Every year about 1.5 million children die from unsafe water and a lack of basic sanitation and hygiene. Around 115 million children of primary school age do not have the opportunity to go to school. About 2.5 billion people don’t have access to decent toilets or sanitation and one billion people are forced to walk at least three hours a day for clean water.

This comes at a time when we have greater wealth than ever before – more than three thousand Australians are estimated to have a net worth of more than $20 million. The gulf between those living comfortably and those living in extreme poverty is ever increasing, bringing into stark relief the fact that we have failed four billion people on human rights.

Human rights are “universal legal guarantees protecting individuals and groups against actions or omissions that interfere with fundamental freedoms, entitlements and human dignity”. The content of the human rights treaties are well known and broadly accepted across the international community. Indeed, in the case of childrens’ human rights, only two member states of the United Nations have failed to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The responsibility for the promotion and protection of human rights lies squarely with the international community.

The 1.2 billion people throughout the world who live on less than US$1 a day experience an almost continuous violation of their rights. Yet despite international law, few people seem to associate extreme poverty with aviolation of human rights.

In Australia, we are well aware of the plight of those less fortunate than ourselves. Research has found that Australians are much more concerned about global issues generally than citizens of other nations and ranked much higher than other nations in our concern for global poverty.

Australia’s generosity was dramatically illustrated after the Boxing Day Tsumani in 2004. The response from Australians giving money to help those affected was overwhelming. This compassion was reinforced last year by the groundswell of support across Australia for the Make Poverty History campaign.

Yet despite this compassion by individual Australians, as a nation we are failing those living in poverty. Government aid has decreased by almost half since the 1970s from 0.48 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) for 1971- 72, to 0.28 per cent in 2005-06. At the same time, on average, Australians are almost 77 per cent richer than they were in 1971-72.

In the 2006–07 Budget, the government has allocated 0.3 percent of GNI for overseas aid. While there has been a slow but steady increase since 2003, the percentage is still well below the internationally agreed figure of 0.7 percent under the Millennium Development Goals – which Australia is a signatory to.

The Millennium Development Goals, established under the United Nations Millennium Declaration, constitute the world’s blueprint to halve chronic poverty by 2015. Under these goals, human rights and development are strongly linked. The Goals provide a framework for governments around the world to work towards helping to improve the living standards of millions of men, women and children.

In trade, Australia has begun to support policies that promote fairer trading rules and create a more level playing field for poor countries. This is an important step in helping poor nations access the benefits of global trade.

We can do more. By providing debt relief to poor countries, we could help them channel their limited budgets into meeting their priorities under the Millennium Development Goals. These priorities include providing adequate healthcare, quality education for children and access to clean water – that is, basic human rights.

Under the Millennium Declaration, human rights have now been placed firmly on the international agenda. We have the responsibility, we have the willingness and we have the ability to help end poverty and in doing so we can improve the basic human rights of billions of people around the world.