Freedom from extreme poverty as a human right

Is extreme poverty merely evidence of failed economic policy or should it also be seen as a breach of human rights?

Legal scholar and UN Special Rapporteur Philip Alston argues that the conversation around human rights has yet to take seriously how the world’s very poor are excluded from a life of dignity – underpinned by access to education, basic health care and housing – while extreme inequality is itself in part sustained by the blocking of civil and political rights by elites.

“As long as elites ignore the consequences of extreme inequality, as long as they don’t deal with what we call economic and social rights as human rights, then they are essentially contributing to the maintenance of the status quo,” he says.

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