UN report on poverty in the UK has shown that not only are people’s human rights being violated through artificially created state sponsored poverty, but things have gone worse over recent years. Below are key findings as well as a link to the actual report.
State sponsored misery
The UK Government’s policies have led to the systematic immiseration of millions across Great Britain.
Child poverty
Close to 40 per cent of children are predicted to be living in poverty by 2021.
Following drastic changes in government economic policy beginning in 2010, the two preceding decades of progress in tackling child and pensioner poverty have begun to unravel and poverty is again on the rise.
Relative child poverty rates are expected to increase by 7 per cent between 2015 and 2021 and overall child poverty rates to reach close to 40 per cent. For almost one in every two children to be poor in twenty-first century Britain would not just be a disgrace, but a social calamity and an economic disaster rolled into one.
Inequality
Although the United Kingdom is the world’s fifth largest economy, one fifth of its population (14 million people) live in poverty, four million of those are more than 50 per cent below the poverty line, and 1.5 million of them experienced destitution in 2017, unable to afford basic essentials. And 2.5 million people survive with incomes no more than 10 per cent above the poverty line – just one crisis away from falling into poverty.
Given the significant resources available in the country, the sustained and widespread cuts to social support, which have caused so much pain and misery, amount to retrogressive measures in clear violation of the United Kingdom’s human rights obligations.
Results since 2010
• 14 million people living in poverty,
• Record levels of hunger and homelessness,
• Falling life expectancy for some groups,
• Ever fewer community services,
• Greatly reduced policing,
• Access to the courts for lower-income groups has been dramatically rolled back by cuts to legal aid.
Recent Comments