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12 April 2000
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Commission on Human Rights
56th Session
12 April 2000
Statement by
Mary Robinson,
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
at the Special Dialogue on Poverty
and the Enjoyment of Human Rights
Chairperson,
Members of the Commission,
Excellencies,
Colleagues from sister organizations,
and NGO’s, members of the press, ladies and gentlemen
The title of this special dialogue presents us with an apparent contradiction: poverty, after all, is not associated with the enjoyment of human rights but rather with their denial and deprivation. As such, the title encourages us to view poverty in its true light, as a denial of a whole range of rights which pertain to the human being based on each individual’s dignity and worth. Tackling poverty becomes a fundamental human rights issue.
That is easily stated, but it has not as yet become an operational reality. Think of the difference it will make - I am optimistic enough to say will rather than would make - when the Boards of the World Bank and IMF explicitly accept that in addressing world poverty their analysis and response should be based on protecting and promoting a whole range of human rights. I believe they are moving in this direction, a momentum to be encouraged.
This dialogue is therefore timely. As the international community reviews the implementation of the commitments to eradicate poverty that it made in 1995 at the Copenhagen Summit for Social Development, the Commission can identify new solutions to poverty from its particular perspective – that of the promotion and protection of human rights. The Commission can give leadership in showing that poverty reduction strategies will have a greater potential for success if they include the realization of human rights within their approach.
Poverty as a denial of human rights
The figures illustrating world poverty are sobering. 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. 790 million people suffer from malnutrition. 140 million school age children do not go to school. 900 million adults are illiterate. Almost 34 million people are living with HIV/AIDS , the vast majority in developing countries. Those hardest hit by poverty are women, children, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 51% of the population live in absolute poverty.
Poverty affects housing, health, food and education. But it is more than just a social or economic problem. Poverty leaves people voiceless and powerless and distances them from the people and institutions that make the decisions that affect their lives. This powerlessness in turn makes the poor even more vulnerable - vulnerable to abuse and vulnerable to the cyclical patterns of poverty that can keep the poor and their children in the same state for generations. In the words of Nobel Prize economist, Amartya Sen, «poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities, rather than merely as lowness of incomes».
So, the link between poverty and the enjoyment of human rights is clear and strong. The reality of poverty is that the poor are denied almost all their human rights - the right to adequate housing, primary healthcare, education and food - not to mention the normal benefits of citizenship - fair legal treatment and access to justice, participation in the decisions that affect the poor, access to information and technology.
It is evident that poverty is a multidimensional problem that requires strategies which promote the active participation of all in society and the fair distribution of benefits. Insofar as poverty is a denial of human rights, the realisation of all human rights - civil, cultural, economic, political and social - provides a meaningful strategy to surmount poverty - a rights-based approach.
The rights-based approach consists of integrating the long established framework of norms, standards and principles of the international human rights system into the plans, policies and processes of poverty reduction. It seeks to address the causes of poverty, and proposes solutions by identifying rights holders and duty bearers.
Developing a rights based approach to poverty reduction
This brings me to my second point. What does a rights-based approach bring to the many strategies to reduce poverty that already exist?
At the World Summit for Social Development, the international community made firm commitments to eradicate extreme poverty, substantially reduce overall poverty and to develop national plans to achieve this. In 1997, the international community proclaimed the First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty and set the target date of 2015 to halve extreme poverty.
The World Bank’s poverty reduction strategy is now based on the premise that practical action to combat poverty should be country-driven, results-oriented, partnership-based, framed within a long term perspective, and comprehensive. UNDP has just launched the Poverty Report 2000, «Overcoming Human Poverty» in the context of the review of the Social Summit’s commitments with a call to mount a new global strategy against poverty. The Secretary-General’s recent his report to the Millenium Summit, gave priority in his vision of the role of the United Nations to achieving «freedom from want».
Poverty reduction strategies promote the enjoyment of human rights to varying degrees - either implicity or explicity. A rights-based approach goes further and argues that the realization of human rights is the primary goal of poverty reduction. I believe that adopting a rights-based approach provides the basis for more successful poverty reduction strategies.
First, the rights-based approach ensures that the human dimension is not lost in developing strategies to reduce poverty. It empowers the individual and community by enhancing the human dimension of poverty reduction strategies, focusing on special groups that need attention.
Second, the rights-based approach is a grassroots one. It seeks to empower the poor through creating the conditions needed for popular participation in decision making and through strengthening institutions of governance and democracy.
Third, the rights-based approach is all encompassing. Poverty is a multidemensional problem which requires broad based solutions that go beyond economic formulae. The human rights perspective provides the framework for developing a multisectoral approach to poverty reduction through the right to development which envisages the realization of all human rights - civil, cultural, economic, political and social.
Fourth, the rights-based approach is preventive. By protecting human rights, we can help prevent the conditions that lead to poverty: the social, economic and political exclusion that continues to plague humanity and destroy development efforts.
Finally, the rights-based approach is supportive of states trying to combat poverty. Integrating a rights-based approach is not about forcing conditionalities onto states in their endeavours to combat poverty. The rights-based approach is about working with the poor, wherever they are, and developing strategies that support their context for the enjoyment of human rights.
Conclusion
I believe it would be very significant if the Commission could deepen its awareness of how to adopt a rights-based approach and advocate this in developing poverty reduction strategies. The Commission already has a number of initiatives to consider. I welcome the comments that have been made in this session of the Commission concerning some of these initiatives such as the global alliance to fight poverty proposed by the Independent Expert on Extreme Poverty as well as comments in support of the work on the draft Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that would grant the right of individuals or groups to submit communications concerning non-compliance with the Covenant.
The Commission also has before it the report of the expert workshop convened last year to consider the question of a draft declaration on extreme poverty, the joint report of the Special Rapporteur on Foreign Debt and the Independent Expert on Structural Adjustment and the report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is examining the question of poverty in the context of globalization. We also have the resolution of the Economic and Social Council, adopted two years ago, on mainstreaming a gender perspective into the policies and programmes of the United Nations system, paying particular attention to the feminization of poverty, its causes and remedies.
These are important initiatives. But there are still many issues to be addressed. Today’s dialogue offers you, the Commission, the opportunity to take a real step in the direction of reducing poverty through the promotion and protection of human rights.
I leave you with a final thought. Last week, the Secretary-General encouraged you to give momentum to the common struggle of the international community to place development at the service of human rights and human rights at the service of development. I encourage you to direct this momentum so that human rights and development are placed at the service of the poor.
*****
56th Session
12 April 2000
Statement by
Mary Robinson,
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
at the Special Dialogue on Poverty
and the Enjoyment of Human Rights
Chairperson,
Members of the Commission,
Excellencies,
Colleagues from sister organizations,
and NGO’s, members of the press, ladies and gentlemen
The title of this special dialogue presents us with an apparent contradiction: poverty, after all, is not associated with the enjoyment of human rights but rather with their denial and deprivation. As such, the title encourages us to view poverty in its true light, as a denial of a whole range of rights which pertain to the human being based on each individual’s dignity and worth. Tackling poverty becomes a fundamental human rights issue.
That is easily stated, but it has not as yet become an operational reality. Think of the difference it will make - I am optimistic enough to say will rather than would make - when the Boards of the World Bank and IMF explicitly accept that in addressing world poverty their analysis and response should be based on protecting and promoting a whole range of human rights. I believe they are moving in this direction, a momentum to be encouraged.
This dialogue is therefore timely. As the international community reviews the implementation of the commitments to eradicate poverty that it made in 1995 at the Copenhagen Summit for Social Development, the Commission can identify new solutions to poverty from its particular perspective – that of the promotion and protection of human rights. The Commission can give leadership in showing that poverty reduction strategies will have a greater potential for success if they include the realization of human rights within their approach.
Poverty as a denial of human rights
The figures illustrating world poverty are sobering. 1.2 billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. 790 million people suffer from malnutrition. 140 million school age children do not go to school. 900 million adults are illiterate. Almost 34 million people are living with HIV/AIDS , the vast majority in developing countries. Those hardest hit by poverty are women, children, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 51% of the population live in absolute poverty.
Poverty affects housing, health, food and education. But it is more than just a social or economic problem. Poverty leaves people voiceless and powerless and distances them from the people and institutions that make the decisions that affect their lives. This powerlessness in turn makes the poor even more vulnerable - vulnerable to abuse and vulnerable to the cyclical patterns of poverty that can keep the poor and their children in the same state for generations. In the words of Nobel Prize economist, Amartya Sen, «poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities, rather than merely as lowness of incomes».
So, the link between poverty and the enjoyment of human rights is clear and strong. The reality of poverty is that the poor are denied almost all their human rights - the right to adequate housing, primary healthcare, education and food - not to mention the normal benefits of citizenship - fair legal treatment and access to justice, participation in the decisions that affect the poor, access to information and technology.
It is evident that poverty is a multidimensional problem that requires strategies which promote the active participation of all in society and the fair distribution of benefits. Insofar as poverty is a denial of human rights, the realisation of all human rights - civil, cultural, economic, political and social - provides a meaningful strategy to surmount poverty - a rights-based approach.
The rights-based approach consists of integrating the long established framework of norms, standards and principles of the international human rights system into the plans, policies and processes of poverty reduction. It seeks to address the causes of poverty, and proposes solutions by identifying rights holders and duty bearers.
Developing a rights based approach to poverty reduction
This brings me to my second point. What does a rights-based approach bring to the many strategies to reduce poverty that already exist?
At the World Summit for Social Development, the international community made firm commitments to eradicate extreme poverty, substantially reduce overall poverty and to develop national plans to achieve this. In 1997, the international community proclaimed the First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty and set the target date of 2015 to halve extreme poverty.
The World Bank’s poverty reduction strategy is now based on the premise that practical action to combat poverty should be country-driven, results-oriented, partnership-based, framed within a long term perspective, and comprehensive. UNDP has just launched the Poverty Report 2000, «Overcoming Human Poverty» in the context of the review of the Social Summit’s commitments with a call to mount a new global strategy against poverty. The Secretary-General’s recent his report to the Millenium Summit, gave priority in his vision of the role of the United Nations to achieving «freedom from want».
Poverty reduction strategies promote the enjoyment of human rights to varying degrees - either implicity or explicity. A rights-based approach goes further and argues that the realization of human rights is the primary goal of poverty reduction. I believe that adopting a rights-based approach provides the basis for more successful poverty reduction strategies.
First, the rights-based approach ensures that the human dimension is not lost in developing strategies to reduce poverty. It empowers the individual and community by enhancing the human dimension of poverty reduction strategies, focusing on special groups that need attention.
Second, the rights-based approach is a grassroots one. It seeks to empower the poor through creating the conditions needed for popular participation in decision making and through strengthening institutions of governance and democracy.
Third, the rights-based approach is all encompassing. Poverty is a multidemensional problem which requires broad based solutions that go beyond economic formulae. The human rights perspective provides the framework for developing a multisectoral approach to poverty reduction through the right to development which envisages the realization of all human rights - civil, cultural, economic, political and social.
Fourth, the rights-based approach is preventive. By protecting human rights, we can help prevent the conditions that lead to poverty: the social, economic and political exclusion that continues to plague humanity and destroy development efforts.
Finally, the rights-based approach is supportive of states trying to combat poverty. Integrating a rights-based approach is not about forcing conditionalities onto states in their endeavours to combat poverty. The rights-based approach is about working with the poor, wherever they are, and developing strategies that support their context for the enjoyment of human rights.
Conclusion
I believe it would be very significant if the Commission could deepen its awareness of how to adopt a rights-based approach and advocate this in developing poverty reduction strategies. The Commission already has a number of initiatives to consider. I welcome the comments that have been made in this session of the Commission concerning some of these initiatives such as the global alliance to fight poverty proposed by the Independent Expert on Extreme Poverty as well as comments in support of the work on the draft Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that would grant the right of individuals or groups to submit communications concerning non-compliance with the Covenant.
The Commission also has before it the report of the expert workshop convened last year to consider the question of a draft declaration on extreme poverty, the joint report of the Special Rapporteur on Foreign Debt and the Independent Expert on Structural Adjustment and the report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is examining the question of poverty in the context of globalization. We also have the resolution of the Economic and Social Council, adopted two years ago, on mainstreaming a gender perspective into the policies and programmes of the United Nations system, paying particular attention to the feminization of poverty, its causes and remedies.
These are important initiatives. But there are still many issues to be addressed. Today’s dialogue offers you, the Commission, the opportunity to take a real step in the direction of reducing poverty through the promotion and protection of human rights.
I leave you with a final thought. Last week, the Secretary-General encouraged you to give momentum to the common struggle of the international community to place development at the service of human rights and human rights at the service of development. I encourage you to direct this momentum so that human rights and development are placed at the service of the poor.
*****