From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

4 RISK AND VULNERABILITY LIVING WITH RISKNo one’s life is free of risk. One way or another, we all suffer from,and have to cope with, insecurity – over jobs, health, relationships,raising our children.While more affluent individuals and societies canmanage some risks and avoid others altogether, poor people and poorcountries cannot. As a result, the lives of most poor people are builtaround coping with risk – and, all too frequently, such risks turn intopersonal or societal catastrophe.The majority of such catastrophes can be avoided through a combinationof protection (by the state, or the international community) andempowerment of the individuals concerned, a combination known as‘human security’. Ending needless suffering of this kind is both a moralimperative and an act of enlightened self-interest in a world where climatechange, conflict, and disease show scant respect for borders. This part ofthe book argues that guaranteeing human security is possible, if governments,citizens, and the international community all take action.Vulnerability to sudden ‘shocks’, the result both of individual orsocial factors (gender, age, disability, health, class, or caste) and ofthe relative power of an individual or community to defend theirinterests, is one of the defining characteristics of poverty.When WorldBank researchers interviewed 64,000 poor people in 24 countries aspart of its Voices of the Poor exercise in 2000, it asked them to reflect onhow their most pressing problems had changed over the course of thepast decade. In their responses, people particularly mentioned fargreater insecurity of livelihood than in the past. The only exception tothis was in Viet Nam, where all the groups interviewed said thateconomic opportunities had increased and that poverty had declinedsubstantially in the 1990s.Physical insecurity also emerged as a major concern. With only afew exceptions, notably in some isolated communities, poor peoplereported feeling less secure and more fearful than they did ten yearsearlier. The researchers concluded that: ‘Anxiety emerges as the definingcharacteristic of insecurity, and the anxiety is based not on one but onmany risks and fears: anxiety about jobs, anxiety about not gettingpaid, anxiety about needing to migrate, anxiety about lack of protectionand safety, anxiety about floods and drought, anxiety about shelter,anxiety about falling ill, and anxiety about the future of children andsettling them well in marriage.’ 1199