The Necessities Accessible To Rich And Not Those Who Are Poor

You only have $1.90 in your pocket and it is a nessessity for you to clothe, feed, bathe, and take care of your family. This sounds hopeless and absurd, but living on $1.90 per day is simply another day for more than 800 million human beings internationally. This is not because humans are lazy. Poverty is due to people having unequal opportunities. Poor people are victims of circumstances and it is society's responsibility to care for them (Myers 2018). One of the causes of poverty is extreme hunger and people having very little clean water. Two billion humans do not have clean water at home and, there are 800 million people without enough food. If people don't have enough food, how can they have enough energy and strength to go to work (Myers 2018)? Also, drinking dirty water leads to preventable illnesses such as diarrhea, or awful diseases such as Guinea Worm disease, Typhoid, and Dysentery (Vestergaard 'Waterborne Diseases'). Also, many humans in third world countries do not have a nearby hospital. This forces people to travel long distances to get medical care, which uses the little income that they barely have. Still, even if there’s means of entry to clean water, in some places people must travel long distances in order to collect it. In total women spend 200 million hours traveling daily to get water for their families. Time which could have been used getting a job or going to school (Myers 2018). Meanwhile, there is also little to no enterances to employment. It would seem straightforward that if someone desired a job, they could get it, but that isn't always the case. 

Specifically in third world countries, the decline in access to land to use to produce, “due to climate change, overpopulation, and overexploitation of fish” or minerals are making it nearly impossible for well known occupations to exist. For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, majority of the people live where resources from mother nature have been stolen over hundreds of years of colonialism. Fights over land disputes have made people escape the land they once counted on for food and income. Half of the Democratic Republic of Congo now lives below the poverty line (Myers 2018). On the other hand, another major thing stopping people from escaping poverty is lack of education. I am not saying that every human without a high school education is living in poverty, however, many people who are living under the poverty line are not educated. Unfortunately, there are many roadblocks preventing children from going to school. For instance, many cannot afford to have one family member not working because, they need as many family members working as possible. Also, culturally many people do not see the need to educate girls. This makes it difficult for people to escape poverty. Education is a gateway to the tools people need to survive and succeed in today's world. 

Sadly, without those skills it makes getting jobs quite difficult. It is estimated by UNESCO that 171 million humans could escape poverty if they had basic reading and writing skills (Myers 2018). Meanwhile, another thing adding to the issue of poverty is the fact that the climate is rapidly changing. It is estimated by the World Bank, that climate change has the power to force a 100 million more people under the poverty line. The worst part about this is that extreme weather events caused by climate change, such as droughts, flooding, and storms, have a bigger impact on people who are already living in poverty, rather than the people who did most the damage in first world countries. This is due to the world’s poorest countries depending on farming, hunting, and gathering to live. So when huge natural disasters hit these countries, that barely had enough to scrape by to begin with, are pushed even deeper and deeper into poverty (Myers 2018). 

If I was in a position of power, I would take advantages of all the resources Canada as a wealthy country such as money and people available to volunteer. I would make clean drinking water more accessible, and hire teachers to come to smaller communities to help people learn how to read and write. However, Canada has its own poverty problem. 1 in 7 Canadians live below the poverty line (Canada Without Poverty 'Just the Facts'). The House of Commons also has already promised to make an effort to end poverty in 1989. And, the biggest roadblock in Canada's want to call itself a fair country is poverty. In Canada, immigrants are far more likely to live below the poverty line. This is due to minorities being forced to get low paying jobs or even be unemployed. However, Canada has one the highest gross domestic products in the world. So why aren't we using that money to end the suffering of our own citizens? (Canada Without Poverty 'Top 10 Reasons Why Poverty Must Be Eliminated in Canada'). 

Inequalities in society led to poverty impacting the lives hundreds of millions of lives daily. This matters because poverty is a direct breach of our rights as human beings. Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes “the right to food, shelter, social security, and education” (Youth for Human Rights 'Articles 16-30, United Nations Declaration of Human Rights'). These are all things victims of poverty do not have. Governments of all countries should be embarrassed by the lack of effort they are giving to eliminate poverty. It is not fair that poor people have to walk kilometers for water that rich people yacht on. As an Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights once said, 'Poverty is not only a deprivation of economic or material resources but a violation of human dignity.'