Why the UN is investigating extreme poverty in America, the world's richest nation

[G_j]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/01/un-extreme-poverty-america-special-rapporteur?CMP=share_btn_fb


At the heart of Philip Alston’s special mission will be one question: can Americans enjoy fundamental human rights if they’re unable to meet basic living standards?


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The United Nations monitor on extreme poverty and human rights has embarked on a coast-to-coast tour of the US to hold the world’s richest nation – and its president – to account for the hardships endured by America’s most vulnerable citizens.

The tour, which kicked off on Friday morning, will make stops in four states as well as Washington DC and the US territory of Puerto Rico. It will focus on several of the social and economic barriers that render the American dream merely a pipe dream to millions – from homelessness in California to racial discrimination in the Deep South, cumulative neglect in Puerto Rico and the decline of industrial jobs in West Virginia.

With 41 million Americans officially in poverty according to the US Census Bureau (other estimates put that figure much higher), one aim of the UN mission will be to demonstrate that no country, however wealthy, is immune from human suffering induced by growing inequality. Nor is any nation, however powerful, beyond the reach of human rights law – a message that the US government and Donald Trump might find hard to stomach given their tendency to regard internal affairs as sacrosanct.

The UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, is a feisty Australian and New York University law professor who has a fearsome track record of holding power to account. He tore a strip off the Saudi Arabian regime for its treatment of women months before the kingdom legalized their right to drive, denounced the Brazilian government for attacking the poor through austerity, and even excoriated the UN itself for importing cholera to Haiti.

The US is no stranger to Alston’s withering tongue, having come under heavy criticism from him for its program of drone strikes on terrorist targets abroad. In his previous role as UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, Alston blamed the Obama administration and the CIA for killing many innocent civilians in attacks he said were of dubious international legality.

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[democratisphere]

1. 41 million Americans officially living in poverty!

Just let THAT sink in for a moment........
WTF is wrong with this country.

[Igel]

2. In this case, the "UN" is a single person who acts entirely on his own.

So "Why is the UN doing this?" isn't a reasonable question. It presupposes something that must be connected with treaties, with the UN charter, with procedures and rules and committees. Whim, personal beliefs of one person, all the venal and ideological biases of a person are subsumed into the institutional biases and ideologies and views of a large organization.

"Why is Mr. Alston doing this?" is the right question. It doesn't rule out his interpretation of the UN charter, procedures, rules, but it does say that the personal beliefs and biases of a single person, no better than any of the other 7.2 billion people on the planet in some ways, plays an outsized role in why he's doing this.

Of course, how Alston got appointed to this role reflects a lot of the institutional biases and views of at least one part of the UN.

[Progressive dog]

3. Of the approximately 1 billion people living

in extreme poverty, close to zero are in the U.S.A. (The UN and world bank used a definition of an income of $1.25 per day in 2012, which might have grown to $2 per day or so by now.)
That headline and story is farcical.