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.

This became became even more clear
to me when I met Griselda.

She's a marvelous young girl
living in a very poor community

in Guatemala.

And one of the things we've learned
over the years

is that perhaps the most powerful thing

that Griselda and her family can do

to get Griselda and her family out of poverty

is to make sure that she goes to school.

The experts call this "The Girl Effect."

But when met Griselda, she wasn't
going to school.

In fact, she was rarely ever leaving her home.

Days before we met her,

when she was walking home from church
with her family, in broad daylight,

men from community just snatched
her off the street,

and violently raped her.

See, Griselda had every opportunity
to go to school,

it just wasn't safe for her to get there.

And Griselda's not the only one.

Around the world, poor women and girls,

between the ages of 15 and 44,

they are, when victims of the everyday violence

of domestic abuse, and sexual violence,

those two forms of violence account
for more death and disability

than malaria, than car accidents,
than war combined.

The truth is, the poor of our world
are trapped in whole systems of violence.

In South Asia, for instance,

I could drive past this rice mill

and this man hoisting these 100 pound sacks

of rice upon his thin back.

But I would have no idea, until later,

that he was actually a slave,

held by violence in that rice mill
since I was in high school.

Decades of anti-poverty programs
right in his community

were never able to rescue him
or any of the hundred other slaves

from the beatings and rapes and the torture

of violence inside the rice mill.

In fact, half a century of anti-povety
programs

have left more poor people in slavery

than in any other time in human history.

Experts tell us that there's about 35 million people
in slavery today.

That's about the population of the entire
nation of Canada,

where we're sitting today.

This is why, over time, I have come
to call this epidemic of violence

"The Locust Effect".

Because in the lives of the poor,

it just descends like a plague,

and it destroys everything.

In fact, now when you survey
very, very poor communities,

residents will tell you that their
greatest fear is violence.

But notice that the violence they fear,

is not the violence of genocide
or the wars,

it's everyday violence.

So for me, as a lawyer, of course,

my first reaction was to think,

"We need to change all the laws

and make all this violence
against the poor illegal."

But then I found out, it already is.

The problem is not that the poor
don't get laws,

it's that they don't get law enforcement.

In the developing world,

basic law enforcement systems
are so broken

that recently the UN issued a report
that found that

"most poor people live outside
the protection of law."

Now honestly, you and I have just about
no idea

of what that would mean

because we have no first-hand experience
of it.

Functioning law enforcement for us
is just a total assumption.

In fact, nothing expresses that assumption

more clearly than three simple numbers:

911,

which, of course, is the number
of the emergency police operator

here in Canada and in the united States,

where the average response time
to a police 911 emergency call

is about 10 minutes.

So we take this just completely for granted.

But what if there was no law enforcement
to protect you?

A woman in Oregon recently experienced
what this would be like.

She was home alone in her dark house
on a saturday night,

when a man started to tear his way
into her home.

This was her worst nightmare because
this man

had actually put her in the hospital
from an assault just two weeks before.

So terrified, she picks up her phone<

and does what any of us would do.

She calls 911.

But only to learn that because
of budget cuts in her county,

law enforcement wasn't available
on the weekends.

Listen:

9-1-1 dispatcher: I don't have anybody to send out there.

Woman: OK

9-1-1: Umm, obviously if he comes inside
the residents and assaults you,

can you ask him to go away?

Or do you know if he is intoxicated
or anything?

Woman: I've already asked him.
I've already told him I was calling you.

He's broken in before, busted down my door,

assaulted me.

9-1-1: Uh-huh.

Woman: Um, yeah, so...

9-1-1: Is there any way you could safely
leave the residence?

Woman: No, I can't, because he's blocking,
pretty much, my only way out.

9-1-1: Well the only thing I can do
is give you some advice,

and call the sheriff's office tomorrow.

Obviously, if he comes in and unfortunately
has a weapon or is trying to cause

you physical harm, that's a different story.

You know, the sheriff's office doesn't
work up here.

I don't have anybody to send."

Gary Haugen: Tragically, the woman
inside that house

was violently assaulted, choked
and raped

because this is what it means to live
outside the rule of law.

And this is where billions of our poorest live.

What does that look like?

In Bolivia, for example, if a man
sexually assaults a poor child,

statistically, he's at greater risk
of slipping in the shower and dying

than he is for every going to jail
for that crime.

In South Asia, if you enslave a poor person,

you're at greater risk of being
struck by lightening

than being sent to jail
for that crime.

And so the epidemic of everyday violence,
it just rages on.

And it devastates our efforts to try
to help billions of people

out of their 2 dollar a day hell.

Cause the data just doesn't lie.

It turns out that you can give
all manner of goods and services

to the poor.

But if you don't restrain the hands
of the violent bullies

from taking it all away,

you're going to be very disappointed
in the longterm impact of your efforts.

So you would think that
the disintegration of basic law enforcement

in the developing world would be a
huge priority for

the global fight against poverty.

But it's not.

Auditors of international assistance
recently couldn't find

even 1 percent of aid going
to protect the poor

from the lawless chaos of everyday violence.

And honestly, when we do talk about
violence against the poor,

sometimes it's in the weirdest of ways.

A fresh water organization tells
a heart wrenching story

of girls who are raped on the way
to fetching water,

then celebrates the solution
of a new well

that drastically shortens their walk.

End of story.

But not a word about the rapists
who are still out there in the community.

If a young woman on one
of our collage campuses

was raped on her walk
to the library,

we wouldn't never celebrate the solution
of moving the library closer to the dorm.

And yet, for some reason,

this is okay for poor people.

Now the truth is, the traditional experts
in economic development

and poverty alleviation,

they don't know how to fix this problem.

And so what happens?

They don't talk about it.

But the more fundamental reason

that law enforcement for the poor
in the developing world

is so neglected,

is because the people inside
the developing world, with money,

don't need it.

I was at the world economic forum,
not long ago,

talking to corporate executives who have
massive businesses in the developing world,

and I was just asking them,

"How do you guys protect all your people
and property from all the violence?"

And they looked at each other,
and they said, practically in unison,

"We buy it."

Indeed, private security forces
in the developing world

are now, four, five and seven times
larger than the public police force.

In Africa, the largest employer
on the continent now

is private security.

But you see, the rich can pay for safety
and can keep getting richer,

but the poor can't pay for it

and they're left totally unprotected

and they keep getting thrown
to the ground.

This is a massive and scandalous outrage.

And it doesn't have to be this way.

Broken law enforcement can be fixed.

Violence can be stopped.

Almost all criminal justice systems,

they start out broken and corrupt,

but they can be transformed
by fierce effort and commitment.

The path forward is really pretty clear.

Number one: we have to start making

stopping violence indispensible
in the fight against poverty.

In fact, any conversation about
global poverty

that doesn't include the problem of violence

must be deemed not serious.

And secondly, we have to begin
to seriously invest

resources and shares expertise

to support the developing world

as they fashion new, public systems of justice,

not private security,

that gives everybody a chance to be safe.

These transformations
are actually possible

and they're happening today.

Recently, the Gates Foundation
funded a project

in the second largest city in the Philippines,

where local advocates and local
law enforcement

were able to transform corrupt police
and broken courts so drastically,

that in just four short years,

they were able to measurably reduce

the commercial sexual violence
against poor kids

by 79 percent.

You know, from the hindsight of history,

What's always most inexplicable
and inexcusable

are the simple failures of compassion.

Because I think history convenes
a tribunal of our grandchildren

and they just ask us,

"Grandma, Grandpa, where were you?

Where were you, Grandpa, when the Jews
were fleeing Nazi Germany

and were being rejected to our shores?

Where were you?

And Grandma, where were you
when they were marching

our Japanese-American neighbors
off to internment camps?

And Grandpa, where were you
when they were beating

our African-American neighbors

just cause they were trying to
register to vote?"

Likewise, when our grandchildren ask us,

"Grandma, Grandpa, where were you

when 2 billion of the world's poorest
were drowning

in the lawless chaos of everyday violence?"

I hope we can say that we had compassion,

that we raised our voice,

and as a generation,

were moved to make the violence stop.

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

Chris Anderson: Really powerfully argued,

talk to us a little bit about
some of the things

that have actually been happening to,
for example, boost police training.

How hard a process is that?

Gary Haugen: Well one of the glorious
things that 's starting to happen now

is that the collapse of these systems

and consequences are becoming obvious.

There's actually, now, political will
to do that.

But it just requires now a investment
of resources and transfer of expertise.

There's a political-will struggle
that's going to take place,

but those are winnable fights

because we've done some examples
around the world

at International Justice Mission
that are very encouraging.

CA: So just tell us in one country,
how much it costs

to make a material difference
to police, for example,

I know that's only one piece of it.

GH: In Guatemala, for instance,
we've started a project

there with the local police
and court system, prosecutors,

to retrain them so that they can
actually effectively bring these cases.

And we've seen prosecutions against
perpetrators of sexual violence

increase by more than 1000 percent.

This project has been very modestly funded
at about 1 million dollars a year,

and the kind of bang you can get
for your buck

in terms of leveraging
a criminal justice system

that could function if it were properly
trained and motivated and led,

and these countries, especially a middle class

that's is seeing that seeing that
there is really no future

with this totally instability and
total privatization of security

I think there's an opportunity,

a window for change.

CA: But to make this happen,

you have to look at each part in the chain:

the police, who else?

GH: So, that's the thing about law enforcement,

it starts out with the police,

they're the front end of the sort of
pipeline of justice

but they hand if off to the prosecutors,

and the prosecutors hand it off
to the courts,

and the survivors of violence
have to be supported by social services

all the way through that,

you have to do an approach
that pools that all together.

In the past, there's bit a little bit
of training of the courts,

but they get crappy evidence from the police,

or a little police intervention that
has to do with narcotics or terrorism

but nothing to do with treating
the common, poor person

with excellent law enforcement,

so it's about pulling it all together,

and you can actually have people
in very poor communities

experience law enforcement like us,

which is imperfect in our own experience,

but boy, is it a great thing to sense
that you can call 9-1-1

and maybe someone will protect you.

CA: Gary, I think you've done
a spectacular job

of bringing this to the world's attention

in your book and right here today.

Thanks so much.

Gary Haugen.

(Applause)