Missing zeros April 21, 2010
Posted by Tomboktu in Uncategorized.trackback
I saw this on the Irish Times’s breaking news web page this evening:
Funding aims to tackle social exclusion
Funding of more than €120,000 was today announced to aid community and voluntary organisations promote awareness of poverty and social exclusion.
The funding is being provided to 43 groups to mark European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, which aims to give a voice to people experiencing poverty and challenge the idea that tackling poverty is a cost to society.
EC director in Ireland, Martin Territt, said: “The guiding principle of the year is to give voice to the concerns of people who have to live with poverty and social exclusion, and to inspire every European citizen and other stakeholders to engage with these important issues.”
Announcing the funding, Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Éamon Ó Cuív said the initiatives being provided with grants include sporting activities, local radio broadcasting campaigns, seminars, art and photographic exhibitions, and education and information schemes.
“These activities will involve people experiencing poverty and will, for wider society, raise awareness of the European Year and poverty and social exclusion issues.”
Among the organisations receiving funding are the Irish Wheelchair Association, Cork Centre for Independent Living, Mental Health Ireland, Kildare Town Youth Project, Kerry Travellers Development Project and Moville Family Resource Centre.
More than 580 applications for funding were received from organisations throughout the country.
Which of the following applies:
(A) A whole €120,000. For 43 organisations. Yeah, that’ll help solve the problem of social exclusion.
(B) Did the Times forget some zeros?
[Hint: http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Press/PressReleases/2010/Pages/pr210410.aspx%5D
Does the Minister not have any shame, issuing a press release for that paltry scheme?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
€2857.14 each, on average. One wonders what Territt makes of it all?
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The irony is that this year Ireland was due to present its cyclical report on Article 30 of the Revised European Social Charter. As I am sure you already know— Well … OK, it’s not the most well-known of the human rights treaties Ireland has signed up to, but it is the ‘sister’ of the European Convention of Human Rights, and the officials in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (are supposed to) co-ordinate Ireland’s annual reports to the Council of Europe on how the State complies with the provisions of it. And it’s important to note that this is an annual process, so it’s not as if it’s like some of the UN human rights treaties where you might forget which year you had submit a report in (what changes form year to year is which articles are to be examined).
Article 30 provides that
And this year’s findings of how well we’ve been doing and what areas we might improve when it comes to social exclusion?
Here’s what the Committee of Ministers (which, it must be said does not undertake the legal analysis of the human rights situation — that is left to an independent committee of lawyers) had to say at the conclusion of the process:
[Emphasis added by me.]
I hope the Irish Times weaves that fact into Dev Óg’s €120,000 publicity in tomorrow’s paper.
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[Correction to my first sentence: Ireland was supposed to submits its report last year to enable the process of legal examination, reporting and ministerial rubber-stamping to finish this year.]
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Territorial Pissing is all. Baby Dev is just reminding people that he took community development with him when he moved from Craggy to Social Warfare.
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Tomboktu, it might be very useful if you turned comment no. 2 into a post. I think, given all the fluff about the Social Charter over the years from elements on the left, that it might be instructive for people to know how much we’re falling down on the job.
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Sorry, I mean the reply to no. 1
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I think, given all the fluff about the Social Charter
Are you possibly thinking of the EU’s social charter, a different beast altogether? I know there has been bruha (especially in the Britain) about that social charter, but I’d never have said that the Revised European Social Charter ever got enough attention for some fluff to rub off.
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Sorry, my bad. I was indeed and this indicates the dangers of posting a comment after 11 pm. Nonetheless still would make an excellent post.
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Interesting post Tomboktu. Are there any specific penalties in the treaty for that sort of thing?
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That line from the CoE’s Council of Ministers is about the limit of the “penalty” Ireland faces.
Where the Revised European Social Charter is most useful are (a) in the “collective complaints” process, and (b) in other countries where international human rights obligations have some domestic bite.
Roma and Traveller groups in France have used the collective* complaints process to get legal findings that France’s laws and administrative practices concerning nomadic Roma and Travellers are a breach of human rights. (In addition to well-known issues affecting Roma and Travellers like living conditions, which can get caught up arguments about the use of resources, France was found to be in breach of one of the most basic political rights through using systems for allocating housing and halting-site places and municipality registration on this to set limits on the percentage of Roma in a municipality’s electoral register. If a Roma came of voting age or registered in the municipality after the quota had been reached, then it was a case of “sorry mate, you can’t be given the right to vote”.)
And Croatia was found to be in breach (of obligations on the right to health, interestingly) for permitting homophobic school text books to be used.
But since Ireland has a “dual legal system”, where our international human rights obligations cannot be invoked before domestic courts unless specific legislation is adopted to make it domestic law, the most legally that can be got out of the two available procedures under the Revised ESC is a slap on the wrist. Of course, that can be useful as part of a broader campaign on a specific issue.
Ireland has been found to be in breach of its obligations under the collective complaints system of the Revised ESC. (I think one of the issues was the laws on physical punishment of children.
May I also say it is a slightly surreal experience to be asked to do a post on the Revised ESC. Even serious human rights lawyers know damn all or have little interest in it. I mean, I didn’t dream that somebody suggested a post on it, did I?
However, … if you are interested, then the Vice-President of the European Committee of Social Rights, the ESC equivalent of the European Court of Human Rights, is speaking at a conference in Dublin next month, although not specifically on the Revised ESC. (He also happens to be Irish.)
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* ‘Collective’ because only (certain) organisations may take cases under the procedure, and the case cannot be about a specific incident but about the overall situation as it applies to a group of people who are protected. (That group of people might be a subset of the population like lesbian or gay school students, or it might be the whole population.) So, instead of legal cases named “Norris v Ireland”, you get only cases like “ADT Fourth World v France”.
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That money is just for promoting “awareness”, not for actually helping any needy people.
Unless “marketing companies” count as needy. These days, who knows?
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I know I noticed that too. I think we’ll all be more ‘aware’ of poverty and exclusion in the next few years, many of us through bitter personal experience, without spending 120 grand on promoting awareness of it but not doing anything to actually tackle it. The cynicism of that just speaks volumes.
Also this: “The guiding principle of the year is to *give voice* to the concerns of people who *have* to live with poverty and social exclusion” – yeah give the poor a chance to blow off some steam in a managed, state-funded way and help them to psychologically come to terms with their poverty and social exclusion.
All of this is the logical domestic application of that development education nonsense where making school children ‘aware’ of third world poverty & wheeling out ‘victims’ to give voice to their shitty situation will somehow magically solve everything.
It’s just depressing to see the same approach applied here especially as the goal “to inspire every European citizen and other stakeholders to engage with these important issues.” means letting the state off the hook by attempting to make everybody individually responsible for poverty & by implying yet another neoliberal partnership model involving those ubiquitous bloody ‘stakeholders’.
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