the poverty and how do we ensure that the people themselves come forward to solve it. With a plan of establishing 3 producer organizations of small holders in Sindh Province this project would be the core start of a platform where local farmers especially women farmers come up and create an enabling environment for themselves and their future. Oxfam and PDI plan to do advocacy on behalf of the poor farmers who are far from the circle of fair trade and buried under the unjust policies of the country and cannot increase their income while the project also includes establishment of farmer organizations to provide for their needs of training and basic support in legal as well as economic support providing the poorest of poor families with agriculture packages and fighting the cases of women under litigation who were granted lands in the Sindh Government Land Distribution Program.

There should be steps taken to ensure the article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights while the Article 3 stating “right to life” is already being met because poverty is full of life, its self-helped with the skill of survival because each day having had spent the whole day in efforts to earn but still without anything to eat, thousands of empty stomachs stay alive and wait for the next day, hoping perhaps the new rising sun brings with it the rays of change and betterment.