The title of this blog will make many think I am callous, and yet I definitely agree that poverty is an EXTREMELY BAD THING. Perhaps some use the words “human rights violation” to be equivalent to “extremely bad thing,” but why? There are many different “extremely bad things,” and it helps if everybody discriminates between them.
The only useful definition of human rights is one where a human rights crusader could identify WHOSE rights are being violated and WHO is the violator. That is what historically has led to progress on human rights. The government officers of the slave-owning antebellum US and the slave-owners were violating the rights of slaves – leading to activism against such violators that eventually yielded the Emancipation Proclamation. The local southern government officers were violating the civil rights of southern blacks under Jim Crow, leading to activism against these violators that yielded the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. The apartheid government officers in South Africa violated the rights of black South Africans, and activism against these violators brought the end of apartheid.
Poverty does not fit this definition of rights. Who is depriving the poor of their right to an adequate income? There are many theories of poverty, but few of them lead to a clear identification of the Violator of this right. Moreover, human rights are a clear dichotomy – someone violates your rights or they do not. But the line between poor and not-poor is arbitrary – it is different in different countries, and on a global scale, many still argue what is the right dividing line that constitutes poverty. So calling poverty a “human rights violation” does not point to any concrete actions that the “violator” must stop in order to restore rights to the “violated.”
So it’s disappointing that the 2009 report of Amnesty International is blurring its previous clear focus on human rights to a fuzzy vision that now includes poverty:
So many people are living in utter destitution…As the global economic outlook appears more and more gloomy,hope lies in the … determination of human rights defenders willing to challenge entrenched interests despite the risks they face. (p. 9)
Social and political progress arguably happens the same way as progress in science or as progress in business: somebody precisely defines a problem and somebody (possibly somebody else?) hits upon a way to solve that well-defined problem. To confuse poverty and human rights violations is to slow down the solutions to both.
PS also see the excellent 2009 book by Chauffour
33 Comments
Full response on my blog tomorrow.
Some people might argue that “rich countries are exploiting poor countries and big firms are looting their ressources” and therefore violate their right to pursue economic development.
Although economists agree to qualify this argument as wrong, the proof is not that easy to establish. Paul Bairoch in “Economics and World History: Myths and Paradoxes” has some very good arguments to show that the neo-marxist interpretation of history is not consistent with the available data.
I completely agree that we should ban this kind of interpretation of poverty which could lead people to support the wrong policies. Moreover, it gives incentives to think with the heart rather than with the brain.
(sorry for my bad english)
I agree that there is no way to define a human right to be out of poverty. But I think Amnesty International are pointing to the close interaction between poverty and proper human rights like those to freedom, education, food, work, and so on. In fact, I understand that one of the main points you are pushing through this blog is that “entrenched interests” (like those of the international aid bureaucracy) are harmful both for the human rights and the economic welfare of citizens in poor countries.
I agree, in some respects – however, human rights violations and poverty are not always mutually exclusive. I think Manual (poster) makes a good point. In India, for example, the ‘untouchable’ caste are denied access to basic human rights (freedoms such as jobs of their own choosing, where they can live, how they may interact with others) which is due, in some part, to their extreme poverty – and this poverty is caused by/tied up with the idea that as ‘untouchables’ they are excluded from associating with the ‘higher castes’. So in this kind of case poverty is not easily separated from wider socio/cultural value systems whereby an individual or group’s human rights are violated or otherwise denied.
Totally agree. I’ve worked in ID for 5 years, for a variety of international and national donors and NGOs (think tanks and service delivery). One of the biggest problems in international aid is our inability to say no to things, and to say things which are true but nevertheless could be interpreted as not supporting some of the fundamental tenants of ID.
For example, any discussions around “are we experiencing serious overstetch by trying to do too many things in too many countries” quickly descend into “don’t you think sector x in country u is important” or “don’t you think people ni country x deserve support in sector y”
Of course we do! That’s not the issue, and in fact the issue is exaclty the opposite – our care for all aspects of everyone’s welfare should not hinder us from attempts at actually improving certain aspects of certain people’s welfare.
But in a world where results are borderline impossible to measure, the drawbacks of wonderful-sounding rhetorical arguments along the lines of “we need to help everyone everywhere…” survive for longer than they should.
I think we can all agree that where there is poverty, there is war. Accordingly, a commitment to eliminate poverty is a commitment to eliminate war.
Yet I’ve yet to hear of anyone outside of the development sector talk of a credible commitment to eliminating war (despite us easily being able to agree that, as an end-point, this would undoubtedly be a Good Thing).
I wonder why?
Correction: “I think we can all agree that where there is poverty, there is war” should of course read “I think we can all agree that where there is war, there is poverty”
I think you hold an overly restrictive notion of what human rights are. There is, of course a sizable and healthy debate about what characterizes human rights, what sets them apart from other rights and from ‘mere’ interests. And in this debate there are positions that would tend to assume that there is perfect symmetry between rights and obligations, and that unless one can identify specific (individual) right-holders, specific duty-bearers, and clear-cut links between interventions and human rights effects, one cannot talk of human right properly understood. But that is one position among many and, frankly speaking, is no longer the most influential.
So, for instance, two aspects that you raise to deny (extreme) poverty the status of a human right violation seem to discord with contemporary understanding of the issue:
- ‘Who is depriving the poor of their right to an adequate income? (…) few of [the theories] lead to a clear identification of the Violator’
The current understanding of human rights would tend to suggest that given a right to a minimum standard of living, States have the obligation to create a (socioeconomic) environment that is conducive to poverty reduction; a mix of policies can be used, and these should target state action itself (establishment of social safety nets, when appropriate; non-discriminatory access to public services, etc) and also ‘horizontal’ relations (labor legislation, environmental protection, etc).
There need not be a single clear violator. What there needs to be, is a proper understanding of what regulatory and other polices the state can adopt to create an environment where people can fend for themselves and, when they fail to do so, where those failing can count on a system of social protection that affords people a minimum level of human security. When States fail to do that, they violate their international obligations.
There is nothing exceedingly complex in poverty that impedes attribution of responsibility and obligations to specific actors (private or public). Look at tort law for examples where decisions are made for causally complex cases, under considerable uncertainty.
A second point you make:
- ‘human rights are a clear dichotomy – someone violates your rights or they do not’
This too seems to be a problematic approach. There are ‘collective rights’, rights enjoyed by individuals as members of a class of people. And in assessing compliance with such rights, it is the aggregate picture, and not individual situations alone, that matters. Economic, social and cultural rights are subject to ‘progressive realization’, which means in practice that no one expects a country to eliminate illiteracy on the day after a treaty comes into force with regard to it. Same goes for hunger, or adequate housing.
A violation of these rights means that the State has failed to demonstrate to a monitoring body (typically a UN treaty body) that it has taken sufficient steps — within its means — to ensure progress in the realization of rights within its jurisdiction. Lack of funds is no excuse for State inaction, but determining compliance with obligations is an imminently contextual exercise (as is, I must add, finding responsibility in a typical court case).
I mentioned state jurisdiction above and that brings me to a third point: it is increasingly recognized that States also have extra-territorial obligations. This means not torturing detainees in Guantánamo or Afghanistan, but it also means not adopting decisions and policies that knowingly deprive foreign peoples and individuals of their rights, particularly their socioeconomic rights. This too is a complicated exercise, as there are myriad interactions between states, and between private actors in a globalized economy, that could affect rights negatively. But there is an emerging consensus that, at the very least, States should evaluate the impact of their policies abroad, and try to abide by a ‘do no harm’ policy. This is true of their unilateral actions and omissions, as it is of their actions within international organizations, such as the EU, the IMF or the World Bank.
Bill-
While you are at it, you might take on the rights-based approach to health. I think is also confused. The only way a right to health makes sense is if a government has defined certain rights to health in which case, entitlements must be clearly defined and preferably funded. I would propose another criteria for a right. Exercising one’s right should not entail a claim on scarce goods.
Poverty is a human rights violation of the poor in developing countries by the West, to the extent that poverty is caused by: 1. Western support (financial, through for example, foreign aid, and political) of corrupt governments, who enrich themselves, 2. Western tariffs imposed time and again on primary exports from Africa and Latin America, on anti-dumping and other flimsy grounds,….Aid-watch seems to be much focused on addressing issue 1 above. Sadly, however, many politicians, especially in Europe, are increasingly using this argument (that aid is more bad than good) to reduce their countries’ commitment to aid.
Good point.
I would too second if different agencies (e.g. UNDP) moved on to a claims-based rather than Rights-based approach. It seems more in accordance with real dilemmas and practical implementation.
I agree with the posts title. It is easiest to see the flaw in a poverty right when taken to the other end of the wealth continuum. Other rights are the about freedom for the individual from hostile intent of others. Poverty is not a right.
Property rights are far more interesting to discuss, but are not inviolable human rights, but rather functions of group vs. individual privilege.
Endemic or chronic Poverty is an outcome of lack of other human rights, not a cause and should not be included as a right per se.
Great post – on an important topic.
As Jeff notes, there is much confusion in the field of health development assistance on the issue of human rights and “rights to health”.
Following a big push in the 2006 by the AIDS activists to get a human right to AIDS treatment broadly recognized, I came across this note by Kristen Veblen in the Providence Journal.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/projo_20060830_30veb.2e351d8.html
She notes:
Should people living with HIV/AIDS have a “right” to treatment, as is claimed by many at this year’s International AIDS Convention that took place here last week?
To decide whether having AIDS confers a right to treatment “it is helpful to adopt a distinction made by the philosopher Lon Fuller between the “morality of aspiration” and the “morality of duty.” Moral aspirations are personal objectives that one seeks to fulfil to achieve goodness. By contrast, moral duties are obligations incumbent on all members of society. Duties have corollary rights. Aspirations do not.”
When I brought up this post with my friend John Arras, who is a philosopher, he replied -
it’s important not to confuse the existence conditions of a human right with the conditions of its enforcement or efficacy. It’s true that without being able to identify both the victim and the perp, human rights are bound to remain unfulfilled, but this doesn’t necessarily go to the question of whether they exist or not. John Tasioulas, of Oxford, has a very nice paper on this issue
“The Moral Reality of Human Rights,” in T. Pogge, ed., Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Politics/PoliticalTheory/PoliticalEthics/?view=usa&ci=9780199226313
Okay – I admit I am procrastinating on my OTHER work here. But, one more comment.
So the tension that bothers me as a practitioner not philosopher or ethicist:
a) a human rights frame (to be free of poverty or to be healthy) may be productive for advocacy – getting those who can to do more than they would without the “rights” frame.
BUT
b) a human rights frame – at least for health – is often unproductive for deliberating on what to to help the unhealthy or impoverished achieve their rights. Often downright destructive (because it so often undermines consideration of prioritization and targeting, so you end up with less effective and less sustainable health programs).
This is the tension running through the global health field as I see it.
Of course it should be possible to use the “rights” perspective for advocacy but not programming – but in practice, it seems they are usually not separated.
Because I can’t refrain from sharing John Arras’ (as always) illuminating response to my comment:
I hear you, April. I would note, though, as I recall our previous conversations on this topic, that your primary target may not be the human rights framework tout court, but rather one particularly unhelpful and wrongheaded conception of human rights: viz., a statist conception, according to which only the state should have a say in how human rights should be fulfilled. My hunch is that many (most?) theoreticians of human rights would want to reserve an important role for NGOs, the market, and regional organizations of states. See, e.g., Onora O’Neill, who argues persuasively that weak states are too often the problem rather than the solution. She agrees with Easterly that in order to be real rights, claims must be matched with specifiable duty-holders. Tasioulas argues, convincingly to my mind, that she’s wrong about this; but she’s right about the need to look beyond the state for those duty-holders. A.K. Sen, of course, sees many positive virtues in markets as vehicles for advancing human welfare and rights, but hey, he’s an economist!
There are now any number of lawyers and legal theorists who believe that social and economic rights, including the right to a decent standard of living, can be or are judicially enforceable human rights: among many, Cass Sunstein and Mark Tushnet in the US, Sandra Fredman in the UK, Sandra Liebenberg in South Africa, Upendra Baxi in India. But maybe this is just theory, and maybe in the real world, since one supposedly cannot identify a rights violator, calling poverty a human rights violation cannot lead to any “concrete action”? Well, actually, the Supreme Court and High Courts of India have taken on the right to a decent life in a number of cases, and have directed a variety of actors to take concrete actions to address it. The same is true of courts in South Africa. But wait, maybe this is something that just a few utopian courts do, not “real” courts that expect to have their directives followed ? Well, actually, the Court of Appeals in New York, the state where Mr Easterly lives, wrote this in 1977: “In New York State, the provision for assistance to the needy is not a matter of legislative grace; rather, it is specifically mandated by our Constitution.”
Maybe Easterly should have done some philosophical and legal research before writing this column. He could talk to Philip Alston or Helen Hershkoff at his university’s own law school.
April said:
b) a human rights frame – at least for health – is often unproductive for deliberating on what to to help the unhealthy or impoverished achieve their rights. Often downright destructive (because it so often undermines consideration of prioritization and targeting, so you end up with less effective and less sustainable health programs).
Why should a ‘human rights frame’ decide such issues? Why should it decide what situations or claims are to be prioritized?
Any country is constantly handling the issue of scarcity and making difficult choices on allocation of resources between different demands. This is true of affluent and poor countries alike.
How does the US decide on how much to allocate resources between, say, ensuring adequate detention conditions, and properly funding schools? Well, there is no decision rule to be found in human rights: both are fundamental rights (at least from the international law perspective), and both deserve proper funding. Ultimately the decision will be political, and law — and human rights in particular — can say very little on how to handle scarcity.
To acknowledge that human rights are not the (ultimate) decision factor in public spending matters in no means suggests that human rights considerations are not relevant. What a ‘human rights approach’ should provide is the understanding that meeting certain needs — those recognized as ‘human rights’ — is not a matter of discretion, or of ‘public charity’. It is not simply a political goal: it is a matter of rendering (legally binding) entitlements fully effective for as many people as possible. ‘As possible’ means that scarcity must always be taken in consideration. But scarcity is no excuse for discriminating against women in schooling, for instance. Assuming you can only fund a limited number of vacancies in schools (or a limited number of medical treatments), these should be made available without gender- or race-based discrimination.
Moreover, a human rights approach requires the affected people to participate in allocation decisions. None of this is outlandish, or contrary to common sense.
That prisons cost money that could otherwise be spent in other activities does not diminish the legal status, under the US Constitution, of the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Nor should it.
I don´t think I agree with you Prof. Easterly (although I do agree with you with many other things). I do think poverty is a human right´s violation in the sense that every human being is entitled to a dignified life and poverty gets in the way of this.
I don´t buy the argument that rich countries are the culprit of this human right´s violation. Rather, I believe market failures, caused many times by our irrational behavior, are many times responsible for poverty. Of course, there are also political reasons, but I think we are all responsible for this. And I mean everybody – because poverty alleviation should not be a Western thing to do, but also a thing od developing countries.
Wow. This discussion is great.
On my observation that having a “rights framework” underlying development assistance in global health can make it harder to use the funding effectively (e.g. it constrains making good decisions on prioritization of use of funding and targeting), John Arras replied:
“Here we’re on the same page, April. As you may dimly recall from my own paper on human rights and health, I argue that prioritization and targeting are absolutely crucial activities, but that the human rights framework is largely mute about them. They must take place on the institutional level where local values, levels of need, and priorities will provide content to such rights, which, in turn, makes human rights look a lot more like political rights than universal rights.”
I’m not entirely sure I understand the difference between political rights and universal rights – but I’m 100% behind a definition of rights that makes it easier to make good decisions about prioritization and targeting of resources – to do the most good.
Great discussion. It underlines some of the different approaches and philosophies of economics and human rights law and how hard it is for one discipline to understand the other.
I believe poverty is a human rights issue and would like to take a couple of steps to explain why
1. Human rights includes not only civil and political rights, but also economic social and cultural rights. While at times the latter has been contentious they are all established human rights law, and both are clearly articulated in the converntion on the rights of the child the most widely ratified human rights treaty even (ratified by everyone except the US).
Many of these economic and social rights are not easily defined as one person infringing the rights of another person – they are more complex than that, about the roles of individuals, communities and states to remove barriers and create an enabling environment for all people to live a life of dignity. Just because the solutions and rioles are harder to pin down doesn’t change the fact that they are rights and that states and citizens have an obligation to realize them.
2. Poverty is not just about money. Money is a means to an end – again to allow a person freedom to pursue their life in freedom, health and dignity. Income is therefore a measurement proxy for other things – and poverty is not just lack of money it is deprivation of rights including the right to shelter, clean water, adequate nutritional food, health, education, employment, etc. as well as protection from violence and discrimination. Money can be a good proxy – but I’m arguing you would still be poor if you had a pile of money, but no acces to health care or no opportunity to have your children educated.
Here’s a link to some information from UNICEF looking at child poverty beyond an income based definition, using a child-rights framework – but still making this measurable and practical http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_48547.html and details of an ongoing study looking at poverty from a child’s perspective to see how this shed new light on the poverty debates.
WHY NOT ECONOMIC RIGHTS?
FROM WHENCE THE LAND?
After all land is not produced but put here by God for all to use. If land has already been taken from the indians and turned into private property, why not a right to the fruits of the land, e.g. a right to food as in the UN Economic and Social Council Human Rights Agenda.
SS
Just to add that looking at poverty as a human rights rather than an income issue also leads you to different answers. It’s not only about ensuring people have enough money to buy things they need, but ensuring they have access to the things themselves such as health, education, land title etc. Money can be instrumental but in many cases its a change in power relations and responsibilities that is also needed and income and growth alone are not guaranteed to change this. Perhaps this is one reason aid hasn’t been as effective in improving people’s lives as we might have hoped.
Can you please elaborate on whether this book approaches freedom differently than Amartya Sen? Thank you.
Arras argued that “prioritization and targeting are absolutely crucial activities, but that the human rights framework is largely mute about them.”
That is absolutely correct if one means that human rights haven’t highly-specified decision-rules on allocation decisions for all circumstances in which scarcity plays a role.
On the other hand, human rights do (or normatively should), play a role in the process of decision-making in allocation of scarce resources. They constrain certain choices — ruling out, for instance, an allocation that is discriminatory on the grounds of gender, race, ethnicity, or political/religious affiliation — but also, and more importantly, establishes a procedural requirement that affected persons be allowed to meaningfully participate in the decision-making process and, finally, require that remedies (judicial and others) be available for when such requirements are not met.
So although human rights law, as presently construed, doesn’t make allocation decisions, it tells you which allocations are not compatible with human rights, and establishes procedural safeguards for legitimizing the decision-making process.
“They must take place on the institutional level (…) which, in turn, makes human rights look a lot more like political rights than universal rights”
I confess I don’t quite grasp the distinction being made here. It would be interesting to know more about it.
The thrust of Amnesty International’s 2009 report, identified in this post is: “people are living in utter destitution”.
As destitution by definition is “extreme want which threatens life unless relieved” (Webster), it follows that AI is referring to poverty which deprives people of an adequate standard of living. This blog’s author thus mistakenly defines the human rights violation in question as a “right to an adequate income”.
Allowing deprivation of an adequate standard of living, would be a violation of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 25.
(1) 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.
As human rights enshrined in the Declaration are meant to be the responsibilities of governments, it is clear who a violator is in allowing poverty.
No, you’re wrong. Human rights are important facts. Important facts are facts of human experience which, history has shown, do not change regardless of attempts to change them. That is the definition used in every western country; in the U.S. too (see West Virginia v. Barnette). It is what led to the removal of exercises of religion from the political system, in consequence giving power over them, to individuals. An exercise of religion is an important fact.
The issue with regard to human rights is always: is the fact, claimed to be a right, an important fact? Didn’t know that, did you, clown?
Your grasp of history is so bad that you don’t even realize the argument on the basis of which slavery was eliminated: freedom from involuntary servitude is an important fact. Indeed, the argument Lincoln used against it was historically based: it didn’t work, it was constantly subverted, and it destroyed government, which he also considered an important fact. (His evidence that slavery destroyed government was the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the response it provoked.)
The Court uses “maintenance” explicitly in both West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937) and a case which is used to stand for the proposition that the political system has unlimited power over all facts, Berman v. Parker.
We are in the process of elevating maintenance to an important fact,getting rid of the scrutiny regime–which comes from a corrupt misreading of West Coast–and establishing the maintenance regime, which stands for the proposition that the law maintains important facts. The old scrutiny regime, under which we “live” now, stands for the proposition that the law has a rational relation to a legitimate government purpose. That has led to the deterioration of the society, because it is simply a police state formulation.
Whether making “maintenance” an individually enforceable right, eliminates “poverty” I don’t know, but I do know that your analysis is so ignorant that it hardly deserves the term “analysis.” From under which rock did you crawl? You’re scum. Witness your inability to describe what, in fact, is poverty: “adequate income,” please! That lame definition shows that you have not researched the facts AT ALL. Adequate to what? But that would lead a churl like you much further into FACTS than you are intellectually capable of going. Goombah.
We’re also in the process of elevating other facts to important facts, which means that there will be vastly expanded individually enforceable rights in them: housing, liberty, education and medical care.
Just see my book, you scum.
UN Human Rights and Wrongs
By William Easterly Last Friday’s post “Poverty is not a human rights violation” spurred a very healthy dialogue on rights, including a response from Amnesty International , which mentioned the UN Declaration of Human Rights. I will not be a…
My first answer to that question would be : yes poverty is a human right violation, then Bill conviced me, then I read this comment from Michelle Chan :
“Allowing deprivation of an adequate standard of living, would be a violation of Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 25.
(1) 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.”
So I keep my first answer, Poverty is a human right violation. The good point is to mind that the violator is somehow diffused in our society… but I think that if we’d all agree that poverty was a human rights violation we might develop the tools to find out what is in cause and find out the actions to resolve this cause…
Maybe our capitalist system is to blame, it concentrates the power and make us forget about poverty… maybe the problem is on the mass consumption system that causes the need for cheap labour and cheap products that can only be produced if there is a poor society somewhere….
In all of those options I think we are all to blame for this… we are the violators of the UDHR… We gain more money than we need in order to stop working one day… to keep living we definatly need someone to work for us somewhere and that someone is a poor women in a rural area of Ghana or Bolivia…
On the other side, the UDHR is really subjective, one could say that an adequate standard of living is what people live in Mali and that there aint no such thing as extreme poverty, there is only extreme richness… and that is what we need to eradicate… And think about it, it would be much more easy to change how 1% of the world population live than half of it…but is it really ?
Then maybe extreme richness is the violation of the human rights and poverty is only a consequence of this violation…
I concur with the author.
A ‘right’ infers an obligation.
If absence of poverty is to be assessed a right, it implies that someone is under obligation to provide wealth to everyone who is poor.
Who might that someone be? Certainly, the first obligation must fall upon the government of the citizen, failing that – who? Everyone else.
Likewise, when progressives are always expanding the concept of ‘human rights’ to include among other things:
Healthcare; Childcare; Welfare; Peace; Education; Leisure; limited work hours, etc.
All of this implies that it is the obligation of someone, usually the government to provide it.
@ Sacrifice
You are right on the obligation concept, but take things inside out as I wrote it and consider extreme richness a violation of human rights, then the obligation of the government would be to impose a limitation on the salaries, easy to do no ? and gives a lot of money to erradicate extreme poverty… but only a world government could do such a thing… that is, I agree, anticapitalist…
But understand that to me it is THE PROBLEM…
Hey guys, I appreciate some of your comments- so, imagine a government is not facilitating or providing adequate socio-economic facilities to its people. whom to blame? Look then at the people who are impoverished? Are they right-holders to drawn in poverty or live decent life?
I dont agree with you that poverty does not imply human rights violation. It does but we should look at who is responsible. The arguments of many people infer the avoidance of responsibility to help the poor. You may not help but dont think that the poor dont have right to better health, improved income, standard education, etc–
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