Dignity For All in Practice

A Reflection on The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2022

Dignity for All in Practice is the theme of the 2022 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. As stated by the United Nations “The dignity of the human being is not only a fundamental right in itself but constitutes the basis of all other fundamental rights.” Poverty compromises human dignity in multiple ways.

The stigma attached to poverty is the first indignity imposed on people. Assumptions about poverty that implicate people in their condition denigrate their humanity. Persistent myths that poverty is a result of laziness, poor choices, or moral deficiencies are not only wrong, but an affront to our shared humanity.

But human dignity can also be compromised in the many ways society has sought to solve poverty. The common understanding of poverty is that it is fundamentally a lack of money. When viewed from this perspective, the solution to poverty is to increase the spending power of those deemed poor. But is the goal of poverty reduction merely to make people better consumers? Or is it to envision and work toward a different kind of society where human worth and dignity is not attached to one’s economic status?

I once led a discussion with a group of people in a local shelter. These were people experiencing the most severe material deprivation. When asked what the most important issue facing them was, the response had nothing to do with money or basic needs. Rather, they said, it was their lack of rights.

Abraham Maslow famously developed a hierarchy of needs. The foundational needs, he argued, are food, shelter, clothing and other things required for our biological survival. The need for things such as esteem and self-actualization are at the top of the pyramid, needs that can be satisfied once our other needs are met.

Yet do not all people have a present need and inherent right to self-actualization and esteem regardless of their material circumstances? Perhaps the response of the shelter residents is instructive. Perhaps the pyramid should be inverted. Perhaps our most fundamental needs are for respect and meaning in life.

If we started with respect and meaning as our foundational needs, the way we approach poverty would be radically different. In place of the power and control inherent in helping relationships, we might instead begin with a place of empowerment and trust.

Instead of complex eligibility criteria and rules that screen people out of supports, what if we simply opened our doors to all who choose to come? Rather than starting with the deficits people experience, what if instead we saw their immense gifts? Rather than treating people as clients to be managed with outcomes to be achieved, what if instead we entered into relationship with each other as neighbours? Rather than goading people into independence, what if instead we embraced our inter-dependence, recognizing the fundamental vulnerability that we all experience that is inherent to the human condition?

The Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says that the problem of stereotypes is not that they’re untrue, it’s that they’re incomplete. The dignity of the human person is fulfilled when we see each other as complete in our full and complex humanity, not just economic agents with material needs.

Canada’s official definition of poverty states that poverty is “the condition of a person who is deprived of the resources, means, choices and power necessary to acquire and maintain a basic level of living standards and to facilitate integration and participation in society.” Let’s start with restoring power to those whose dignity has been stripped away and watch what happens to a society thus transformed. This is my vision for a world without poverty.

Derek Cook

Director, Canadian Poverty Institute