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Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 12
- Paragraph text
- Even when resources are limited, States are legally bound to respect, protect and fulfil international human rights obligations. For State parties to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, this means, for example, that they must dedicate the maximum amount of resources available to progressively achieve the full realization of all economic, social and cultural rights. The human rights perspective distinguishes between the inability and the simple unwillingness to act. States cannot use the economic damage caused by the crises to justify actions or omissions that amount to violations of basic human rights obligations. While economic, social and cultural rights are often subject to the principle of "progressive realization" depending on the availability of resources in each State, this principle also prescribes particular modes of conduct that are compulsory for all States, regardless of their level of development. These obligations considerably limit the discretion of States with regard to the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights, and require immediate action.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 23
- Paragraph text
- To ensure accountability, fiscal policies, including, for example, tax incentives granted to foreign investors, should be open to judicial oversight, while public officials should be accountable for decisions that endanger the enjoyment of human rights. Accessible mechanisms for complaints and redress should also be put in place.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 71
- Paragraph text
- Third, contrary to the orthodoxy promoted by economic institutions and corporate actors in recent years, there needs to be a resurgence of support for the central role of the State, and recognition of the importance of fair and progressive fiscal policies, and of the indispensability of policies to ensure redistributive justice.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 70
- Paragraph text
- Second, the right to work, the right to social security, and above all the right to an adequate standard of living need to be given a prominent place on the human rights community’s agenda. If these rights are marginalized, the overall agenda will become increasingly less relevant to the most pressing and urgent questions of the day.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Marginality of economic and social rights 2016, para. 57
- Paragraph text
- Nevertheless, some of the major international NGOs continue to approach economic and social rights in ways that do very little to change the marginality of those rights within the field. This is especially problematic because these organizations still disproportionately influence the overall shape of the non-governmental agenda, especially at the international level. Good faith efforts in recent years to develop a more positive and proactive approach to economic and social rights have succeeded in moving the field forward in relation to several issues that are important, even though they represent a rather narrow slice of the overall economic and social rights pie. Reporting on issues such as forced evictions, maternal mortality, discrimination in access to schooling, access to palliative care and to HIV/AIDS drugs, and sexual and reproductive health, has contributed significantly in these areas, but the approaches adopted have too often relied almost entirely on using a discrimination lens and avoided reliance on the economic and social rights framework. When combined with policies that eschew issues that involve redistributing resources or require significant budgetary allocations, the approach can amount to a self-denying ordinance that effectively maintains the status quo and ensures that the core economic and social rights issues will not be adequately addressed.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Marginality of economic and social rights 2016, para. 15
- Paragraph text
- Economic and social rights are also of central importance to efforts to tackle extreme inequality and its consequences. The thoroughly documented increases in global wealth and income inequality threaten to undermine the social fabric, to turn civil and political rights into a tool that will be used predominantly to protect the rights and interests of the wealthy and to entrench forms of economic and political liberalism that ignore the needs and deny the rights of those living in poverty. In many respects, the approach currently taken by the international human rights system all but ensures the worst of all possible outcomes. On the one hand, the correct approach insists that economic and social rights are indivisible from, and of equal importance to, civil and political rights, thus suggesting that they can provide a meaningful response to extreme poverty, extreme inequality and other forms of rampant social injustice. On the other hand, the international human rights system systematically marginalizes those rights in many respects, and tolerates a situation in which the majority of States avoid the recognition, institutionalization and accountability that alone can establish solid foundations upon which to build respect for economic and social rights as full-fledged human rights and thus provide powerful and principled arguments to reduce levels of inequality.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Civil & Political Rights
- Economic Rights
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 32
- Paragraph text
- It is clear therefore that the most impoverished suffer the most extreme effects of inequality for a variety of reasons. In part, this is because their influence and capacity to exercise rights is diminished relatively, even if not absolutely, as others become wealthier and gain greater political and economic power, and in part because they are more vulnerable to the harms associated with social unrest, crime and violence.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Violence
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 17
- Paragraph text
- In all modern democracies, laws, regulations and institutions influence, and are influenced by, the distribution of economic and other forms of power. Economic inequalities are not only the result of market forces, but equally of political forces that affect laws, regulations and institutions. A full understanding of economic inequalities therefore requires an examination of the exercise of political power.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The World Bank and human rights 2015, para. 59
- Paragraph text
- Fourth, the Bank needs to bring its operational policies into line with mainstream development theory, especially its own. In 1999, Amartya Sen published a landmark study entitled Development as Freedom, based on lectures given at the Bank. Sen made a powerful case that freedom and the enjoyment of a range of rights were integral to achieving meaningful development. More recently, William Easterly has argued that "the cause of poverty is the absence of political and economic rights, the absence of a free political and economic system that would find the technical solutions to the poor's problems". He dismissed policies that seek to artificially separate human rights from development as technocratic illusions. The Bank itself has often paid lip service to the consensus that has emerged since the end of the cold war that recognizes that "democracy, development and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms are interdependent and mutually reinforcing," as proclaimed in the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by consensus by 171 States in 1993. By staunchly maintaining the technocratic illusion, not in its conceptual work, but in its operations where it really matters, the Bank has not only placed itself firmly outside mainstream development thinking and policies formally endorsed by all States, but perhaps more problematically has sent the message that rights and development can, and in its own case must, be kept separate. The flow-on effect of that negative example cannot be underestimated;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Unpaid care work and women's human rights 2013, para. 84
- Paragraph text
- States should take a comprehensive and holistic approach, considering both the needs and well-being of caregivers and care receivers when making policy and addressing the rights enjoyment of both groups. Before new public policies are implemented, their impact on the quality, amount, intensity and distribution of unpaid care work should be assessed.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Unpaid care work and women's human rights 2013, para. 58
- Paragraph text
- Owing to systematic gender inequality and discrimination, the lack of value assigned to their work, its location in the domestic sphere and the time it entails, unpaid caregivers are often chronically disempowered and unable to enjoy their right to participation in cultural, social, political and economic life (see A/HRC/23/36).
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Gender
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to justice for people living in poverty 2012, para. 34
- Paragraph text
- Persons living in poverty face greater and disproportionate barriers and disincentives in accessing registration services, which are often geographically distant for them, time-consuming and unaffordable. The travel costs to access registration services are added to relatively high fees charged for the issuance of identity documents and to the working time lost. These costs are more burdensome for the poor.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Movement
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 21
- Paragraph text
- The requirement that a State must ensure enjoyment of human rights equally and without discrimination of any kind is a fundamental pillar of the human rights framework. The scarcity of resources in times of economic hardship is not an acceptable justification for discriminatory measures or failing to implement anti-discrimination policies.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 48
- Paragraph text
- A well-placed tax threshold (namely, the income below which an individual or household is exempted from income tax) is also crucial for ensuring that the taxation system does not jeopardize the ability of people living in poverty to enjoy minimum essential levels of economic, social and cultural rights. Unfortunately, in some countries, households are required to pay tax before they earn enough to even meet minimum food basket requirements.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The implementation of the right to social protection through the adoption of social protection floors 2014, para. 21
- Paragraph text
- The generic term "social protection" has been used to describe a wide range of past and present policy approaches. In recent years, however, the main debate has been between those who support what are termed "social safety net" approaches and those who seek "social inclusion" and acknowledge "social citizenship". The principal response of the World Bank to the backlash against the austerity and adjustment policies of the Washington Consensus was to advocate social safety nets. The concept of social risk management gained special prominence, both as a means to protect the basic livelihood of the most vulnerable, or those living in chronic poverty, and to promote better managed risk-taking in response to economic and other shocks. However, the safety net approach was also widely criticized for failing to devote enough attention to structural poverty and inequality, and for its emphasis on the narrow targeting of groups for assistance. In response, rights-based approaches were promoted, not only within the human rights community, but by a broader range of development scholars and institutions. But the general debate is far from settled and critics argue that many of today's approaches to social protection continue to show a "bias towards more ameliorative and less transformative approaches to social protection, which are likely to leave the underlying causes of injustice in place."
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Penalization of people living in poverty 2011, para. 50
- Paragraph text
- Support for these measures is not based on strong evidence of their effectiveness and economic efficiency, but rather on discriminatory stigmas and stereotypes, perpetuated by the media, that portray recipients of social benefits as lazy, dishonest and untrustworthy. Requirements and conditions are often underpinned by strong paternalistic attitudes; policymakers believe that they are acting in the best interests of persons living in poverty, who cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves and their families.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Families
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The implementation of the right to social protection through the adoption of social protection floors 2014, para. 57
- Paragraph text
- In particular, civil society should engage actively in debates over affordability at the national level. In that context, it is pertinent to recall the highly relevant report by the previous Special Rapporteur on the key role played by fiscal and related policies at the national level in terms of generating the resources necessary for poverty reduction and the realization of human rights (A/HRC/26/28).
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 69
- Paragraph text
- The starting point is to acknowledge that economic insecurity represents a fundamental threat to human rights. It is not only a threat to the enjoyment of economic and social rights, even though they are a principal concern. Extreme inequality, rapidly increasing insecurity, and the domination of politics by economic elites in many countries, all threaten to undermine support for, and ultimately the viability of, the democratic systems of governance upon which the human rights framework depends.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Taxation and human rightss 2014, para. 74
- Paragraph text
- In order to take effective and decisive action in these matters, concerted international cooperation is necessary. Without absolving any State of its obligation to raise the maximum available resources domestically to ensure the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights, there are limits to national-level actions in the absence of global reforms. Many States are undoubtedly hamstrung in their efforts to enact progressive taxation and combat illicit financial flows that could fight inequality and enhance the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 96
- Paragraph text
- The Independent Expert urges G20 countries to give serious thought to the proposal by France to introduce a financial transaction tax, and welcomes the recent decision to commission an inquiry into the feasibility of implementing such a tax. A global consensus on a financial transaction tax would represent an historic decision to prioritize the most disadvantaged and marginalized and be a valuable means of assisting developing countries to meet obligations to ensure the full realization of all economic, social and cultural rights.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 83
- Paragraph text
- The human rights framework obliges States to take measures to ensure that individuals under their jurisdiction are protected from infringements of their rights by third parties, and to take all available legal or policy measures to prevent third parties from violating economic, social and cultural rights. Accordingly, States should take immediate steps to regulate the actions of banking and financial sector entities under their control, in order to prevent them from violating or infringing upon human rights.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights based approach to recovery from the global economic and financial crises, with a focus on those living in poverty 2011, para. 22
- Paragraph text
- Expenditure and entitlements must benefit all social groups equally, and exclusions from public funds based on, for example, citizenship or employment status, may violate the requirement for non-discrimination. These principles also require States to identify vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in society and to protect them as a matter of priority. States have an obligation to take special and positive measures to diminish or eliminate conditions that cause or help to perpetrate discrimination.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The implementation of the right to social protection through the adoption of social protection floors 2014, para. 39
- Paragraph text
- Finally, much has been made in the context of the Covenant of the importance of establishing benchmarks against which governmental performance can be evaluated. As the United Nations Development Group has observed, the immediate realization of a social protection floor is not a realistic policy goal for most countries in the region. but progress can be achieved through "setting a benchmark for the benefit levels. The benchmark may be taken as the national poverty line for tax-financed, universal schemes and relative benchmarks as laid out in the ILO's social security Conventions."
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 7
- Paragraph text
- There is a strong risk that when confronted with the challenge of addressing economic insecurity the human rights system will proceed in zombie mode. It will keep marching straight ahead on the path mapped out long ago, even as the lifeblood drains out of the enterprise. Its supervisory and monitoring organs will address themselves ever more insistently to State actors that have made themselves marginal, and they will continue to demand respect for standards that have long since been overtaken by the grim realities of global supply chains. For the most part, the human rights machinery is cumbersome, lacking in agility, and poorly placed to develop new thinking in such contexts. But it will need to do so if it is to remain relevant.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme poverty and human rights on universal basic income 2017, para. 4
- Paragraph text
- The neoliberal policies encapsulated in the 1980s-era Washington Consensus can be seen, especially in retrospect, to have greatly exacerbated economic insecurity, whether or not that was the intent. The State was assumed to be intrinsically inefficient and corruption-prone, and this led to constant pressure to shrink all those parts of it that provided social and basic economic services to the populace, while vindicating and reinforcing the State in its role as the regulator facilitating and legitimizing the privatization of the economy. Social security and social protection was transformed, including through the explicit policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, into a minimalist notion of “social safety nets” designed to avoid the very worst outcomes and make the State look beneficent while empowering officials dedicated to devising ever more efficient “targeting” mechanisms and to rooting out overinclusion while playing down underinclusion. The objectives of promoting tax reform and prudent fiscal policies turned into a race to the bottom to set the lowest individual and corporate tax rates, attracting businesses through expensive exemptions, turning a blind eye to illegal or unconscionably evasive tax practices, and eliminating estate taxes and other measures that would bring about even minimal redistribution. Privatization was promoted even in relation to what were once seen as basic State functions, such as prisons, education and security. In some States, even the justice system has been partly privatized, whether through onerous court fees for the poor or the channelling of consumer and other complaints into private arbitration.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Marginality of economic and social rights 2016, para. 17
- Paragraph text
- A strong case is also to be made for attributing the resurgence of right-wing populism, at least in some of the many countries in which it is occurring, to the growth of inequality and the widespread neglect or denial of economic and social rights.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Marginality of economic and social rights 2016, para. 42
- Paragraph text
- Because of the relative inactivity of these other actors, studies of economic and social rights accountability have focused overwhelmingly on the courts and on the extent to which the increasing constitutional recognition noted above has enabled them to play an active role in upholding economic and social rights. It is open to question whether this emphasis accurately reflects the main trends in economic and social rights accountability or whether it is due more to the lawyers' preference for studying courts. It might also be linked to the determination of economic and social rights proponents in the era of post-Cold War constitutional revitalization to respond to the often heard, but highly reductionist, proposition that "if one is to talk meaningfully of rights, one has to discuss what can be enforced through the judicial process". In response, economic and social rights proponents have sought legitimacy by seeking to demonstrate that economic and social rights resemble civil and political rights, at least in this key respect.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 42
- Paragraph text
- In its resolution 1993/40, the Sub-Commission, recalling the report by its Special Rapporteur, stated that it was deeply alarmed that the gap between the rich and the poor had more than doubled over the previous three decades and that it was conscious of the impact of inequitable income distribution on the realization of the rights to health, education, housing, food, environmental quality and other economic, social and cultural rights. Also, it reiterated the fundamental principles of equality of treatment, human dignity, equity and justice. Aware that the relationship between income distribution and growing levels of poverty, as well as the violation of human rights, required further in-depth research and analysis by the human rights community, the Sub-Commission entrusted Asjbørn Eide with the task of producing a report on the relationship between the enjoyment of human rights, in particular economic, social and cultural rights, and income distribution, at both national and international levels. In endorsing the proposal, the Commission on Human Rights, in its resolution 1994/20, called the fair distribution of the benefits of development one of the central purposes of the process of development.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 38
- Paragraph text
- The World Bank has also been active on this front. In its Annual Report 2014 it noted that "rising inequality in many countries is harmful to economic stability and the sustainability of growth, but well-designed policies can reduce inequality without hurting growth". In January 2015, the Bank's Chief Economist suggested that the "deep and pervasive inequality that exists today can only be condemned". He recalled that the annual income of the world's 50 wealthiest people was close to the total income of the poorest 1 billion, a figure that he characterized as "a collective failure". He called for the consideration of "policies and interventions to curb such extreme inequality", which he said must be done "not only out of a sense of justice, but also because, in a world afflicted with such extreme disparities, its poorest residents lose their voice, even when they have the right to vote. Extreme inequality is, ultimately, an assault on democracy."
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Extreme inequality and human rights 2015, para. 28
- Paragraph text
- Economic inequalities, especially when extreme, can also be closely linked to social unrest and conflict. The Secretary-General has noted that when people perceive inequality to be unfair and excessive, protests and social unrest can result, such as those seen around the world in recent years (see A/67/394, para. 26). A study on poverty and inequality found that "high levels of interlocking inequalities may undermine the realization of civil, political and social rights; they may raise the level of crime and plunge societies into conflict". ILO, in its World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2015, stated that "rising inequalities have undermined trust in government, with a few exceptions" and that significant falls in trust "in particular if they accompany stagnant or declining incomes, can contribute to social unrest, as several countries in the Middle East have demonstrated, with knock-on effects on social conditions, growth and employment dynamics". Even in ancient times, Plato argued that "if a state is to avoid … civil disintegration … extreme poverty and wealth must not be allowed to rise in any section of the citizen-body, because both lead to disasters".
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph