CONTRIBUTIONS TO A HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH TO POVERTY

Abstract

 Despite renewed international promises to combat poverty, it remains a global reality, primarily affecting peripheral populations and vulnerable groups. In the capitalist context, poverty is addressed through mechanisms of international cooperation and managerial global governance that obscure its structural causes, measuring it instead with reductionist metrics. This article aims to contribute to defining the legal meaning of poverty, adopting a human rights-based approach within the international (global) system, while analysing the associated limitations and possibilities. Engaging in a normative legal debate, the article draws on documentary research, surveying UN resolutions and reports concerning human rights and poverty, and a review of relevant literature. It defines poverty as a human rights violation involving the following concerns, understandings, and commitments: a) following the “Bristol School” theoretical tradition initiated by P. Townsend, it views poverty in broad, relative, and multidimensional terms, consistent with the global agenda; b) it identifies the deprivation of social, economic, and cultural rights as constitutive dimensions of poverty and links them to the state’s non-derogable obligation to address the issue; c) it proposes the political-tactical use of human rights as a tool to combat poverty; and d) it highlights the importance of reconciling universal human rights with the relative nature of poverty. Thus, the article aims to contribute to revising the criteria for defining and measuring poverty, offering insights for the design of programs, public policies, and concrete measures to combat poverty and promote human rights and dignity.

KEYWORDS: Poverty. Human rights. Global governance.