Rep. Terri Sewell invites UN's Haley to see Alabama poverty for herself

Open-air trenches carry raw sewage away from homes in a Butler County community. (File)

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) has invited United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to see for herself if Alabama's poor deserve the recent UN attention they have gotten for the way they live.

Haley said it was "patently ridiculous" for the UN to examine poverty in America after a recent study by the UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty. The study was done at the request of the Trump administration, press reports said.

The study found serious problems affecting the poor in Alabama and other states, including lack of access to basics like clean water, sewage disposal and health care.

"In Alabama and West Virginia, a high proportion of the population is not served by public sewerage and water supply services," the study said. "Contrary to the assumption in most developed countries that such services should be extended by the government systematically and eventually comprehensively to all areas, neither state was able to provide figures as to the magnitude of the challenge or details of any planned government response."

Haley called the report "misleading and politically motivated" She said she was "deeply disappointed" that the special investigator, Philip Alston, had "categorically misstated the progress the United States has made in addressing poverty ... in [his] biased reporting."

"It is not 'patently ridiculous' to call attention to extreme poverty in America, but it is ridiculous and shameful to disregard it and do nothing...," Sewell said in her letter. "She should see for herself the economically marginalized and forgotten communities that struggle under the weight of generational poverty. In Alabama's 7th Congressional District, the failure of wastewater infrastructure in some rural communities has created a health crisis that should not exist in modern-day America. I invite Ambassador Haley to my district to see firsthand the suffering that I have seen, and the issues that my constituents confront every day."

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