Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out most of New Orleans last summer, gave the world a glimpse of the extreme poverty that bedevils the worlds richest nation, according to a report presented by the UN independent expert, Arjun Sengupta, to the UN Human Rights Council.
Sengupta visited New Orleans and other areas of deprivation in the United States a couple of months after Katrina struck. He met more than 80 victims of the hurricane - most of them poor African Americans who ended up without adequate food, water and sanitation in what was to become the living hell of the Superdome and Convention Centre. They told him of their fears that New Orleans would lose its unique culture due to the large numbers of African Americans displaced
Poverty - a consequence of the system
Katrina, according to the UN rapporteur, was an indication that poverty in the United States was not due to an individuals failings but a result of a system that excluded certain groups and failed to give them economic and social opportunities.
Immigrants from developing countries were systematically exploited by employers, the report found, forced to work 80 hour weeks for less than the minimum wage and live in crowded cock-roach infested apartments.
While those from Mexico, Central America and Haiti, slept fifteen to a trailer to save money as they toiled in the fields of South Florida for less than 60 dollars a day.
African Americans, picking cotton in the Mississippi delta were also systematically exploited as were poor whites denied access to jobs and health care in the Appalachian mountains.
The poorest of the poor - a growing problem
Although the US is the richest country on the planet with a $12 trillion economy, it not only has the highest incidence of extreme poverty in the industrialised world, but the numbers of "extreme" poor are on the rise.
According to the UN rapporteur, government programmes and policies have not effectively tackled the problem. He recommends that a national anti-poverty strategy is drawn up to replace "the patchwork of different laws that address poverty in a limited manner". The poorest of the poor should be identified and given legal entitlements to programmes to help them improve their living standards. These programmes, he recommends, should be paid out of a special fund set up by the federal government.
While not responding directly to the recommendations, the US delegation to the Council expressed disappointment that "broad conclusions had been drawn based on limited information" and that a wider range of sources had not been consulted
The mission to the United States was part of an overall report by the UN rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, which called for extreme poverty to be considered a human right and for states who violate it to be punished.
For Xavier Verzat, the ATD Forth World representative at the UN, this report is significant because "it illustrates that extreme poverty is not only a problem of poor developing countries, but a phenomenon that is found in most countries of the world, and even in the richest nation on earth, the United States.
France and Germany have backed the report and are lobbying hard for the work of the UN rapporteur on human rights to be continued. A resolution is due to be presented to the UN Human Rights Council later this week.