Poverty, inequality and human rights
On 3 September 2009, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) published a report which examines how human rights have been used internationally to develop new conceptions of poverty as well as identifying new approaches to combating it.
The report notes that human rights and anti-poverty work are rarely integrated, either in UK public policy or among communities experiencing poverty. The key findings to emerge from this study of how other countries use human rights to tackle poverty include evidence that:
- in both wealthy and low-income countries, people working to combat poverty have harnessed human rights to: reframe conceptions of poverty and challenge stereotypes of people affected by it; mobilise alliances between disparate groups around anti-poverty goals; and hold governments legally accountable for poverty.
- communities affected by poverty that have asserted their right to participate in decision-making have generated practical and cost-effective policy solutions.
- legal enforcement of socio-economic, civil and political rights has reduced poverty in some circumstances.
- governmental use of human rights is episodic but has brought benefits. Some governments have used human rights to bring coherence to – and permit prioritisation within – anti-poverty strategies and to set transparent targets.
- within the UK human rights and anti-poverty communities, some think that introducing socio-economic rights more visibly into UK public debate – and building the role of civil and political rights as an anti-poverty tool – may help shift negative perceptions of both human rights and poverty.
Poverty, inequality and human rights (PDF)
