United States of America
Visit by the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and Extreme Poverty

Dr. Arjun Sengupta, Independent Expert of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, along with his staff from Geneva visited New Orleans and Baton Rouge as part of a fact-finding mission to the United States.

The Independent Expert will analyze some of the lessons learned in the United States in addressing the different components of extreme poverty such as income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion and identify examples of good practices and obstacles encountered.

Dr. Sengupta and his staff met with government officials, at the federal and state levels, as well as representatives of civil society, including organizations working with and for people living in poverty, members of the media and academics.

A report on his mission to the Commission on Human Rights will be presented at its 62^nd session in March-April 2006.

On Thursday, October 27 a meeting was held at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law. This meeting was to give Dr. Sengupta an opportunity to listen directly to low-income people about their experience with poverty in New Orleans before and after hurricane Katrina. The meeting also provided the opportunity for Dr. Sengupta to hear from economic justice and human rights activists and policy people about poverty in New Orleans before and after hurricane Katrina.

After listening to and touring parts of New Orleans, Dr. Sengupta called the federal government’s response to the disaster “shocking.”  “Something went wrong and it appears to be a gross violation of human rights,” Dr. Sengupta said. Dr. Sengupta said the federal government responded slowly and with poor communications to help some of its poorest and most vulnerable citizens.

Dr. Sengupta said he does not know what the United Nations council will do with his report but he wants the world to know what he saw and heard in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. “My whole intent is to understand.  I don’t think I would have understood the extent of the calamity until coming here,” Sengupta said. “What is more shocking is that 2 months later, my impression is that New Orleans is untouched and debris is not cleared. Relief work in New Orleans is not what I expected with the richest country in the world. Why should it take so much time?”

Representative from different areas of New Orleans spoke at the Loyola University New Orleans meeting included residents from New Orleans East, Lower Ninth Ward, Lakeview, Uptown, Mid-City and from Gretna in Jefferson Parish.

Sister Jane Remson, O.Carm., Director of the New Orleans Chapter of Bread for the World, spoke at the meeting saying, “Katrina did not create poverty in New Orleans, Katrina uncovered the poverty that already existed and still exists in New Orleans.” Sister Remson sited information from a 1997 survey “Identifying the Hungry in Metropolitan New Orleans” conducted by New Orleans Bread for the World. The survey interviewed residents living in nine different areas of metropolitan New Orleans. These areas extended from the east – St. Tammany / Orleans parish line and to the west – Jefferson / Orleans parish line. The survey concluded that: “The overall pattern of findings that emerged from the data suggests that although 59.9% of the study participants were employed, 74.4% of the participants used government assistance, and that 83.6% of the children were participants in the school meals programs. Seventy-five percent used a soup kitchen weekly and approximately 44% of the participants went hungry because of a lack of food and a lack of money. The failure to alleviate some degree of hunger in this population questions the adequacy of the minimum wage allowances as reasonable to support food sufficiency and adequate nutritional security.”

The overwhelming challenges facing the people affected by Katrina are mountainous. Not the lease of these challenges is the debris that lines the streets of most neighborhoods. Travel through most neighborhoods and one can see the contents of houses, including the personal possessions and the memories attached to those possessions, lining the streets in front of what was a place where an individual or family lived. It is estimated that it will take 3 million truckloads to remove the downed trees, fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock, roofing materials, abandoned cars, water logged mattresses and carpets, and refrigerators to clean-up New Orleans alone.

Over 245,000 people lost their jobs in September. Public schools in New Orleans have not restarted. And the levees are not up to their flawed level in August.

“The United States is the richest nation in the history of the world. Why cannot it restore electricity and water and help people rebuild their homes and neighborhoods? If the United States can rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, why not New Orleans,” said Dr. Sengupta.