Report of the Independent Expert on the Question of Human Rights and Extreme Poverty (original) (raw)
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SSRN Electronic Journal, 2012
Human Rights Council Twenty-first session Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Final draft of the guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights, submitted by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona * Summary The document, submitted pursuant to resolution 15/19 of the Human Rights Council, provides the final draft of the guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights, which has been prepared by the Special Rapporteur on the basis of consultations with States and other stakeholders since the initiation of the original drafting process in 2001. Annex I contains an overview of the process followed to develop the guiding principles, while annex II provides a list of relevant resolutions and documents. * The annexes to the present report are being circulated as received, in the language of submission only.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2014
Item 72(b) of the provisional agenda* Promotion and protection of human rights: Human rights questions, including alternative approaches for improving the effective enjoyment of human rights and fundamental freedoms Report of the Special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights** Note by the Secretary-General The Secretary-General has the honour to transmit to the General Assembly the report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, submitted in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 35/19.
2010
From 3 to 10 December 2009, the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty and the independent expert on the issue of human rights obligations related to access to safe drinking water and sanitation undertook an official country mission to Bangladesh. Their mission focused on the human rights situation of people living in extreme poverty, the enjoyment of the rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, and the intersection between these topics. Special attention was paid to groups particularly vulnerable to poverty and lack of access to sanitation and water, including women, children, persons with disabilities, minority groups, refugees and people living in urban slums. In the report, the independent expert on water and sanitation highlights the problems relating to sanitation, water quality and availability, and menstrual hygiene. The independent expert on extreme poverty focuses on social protection programmes for education, women, older persons, emer...
2014
This brief argues that: • The adoption of the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights marks a potentially historic advance in the overall process of incorporating poverty related issues. Persons living in poverty are confronted by the most severe obstacles-physical, economic, cultural and social-to accessing their rights and entitlements. Consequently, they experience many interrelated and mutually reinforcing deprivations-including dangerous work conditions, unsafe housing, lack of nutritious food, unequal access to justice, lack of political power and limited access to healthcare-that prevent them from realizing their rights and perpetuate their poverty. Persons experiencing extreme poverty live in a vicious cycle of powerlessness, stigmatization, discrimination, exclusion and material deprivation, which all mutually reinforce one another. Extreme poverty is not inevitable. It is, at least in part, created, enabled and perpetuated by acts and omissions of States and other economic actors.
Extreme Poverty & Human Rights: A Primer
Everyone deserves the opportunity to have a roof over their head, to put food on the table and to give their children a chance at a bright future, but that opportunity does not exist for the hundreds of thousands of people in Illinois living in extreme poverty. Freedom from this barrier requires a comprehensive vision and plan. This primer will provide the tools to understand the role of opportunity and human rights in eradicating poverty. Specifically, this guidebook defines what it means to be extremely poor and how many people live in extreme poverty -- globally and locally. It also identifies the rights guaranteed equally to every human being, which have been promised by the United Nations and by the United States government. Freedom from extreme poverty is the most basic of human rights. Finally, this primer highlights global and local efforts to fulfill human rights and eradicate extreme poverty and what each of us can do to help move all of humankind from poverty to opportunity.
This paper examines poverty as a human right issue since there si a wide acceptance by scholars that poverty should be conceptualised in the context of human right. Saying that, the central point in the paper is the claim of poverty as a human right violation. In this light, the debate is constucted by analysing different conceptual approaches that differ on how they link poverty and human rights. Wheather conceptualilising poverty itself as a violation of human rights, or as a cause or concequence of some violation of human rights, these approaches lack in clarity and complexity. The main argument of the paper is that the core phenomenon is poverty in its dimension as a violation of the basic right to subsistence or the right to an adequate standart of living, speaking legally. It is concluded that this is a universal and basic right and is essential for all other rights that are built upon, following Pogge and Shue's argument.
Human Rights Law Review, 2023
In September 2022, 10 years had passed since the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights were adopted by the Human Rights Council. The Guiding Principles, as a soft law human rights instrument, were designed to be a useful tool for states in the formulation and implementation of poverty reduction and eradication policies. In this piece, I examine to what extent this objective has been met. Based on empirical research involving states’ representatives and civil society organizations, and analysis of the documents produced by United Nations bodies that played a key role in developing a human rights-based approach to poverty, I argue that this objective has been met only to a limited extent.
Poverty : The Relevance of Human Rights to Poverty Reduction
2007
1. This paper is prepared as a discussion paper in the context of the ongoing investigation conducted by the International Council on Human Rights Policy. It examines and describes two social programs currently being implemented in Chile. The first program, known as Puente (“Bridge”) is the starting point of a coming new legal system of social protection. It was approved by the Chilean Congress and is based on an innovative government approach to programs designed to eradicate poverty. An emphasis on human rights concepts underlies this program and may spread to other government initiatives.
Severe Poverty as a Human Rights Violation
We citizens of the affluent countries tend to discuss our obligations toward the distant needy in terms of donations and transfers, assistance and redistribution: "How much of our wealth, if any, should we give away to the hungry abroad?" This way of conceiving the problem is a serious moral error, and a very costly one for the global poor. It depends on the false belief-widespread in the rich countries-that the causes of the persistence of severe povery are wholly indigenous to the countries in which it occurs. There are indeed national and local factors that contribute to persistent poverty in developing countries. But global institutional rules also play an important role in its reproduction, in part by sustaining the national and local factors that affluent Westerners most like to blame for the problem. Since these rules are shaped by our governments, in our name, we bear moral responsibility not merely by assisting the distant poor too little, but also, and more signi...