Community Empowerment for Sustainable Development in Iran

Preface: " Poverty is not simply a matter of material deprivation. It is a matter of human dignity, justice, fundamental freedoms and basic human rights. " 1-UNESCO The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) development community has arrived at a critical point in its approach to the issue of poverty alleviation and its ideal of poverty eradication. Despite valiant efforts on the part of the governments and international organizations in their fight against poverty, and the unprecedented economic progress and financial gains attained by advances in information technology in the West, extreme poverty has persisted through the new millennium as a scourge that afflicts most humanity. The development community, among others, has now espoused the eight Millennium Development Goals and has undertaken the audacious stance of halving extreme poverty world wide as its first goal. 2 This appreciation of the daunting task at hand has been accompanied by a more recent and fundamental change in the development community's overall philosophic stance with regards to this matter. Poverty is no longer perceived solely as a " material " issue. A new paradigm has been introduced, namely, " poverty is the denial and violation of human rights ". Combating poverty thus transcends from a political/moral responsibility to an ethical necessity. 3 Furthermore, it is hoped that by triggering, propagating and strengthening awareness along the lines of this shift in outlook among the peoples of developing countries, firm steps could be taken towards the sustainability of development activities at large. According to UN statistics more than 1.2 billion people are living under the absolute poverty line with daily income of less than one dollar. More than one billion people, basically from the third world, do not have access to clean and potable water. More than 250 million school age children are not attending class and the illiterate population of the world is still at the high figure of nearly one billion, with women making up seventy per cent of this figure. If present trends are sustained, at the end of the first decade of the twenty first century 700 million people will join the world's unemployed. For the past thirty years, the development community has acknowledged the shortcomings of centralized planning, while recognizing the capacities of local communities to manage their own affairs and make efficient use of the resources at their disposal. Governments have been encouraged to retreat from their overpowering roles …