COMMITTEE ON ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS REVIEWS DRAFT GUIDELINES ON HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH TO POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGIES

CESCR
29th session
25 November 2002



The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights reviewed this afternoon its draft guidelines on a human-rights approach to poverty reduction strategies. The guidelines aim at integrating human rights into poverty reduction efforts.
Committee Chairperson Virginia Bonoan-Dandan recalled that in a letter dated 6 July 2001, she had asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to develop guidelines for the integration of human rights into poverty reduction strategies. In response to that request, the then High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, asked Paul Hunt and two other external experts to prepare guidelines.
In its preface, the draft text states that eradicating poverty should be the first goal for the new Millennium. Governments had committed themselves to taking action through strategies and programmes which aimed to reduce poverty and eliminate extreme poverty, the text notes; it goes on to say that the denial of human rights is inherent in poverty, something has been made powerfully evident by recent studies.
The text was introduced by Paul Hunt, Committee Expert and one of the three authors of the draft, who said consultations had been carried out to establish the responsibilities of States parties, civil society, and international development agencies, including the World Bank, in dealing with the matter.
The draft document stresses that in elaborating the guidelines, the authors had taken up the challenge of bridging the divide between a normative approach and a development economists' approach to the concept and content of poverty. The text draws upon the experience of the international human rights system over the last 50 years and more recent scholarship by social scientists, the document remarks.
Other Experts said the text should emphasize a country-driven approach to poverty eradiation in which all members of the civil society express their feelings through participation. The poor should be given economic security in order to allow them to participate, which would give them a feeling of empowerment, the Experts said.
Also this afternoon, a representative of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights made an introductory statement concerning draft guidelines on the right to adequate food. The representative said the Office believed that the participation of the widest range of stakeholders in the process would be key to successful completion of the guidelines, as we as for a better definition of the right. The 1996 Rome Summit on food security, in its Plan of Action, had invited the Office to undertake a better definition of the right related to food in article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The task was completed successfully; and the scope of the right was now defined through a process that involved a wide-range of stakeholders, the representative said.
When the Committee reconvenes at 10 a.m. Tuesday, 26 November, it will discuss its draft general comment on the right to water and is expected to adopt it in the afternoon.



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