Poverty as a Human Right Violation.

“Don’t ask me what poverty is because you have met it outside my house. Look at the house and count the number of holes, look at everything and write what you see, what you see is poverty”. This was a statement made by a poor man in Kenya as cited by Todaro and smith (2012:6). As a backdrop to this statement we can assert that poverty is not just an abstract concept or a creation of the mind. It is a living reality that lives in and amongst millions of people around the world every day. This is not an attempt to give poverty a personality but to express the realities on ground that makes for the existence of poverty. As it is through this that a phenomenon like poverty is properly understood and conceived. However poverty does have a human face.

Human rights are directly relevant to the goals of poverty. Poverty as an enemy of human dignity is therefore the number one enemy of human rights since the fundamental goal of human rights is the preservation of human dignity. Development in summary involves all the processes aimed at eliminating poverty.  In its grammatical sense, human rights has not always been linked or been in touch with the realities of poverty, and human rights as a concept is not always linked to poverty but a deep reflection on the concept of poverty and a close examination of human rights would reveal the strong binding cord between human rights violations and poverty. This is why a realistic examination of the practical effect of poverty is necessary to a closed abstract examination of poverty.

The places and areas where there are gross violations of human rights are where poverty thrives and reigns. “….Hunger or lack of access to education or shelter orgood drinking water and other essentials for a decent living is poverty being expressed and these basic needs are an integral part of human rights, therefore their absence logically implies undermining human dignity Rukooko(2010:13). In a straight forward statement, extreme poverty undermines or is a threat to the right to life. Over the years there has been reluctance in defining poverty in terms of human rights. Therefore we must understand that poverty is created, it is a creation of certain circumstances ,and it is not a stand-alone entity so the biggest question we should be asking is what are these creators of poverty? Social injustice, inequality, slavery, hunger, deprivations, low standard of living, lack of basic necessities for living and the likes are characteristics of poverty   created by the violations of human rights. Therefore the violation of human rights constitutes the major creator of poverty. Poverty has been measured in different terms and with different measures of poverty, comes different creators.

Poverty is a highly relative term and the prefix ‘extreme’ may have little or no genuine meaning for those living.  Poverty is a hybrid concept entailing produced or lived experiences constructed out of specific actions and struggles, compromises and temporarily settled relations of cooperating and competing social actors in relation to material goods. It is both a state of being and a process which depicts material or spiritual absence representing the world view of particular actors. Rukooko (2010:14).

Poverty dehumanizes and its effects can be psychological. “Victims of poverty are so compromised that they cannot understand and mobilize against it. They are unwilling and unable to stand and demand international action against it or even think of possible remedies” Rukooko (2010:15). A simple definition of poverty is a negation of human dignity. Another area in which the violation of right can result in poverty is in the area of health. Going along with the popular saying that health is wealth, when individuals are denied access to proper health care services, it undermines their capabilities to live a healthy life and consequently denies them a higher life expectancy. The core content of human rights is dignity of the human person. Human rights are designed to protect the weak against the strong and also to prevent unwarranted intrusion into the lives of individuals by the state, and also motivate human beings to achieve the best of their personality. The realities of poverty has amplified the social problems of  inequality and social injustice as this problems becomes more glaring when we ask questions like, why does affluence coexist with dire poverty within the same country and even within the same city?

Having a broad view of poverty as beyond the increase or decrease in income makes us to conceive poverty as not just exclusive to developing or low income countries that represent the third world, but a global phenomenon present all across the globe irrespective of geo-political area. A 1999 report by the United Nations Children Education Fund  (UNICEF) and a World Health Organisation (WHO) report of year 2000 states that  “roughly one third of all human deaths, some 50,000 daily are due to poverty related causes and this is avoidable insofar as poverty is avoidable”  Pogge (2001:60). The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and the right to development are human rights mechanisms that address poverty or are geared towards eliminating poverty.

Poverty is a kind of disability in that it renders the human being handicapped as he is unable to fulfil his needs and see to his life’s sustenance. “Currently more than eight million people around the world die each year because they are too poor to stay alive” Sachs (2005:1). Bodies weakened by chronic hunger are prone to killer diseases, conflicts, unrests, violence, destabilization of families and societies can be traced to factors like extreme poverty. Knowing fully well the degradation that poverty can bring to the life of an individual, the first step then for the campaign against poverty would be or based on true reverence and respect for human life. The results or effects of underdevelopment as reflected in the lack of basic amenities like even good drinking water and basic healthcare facilities are the fertilizers of poverty. This might be contested or debated but the truth is that hundreds of people die every day as a result of extreme and chronic poverty, stunted growth, mal-nutrition, poor health and even death as a result of malnutrition especially amongst children.

Jeffery Sachs gives three degrees of poverty to define poverty. They are: extreme poverty (other terms are absolute and chronic poverty), moderate poverty and relative poverty. Extreme poverty which is the topmost in the poverty ladder occurs mostly in developing countries or according to Sachs only in developing countries. 

Extreme poverty means that households cannot meet basic needs for survival. They are chronically hungry, unable to access health care, lack the amenities of safe drinking water and sanitation, cannot afford education for some or all of the children and perhaps lack rudimentary shelter, a roof to keep the rain out of the hut, a chimney to remove the smoke from the cooking stove and basic articles of clothing such as shoes. Sachs (2005:20). 

Moderate poverty refers to living conditions in which basic needs are barely met. This implies that daily needs are met but just an insignificant proportion of the needs. In this sense one could have just enough for today and less than enough for a week or even months.  Relative poverty on the other hand obtains where basic needs can be met to a certain proportion. “Relative poverty is generally construed as a household income level below a given proportion of average national income. The relatively poor in high income countries lack access to cultural goods, entertainment, recreation and to quality health care, education and other prerequisites for upward social mobility” Sachs (2005:20). In other words the individual lacks those needs that could elevate his social and emotional status. Poverty is a human condition characterised by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, chances, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, political and social rights.

In just seventeen years since the end of the cold war, over 300million human beings have died prematurely from poverty related causes with some 18million more added each year. Much larger numbers of human beings must live in conditions of life threatening poverty that make it very difficult for them to articulate their interests and effectively to fend for themselves and their families.Pogge (2007:51).

The principle of humanity is the major basis of the proposal for the regarding of poverty as a violation of human rights.To ascertain if poverty is a violation of human rights we should begin first by outlining in detail what poverty entails conceptually and in existential reality. In doing so, we will not be able to hide or run away from the truth that, poverty undermines the individual’s humanity, inherent dignity and in more severe cases right to life. The categorisation of poverty therefore as a violation of human rights according to Thomas Pogge, will be applauded and encouraged by everyone who recognizes the horrendous realities of widespread extreme poverty of the sort experienced by over a fifth of the world’s population.

   Approaching poverty through the prism of human rights is to lift it from the status of a social problem to that of a moral catastrophe Pogge (2007:56).  This view of poverty helps to strike out the idea from people’s minds that poverty is merely unfortunate and install the idea that it is a creation of certain avoidable and controllable socio-political and economic circumstances and factors. If we can widely accept that torture is a violation of human rights as enshrined in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) of the UNDHR without raising any eyebrows, then we should not hesitate to accept that poverty is also a violation of human rights because even poverty itself is a kind of torture. It is only when we try to politicise human rights by ascribing some things as rights and some as not, based on what we feel or what interests us that we fail to accept that poverty is a human right violation. The categorisation of poverty as a human right violation gives or equips us with a new weapon with which to tackle and eliminate poverty. The need for this kind of new approach is necessary seeing that despite the economic activities of growth and development plans by various governments today, poverty is increasing instead of decreasing. In some quarters the political and economic measures themselves constitutes a boost to poverty or help create new poverty. Economic measures instead of lifting people out of poverty are ushering them into new dimensions of poverty.

If the fundamental tenet of human rights is the upholding of human dignity, then to throw away the idea of poverty as a violation of human rights from the human rights discourse would be to indirectly throw out the very substance of human rights itself as poverty strips human beings of their human dignity. Sane gives the practical implication of viewing poverty as a human right violation, “by treating poverty as a violation of human right we are in effect encouraging the institutionalization of social and economic rights so that courts not governments will be given the tasks of setting minimum welfare standards in these areas, avoiding legislation that they consider increases or fails to decrease the incidence and degree of poverty” pogge (2007:57).