Introduction
This autumn, during the State of the Union speech, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced the development of a new EU Anti-Poverty Strategy. Aiming to take practical measures against a phenomenon affecting more than one fifth of EU citizens, one of the focal points of this strategy is the combatting of child poverty. With almost one in four children in the European Union suffering from poverty or social exclusion, action must be taken to break the cycle of disadvantage for future generations.
The gravity of child poverty across the EU left us wondering how this condition impacts children throughout their lives, both as economic actors, and as rights-holders. The material and emotional gaps created by poverty are strongly linked to the fundamental needs of life. With child poverty having broad scope of effects, we sought to understand its link with an equally extensive concept, the right to dignity. In this context, the restricted access to full enjoyment of social and economic rights bleeds into the lack of safeguards for the children’s right to dignity.
In the search for answers regarding child poverty and understanding the nexus with the right to dignity, we interviewed Esmah Lahlah, Member of the Parliament of the Netherlands, whose extensive background in child and youth psychology and law made for an enriching conversation. Her current position as law-maker and previous involvement in local municipalities also provided us with insight into how policies and legislation are implemented to affect change for people who experience poverty, and what avenues should be explored in the future at a national and EU level.
The Impact Of Poverty On Children
From the outset, MP Lahlah outlined her position on this issue: “child poverty is a fundamental violation of human dignity”. She motivated her belief by illustrating the poor understanding that society has of poverty. “When you discuss poverty or child poverty, a lot of people think it’s simply about a lack of income, but it’s not. It’s about a lack of access to opportunities, to stability, to care, and to protection. I was born and raised in an impoverished neighbourhood, and although I didn’t grow up in poverty myself, I grew up around people who experienced it. The impact is striking,” she said. Child poverty limits cognitive development due to chronic stress, it affects mental health and well being, it restricts access to education and healthcare, and all these issues accumulate and reproduce inequality. “When a child grows up in poverty, their world becomes much smaller – fewer books, fewer chances, fewer dreams that feel realistic.”
MP Lahlah put a strong emphasis on the fact that children in poverty absorb the anxiety of their parents, and end up living with chronic stress over their livelihoods. The state of affairs right now, which completely overlooks the effects of poverty which go beyond the material, denies the inextricable link between economic and social rights. Poverty evidently hits at the core of economic rights; however, the effects of poverty affect the enjoyment of social rights.
She recalls a story told by the head of an organisation which provides food aid to impoverished people. As a result of the lack of access to fresh fruit and vegetables, a mother had sent her child to school with a frozen hamburger patty. The rationale, uncovered by puzzled teachers during lunch break, was “just take a frozen one to school. By lunchtime, it will be defrosted and you can eat it.” Notably, in such cases, the parents shouldn’t be villanised. While they are rights-holders with capacities well beyond those of a child, poverty does not discriminate. That is why MP Lahlah follows this up by stressing the importance of prevention: “If we want to increase the chances of life for children […] who grew up in poverty and as such, in unequal circumstances, we should empathise and try to prevent poverty from occuring.”
Making The Case For Prevention
MP Lahlah’s stance on how relevant prevention is in the quest against poverty is particularly pertinent because, in her own words, “especially in the Netherlands, we seem to just accept that there is child poverty, and that we are not able to reduce it to zero, to nonexistence.” She spoke with bewilderment of a Dutch Parliament which, just last year, had accepted with resignation that the goal which could be reached was not (child) poverty reduction, but the maintenance of leveled quotas. This status quo led her to characterise the parliament’s position as one of tolerance. MP Lahlah continued: “if you won’t take the necessary steps to reduce, to diminish child poverty, then you normalise inequality at the start of life.”
In addressing what is being done to work against poverty, we went back to the example of food insecurity as a marker for poverty and as a factor which gravely impacts children. In the Netherlands, programs exist in which schools from certain neighbourhoods can offer a healthy breakfast or lunch to students. However, this highlights MP Lahlah’s point – most, if not all measures regarding child poverty are meant to repair an unfair status quo. These measures fail to address the underlying issues which cause food insecurity, economic instability, mental and physical health problems, and much more.
MP Lahlah found that “prevention is the most powerful form of combating child poverty, but also the most powerful form of human rights protection.” Protecting children from the harm that poverty causes to them early on in their lives is essential for achieving an EU where everybody is guaranteed the dignity of going through life and doing what suits them, their cognitive ability and personal growth. “I see child poverty as a harm to children’s well being. So when we leave children at that level, we entrench inequality for decades. But human rights protection should not only correct injustice, but prevent it from arising.”
The Consideration Of Dignity As A Right
The economic and social dimensions of poverty are undeniable, and impoverished adults directly experience barriers to exercising their related rights. However, when it comes to child poverty, the human rights aspect becomes blurry. Children are not economically active, and their social rights are strongly linked with their parents. As a result, understanding how poverty affects children’s human rights requires taking a broader perspective. Consideration must be given to more than just finances and civil relations, but to development processes, health, access to education and support and other factors. Due to the broadness of this necessary perspective, the most relevant human rights notion is the right to dignity.
Dignity is a complex concept and right. It is provided for in Article 1 of the European Charter of Human Rights, yet there is no precise definition. However, the general understanding, based on the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights, is that dignity is the underlying foundation of all human rights and freedoms. Therefore, the link between the basic notions of dignity and the elements which are missing from a child living in poverty is inextricable.
Since both topics carry vast meaning, we wanted to understand what MP Lahlah as a policy-maker considers of their intersection. The abstract notion of dignity can be difficult to concretely implement due to vagueness; on the other hand, this can also be instrumentalised to effect change in different ways depending on the aim of specific policies. To this end, MP Lahlah described a paradigm shift which occurred in the past years in the Netherlands which has placed growing responsibility on policy-makers. Acknowledging how poverty brings along feelings of shame and stigma, Dutch politicians have developed new verbiage which accounts for the deep human rights dimension of poverty – the right to live.
Nevertheless, emerging terms do not signal impactful change. In her experience, MP Lahlah has seen that although the landscape is slowly developing, no one is stepping up to take charge of the work towards eliminating child poverty.
The Imperative Of Breaking The Cycle
The argument made across our conversation is in favour of poverty prevention, and MP Lahlah contends that breaking the cycle of poverty, including curbing its cross-generational effects, is the most effective intervention to be made in the Netherlands and broader EU. “I would really stress that prevention is cheaper, more effective, and morally much stronger, bearing in mind that prevention means ensuring income stability for families, but not only that. It’s early childhood education and care. It’s affordable housing, food security, support for parents facing debt, and accessible healthcare,” she said.
Since the impact of child poverty is so well-studied and recognised, there must be several barriers to effecting change in this area of policy. Some, mentioned by MP Lahlah, were a lack of political will, or just an unwillingness to address certain issues. Although, she tells us, sometimes people simply lack the knowledge or resources to successfully implement legislative measures. She does hammer one point down: “I do believe that political choices led us to this situation, but we can make other political choices, which can change the situation.”
We wondered what the stepping stones of this endeavour would be, and what measures are being taken on a national and EU level to curb child poverty. MP Lahlah talked about an initiative she has been working on with a law-maker colleague to create legislation on this topic which would employ hard compliance standards and targets, which she compared to the existing climate-related goals. However, she acknowledges the difficulty of successfully implementing hard lines and tangible measures, not just legal norms: “Dignity and solidarity are views and standards of society which cannot always translate correctly into legal documents. Having said that, I think that we at an EU level should be more of a community of solidarity and not just the market.We have to look much further into value driven policy. And I think if we look at the EU, we have social objectives, but they must be made really tangible, and really concrete. We cannot only be united on trade, but then be divided on children’s well being.”
Concretely, there are several programs and best practices that can contribute to the reduction and elimination of child poverty. MP Lahlah considers early childhood education and care programs to be one of the best measures. Additionally, she believes childcare should be free, and parental support for impoverished adults raising children is essential. She also stressed the importance of bringing services to the neighbourhoods of people experiencing poverty. While children’s healthcare is free through their parents’ insurance, many parents in poverty still fear costs which they might have experienced during their childhoods or feel shame for their situation, and therefore may inadvertently prevent their children from accessing such services. MP Lahlah highlighted thus the intergenerational consequences of poverty, while also stressing that treating children as full rights-holders would enable them to enjoy the amenities provided by different programs without having to go through their parents who feel ashamed, embarrassed or afraid to do so.
A Dichotomy Of Strategies
Further into questions on national and EU strategies, MP Lahlah discussed one of the most confounding issues in policy-making on child poverty. On the one hand, she said, the popular stance on child poverty is that growing up in such circumstances is unacceptable. As a result, the national governments initiate regulations and programs to combat the phenomenon. Nevertheless, when talking about adults experiencing poverty, the common position veers towards individualism – “if you are successful, your benefits, your challenges. But if you are not, and if you fail to have an income to just live life, then it’s your fault.” From her time as an alderman in Tilburg, MP Lahlah shared that the usual decision-maker’s attitude is to make it as difficult to access financial help and social programs, to make people ‘work’ for it.
Considering these two contradicting approaches towards people experiencing poverty, MP Lahlah puts things into perspective: “if we don’t challenge those ideas and broaden the narrative, poverty could happen to all of us. You could have a job today, and tomorrow lose it; you can have good health, and suddenly you or your partner become ill, and if it happens, we could all benefit from good intervention programs on a local and national level.”
Conclusion
Our conversation with MP Lahlah paints a sad picture. Now, more than ever, impoverished people need support from their governments in order to make ends meet and to potentially move away from financial insecurity. Research strongly supports that child poverty, in particular, is extremely harmful and hurts broader society. Still, we are witnessing a move away towards entrenched individualism, which is reflected in the attitudes of politicians and in the outcomes of policy- and decision-making processes.
Nevertheless, MP Lahlah stayed positive by stating: “We know what works. We have the evidence. And when countries really commit to coordinating human centred strategies, we see real progress. What makes me hopeful is that child poverty is not inevitable. It is a political choice, like I said earlier, and if it’s a political choice, we can also make the decision to eradicate child poverty completely.”
