International Human Solidarity Day: A Retrospection

Rajesh Compoo

Introduction

The observance of International Human Solidarity Day on 20^th December every year aims at raising awareness about the importance of human solidarity among masses, seeking unity in diversity and eradicating poverty in order to promote social development in developing countries.

 

Meaning of Solidarity

 Solidarity means creating public awareness regarding a sense of sharing interests for establishing unity in diversity as to reduce poverty.

 

History

As the international solidarity day is celebrated on 20^th December each year, it is an international annual unity day of the United Nations. On December 2002, United Nations general assembly established the world solidarity fund by resolution 57/265.

The world solidarity fund was named as a trust fund of the United Nations development programme in February 2003 with an objective to combat poverty and promote human and social development in developing countries.

During 2005 World Summit, the solidarity was recognized as one of the fundamental and universal values by the United Nations General Assembly on 22^nd December 2005 by resolution 60/209 and 20^th December of each year was declared as the international solidarity day.

 

Main Tenets

According to the United Nations general assembly , the international human solidarity day is to fulfill the following objective comprehensively  :

 

v To involve all relevant stakeholders holders in order to fight against poverty

v To celebrate our unity in diversity.

v To remind government respect their commitments to international agreements

v To raise public awareness regarding The importance of solidarity

v To encourage debate on the ways to promote solidarity for the achievements of the sustainable developments goals including poverty eradication.

v To encourage new initiatives for poverty eradication.

Retrospection

Since the proclaiming of the International Human Solidarity Day on 20^th December 2005 ,a lot of endeavors have been made to promote the  concept of solidarity ,It is also a time to retrospect what is the real position of poverty in India particularly and the world in general . In fact poverty is measured by Multidimensional Poverty Index globally ,that is why It is also termed as Global Multi-dimensional Poverty Index . It is a statistical parameter to measure The complexities of poor people live individually and collectively , each year it uses comprehensive indicators namely health, education and standard of living to identify how people are deprived of the basic facilities . It is also to determine the incidence and intensity of poverty experienced by the population globally. The three key dimensions namely health , education and standard of living consists of 10 indicators such as nutrition ,child morality ,years of schooling ,school attendance ,cooking fuel ,sanitation ,drinking water ,electricity ,housing and asset.

Therefore the author has tried to highlight some of the glimpses taken from 2020 global multi-dimensional poverty index data released on 16th July 2020 by the University of Oxford in the following points:

 

v 1.3 billion People live in multidimensional poverty across 107 developing countries

v 644 million children under the age of 18 have been found in the line of multidimensional poverty

v 558 million multidimensional poor people live in sub Sahara Africa

v 50 million multidimensional poor people live in south Asia

v 803 million multidimensional poor people are under-nourished

v 476 million Poor people have out of school child at home

v 1.2 billion Poor people lack access to clean fuel for cooking purposes

v 687 million poor people are not having electricity facilities

v 1.03 billion Poor people have substandard housing infrastructural material

v 107 million multidimensional poor people are of the age group of 60 and above

v India ranked 94 among 107 in the global hunger index 2020 which is due to poor implementation processes, lack of effective monitoring, soiled approached in tackling malnutrition and poor performance. In 2019, India’s’ rank was 102 out of 117 countries.

 

Though India has made a remarkable achievement in reducing the poverty and she is one the fastest –growing economies. The multi-dimensional poverty has reduced to 6%in 2020. However There are 53.5 million people are living in extreme poverty. It means two –third of people in India live in poverty. 68.8% of Indian population live on less than 150 rupees  per day whereas 30 % are having less than 75 rupees per day.

Conclusion

Keeping in view above discussion, it may be concluded that there is dire need to re-watch the objectives of United Nations Millennium Declaration for establishing human solidarity in an effective manner and it will only be possible when a comprehensive plan of action would be launched to combat the global poverty. Every possible endeavour must be enhanced to ensure civil and political rights for individuals in the modern era of science and technology. In this regard, the events such as seminars, workshops, conferences, debates, and discussion must be organized on global as well as country levels to seek possible solutions for eradicating the poverty world over.