UN poverty visit is city’s ‘wake-up call’
EVIDENCE OF THE SHOCKING REALITY OF LIFE
THE UN visit to investigate poverty in Newcastle has been a “wake-up call” for the city, according to a human rights expert.
Newcastle University researcher Koldo Casla compiled evidence of the shocking realities of daily life for the city’s poorest families ahead of UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston’s investigation last month.
Almost three in 10 children in the city live in low-income families, more than 17,000 homes are in fuel poverty, and thousands of people have been left facing severe hardship due to the roll out of Universal Credit and the bedroom tax.
Dr Casla has now called on residents in Newcastle to take action to ensure the UN’s call for change is not “toothless”.
After addressing an event to mark the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at Newcastle Civic Centre, he said he is hopeful that having a deeper understanding of poverty will also bring human rights failures in Newcastle into sharper focus.
He said: “I think it has been a wake-up call, firstly because this was a very well-known UN independent expert coming into a wealthy country - it was shocking to be looking at extreme poverty in the UK.
“But he was also talking about issues from a human rights perspective and in the UK people think of that as a more traditional thing - like freedom of expression, or not being beaten up by police.
“But poverty is closely related to human rights, and this has helped shed light on those issues.”
In Mr Alston’s preliminary findings from his two-week visit to the UK, he condemned a “punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous approach” to those who are suffering.
A full report with recommendations to the Government will be published next year, but Dr Casla says that more can be done at a local level to make change happen.
He added: “One element is what does the Government do with the recommendations? That is a political matter, and hopefully there will be enough pressure for it to happen.
“The other dimension is what happens locally. A message that I am trying to convey is that the report, as widely covered as it has been, is toothless really.
“Its power depends on people like us and whether we use it to demand policy change from authorities in London and at a local authority level.
“I think there is an appetite to explore a human rights approach to monitoring living conditions, for example. There is an appetite to use international standards and benchmarks on housing rights to allow people to monitor how their own living conditions are improving or not.”
Dr Casla is also policy director of human rights charity Just Fair, and is hoping to use Newcastle as the starting point for a ‘Social Rights Alliance’ in England that would involve community-led monitoring of issues such as housing standards, evictions, and the living wage.
Coun Rebecca Shatwell, who organised the human rights event, said: “Until the UN’s special envoy for extreme poverty and human rights visited the UK including Newcastle last month, many people assumed that human rights violations were an international issue, and not a universal one.
“Philip Alston’s initial report found that austerity Britain was in breach of four human rights agreements relating to women, children, disabled people and economic and social rights. Levels of child poverty were “not just a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster.
“So it’s a further disgrace, but not surprising given their loyalty to neoliberalism, that this Government was dismissive of Alston’s report and disagreed with his analysis. But for many the report was a wake-up call.”