Transcript Poverty and Human Rights

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Poverty and Human Rights
Prof. Fons Coomans
Outline
Human rights as a concept
Poverty as a concept
Relationship between human rights and poverty
Human rights principles underlying poverty reduction
strategies
Value added of human rights based approach to poverty
reduction
Examples
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Human rights as a legal concept
Values and norms about the protection of human dignity, laid
down in legal texts, that entail rights for individuals and
obligations for states.
Human rights as vehicles to protect human dignity.
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
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Categories of human rights:
• Civil and political rights
• Economic, social and cultural rights
• Collective or group rights
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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.
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Example
• Poverty in the USA:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZukhSRMkug
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Poverty as a Concept
• Who defines what poverty is and who decides which
people are poor? → often based on one’s own norms about
what is considered as poor. Ask the people!
• Poverty line: 1$ per day.
• Poverty: relative and context-based: different types of
poverty and depending on the place where people live and
their socio-economic position.
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Income Poverty
• General meaning: lack of income or purchasing power
• Extreme poverty: households are unable to meet their basic
needs for survival.
• Moderate poverty: conditions of life in which basic needs
are met, but just barely.
• Relative poverty: a household income level below a given
proportion of average national income.
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Capability Poverty
Amartya Sen’s capability approach:
A person’s freedom or opportunities to achieve well-being.
Poverty: low levels and deprivation of capability.
Sen: poverty: “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.
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Social Exclusion
• The process through which individuals or groups are
wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the
society in which they live, often on a discriminatory basis.
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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.
• Example: Ogoni region (Niger Delta, Nigeria)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXtQVaK94s8
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The Link between Poverty and Human Rights
Basic opportunities or freedoms, both negative and
positive ones, which 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)
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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)
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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?
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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.
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Normative Human Rights Framework
• International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights (1966); Article 2(1) + 6-15
• Declaration on the Right to Development (1986)
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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.
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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 there from.’
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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.”
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Human Rights Principles Underlying Poverty Reduction
Strategies
• Universality and indivisibility
• Equality and non-discrimination
• Participation and inclusion of marginalized and vulnerable
groups
• Empowerment of poor people
• Accountability and the Rule of Law
• State obligations: progressive realization of esc-rights
• Obligation of International Cooperation
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Example
• Key role of non-discrimination, inclusion and
empowerment:
• Roma in Europe: breaking the cycle of poverty:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqECoZz35z8
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Value added 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.
• Emphasis on legal obligations to realize essential services.
• Key role of non-discrimination as a legal principle.
• Accountability of policy-makers.