The hidden reason for poverty the world needs to address now

To be honest, by personality,

I'm just not much of a crier.

But I think, in my career, that's been
a good thing.

I'm a civiil rights lawyer,

and I've seen some horrible things
in the world.

I began my career working police-abuse
cases in the United States.

In 1994, I was sent to Rwanda to be
the director

of the UN's genocide investigation.

Tears just aren't much help

when you're trying to investigate a genocide.

The things I had to see, and feel and touch,

were pretty unspeakable.

What I can tell you is this:

the Rwandan genocide was one of the world's

greatest failures of simple compassion.

The word compassion actually comes from

two latin words:

cum passio, which simply mean
"to suffer with."

And the things that I saw and experienced

in Rwanda as I got up-close to human suffering

did, in moments, move me to tears.

But I just wish that I and the rest of the world

had just been moved earlier.

And not just to tears,

but to actually stop the genocide.

And by contrast, I've also been involved
with one of the world's

greatest successes of compassion.

And that's the fight against global poverty.

It's a cause that's probably involved
all of us here.

I don't know if your first introduction

may have been choruses of "We Are the World",

or maybe the picture of a sponsored child
on your refrigerator door,

or maybe the birthday you donated
for fresh water.

I don't really remember what my first
introduction to poverty was

but I do remember the most jarring.

It was when I met Venus,

a mom from Zambia.

She's got three kids and she's a widow.

When I met her,

she had walked about 12 miles

in the only garments she owned,

to come to the capital city
and share her story.

She sat down with me for hours,

just ushered me in to the world of poverty.

She described what it was like
when the coals on the cooking fire

finally just went completely cold.

When that last drop of cooking oil
finally ran out.

When the last of the food,
despiete her best efforts,

ran out.

She had to watch her youngest son, Peter,

suffer from malnutrition,

as his legs just slowly bowed into uselessness.

As his eyes grew cloudy and dim.

And then as Peter finally grew cold.

For over 50 years, stories like this
have been moving us to compassion.

We whose kids have plenty to eat.

And we're moved not only to care about
global poverty,

but to actually do our part to stop the suffering.

Now there's plenty of room for critique
that we haven't done enough,

and what it is that we've done
hasn't been effective enough,

but the truth is this:

the fight against global poverty
is probably the broadest, longest

manifestation of the human phenomenon
of compassion

in the history of our species.

And so I'd like to share
a pretty shattering insight

that might forever change the way
you think about that struggle.

But first, let me begin with what
you probably already know.

35 years ago, when I would have been
graduating from high school,

they told us that 40,000 kids died
everyday because of poverty.

That number, today, is now
down to 17,000.

Way too many, of course,

but it does mean that every year,

there's 8 million kids who
don't have to die from poverty.

Moreover, the number of people
in our world

who are living in extreme poverty,

which is defined as living off of
about a dollar and a quarter a day,

that has fallen from 50 percent,

to only 15 percent.

This is massive progress,

and this exceeds everyone's expectations
about what is possible.

And I think you and I,

I think, honestly, that we can feel proud
and encouraged

to see the way compassion actually
has the power

to succeed in stopping the suffering of millions.

But here's the part that you
might not hear very much about.

If you move that poverty mark just
up to two dollars a day,

it turns out that virtually the same
2 billion people

who were stuck in that harsh poverty

when I was in high school,

are still stuck there,

35 years later.

So why, why are so many billions
still stuck in such harsh poverty?

Well let's think about Venus for a moment.

Now for decades, my wife and I

have been moved by common compassion

to sponsor kids, to fund micro loans,

to support generous levels of foreign aid.

But until I had actually talked to Venus,

I would have had no idea that
none of those appraoches

actually addressed why she had
to watch her son die.

"We were doing fine," Venus told me.

"Until Brutus started to cause trouble."

Now Brutus is Venus' neighbor
and "caused trouble"

is what happened the day after
Venus' husband died.

When Brutus just came and threw
Venus and her kids

out of the house,

stole all their land, and robbed
their market stall.

You see, Venus was thrown into destitution
by violence.

And then it occurred to me, of course,

that none of my child sponsorships,
none of my micro loans,

none of the traditional anti-poverty programs

were going to stop Brutus,

because they weren't meant to.