APDHA points out that “this is the worst moment for decades about the validity of human rights at a global level”.

While poverty is being inflicted on children, single-parent households, and those made up of migrants, Andalusia maintains higher rates of risk of social exclusion than the poorest countries in the European Union”.

Evictions, the lack of access to basic goods and the increase in the number of fatal victims of gender violence are other alarming indicators for Andalusia.

Diego Boza, general coordinator of the Pro Human Rights Association of Andalusia, and Macarena Olid, vice-coordinator of the organisation and delegate for Seville, today presented the document ’75 years and everything still to do’, the now traditional report that the association publishes every year on the occasion of International Human Rights Day. As Diego Boza himself explained, “this year, 2023, marks the 75th anniversary of the approval of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights” and “we at APDHA want to offer our assessment, our vision of the reality that this text is living at present”.

The APDHA coordinator stated that “we are at the worst moment in relation to the validity of human rights on a global level”, because “although it is true that in these 75 years we have not fully achieved the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration, in recent years we have observed with preoccupation the rise of discourses contrary to human rights which, through reactionary populism, are gaining power in many countries”.

However, Boza wanted to emphasise that “at APDHA we maintain our full conviction in the transformative power of human rights” and that, “for this reason, in this report we make a critical and also informative assessment of the degree of compliance with the different articles that make up the Universal Declaration”. The general coordinator of APDHA offered some of the most significant data compiled in the report, affirming that “it is unacceptable that in today’s world there are still 50 million people who are slaves, a quarter of whom are children”. Boza believes that “the fact that since 2022 the richest 1% of the world’s population has more than twice as much wealth as the remaining 99% of the population should tell us that something is wrong”. Boza also lamented that “so far in the 21st century, more than 1,325,000 people have lost their lives in wars and armed conflicts” and regretted that “before our eyes, in the Gaza Strip, a real genocide is being perpetrated, which is the culmination of a process of apartheid that has developed over the last 75 years against the Palestinian population”.

Boza, however, also reviewed the statistical data on the socio-economic situation of Andalusia, which form one of the pillars of the traditional APDHA Report, and pointed out that “what the data says is that in 2023 Andalusia has not yet recovered the living standards that existed before the financial crisis of 2008”. The APDHA coordinator regretted that “Andalusia continues to be the region with the poorest people in the whole of Spain, maintaining higher percentages of poverty and exclusion risk than Romania and Bulgaria, for example”. Diego Boza explained that “the figures tell us that Andalusians suffer unemployment rates 63% higher than the Spanish average, we earn 2,300 euros less per year and we have the dubious honour of having 10 of the 15 poorest neighbourhoods and 10 of the 15 poorest municipalities in the whole country”.

“Poverty in Andalusia has a woman’s face”.

Macarena Olid, the vice-coordinator of the Association for Human Rights (APD), went on to break down the statistical data on Andalusia and explained that “poverty hits the most vulnerable groups hardest, wreaking havoc among children, among single-parent households and among households made up of migrants”, pointing out that “child poverty has increased compared to the previous year, while 43.3% of single-parent households and up to 58.5% of households made up of migrants are statistically poor”.

APDHA’s vice-coordinator and the association’s delegate for Seville explained that “inflation and the rise in the prices of basic goods and foodstuffs is taking its toll on the poorest sectors of Andalusian society”. In this sense, Olid denounced that “more than 20% of Andalusian children live in homes that cannot afford to keep the house at an adequate temperature and that 10% of children cannot eat meat or fish at least twice a week”.

Macarena Olid also pointed out other major problems facing Andalusians, such as “the increase in evictions of families who cannot afford to pay the increase in rent or mortgage” or “the alarming increase, for the third consecutive year, in the number of deaths due to gender violence in Andalusia”. Olid explained that, “although Andalusia accounts for 17.8% of the state population, so far in 2023 we have accumulated more than 32% of the fatal victims of gender violence” and points out that “there may be a direct relationship between the low number of shelter places offered in Andalusia to victims with protection orders”, because while the Spanish average is 13.1 shelter places for every 100 women with protection orders, the average falls to 7.6 places (42% less) in Andalusia.

Olid explained that “it is possible to draw a statistical portrait of poverty in Andalusia, which would have the face of a woman, at the head of a single-parent household with children under her care, who has forgotten the last time she was able to buy chicken or fish and whose home is hot in summer and cold in winter”. The vice-coordinator of APDHA explains that “women in Andalusia not only have an unemployment rate 25% higher than men, but also that the temporary, less paid and more precarious work falls on women”.

On Sunday 10 December, as explained by APDHA, the Andalusian association is calling for participation in the calls organised by the platform ‘Andalusia with Palestine’ in the Andalusian provincial capitals to demand a ceasefire in Gaza. Throughout the following week, the different APDHA delegations organised activities and events to demand and raise awareness of the need to restore full respect for human rights.

Link to the PDF report: