NEW YORK, NOV. 13, 2006 (Zenit.org).- The Holy See told a U.N. panel that the eradication of world poverty is a necessary service for peace.
When addressing the U.N. General Assembly’s committee discussing the topic, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the United Nations applauded the recent awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to professor Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank.
Archbishop Celestino Migliore told the U.N. committee last Friday: “The link between peace and development appears quite evident to those on the ground who must confront the constraints placed on the poor and who know, sometimes from bitter experience, that development is the new name for peace.”
The apostolic nuncio recalled that the first International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, “stressing the link between poverty and human rights, takes its inspiration from a meeting of 100,000 people in Paris which took place in 1987 in response to the call by the late Father Joseph Wresinski.”
“It rightly led to the growing acknowledgment at the international level that poverty often stems from the violation of human rights and that the promotion of human rights can help alleviate poverty,” Archbishop Migliore added.
“My delegation believes that charity and welfare will always be needed to assist the poorest,” the prelate said. “Added to them, this fresh approach links human rights and poverty reduction, making the latter a legal as well as a moral obligation.
“Like everyone else, the poor have the right to justice, decent work, adequate food, health and education, in accordance with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as other rights found in other international instruments.
“However, since the poor are many times, by their very condition, excluded from society, their capacity to secure their rights is often very limited.”
That is why, the archbishop said, the international community and the different countries must put “the eradication of poverty at the heart of legal as well as social agendas.”
