"Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of a fundamental human right, the right to dignity and a decent life.” — Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa.
Each year, homeless freeze to death in the street. A reality that is more and more alarming as the number of homeless increase every year. The governements have failed providing a long-term solution to end the homelessness issue. In fact, our governements just seems to have abandoned their responsabilities toward their populations. By allowing those with power and money to dominate the housing market, they have failed in their responsability to provide the people with affordable houses. Governements actions and decisions played a great part in the creation of homelessness and it's never-ending growth.
Homeless live in the most difficult conditions and are deprived of everything: shelter, food, drinkable water, sanitation facilities, and feeling of safety and security. They are exposed to violence, discrimination, criminalisation and stigmatisation. Due to the harsh conditions of the life in the street, homeless life expectancies is far lower than the rest of the population. This is a direct violation of human rights and shoudn't be allowed or tolerated in a modern society.
As more stories of homeless dying in the street comes out in the news, we can only ask ourself what could we do to end homelessness once and for all.
First it could be useful to know that the FEANTSA and the Housing Rights Watch organisations have launched a homeless bill of rights for European regions. The main objective of this bill is to get local concil across Europe to recognise their obligation to provide homeless with solutions to exit homelessness. It would make access to decent emergency accomodation mandatory and would also protect and preserve the rights of homeless people.
If the goverments have an important responsability toward homeless population, we as individual can also play our part to help. OpSafeWinter new challenge, objective zero death aim at end homeless death in the street by providing help to increase their living conditions.
What can you do to help?
OpSafeWinter is an operation that aim at organising every year an international event on the 10 of december to help homeless. In many countries, anons around the world gather in small group to help the homeless in their communities. The idea of this new challenge is to increase the help toward the homeless community by reaching out to them not only one day, but every day until the end of winter.
If organising daily event can be hard for some of us, we can still all help at least one homeless person everyday. On our way to school or work, we all enconter homeless people, if we were to change our habits and stop by, talk to them, buy them a coffee or some food, or take with us some extra blanket or clothes that we don't need anymore it could improve their quality of life. A small action repeated by several person can led to great change.
Everyday, no matter how hard our day was, we have the chance and blessing to come home, to safety, with our families, where food and comfortable beds are waiting for us. Homeless are children, veterans, elderly, parents, people struggling with health issues, people who do not share our chance. It is not an act of charity to help them, it is a moral duty, a responsability that fall upon us all. Let's make it our new year resolution to make sure that no more homeless is left to die in the streets.
Happy new year and God bless you all.
This article is written as part of OpSafeWinter, if you wish to help and contribute, join us at anonboards.com and post in this forum thread.