Poverty, human rights, and development

C. Raj Kumar
The Hindu, 22 February

Poverty recognised only as an economic and public policy issue invites official responses from government bodies. But if it is seen as a violation of human rights, civil society and the judiciary can intervene.

THE RECENT report of the World Food Programme, the United Nations' food agency, that 18,000 children die of hunger and malnutrition every day underscores the urgent need for all governments to respond to poverty in all its manifestations. Poverty is probably the most serious human rights and development challenge both advanced and developing countries face. The recognition of poverty as a human rights issue is a recent development. It coincides with the greater acceptance of economic, social, and cultural rights as enforceable human rights rather than mere policy objectives. In the Indian situation, this transition is indeed telling given that an integral understanding of the chapters on fundamental rights and directive principles of state policy of the Constitution of India has been elaborated over time through a progressive interpretation by the Indian judiciary, in particular, the Supreme Court.

In September 2000, at the United Nations Millennium Summit, world leaders agreed to a set of time-bound measurable goals and targets for combating poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women. Among these objectives, which are now called the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the first is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger. Specifically, the goal is to reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. All 191 U.N. member states have pledged to meet these goals by the year 2015. It is very unlikely that these targets will be met. However, human rights-based approaches focus on the empowerment of the people as a core strategy in ensuring that the system of governance is reformed to respond to issues that affect their lives, including poverty.

Unfortunately, an overtly legalistic approach to human rights has failed to recognise that poverty inhibits access to justice. This should be a critical component of effective legal systems and, as such, should also be one of the criteria evaluated in human rights and governance assessments. While access to justice in a procedural sense does involve issues relating to locus standi and legal aid, its the jurisprudential foundations rest on the capability of people to approach the courts of law or other governance institutions. Poor people who are dying of extreme poverty will not able to seek any form of justice to protect their rights, including the most fundamental right to food. Economic, social, and cultural rights, if properly enforced, serve as empowering tools that will enable the protection of access to justice as a human right.

In this regard, Jean Dreze and Amartya Sen observed in Hunger and Public Action: "The point is not so much that there is no law against dying of hunger. That is of course, true and obvious. It is more that the legally guaranteed rights of ownership, exchange and transaction delineate economic systems that go hand in hand with some people failing to acquire enough food for survival... In seeking a remedy to this problem of terrible vulnerability, it is natural to turn towards a reform of the legal system, so that rights of social security can be made to stand as guarantees of minimal protection and survival."

One of the important proposals that a report by the U.N.'s independent expert on human rights and extreme poverty, Arjun Sengupta, makes is to recognise the removal of the conditions of poverty as a "core" obligation, which should be realised immediately and not progressively. To overcome possible objections from many developing countries to this proposal, Professor Sengupta, has argued, "The idea is to identify as extremely poor any group whose number is limited so that the society does not find it unmanageable to deal with their problems. Once ... identified, the removal of their conditions of extreme poverty must be taken as an obligation corresponding to the fulfilment of human rights norms."

It is in this context that the legal framework and the notion of legal empowerment of the poor through law and institutional reforms become significant. In countries where there is a functioning and effective legal system based on the rule of law, the courts and other democratic institutions would inevitably play an important role in determining what constitutes legal entitlements and how they can be enforced. An example would be the enactment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act by the United Progressive Alliance Government.

The focus of rights-based approaches to development is to ensure that governments are constantly evaluated and made accountable to citizens and the international community on the basis of their progress. A rights-based approach would integrate the norms, standards, and principles of the international human rights system into the plans, policies, and processes of development including anti-poverty policies in the domestic context. Another important aspect of such an approach is that it defines human rights goals and objectives specifically by providing for timelines, indicators, and measurements to monitor progress in the realisation of specific development objectives such as those dealing with food, shelter, drinking water, education, and health. Extreme poverty impedes social and economic development, and threatens the rule of law and social fabric of any society.

If poverty is recognised as a violation of human rights, it is possible that the judiciary may be empowered to intervene when situations of poverty are consequences of failures in governance. A wrongful act, when understood to be a human rights violation, would provide for valuable judicial space and ensure mandatory enforcement of its directions for possible relief measures. Judicial empowerment, through an expanded interpretation of rights, would necessitate an attitudinal change in government to facilitate the development of anti-poverty mechanisms while recognising that abolishing poverty is no longer merely a public policy goal, but a constitutional and human rights imperative.

Institutions like the national human rights commission will also have an important role to play.

Active and sustained involvement of civil society is necessary for tackling any social problem, including poverty. If poverty is recognised as a human rights issue, both domestic and international civil society would need to take an active part in promoting it as such, and in resisting any policy that loses sight of the need to constantly keep poverty in check. The human rights activism that is typically generated through the work of civil actors can be useful for the various departments of governments that engage in formulating and implementing policies relating to fighting poverty. A human rights approach creates an empowering dimension in the work of civil society in ensuring transparency of the government.

Poverty recognised only as an economic and public policy issue invites official responses from government bodies. But the human rights aspects of the discussion will receive a wider community of responses. This empowering dimension of the human rights discourse is useful in sustaining poverty-free governance as a basic principle of administration.

When poverty is recognised as a human rights issue, it is possible to achieve political consensus on the ways and means of fighting it. Further, it can ensure that objectivity is maintained in the implementation of policies relating to fighting poverty so that resource allocation and targeting of the areas and people who are suffering from extreme poverty is not based on any biases or prejudices. This is important as it is possible that the resources that are allocated to fight poverty may not reach the true and deserving beneficiaries because of corruption or other abuses of power. To avoid this problem, the recognition of poverty as a human rights issue broadens the scope for engagement and political consensus can be developed to ensure that violations are uniformly recognised, without any form of discrimination. Maintaining political consensus on issues relating to poverty can then in time result in the broader application of internationally developed good governance principles.

The writer is with the School of Law, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. He is member of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the Harvard Project on the Implementation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. crajkumar4@yahoo.com