Check against delivery - Speech by Bjørn Berge, Deputy Secretary General of the Council of Europe

President Ermischer,

The Hon Michael Farrugia,

Professor De Schutter,

Dear friends,

Poverty is a vicious circle.

This vicious circle of poverty encompasses the globe.

According to the United Nations, more than 1.1 billion people face acute multidimensional poverty, and the most recent statistics suggest that 93.3 million people in the European Union are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

This, in turn, exacerbates the other urgent challenges facing the world.

The late activist, Dame Jane Goodall, saw poverty as the number one threat to the world.

As she said:

“If you're really poor and you're living in a rural area, you're going to cut down the last trees because you need to grow food or because you need money and you want to make charcoal.

If you're living in an urban area and you're really poor, you're going to buy the cheapest food because you have to.

You're not going to say: was it ethically made?”

And so the land is poorer, climate change intensifies, and the people affected the most by climate change are the poor —

Even though the poorest half of the world contributes only a small share of emissions.

Dear friends,

Poverty is a human rights violation that affects us all — because we are all connected.

So we must work together to break the cycle by addressing the root causes.

We must use resources effectively to change the status quo, by developing wage policies to ensure families can afford necessities — housing policies that assist those most in need and prevent homelessness — and through investing in education and healthcare.

Such policies are fundamental for equity — and they are fundamental for our collective future.

As the President of the European Committee of Social Rights, Aoife Nolan has said:

“A New Democratic Pact that does not encompass a social rights-based conception of social justice will not speak to the socio-economic inequalities and concerns about the cost of living and precarity that constitute a clear a present danger to commitment to democracy in Europe.”

The Reykjavik Declaration affirmed the importance of social justice as a key factor for a strong democracy.

In its wake, a high-level conference on the European Social Charter was held in Vilnius last year, and the Republic of Moldova will host the next one in Chișinău next year.

It will address the links between social justice, democratic stability and security and is expected to pave the way for an  Action Plan on the European Social Charter.

And last month, the Council of Europe declared its wish to join the ILO-led Global Coalition for Social Justice, reinforcing our core values and commitment to social justice.

To conclude, let me restate the wise words on poverty by UN Secretary General António Guterres: 

“Too often, people living in poverty are blamed, stigmatised, and pushed into the shadows.

Yet poverty is not a personal failure; it is a systemic failure – a denial of dignity and human rights.”

This is the challenge we are facing. Nothing more. Nothing less.