Hospitals & Asylums
Poverty Reduction Obligation Under Deliberation, Human Rights Day HA-4-12-06
By Anthony J. Sanders, title24uscode@aol.com
“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the
health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to
security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age
or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.” Article
25 (1), Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Human Rights Day is observed by the international
community every year on 10 December. It commemorates the day in 1948 the United
Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Its
formal inception dates from 1950, after the Assembly passed resolution 423 (V)
inviting all States and interested organizations to adopt 10 December of each
year as Human Rights Day. In the 2006
the theme is Fighting
Poverty: a matter of obligation, not
charity.
Preamble
Poverty is the
gravest human rights challenge facing the world today.
40 per cent of the
world’s population living with the reality or the threat of extreme poverty,
and one in five persons living in a state of poverty so abject that it
threatens survival.
The vision of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a world free from want and fear. The United
Nations Millennium Project suggests the end of poverty is an achievable goal. Governments around
the world have expressed their strong commitment to eradicating poverty and
hunger.
It is the right of
people to live in freedom and dignity, free from poverty and despair. Poverty is a cause and a product of human rights
violations. People whose rights are
denied -- victims of discrimination or persecution, for example -- are more
likely to be poor.
The poor find it harder or
impossible to participate in the labor market and have little or no access to
basic services and resources. The poor
in many societies cannot enjoy their rights to education, health and housing
simply because they cannot afford them.
Poverty affects all human
rights: for example, low income can
prevent people from accessing education -- an “economic and social” right --
which in turn inhibits their participation in public life -- a “civil and
political” right -- and their ability to influence policies affecting
them.
Poverty is the result
of factors like the denial of human rights and human dignity, discrimination,
unequal access to resources, and social and cultural stigmatization have always
characterized it, that the governments and those in a position of authority
can, indeed are obliged to, do something about.
We overwhelmingly accept a number of human rights
treaties and sign on to the international consensus to make poverty history, through
the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals. The realization of human rights – including
the fight against poverty -- is a duty, not a mere aspiration.
(1) Any strategy
for poverty reduction has to begin with an identification of the poor. This
task is composed of two steps:
(a) identifying the
attributes that are deemed to constitute poverty and
(b) identifying the
population groups that possess these attributes. Basic capabilities must be adequately nourished, avoiding
preventable diseases and premature mortality, being adequately sheltered,
having basic education, being able to ensure personal security, having
equitable access to justice, being able to live in dignity, being able to earn
a livelihood and being able to take part in the life of a community. Once the basic capabilities have been
determined, the next step is to identify the population groups that suffer from
inadequate achievement of those basic capabilities.
(2) The human
rights approach demands that it should be guided by two special
considerations.
First, the
objective of the exercise should not merely be to come up with a number, such
as the percentage of poor people in the population, but to ascertain who these
people are and how poor.
Second, special
efforts must be made to identify those among the poor who are especially
deprived and marginalized and have special needs (e.g., women, or people living
with HIV/AIDS, or the elderly, or the disabled, or those suffering from racial,
political or religious discrimination).
Guidline 2:
National and International Human Rights Framework
(1) While the
documents spelling out poverty reduction strategies are not legal instruments,
they must be consistent with, and informed by, the State's national and
international human rights commitments for two reasons: (a) this will make the
strategy more effective; and (b) otherwise, some features of the strategy may
be unlawful.
(2) A State should
ensure that: (a) Its human rights commitments are expressly referred to in the
poverty reduction strategy;
(b) Those
responsible for formulating and implementing the poverty reduction strategy
receive basic human rights training so that they are familiar with the State's
human rights commitments and their implications;
(c) Individuals are
appointed with a particular responsibility to ensure that the State’s human
rights commitments are taken into account throughout the formulation and
implementation of the poverty reduction strategy (e.g., departmental human
rights officers);
(d) Processes are
designed, and put in place, to ensure that the State’s human rights commitments
receive due attention throughout the formulation and implementation of the
poverty reduction strategy.
(1) The right to
equality and the principle of non-discrimination are among the most fundamental
elements of international human rights law.
First, the right to
equality guarantees, first and foremost, that all persons are equal before the
law, which means that the law shall be formulated in general terms applicable
to every individual and shall be enforced in an equal manner.
Secondly, all
persons are entitled to equal protection under the law against arbitrary and
discriminatory treatment by private actors. In this regard, the law shall
prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective
protection against discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex,
language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin,
property, birth, disability and health status, including HIV/AIDS, age, sexual
orientation or other status. People
living in poverty are typically victims of discrimination.
(2) If Governments
are responsible for such discrimination, they are under an obligation immediately
to prohibit and cease all discriminatory laws and practices. If discriminatory
attitudes are caused by traditions among the population, Governments shall
adopt and enforce laws prohibiting any discrimination by private actors.
(a) Inequalities
and discrimination may assume various forms, including explicit legal
inequalities in status and entitlements, deeply rooted social distinctions and
exclusions, and forms of indirect discrimination.
(b) As
discrimination may cause poverty, poverty also causes discrimination.
(3) The twin
principles of equality and non-discrimination require States to take special
measures to prohibit discrimination against the poor and to provide the poor
with equal and effective protection against discrimination.
(1) Poverty is so
deeply entrenched in many societies that it is unrealistic to hope that even
with the best of intentions it can be eliminated in a very short time. Equally,
one must accept the reality that in a context of scarce resources it may not be
possible to fulfill all human rights immediately. All human rights - economic, civil, social, political
and cultural - impose negative as well as positive obligations on
(2) The obligation of States is captured in
the distinction between the duties to respect, protect and fulfill.
(a) The duty to respect requires the
duty-bearer to refrain from interfering with the enjoyment of any human right.
(b) The duty to protect requires the
duty bearer to take measures to prevent violations of any human right by third
parties.
(c) The duty to fulfill requires the
duty-bearer to adopt appropriate legislative, administrative and other measures
towards the full realization of human rights.
(3) In cases where a right cannot be realized
immediately due to resource constraints, the State must begin immediately to
take steps to fulfill the rights in question as expeditiously as possible.
First, the State must acknowledge that with a
serious commitment to poverty reduction it may be possible to make rapid
progress towards the realization of many human rights even within an existing
resource constraint.
Second, to the extent that the realization of
human rights may be contingent on a gradual expansion in the availability of
resources, the State is required, as an immediate step, to develop and
implement a time-bound plan of action.
Third, as the realization of some human
rights may take considerable time, the plan must set benchmarks (i.e.,
intermediate targets) corresponding to each ultimate target.
Fourth, the targets, benchmarks and
indicators must be set in a participatory manner, so that they reflect the
concerns and interests of all segments of the society, including the poor. At the same time, appropriate accountability
mechanisms must be set up, so as to ensure that the State commits itself fully
to realizing the agreed targets and benchmarks.
(1) As States have primary responsibility for
fulfilling the human rights of the people living in their respective
jurisdiction, it follows that any poverty reduction strategy must be a
country-driven process. Country ownership should thus be an essential attribute
of any poverty reduction strategy.
(a) The strategy has to be owned by all
stakeholders within the country, including the poor. This can be possible,
however, only when all stakeholders, including the poor, participate
effectively in all stages of policy formulation.
(b) Active and informed participation by the
poor is not only consistent with but also demanded by the human rights-based
approach, because the international human rights normative framework affirms
the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs.
(c) It is not enough for the poor merely to
participate in decision-making; they must be able to participate meaningfully
and effectively.
(2) One may distinguish four stages of
participation: preference revelation; policy choice; implementation; and
monitoring, assessment and accountability.
First, Preference revelation is the
initial stage of any policy formulation. Before policies can be formulated,
people must be able to express what objectives they want to achieve.
Second, Policy choice refers to the
stage at which policies are formulated and decisions taken regarding the
allocation of resources among alternative uses.
Third, the implementation of policies
is primarily the responsibility of the executive arm of the State,
opportunities must be created to enable the poor to exercise their right to
participate in it as well.
Fourth, the final stage of participation is
the monitoring and assessment of the success or failure of policies so
that the State and other duty bearers can be held accountable for their
obligations.
Guidline
6: Monitoring and Accountability
(1) An accountability procedure provides
right-holders with an opportunity to understand how duty bearers have
discharged, or failed to discharge, their obligations, and it also provides
duty-bearers with an opportunity to explain their conduct. The objective of
monitoring is twofold:
First, to help identify, on an ongoing basis,
the areas on which duty-bearers may need to concentrate in order to attain
their targets for the realization of human rights in the most expeditious and
effective manner; and
Second, to enable a right-holder to hold a
duty-bearer to account for its failure to discharge its duties. An accountability procedure depends on, but
goes beyond, monitoring. It is a mechanism or device by which duty-bearers are
answerable for their acts or omissions in relation to their duties.
(2) While accountability implies some form of
remedy and reparation, it does not necessarily imply punishment. In the context of poverty reduction, all
duty-bearers are encouraged to devise, in close collaboration with people
living in poverty, innovative and non-formal monitoring and accountability
mechanisms that secure the active and informed participation of the poor. While the State is the principal duty-bearer
with respect to the human rights of the people living within its jurisdiction,
the international community at large also has a responsibility to help realize
universal human rights.
Guidline 7: International Assistance and
Cooperation
(1) Effective poverty reduction requires
international action. Access to aid, debt relief, markets, substantial and
affordable capital flows, as well as stability in the global economy, have an
impact on the options open to a State as it formulates and implements its
poverty reduction strategy.
(a) International assistance and cooperation
help to create an environment in which the poor in developing States can lift
themselves out of poverty.
(b) The human rights approach to poverty
reduction underlines the joint responsibility of States to work actively
towards creating the equitable multilateral trading, investment and financial
systems that are conducive to the reduction and elimination of poverty.
(2) A developed State should not only
formulate a poverty reduction strategy in relation to poverty within its
domestic jurisdiction; it should have a strategy for poverty reduction beyond
its borders and take into account their international human rights obligations
to engage in international assistance and cooperation; the commitments they
have made at recent world conferences; and the Millennium Development
Goals. Developed States should:
(a) Ensure that all
bilateral and multilateral decision-making processes are fair, equitable and
transparent, and sensitive to the needs of developing States, especially their
disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups, including the poor. Ensure that, in accordance with the United
Nations target, their development assistance is no less than 0.7 per cent of
the gross domestic product (GDP).
(b) Take reasonable
measures to ensure that the overseas operations of companies headquartered in
their jurisdiction are respectful of the international human rights obligations
of both the home and host States.
(3) Developing
nations must formulate national poverty reduction strategies. These must give careful attention to its
international human rights obligations to the poor living in its jurisdiction
when engaging in bilateral, multilateral or corporate negotiations. Developing nations should:
(a) Ensure that,
before adopting relevant international agreements or policies, there is an
independent, objective and publicly available assessment of its impact on the
poor. I
(b) If the
assessment suggests that the proposed agreement or policy will have a negative
impact on the human rights of the poor, effective countervailing measures must
be adopted, consistent with the international human rights obligations of the
concerned parties.
(c) Endeavor to
strengthen their negotiating capacity to seek international assistance to
establish appropriate regulatory frameworks for the private sector without
compromising the State’s comparative advantage.
Guidline 8:
Integrating Specific Human Rights Standards
(1) Any sustainable
poverty reduction strategy must include provisions for the fulfillment of human
rights.
(a) Usually, people
living in poverty are socially excluded and belong to politically marginalized
groups. They lack the information and political power necessary for meaningful
participation in political decision-making. As they are underrepresented in
political decision making bodies, their specific needs are often neglected.
(b) Lack of
political rights and freedoms is both a cause and a consequence of poverty.
Socially and politically excluded people are more likely to fall into poverty,
and the poor are more vulnerable to social exclusion and political
marginalization.
(c) Lack of
political rights and freedoms is constitutive of poverty if inadequate command
over economic resources plays a role in its causation.
(2) Active
participation in political decision-making, as well as in the broader social
and cultural life of their communities, plays a role in expanding political
freedoms and in empowering people, which in turn contributes towards combating
social exclusion and political marginalization.
(a) In addition,
the enjoyment of political rights and freedoms is instrumental to securing
other human rights such as education, work, health and equal access to justice.
(b) Enabling the
poor to participate actively in the social, cultural and political life of
their communities should therefore form an integral part of a poverty reduction
strategy.
Political Rights
(1) Political
rights are usually defined as the right and opportunity to take part in the
conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives,
for instance by means of the right to vote and to be elected in parliamentary
and other elections, and the right of equal access to public service.
(a) Political
freedoms include essential democratic rights such as freedom of speech,
expression, information, association, assembly and the media.
(b) While political
rights are usually restricted to citizens, political freedoms are general human
rights to be equally enjoyed by all human beings, regardless of citizenship or
other status.
(2) States should
organize public information campaigns directly addressing the poorest sectors
of society and informing the poor about their rights as well as relevant
governmental services aimed at poverty reduction, including free access to
education, health and social security services, the administration of justice
and other services.
(a) People living
in poverty should be encouraged and enabled to express, freely and publicly,
their opinions, ideas, political claims and criticisms of governmental
policies.
(b) People living
in poverty should further be encouraged and enabled to form their own special
associations, unions, political parties or foundations for the more effective
protection of their rights and interests.
(1) The right to
work. People living in poverty
invariably lack adequate and secure livelihoods. In both rural areas and
cities, the poor experience unemployment, underemployment, unreliable casual labour,
poverty wages and unsafe working conditions.
(a) Work as specified in international human
rights law must be decent work, that is, work in which human rights and
the rights of workers, in terms of work safety and remuneration, are
protected.
(b) Rights in work include the right of
everyone to the enjoyment of just and favourable conditions of work, including
fair wages and equal remuneration for work of equal value, equal opportunities,
remuneration which is sufficient to ensure a decent living for workers and
their families, safe and healthy conditions of work, and reasonable hours of
work and rest, as well as the rights to organize and bargain collectively.
(2) A strategy to
realize the right to work in the context of poverty reduction must aim at improving
the quantity and quality of work for the poor. This entails reducing unemployment/underemployment
of people living in poverty, on the one hand, and raising the return on their
labor, on the other. For this to be possible on a wide and sustainable basis, action
should be guided by three principles.
First, measures
should be taken to improve the production potential of the economy on a
sustained basis, because without growth in economic activity, an adequate
quantity and quality of work cannot be provided for any substantial number of
people in a sustainable manner.
Second, policies
should ensure that growth in production takes place in such a way as to
maximize the demand for labor, because it is only through greater demand for
labor that unemployment and underemployment can be reduced and returns on labor
increased. Policies that provide artificial incentives for the use of capital
at the expense of labor at the level of the aggregate economy—should be
avoided, although in specific sectors, greater capital intensity may sometimes
be warranted on productivity grounds.
Third, conditions
should be created to enable the poor, especially the most deprived among them,
to integrate into economic processes so that they can take advantage of labor
demanding growth.
(1) The right to adequate food. Adequate
food is needed for human survival. Under nutrition handicaps people for life:
brain cells do not develop, growth is stunted and diseases become rife,
limiting potential and condemning the hungry to a marginal existence.
(a) Hungry children cannot concentrate at
school and hunger reduces workers’ productivity. Thus, the right to adequate food has a crucial role to play in
relation to poverty reduction.
(b) Enjoyment of the right to adequate food
is instrumental in securing other rights such as health, education and work.
The right to food includes the right to water.
(c) The importance of the right to adequate
food is underlined by the millennium development goal that aims to halve, by
the year 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
(2) The right to adequate food is the right
of all individuals, alone or in community with others, to enjoy physical and
economic access to adequate food or the means for its procurement. It should be
understood primarily as the right to feed oneself, rather than the right to be
fed. The
right to food implies:
(a) the
availability of food in sufficient quantity and quality to satisfy the dietary
needs of all individuals in a form that is culturally acceptable; and
(b) the
accessibility of food in ways that are sustainable and do not interfere with
the enjoyment of other human rights.
(3) The
“availability of food” refers either to the possibility of feeding oneself
directly from productive land or other natural resources, or the existence of a
well functioning distribution, processing and marketing system that moves food
from the site of production to where it is needed in accordance with
demand.
(a) The “accessibility
of food” encompasses both economic and physical accessibility.
(b) “Economic
accessibility” implies that the personal or household costs associated with the
acquisition of food for an adequate diet should be at such a level that the
satisfaction of other basic needs is not compromised.
(4) The right to
adequate food also encompasses food safety and food security.
(a) “Food safety”
implies that food should be free from adverse substances, whether from
adulteration, poor environmental hygiene or other causes.
(b) “Food security”
implies the absence of vulnerability to hunger, i.e., a low risk of falling victim
to hunger through changes in personal or external circumstances. In other
words, people are food-secure if they can afford and have access to adequate
food at all times.
(1) Most people
living in poverty are disadvantaged and endangered by the places and physical
conditions in which they live.
(a) They experience
precarious shelter; problems caused by overcrowding and pollution; seasonal
exposure to the worst conditions; insecurity of person and property;
remoteness; problems stemming from non-existent or inadequate infrastructure,
including the lack of access to safe drinking water; and stigma.
(b) The importance
of the right to adequate housing is underlined by the millennium development
goal that aims to achieve a significant improvement in the lives of at least
100 million slum dwellers by 2020.
(2) This right to adequate housing has a
number of components, including:
(a) Legal security of tenure. Everyone
should enjoy legal protection from forced eviction, harassment and other
threats;
(b) Habitability. Housing must provide
inhabitants with adequate space and protection from the elements and other
threats to health;
(c) Location. Housing must be in a
safe and healthy location which allows access to opportunities to earn an
adequate livelihood, as well as access to schools, health care, transport and
other services;
(d) Economic accessibility. Personal
or household costs associated with housing should be at such a level that the
attainment and satisfaction of other basic needs are not compromised;
(e) Physical accessibility. Housing
must be accessible to everyone, especially to groups whose access to housing
may pose particular difficulties, such as the elderly, persons with physical
disabilities and the mentally ill;
(f) Cultural acceptability. Housing
must be culturally acceptable to the inhabitants, for example reflective of
their cultural preferences in relation to design, site organization and other
features;
(g) Adequate infrastructure. The
services, materials and facilities essential for health, security, comfort and
nutrition—such as safe drinking water, sanitation and washing facilities—must
be available. States should develop and
allocate adequate resources to low-income housing programs and develop tax
credits and other incentives to encourage the construction of low-income
housing in the private sector.
Right to Health
(1) Ill health causes and contributes to
poverty by destroying livelihoods, reducing worker productivity, lowering
educational achievement and limiting opportunities. Because poverty can lead to
diminished access to medical care, increased exposure to environmental risks
and malnutrition, ill health is also often a consequence of poverty.
(a) Ill health is both a cause and a
consequence of poverty: sick people are more likely to be impoverished and
people living in poverty are more vulnerable to disease and disability.
(b) Good health is central to creating and
sustaining the capabilities that the poor need to escape from poverty. A key
asset, good health contributes to their greater economic security.
(c) Good health is not just an outcome of
development: it is a way of achieving development.
(d) Health targets are prominent among the
MDGs to be achieved worldwide by 2015: among them, the goals of reducing
under-five child mortality by two thirds and maternal mortality by three
quarters, of halving the proportion of people without sustainable access to
safe drinking water, and of reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS and the incidence
of malaria and other major diseases.
(2) The right to
health is not to be understood as the right to be healthy: the State cannot
provide protection against every possible cause of ill health. It is the right
to the enjoyment of a variety of facilities, goods, services and conditions
necessary for the realization of the highest attainable standard of health.
(a) The right
includes both health care and the underlying determinants of health, including
access to safe drinking water, adequate and safe food, adequate sanitation and
housing, healthy occupational and environmental conditions, and access to health-related information and
education.
(b) The right to health contains both
freedoms and entitlements. The freedoms include the right to control one’s
body, including reproductive health, and the right to be free from
interference, such as freedom from torture and non-consensual medical
treatment. The entitlements include a system of health care and protection that
is available, accessible, and acceptable and of good quality.
(3) Accessibility has a number of dimensions,
including physical, information and economic. Thus,
(a) “Information accessibility” includes the
right to seek, receive and impart information concerning health issues, subject
to the right to have personal health data treated with confidentiality.
(b) “Economic accessibility” means that
health facilities, goods and services must be affordable for all.
(c) Furthermore, all health facilities, goods
and services must be acceptable, i.e., respectful of medical ethics and
culturally appropriate, and of good quality.
(4) According to international human rights
law, the right to health encompasses a number of more specific health rights,
including the right to maternal, child and reproductive health; the right to
healthy natural and workplace environments; the right to prevention, treatment
and control of diseases; and the right to health facilities, goods and
services.
(a) States should improve the supply of
personal health services and make them more accessible to the poor by targeting
delivery to the poor by providing tailor-made services for groups whose access
to health services may raise particular challenges, such as women, the elderly,
children, indigenous peoples, minorities, slum-dwellers, labor
migrants and those living in remote rural communities, via outreach clinics.
Right to Education
(1) Education is the primary vehicle by which
children and adults can lift themselves out of poverty. The exercise of the
right to education is instrumental for the enjoyment of many other human
rights, such as the rights to work, health and political participation.
(a) Lack of education, as manifested by high
illiteracy rates and low primary school enrolment ratios, itself constitutes a
dimension of poverty.
(b) The relevance to poverty of the right to
education is underlined by the fact that universal primary education is a
millennium development goal to be achieved worldwide by 2015.
(2) Equality and non-discrimination are
important aspects of the right to education, and States should give priority to
equal access for girls and other groups vulnerable to discrimination, such as
children with disabilities and minority and refugee children. The quality of education should be directed
to the development of the child’s personality, talents and abilities to their
fullest potential, and to the preparation of the child for responsible life in
a free society, in a spirit of tolerance and respect for human rights, the
natural environment, his or her parents and cultural identity, and
civilizations different from his or her own.
(3) Poverty reduction strategies should give
close attention to the realization of the right to education and ensure that
people living in poverty are the first to benefit from better access to
education.
(a) In addition to providing free and
compulsory primary education for all children, States have an obligation to
progressively introduce free and equal secondary education (including
vocational training) for all and equal access to free higher education on the
basis of capacity.
(b) States also have an obligation to
intensify fundamental (basic) education, leading above all to the elimination
of illiteracy, for adults who have not satisfied their basic learning needs.
(4) Any human rights-based, pro-poor
education policy should ensure that the most vulnerable and marginalized groups
in society have access, free of charge, to the most fundamental types of
education, such as primary education, vocational training, literacy programs
and other forms of basic adult education.
First, States should formulate and adopt a
detailed plan of action for the progressive implementation of the principle of
compulsory primary education free of charge for all.
Second, special support programs should
enable the poor to have access also to secondary and higher education. For
example, children living in poverty should be supported financially by
scholarships and provided with transport to school, adequate textbooks, school meals
and other services free of charge.
Third, in addition to providing free and
equal access to these types of education, Governments should ensure that people
living in poverty are not discriminated against when receiving education and
that their drop-out rates are not significantly higher than those for other
groups in society.
Right to Personal Security and Privacy
(1) People living in poverty usually suffer
from various forms of insecurity. As well as experiencing financial, economic
and social insecurity, they are often homeless, marginalized, discriminated
against and subject to physical violence and attacks on their privacy,
integrity, honor and reputation by State and non-State actors. Accordingly,
efforts to strengthen the right of the poor to personal security should have a
crucial place in poverty reduction strategies.
(a) The right to personal security is a human
right independent of the right to personal liberty.
(b) If individuals or groups are subject to
death threats, violent attacks, harassment, intimidation or severe
discriminatory treatment, States have a positive obligation to provide a
minimum standard of protection for their lives, integrity and personal
security.
(c) In addition, States are under an
obligation to ensure that no human beings shall be subjected to arbitrary or
unlawful interference by State or non-State actors, with their privacy, family,
home or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on their honor and reputation.
(2) The concept of privacy protects the
particular area of individual existence and autonomy, including a person’s
appearance, identity, integrity, intimacy, sexuality, communication, family and
home, that does not touch upon the liberty and privacy of others.
(a) Policies aimed
at eliminating, or at least substantially reducing, violence against the poor
should clearly distinguish between violence by State and non-State actors.
Violence may take the form of death threats, violent attacks, harassment,
intimidation or severe discriminatory treatment.
(b) As women are
particularly vulnerable to domestic and other forms of gender-specific
violence, special measures should be taken to combat these crimes.
(c) States should
conduct education programs for the population in general, and for the police in
particular, aimed at promoting better understanding of poverty as well as nondiscrimination
towards the poor.
(d) In the
recruitment of police and other security forces, the attitude of candidates to
people living in poverty and other particularly vulnerable groups of society
should be taken into account.
Right of Equal
Access to Justice
(1) People living
in poverty are particularly vulnerable to human rights violations and abuses by
governmental authorities and private individuals. The most important tool
available to the poor to defend themselves against these abuses is court
protection.
(a) However, for
economic or other reasons, people living in poverty typically lack the
capability to obtain justice.
(b) Even if free
legal aid is available, they may lack the necessary information and
self-confidence to seek redress from the courts.
(c) States should
actively promote free access of the poor to courts, tribunals and other dispute
resolution mechanisms as a remedy against human rights violations.
(d) . All persons
are equal before the courts and tribunals, and enjoy certain procedural guarantees
in civil and criminal trials.
(e) Equality before
the courts means, in particular, that all persons must be granted, without discrimination,
the right of equal access to an independent and impartial court or tribunal for
the determination of civil disputes or criminal charges.
(f) The most
important procedural guarantee in both civil and criminal proceedings is the
right to a fair and public hearing, including the principle of equality between
all parties.
(2) The poor are
accused of criminal behavior more often than the non-poor. Whether they have committed
a crime or not, those living in poverty have a right to enjoy the minimum
guarantees of a fair trial, such as the presumption of innocence. Experience
shows that people living in poverty are more likely than others to be
discriminated against and deprived of these minimum guarantees.
(a) In criminal
trials, a number of specific rights are granted to the accused, such as the
presumption of innocence, the right to an adequate defense including the
assistance of counsel, the right to examine witnesses, and the right not to be
compelled to testify against oneself.
(b) Victims of
crime should also be provided with equal access to justice and may require
specific protection.
(3) Some procedural
guarantees explicitly refer to the needs of the poor: if an accused in a
criminal trial does not have sufficient means to pay for legal assistance,
Governments are under a positive obligation, if the interests of justice so
require, to provide a counsel free of charge.
(a) Similarly, if
accused persons do not understand or speak the language used in court, they
should have the free assistance of an interpreter.
(1) Anti-poverty policies are more likely to be effective, sustainable, inclusive, equitable and meaningful to those living in poverty if they are based upon international human rights. There is an emerging view that poverty constitutes a denial or non-fulfillment of human rights.
(a) The capability approach defines poverty as the absence or inadequate realization of certain basic freedoms, such as the freedoms to avoid hunger, disease, illiteracy, and so on.
(b) Freedom here is conceived in a broad sense, to encompass both positive and negative freedoms.
(c) a person’s freedom to live a healthy life is contingent both on the requirement that no one obstructs her legitimate pursuit of good health – negative freedom, and also on the society’s success in creating an enabling environment in which she can actually achieve good health – positive freedom.
(2) The reason why the conception of poverty is concerned with basic freedoms is that these are recognized as being fundamentally valuable for minimal human dignity.
(a) The concern for human dignity also motivates the human rights approach, which postulates that people have inalienable rights to these freedoms.
(b ) If someone has failed to acquire these freedoms, then obviously her rights to these freedoms have not been realized.
(c) Therefore, poverty can be defined equivalently as either the failure of basic freedoms – from the perspective of capabilities, or the non-fulfillment of rights to those freedoms – from the perspective of human rights.
(3) The idea of progressive realization has two major strategic implications.
First, it allows for a time dimension in the strategy for human rights fulfillment by recognizing that full realization of human rights may have to occur in a progressive manner over a period of time.
Second, it allows for setting priorities among different rights at any point in time since the constraint of resources may not permit a strategy to pursue all rights simultaneously with equal vigor. T
(4) The recognition of a time dimension and the need for prioritization are common features of all approaches to policy-making. The distinctiveness of the human rights approach is that it imposes certain conditions on these features, so that the pursuit of human rights is not reduced to mere rhetoric in the name of progressive realization.
(1) Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights. Principles and Guidelines for a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies. HR/PUB/06/12
(2) Office of the High Commissioner on Human
Rights. Human Rights and Poverty Reduction:
A Conceptual Framework. 2004