Freedom from Poverty

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Freedom from poverty defined:
Freedom from poverty is having all economic human rights secured. Freedom from poverty requires that basic needs are met and that economic security is achieved.

Early education and care is values-based. What and how we teach, and how we care for the young, is always reflective of values. Human rights educators advance the values of love, respect and dignity, and the sanctity of human life. Poverty is an affront to these values.

Freedom from poverty and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

• Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (article 25)
• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. (article 23)
• Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. (article 23)
• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay. (article 24)
• Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection. (article 25)
• Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality. (article 22)

View all economic human rights expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Call to action:
Democratically elected and controlled governments advancing human rights values have the power and resources required to end poverty. It is therefore the responsibility of early educators to participate in the political process to elect governments that will enact policies and programs to end poverty. It is also our responsibility to hold governments to account when it comes to doing what's required to end poverty.

Changing political values and systems in a democracy takes time. So too does ending poverty. The goal of ending poverty requires incremental changes through the political process. It also requires direct social action. In the context of early care and eduation, incremental change includes increased funding and expanded access to quality early care and education, advocating for universal early care and education programs, improving rates of pay paid to early educators to attract and retain highly skilled providers and improving the standard of care through regulation and development of best practices based on human rights values.

Direct social action includes voluntarily providing affordable care, paying child care professionals wages that are at least worthy of human dignity and working together to improve care and expand access directly.