A/HRC/44/40
United Nations
General Assembly
Distr.: General
19 November 2020
Original: English
Human Rights Council
Forty-fourth session
15 June–3 July 2020
Agenda item 3
Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil,
political, economic, social and cultural rights,
including the right to development
The parlous state of poverty eradication
Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human
rights*
Summary
The present report is submitted by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and
human rights, Philip Alston, pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution 35/19. The
world is at an existential crossroads involving a pandemic, a deep economic recession,
devastating climate change, extreme inequality, and an uprising against racist policies.
Running through all of these challenges is the longstanding neglect of extreme poverty by
many Governments, economists and human rights advocates.
By single-mindedly focusing on the World Bank’s flawed international poverty
line, the international community mistakenly gauges progress in eliminating poverty by
reference to a standard of miserable subsistence rather than an even minimally adequate
standard of living. This in turn facilitates greatly exaggerated claims about the impending
eradication of extreme poverty and downplays the parlous state of impoverishment in
which billions of people still subsist.
While the Sustainable Development Goals have achieved a great deal, they are
failing in relation to key goals in the areas of, among others, poverty eradication, economic
equality, gender equality and climate change. They need to be recalibrated in response to
the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), the ensuing recession and accelerating global
warming.
Poverty is a political choice and its elimination requires: (a) reconceiving the
relationship between growth and poverty elimination; (b) tackling inequality and
embracing redistribution; (c) promoting tax justice; (d) implementing universal social
protection; (e) centring the role of government; (f) embracing participatory governance;
and (g) adapting international poverty measurement.
* The present report was submitted after the deadline so as to include the most recent information.
GE.20-15598(E)