Religion and Poverty Alleviation



Religion and Poverty Alleviation

By Leela Ramdeen, Chair of the Catholic Commission for Social Justice

On Monday 20th October the IRO organised a Panel Discussion, Chaired by Rev. Cyril Paul, on the above topic at City Hall, Port of Spain. Members of the panel, including me, reflected the diversity of our religious traditions.

Religion has a major role to play in poverty reduction. All of us, particularly people of faith, must move out of our comfort zones and take action to promote distributive justice in our nation. People of faith must be impassioned builders of a more just social order.

We must become advocates for change and speak out for the ‘powerless’- those among the approx. 30% of our citizens who live below the poverty line. We must all play our role in contributing to the upliftment of our people. Martin Luther King Jr had urged people of African descent to “Pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” The problem is that some of our poor do not have ‘boots’ while others kick them with theirs.

For example, it is scandalous that we are making the poor suffer by inaction on the appointment of a Director and Board for the Legal Aid Authority. Good governance and effective public sector performance are central to the implementation of a poverty reduction strategy.

Injustices against the poor still disfigure our age. We are bound together by our common humanity. We are all members of one human family. Because of the mystery of human solidarity and interdependence, for people of faith – whatever our religion – there can be no neutrality in the face of injustice against the poor. This should be a common concern for all of us.

The struggle for the poor is the struggle for an order of life that is founded on real spiritual and moral values. People of faith must be in the forefront to promote the common good, working for social conditions that allow people to reach their full potential and realise their human dignity.

Religious leaders should speak up more vociferously on social justice issues as a social conscience, a moral force, a source of inspiration, hope and empowerment, thus providing guidance to their followers. As Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor said in the Houses of Parliament in 2001, religious leaders should:

“…speak out on the many moral and ethical issues which face our nation. We can and should be more prophetic, more demanding, less compromising.”

The Catholic Church is committed to a preferential option for the poor. It is incumbent upon each of us to stand in solidarity with the poor in their cause against the ravages of dismal and inhumane poverty. Catholic teaching states that the basic moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. We are called to analyse the impact of public policy decisions on the poor and to work towards systemic change to overcome unjust practices and situations that oppress the poor.

We are all equally invited by God to the banquet of life, but some of our people live as Lazarus did, waiting for crumbs to fall from our tables. A wealthy society, such as ours, if it is a greedy society, is not a good society. The Government’s 2020 Vision is very laudable. Sadly, many of our people will die in poverty before that date. They want justice now. We have the resources to alleviate poverty in T&T– including $35m from the European Union for poverty reduction. This sum, together with the various allocations identified in next year’s ‘mega’ budget of $22.3 billion for social issues, is more than sufficient to make a dent in ‘poverty’ in our nation.

What we need is commitment to implement policies related to the use of such funding; monitoring and evaluation procedures to ensure that funding actually reaches those for whom it is targeted; and a clear plan of action to link such spending to a pre-prepared short term, medium-term and long term plan that links economic growth to human development.

Distributive justice requires that the allocation of income, wealth, and power in society be evaluated in light of its effects on persons whose basic material needs are unmet. The Second Vatican Council stated: “The right to have a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one’s family belongs to everyone…we are obliged to come to the relief of the poor and to do so not merely out of our superfluous goods.”

As Dr Inyang Imbong-Harstrup, Head of the UN for the Region, has warned T&T to do something about rising poverty here. She linked poverty, illiteracy and crime and asked: Is T&T inadvertently sowing the seeds of terrorism in parts of the country by allowing poverty to be perpetuated? She rightly pointed to the fact that we have had 6 years of economic growth, yet our poverty levels are rising. Didn’t the UN in their report a few months ago urge us to do more to reduce poverty?

The World Bank’s study (8th October) entitled: “Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean: Breaking with History” repeats what the IDB had noted some time ago – that this region is one of the most unequal in the world. The IDB had stated that:

“poverty reduction in the region will not be successful without also addressing the complex determinants of social exclusion. As social exclusion so severely restricts access to the services and jobs needed for a minimal standard of living, there is a high correlation between poverty and social exclusion.”

Social exclusion is a broader concept than poverty. It is a short hand term for what can happen when people or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environs, bad health and family breakdown.

We must not only be concerned to fill hungry bellies. Pope Paul V1 stated in his encyclical: On the Development of Peoples, that progressive development must be a holistic enterprise that nurtures each human being in his/her entirety. Our Government’s policies and programmes must cater for the needs of the whole person – the spiritual, moral, social, economic, cultural, political, educational, and physical dimension of each person.

This has major implications for the way in which annual budgets are linked to operational plans across various Government Ministries and the way in which sustained development is mapped out and linked to a long term vision that truly seeks to empower people so that they can stand on their own two feet and not depend on handouts.

Our Government has a positive moral function to make the economy work for everyone but cannot tackle social exclusion by itself. It must work in partnership with religious groups, NGOs, CBOs, the private sector, and civil society to develop policies and deliver services.  Let's share strategies for alleviating poverty with our Government. We need a multi-faceted approach to empower the poor. People of faith must strengthen ties and apply the wisdom and resources of our various religious traditions for a common cause - to build a nation where all can live in dignity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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