Amnesty International's 2009 Report shows where world attention and resources are really focused - and it isn't on internationally-agreed targets to reduce poverty or the human rights impacts of the global economic crisis.

"In the current crisis rich and powerful governments are suddenly able to find many more times the sums that cannot be found to stem poverty," says Amnesty International Secretary-General Irene Khan.

"As with climate change, so too for global economic recession: the rich are responsible for the damaging action, but it is the poor who suffer the worst consequences," she says in a foreword to the 2009 Report. "While no one is being spared the sharp bite of the recession, the woes of the rich countries are nothing compared with the disasters unfolding in poorer ones.

"From migrant workers in China to miners in Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, people trying desperately to drag themselves out of poverty are feeling the brunt."

The World Bank has predicted the gains of the past decade will be wiped out as 53 million more people are thrown into poverty this year, on top of the 150 million hit by the food crisis of 2008. The International Labour Organisation says between 18 and 51 million people could lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, skyrocketing food prices lead to more hunger and disease, and forced evictions and foreclosures to more homelessness and destitution.

The World Bank has predicted ... 53 million more people [will be] thrown into poverty this year, on top of the 150 million hit by the food crisis of 2008.

"Not only have governments abdicated economic and financial regulation to market forces, but they have also failed abysmally to protect human rights, lives and livelihoods," Irene Khan says.

In limiting international action on the economic crisis to finance and the economy, world governments are recreating the mistakes of the past rather than focusing on global solutions based on global values of human rights.

"Alliances between governments and corporations built on expectations of financial enrichment at the expense of the most marginalised must be dismantled. Alliances of convenience that protect abusive governments from accountability must go."

Rights relegated

In recent years, human rights have been relegated to the back seat as the juggernaut of unregulated globalisation swept the world into a frenzy of growth. "The consequences are clear," says Irene Khan: "Growing inequality, deprivation, marginalisation and insecurity; voices of people protesting suppressed with audacity and impunity; and those responsible for the abuses - governments, businesses and international financial institutions - largely unrepentant and unaccountable."

“The dirty truth is that many people are poor because of overt and covert policies of discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion, perpetrated or condoned by the state, with the collusion of business or private actors”

- Irene Khan, Secretary General, Amnesty International

Growing signs of political unrest and violence are adding to global insecurity because of the failure of the international community to resolve conflicts in places like Afghanistan, Gaza and Somalia. "We are sitting on a powder keg of inequality, injustice and insecurity and it is about to explode.

"Most of the world's population now live in cities, and one in three city dwellers lives in inadequate housing, with few or no basic services and the daily threat of insecurity, violence and forced evictions.

Inequality as a by-product of globalisation has not been limited to developing countries. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's October 2008 report places the US - the world's richest country - 27th out of 30 member states in terms of entrenched poverty and income disparity.

Irene Khan blames governments and cynical business interests for the divide.

"From the urban poor in the favelas of Rio de Janiero to Roma communities in European countries, the dirty truth is that many people are poor because of overt and covert policies of discrimination, marginalisation and exclusion, perpetrated or condoned by the state, with the collusion of business or private actors," she says.

Indigenous communities the world over were a clear example of the collusion between business and state interests to deprive people of their land and natural resources and to impoverish them.