Human Rights and Poverty

1
Human Rights and Poverty

• Human rights as a concept
• Poverty as a concept
• Relationship between human rights and poverty
• Normative framework
• Other related notions
• Human rights principles underlying poverty
  reduction strategies

2
Human rights as a concept

• Values and norms about the protection of human
  dignity, laid down in legal texts, that entail
  rights for individuals and obligations for
  states.
• Requirements for a right to be recognized as a
  human right
• Object substance or content of a right
• Subject right holder
• Duty bearer duty holder

3
Categories of human rights

• Civil and political rights
• Economic, social and cultural rights
• Collective or group rights

4
Economic, social and cultural rights

• Different definitions
• Rights relating to an adequate standard of
  living
• Conditions under which people live and work
• Claims to the fulfilment of basic needs
• Claims relating to the quality of life from a
  material and immaterial perspective
• Claims relating to opportunities to make a living
  and
• the protection of working conditions.

5
Poverty as a concept

• Amartya Sens capability approach
• A persons freedom or opportunities to achieve
  well-being.
• Poverty low levels of capability.
• Sen the failure of basic capabilities to reach
  certain minimally acceptable levels.
• Basic capabilities being adequately nourished,
  clothed and sheltered, avoiding preventable
  morbidity, taking part in the life of a community
  and being able to appear in public with dignity.

6
Poverty as a broad concept

• Inadequate command over economic resources (work
  generated income)
• Insufficient command over publicly provided goods
  and services (housing, health, education)
• Inadequate command over or access to resources
  that are made available through formal and
  informal networks of support (social security and
  social assistance)

7
Voices of the Poor (World Bank, 2000)

• Poverty is lack of freedom, enslaved by crushing
  daily burden, by depression and fear of what the
  future will bring. (Georgia)
• For a poor person everything is terrible
  illness, humiliation, shame. We are cripples we
  are afraid of everything we depend on everyone.
  No one needs us. We are like garbage that
  everyone wants to get rid of.
• (A blind woman from Tiraspol, Moldova.)

8

• Poverty is like living in jail, living under
  bondage, waiting to be free. (Jamaica)
• If you want to do something and have no power to
  do it, it is talauchi (poverty). (Nigeria)

9
Extreme poverty

• The combination of
• Income poverty lack of income or purchasing
  power to secure basic needs.
• Human development poverty extreme or severe
  deprivation of elements of well-being, such as
  health, education, food, housing.
• Social exclusion When as a consequence of
  marginalization, discrimination and exclusion in
  social relations, people lack basic security and
  the capability to lead a life of value.

10
Impoverishment

• A worsening of the poverty situation of people
  as a result of a deliberate policy of the state
  or a failure or indifference by the state to
  embark on an active and effective policy of
  poverty eradication.

11
Relationship between poverty and human rights

• The capability approach defines poverty as the
  absence or inadequate realization of certain
  basic freedoms.
• These freedoms should be understood as negative
  and positive freedoms
• Negative non-interference with the pursuit of
  freedoms
• Positive creation of an enabling environment.

12

• Basic freedoms, both negative and positive ones,
  are considered as fundamental for minimal human
  dignity.
• Consequently, poverty can be defined as
• Either the failure of basic freedoms (from the
  perspective of capabilities)
• Or the non-fulfilment of rights to those freedoms
  (from the perspective of human rights)

13

• Non-fulfilment of human rights would count as
  poverty when it meets the following two
  conditions
• The human rights involved must be those that
  correspond to the capabilities that are
  considered basic by a given society.
• Inadequate command over economic resources must
  play a role in the causal chain leading to the
  non-fulfilment of human rights.

14
Poverty seen through a human rights lens

• A human condition characterized by sustained or
  chronic deprivation of the resources,
  capabilities, choices, security and power
  necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate
  standard of living and other civil, cultural,
  economic, political and social rights.
• Poverty constitutes a denial of human rights.
• (UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
  Rights, Statement on Poverty, 2001)

15
Disputed definition of poverty from a human
rights perspective

• Poverty as a massive and ongoing violation of
  human rights. Poverty is seen as a mass,
  structural and enduring phenomenon, in which
  individuals and families are subjected to poverty
  by external forces and decisions which have
  nothing to do with them and over which most of
  the time they have no control.
• Poverty appears as an arbitrary imposition on
  certain individuals and groups, and constitutes a
  flagrant type of discrimination.

16
Poverty as a violation of human rights?

• What is a violation? A violation is an act or
  omission (failure to act) which destroys or harms
  the enjoyment of a right which a state is under
  an obligation to respect or to fulfil.
• Of which legal norm? There is no human right not
  to be poor.
• By whom? ? Who is the duty bearer?
• ? Who is the perpetrator?

17
The United Nations position

• The United Nations presently sees poverty as a
  cause and a product of human rights violations.
• Poverty is characterized by discrimination,
  unequal access to resources and social and
  cultural stigmatization. It amounts to a denial
  of human rights and human dignity.
• Fighting poverty is a matter of obligation, not
  of aspiration or charity.

18
General Assembly of the United Nations

• The existence of widespread extreme poverty
  inhibits the full and effective enjoyment of
  human rights and might, in some situations,
  constitute a threat to the right to life.

19
Normative Legal Framework

• International Covenant on Economic, Social and
  Cultural Rights (1966) Article 2(1) 6-15
• Declaration on the Right to Development (1986)
• Vienna Declaration World Conference (1993)
• All human rights are universal, indivisible and
  interdependent and interrelated.

20
International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (1966)

• Article 2(1)
• Each State Party to the present Covenant
  undertakes to take steps, individually and
  through international assistance and cooperation,
  especially economic and technical, to the maximum
  of its available resources, with a view to
  achieving progressively the full realization of
  the rights recognized in the present Covenant by
  all appropriate means, including particularly the
  adoption of legislative measures.

21
Declaration on the Right to Development (1986)

• Development is a comprehensive economic, social,
  cultural and political process, which aims at the
  constant improvement of the well-being of the
  entire population and of all individuals on the
  basis of their active, free and meaningful
  participation in development and in the fair
  distribution of benefits resulting therefrom.

22
Core human rights obligations

• (...) the Committee is of the view that a
  minimum core obligation to ensure the
  satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum
  essential levels of each of the rights is
  incumbent upon every State party.
• Thus, for example, a State party in which any
  significant number of individuals is deprived of
  essential foodstuffs, of essential primary health
  care, of basic shelter and housing, or of the
  most basic forms of education is, prima facie,
  failing to discharge its obligations under the
  Covenant.
• UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural
  Rights, General Comment no. 3, 10.

23
UN-Millennium Declaration (2000)

• We will spare no efforts to free our fellow
  men, women and children from the abject and
  dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to
  which more than a billion of them are currently
  subjected. We are committed to making the right
  to development a reality for everyone and to
  freeing the entire human race from want.

24
Human Rights Principles Underlying Poverty
Reduction Strategies

• Universality and Indivisibility
• Equality and Non-Discrimination
• Participation and Inclusion
• Empowerment of Poor People
• Accountability and the Rule of Law
• State obligations progressive realization of
  esc-rights
• Obligation of International Cooperation

25

• Poverty reduction is clearly a human rights
  obligation. ? Failure to overcome poverty implies
  a failure to implement human rights.
• Lack of anti-poverty policies and programs may
  give rise to a breach of human rights obligations.

26

• Poverty reduction strategies should depart from a
  human rights based approach
• ? national level pro-poor programs aimed at
  vulnerable and marginalized groups require
  priorities in the budget
• ? IMF and World Bank programs
• ? Bilateral development cooperation.

27
Added Value of a human rights based approach to
poverty reduction

• International legal human rights obligations
  accepted voluntarily add legitimacy to poverty
  reduction.
• Recognition of complementarities between
  economic, social and cultural rights and civil
  and political rights.
• Focus on both processes and goals of development.
• Emphasis on legal obligations to realize
  essential services.
• Accountability of policy-makers.