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Access to information in international organizations 2017, para. 2
- Paragraph text
- In his 2016 report detailing the refusal of the United Nations to acknowledge responsibility for the tragic outbreak of cholera in Haiti, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights noted the following: “It has been suggested to the Special Rapporteur by several sources that the legal advice originally submitted to the Secretary-General took a rather different approach to these crucial issues [the responsibility of the United Nations for the cholera outbreak] from that which was finally adopted, but this cannot be confirmed since none of the analyses of the Office of Legal Affairs have been made public. If true, however, it might explain why the arguments adduced in order to abdicate responsibility are both peremptory and inadequately justified (A/71/367, para. 33).”
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
Paragraph
Access to justice for people living in poverty 2012, para. 51
- Paragraph text
- In addition to the costs of legal assistance (see paras. 60-67 below), there are numerous other costs associated with accessing justice which constitute a major barrier for the poor, who simply cannot afford those expenditures. Fees are encountered at every stage of the legal process, along with several indirect costs, such as for obtaining a legal document, witness costs, commissioning independent expertise, photocopies and phone calls. The cumulative impact of those costs is a crucial factor preventing the poor from accessing and benefiting from the justice system.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2012
Paragraph
Access to justice for people living in poverty 2012, para. 65
- Paragraph text
- The quality of legal services available to persons living in poverty is significantly undermined by the inadequate allocation by States of human and financial resources to legal aid services. In many instances, the fees legal aid lawyers are paid are far from commensurate with the amount of time and effort required to effectively litigate a criminal or civil case. Legal aid lawyers are often in short supply and overstretched. Legal aid providers therefore have to turn down a large proportion of deserving applications. In many countries, the number of applications for civil legal aid has risen, while resources allocated to legal aid have decreased. The lack of funding also dramatically impedes the quality of free legal services, as legal aid lawyers may be very inexperienced.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2012
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 29
- Paragraph text
- The poverty-reducing potential of more equitable land distribution is further illustrated by statistical analyses showing that "a decrease of one third in the land distribution inequality index results in a reduction in the poverty level of one half in about 12-14 years. The same level of poverty reduction may be obtained in 60 years by agricultural growth sustained at an annual average of 3 per cent and without changing land distribution inequality". Land reforms in Asia following the Second World War resulted in a 30 per cent increase in the incomes of the bottom 80 per cent of households, while leading to an 80 per cent decline in the incomes of the top 4 per cent.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
Paragraph
Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 37
- Paragraph text
- Agroecological practices require the supply of public goods such as extension services, storage facilities, rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, information and communication technologies) and therefore access to regional and local markets, access to credit and insurance against weather-related risks, agricultural research and development, education, and support to farmer's organizations and cooperatives. While this requires funding, the investment can be significantly more sustainable than the provision of private goods, such as fertilizers or pesticides that farmers can only afford so long as they are subsidized. While many efforts have been made since 2008 to reinvest in agriculture, too little attention has been paid to the differences between the various types of investment required and to understanding their impacts on the reduction of rural poverty. This has led World Bank economists to note that "underinvestment in agriculture is […] compounded by extensive misinvestment" with a bias towards the provision of private goods, sometimes motivated by political considerations. Research based on the study of 15 Latin American countries over the period 1985-2001 in which government subsidies for private goods was distinguished from expenditures in public goods indicated that, within a fixed national agriculture budget, a reallocation of 10 per cent of spending to supplying public goods increases agricultural per capita income by 5 per cent, while a 10 per cent increase in public spending on agriculture, keeping the spending composition constant, increases per capita agricultural income by only 2 per cent. In other words, "even without changing overall expenditures, governments can improve the economic performance of their agricultural sectors by devoting a greater share of those expenditures to social services and public goods instead of non-social subsidies." Thus, while the provision or subsidization of private goods may be necessary up to a point, the opportunity costs should be carefully considered.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
Paragraph
Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 38
- Paragraph text
- Agroecology is knowledge-intensive. It requires the development of both ecological literacy and decision-making skills in farmer communities. Investments in agricultural extension and agricultural research are key in this regard. While agricultural spending is among the four top contributors to increasing rural welfare, along with public spending in education, health and roads, agricultural research has the greatest overall impact on poverty and agricultural productivity in developing countries. Agricultural research had "the largest impact on agricultural production and second-largest impact on poverty reduction (after rural education) in China, and the second-largest impact on poverty reduction in rural India (after investment in roads)." Research in agroecological practices, in particular, should be prioritized, because of the considerable and largely untapped potential of such practices. Modern science combines with local knowledge in agroecological research. In Central America for instance, the coffee groves grown under high-canopy trees were improved by the identification of the optimal shade conditions, minimizing the entire pest complex and maximizing the beneficial microflora and fauna while maximizing yield and coffee quality. However, perhaps because such practices cannot be rewarded by patents, the private sector has been largely absent from this line of research.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 14
- Paragraph text
- In order to assess and ensure affordability, States need to look into the overall cost of delivering service that can have implications to the user's payments. These include not only those regularly occurring costs such as operation and maintenance, but also the entire "life-cycle" costs of services, which include construction and rehabilitation (where necessary). This life-cycle cost is particularly relevant for sanitation, considering the management of wastes. Once the costs for service delivery have been estimated, a different discussion is how to recover them. This can include a variety of sources, from tariffs to external public financing and, more important to the aim of this report, how to share the revenues from different users. On this last point, affordability needs to be a key consideration in order to avoid excessively compromising the expenses of people living in poverty.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 15
- Paragraph text
- For water, costs range from construction, operation and maintenance, in the case of networked provision, to costs of construction and maintenance of on-site solutions such as wells or boreholes. Connection charges are often a significant barrier for those living in extreme poverty. Household contributions for water services in rural areas and in informal settlements can differ quite substantially from household contributions for piped water provision. Beyond the option of buying water from public or private suppliers, individuals may need to cover the costs of the construction, operation and maintenance of communal or individual household provision (such as a rainwater cistern), the cost of purchasing containers to store water, and the treatment of water. Even where water is safe at the source, by the time it has been transported and stored for future use, there is a high risk that it will become contaminated, which leads to extra costs for household water treatment.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 45
- Paragraph text
- The approach, or its implementation in particular cases, has encountered some criticism from the perspective of human rights, including concerns about the affordability of adequate sanitation for the most disadvantaged due to the lack of subsidies. Without external support, people living in extreme poverty may only be able to build very basic latrines and do not always have the means to afford maintenance and improvements. Some variants of Community-Led Total Sanitation are open to using external subsidies for the most disadvantaged in communities. Some suggest a sequencing approach to the use of public finance. While the initial investments in hardware are expected to be made by the community, public finance should be used in the long term to create the enabling environment for sustainable sanitation and ensuring public health, for instance for maintenance and pit emptying, or through public health interventions that promote sanitation and good hygiene practices. Some schemes have provided microfinance for the construction of latrines, which is then paid off over a two- or three-year time frame. This can be an effective way of spreading the cost, but affordability concerns will remain for the poorest households.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 56
- Paragraph text
- In different contexts, different mechanisms have been used with the aim of targeting financial support at those individuals and groups who rely on it to ensure the affordability of services. Subsidies could apply to low-income households, to areas populated predominantly by low-income communities, or to small-scale services likely to be used by those living in poverty or on a low-income.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 58
- Paragraph text
- Targeting schemes that are based on levels of household income or expenditure may be costly, requiring administratively labour-intensive surveys to assess who is eligible, except when this is available information for other administrative needs such as taxes. Targeting is especially difficult where there is a large informal economy. More generally, such targeting is often imprecise. Even sophisticated social security systems can exclude significant numbers of the poorest residents, particularly those living in rural areas, where it may be difficult to keep people informed of their entitlements.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 60
- Paragraph text
- While being easier and cheaper to administer, they have the drawback of not always being able to differentiate between people living in poverty, who may be able to pay a small amount, and people living in extreme poverty, who cannot afford to pay more than a nominal sum or anything at all. In many instances, it may be useful to utilize a mixture of mechanisms. For example, a comparison of schemes of subsidies in Chile (based on household means) and in Colombia (based on categories of socio-economic status and socio-geographic context) suggests that means-tested subsidies are more effective at identifying poor households than geographically targeted schemes. For example, it may be beneficial to provide subsidies automatically in low-income areas, but to permit people outside such areas to apply for subsidies on the basis of their low income. Moreover, where an income supplement is provided, households that are not connected to a network, including those living in rural areas, could also be eligible.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Affordability of water and sanitation services 2015, para. 73
- Paragraph text
- At a broader level, communities have used participatory wealth rankings as a way of assessing poverty to determine how to target measures within their communities. Determining relative poverty in a community allows for targeting on that basis. Such participatory processes can provide detailed insights on local poverty and often include access to water as an indicator in the analysis.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 8
- Paragraph text
- In recent years market-based housing finance has rapidly spread throughout the world, mainly targeting the more affluent segments of society that have had the initial capital to take a mortgage, profiting lenders through the payment of interest. Traditionally, mortgage finance has been considered unattainable for the poor owing to issues such as lack of land titles, low and erratic income and employment in the informal sector.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 11
- Paragraph text
- The discrepancy between income levels and soaring housing and rental prices coupled with increasing unemployment have led to more payment default, foreclosures and homelessness. These processes are exacerbated by the adoption of legal and institutional adjustments aimed at facilitating foreclosures, which have been promoted in recent years as "imperatives for developing a housing finance system". The crisis has disproportionately affected the poorest and most vulnerable, who were the last to join the mortgage markets and the first to suffer the consequences of the crises owing to their low resilience to economic shocks and low repayment abilities.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 18
- Paragraph text
- Most housing microfinance initiatives originate in developing countries and emerging markets - Latin America, Asia and, to a lesser extent, in Africa. Although microfinance agency interest rates are typically lower than those of informal moneylenders, they are much higher (between 20 and 50 per cent) than those charged by formal financial institutions and have much shorter maturities. The poorer the client, the more likely the housing microfinance agency will attempt to manage default risk by reducing the size as well as the time over which the client must repay the loan and by increasing the interest rate. The use of floating rates of interest also leads to increases over the repayment period, sometimes up to double the original rate. It is therefore questionable whether housing microfinance fosters housing affordability for the urban poor or whether, in some cases, it leads to increased indebtedness.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 25
- Paragraph text
- Despite the decline in support for rental housing, the absolute number of tenants worldwide is rising. Across the world, approximately 1.2 billion people (around one third of the urban population and one sixth of all people in the world) live in rented accommodation, the great majority in towns and cities. In many European countries the private rental sector, including informal, is playing a growing role for the poor, owing to inadequate access to social housing and greater constraints in accessing ownership. In developing countries, the largest proportion of tenants is in urban Africa; in Asia, tenants comprise approximately one third of the urban population.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 28
- Paragraph text
- Significant increases in the supply of private rented housing are therefore necessary to help empower lower income tenants in the rental market and relieve affordability problems. In addition, demand-side policies are required to increase the affordability of the rental sector for the poor. Although most Governments have focused their efforts on increasing individual homeownership, there are some good examples of supply- and demand-based policies aimed at encouraging the small-scale private rental sector and increasing rent affordability for low-income households. Such interventions include taxation, direct or indirect subsidies, and regulation. State policies towards the informal rental sector also affect the accessibility of the poorest to rental arrangements.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Analysis of two alternative housing policies: rental and collective housing 2013, para. 32
- Paragraph text
- Some countries have been implementing rent assistance programmes in order to address affordability problems (see A/HRC/13/20/Add.4, paras. 10 and 25). However, evidence indicates that such initiatives, in the absence of other policies regulating markets and assisting recipients of housing allowances, are not sufficient to provide adequate and affordable rental housing for low-income households. In countries in which rental supply is limited, subsidies schemes actually lead to an increase in rental prices and shortages of rental stock for low-income earners. Low income households receiving housing benefits often face difficulties in finding and keeping habitable accommodation in adequate locations with access to services, despite the extra purchasing power, owing to the low value of the benefits (given the rise in rental prices) and discrimination against vulnerable groups in the private rental market (see A/HRC/13/20/Add.4, paras. 17-26). In addition, means testing for housing benefits is often complicated, targeting is not always effective and allocation procedures encourage corruption. The tight conditioning of housing benefits on income levels has been criticized for failing to reach all beneficiaries (for example, only 40 per cent of private renters living in poverty in England are in receipt of housing benefit). Furthermore, the substantial cuts in housing benefits currently applied in various countries as part of recent austerity measures are likely to exacerbate the problem (see A/67/286, para. 32).
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
Paragraph
Child slavery in the artisanal mining and quarrying sector 2011, para. 33
- Paragraph text
- With the growth in rural poverty and lack of investment in rural livelihoods, communities are drawn to work in this sector as they know that they can gain immediate benefits from selling gold as opposed to cultivating land.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, including its causes and consequences
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
Paragraph
Development cooperation and the human rights to water and sanitation 2017, para. 64
- Paragraph text
- Decisions related to the coverage of projects can have an impact on the beneficiaries, particularly the population in the most vulnerable situations. Applying a human rights approach to development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector would involve a greater emphasis on providing services for those populations who predominantly live in small, dispersed rural communities or in peri-urban areas. In the latter case, the informal nature of settlements may impede such dwellers from being connected to citywide systems. The principle of equality and non-discrimination sometimes requires the adoption of targeted measures and affirmative action in order to achieve substantive equality (Human Rights Committee, general comment No. 18 (1989) on non-discrimination, para. 10). Thus, funders and partner States should work together and identify individuals and groups to target, particularly those who are in vulnerable situations, and not be limited to identifying those who are financially disadvantaged, often called “the poor”.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
Paragraph
Development cooperation and the human rights to water and sanitation 2017, para. 67
- Paragraph text
- In the projects assessed herein, most funders did not demonstrably ensure that a sustainable financing strategy would be established for long-term service provision. In only one project were community committees created that were tasked with setting tariffs for piped water services that were being extended to their neighbourhoods. Another project entailed immediate affordability concerns as it required households to pay for connection costs to a piped water network; the national regulation established a maximum discount of 60 per cent of that cost for users in situations of poverty. Overall, in the projects reviewed, little evidence exists indicating that funders support governments and service providers in developing specific schemes to ensure reconciliation between economic sustainability and access to services for users with insufficient economic means.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
Paragraph
Development cooperation and the human rights to water and sanitation 2017, para. 79
- Paragraph text
- Outcomes in ex post human rights assessments should inform several characteristics of beneficiaries gaining access to services, allowing impacts to be assessed for populations living in conditions of poverty or vulnerability and identifying reductions in inequality. In particular, those data must go beyond limited assessments of access and availability of services (for example, the number of houses connected to a piped network) and should include ways of identifying discrimination and inequalities, collection time and other barriers to physical access, water quality, safety, acceptability and affordability.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2017
Paragraph
Development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector 2016, para. 14
- Paragraph text
- Integrating human rights law and principles into development cooperation provides a clear legal framework for the human rights to water and sanitation that States have already recognized. In addition, the normative content of the human rights to water and sanitation and human rights principles offer guidance on who and what to prioritize in planning and programming international cooperation, as well as on how policies, programmes and interventions should take place. It is critical to use the language of the human rights to water and sanitation explicitly because, as stated by the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, the human rights language recognizes the dignity and agency of all individuals and is therefore intentionally empowering (see A/70/274, para. 65).
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2016
Paragraph
Development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector 2016, para. 47
- Paragraph text
- It is notable that some important multilateral funders, including the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, view water as a socially vital economic good and aspire to similar goals of creating inclusive economic growth and equity and reducing poverty. As indicated previously, such goals may claim to produce outcomes that contribute to improved access to water and sanitation. However, it may result in part from a lack of concrete human rights consistency that programmes and projects are oriented to hastily pushing money out of the door (see A/70/274, para. 36). A framework with solid grounding in human rights, backed by the commitment of the staff and boards of those institutions, would provide safeguards against such risks, ensuring that loans for water and sanitation projects and programmes do not produce negative outcomes for some individuals or groups, but rather increase the realization of the rights of the most disadvantaged.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2016
Paragraph
Development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector 2016, para. 52
- Paragraph text
- While those international commitments were being negotiated and settled during the 1990s and 2000s, various funders were simultaneously establishing their own policies. Regarding the policies of several multilateral agencies, a popular focus since then has been the so-called "pro-poor" or social safety nets approaches, which aim to target the poorest groups. Those orientations have been the subject of both intense theoretical debates that focus on the various social effects of targeted or universal interventions and empirical research assessing the outcomes of various programmes. An observed trend is that "pro-poor" approaches have not been effective in certain sectors, owing to their inability to meet the needs of the poor; this has been particularly the case in the water and sanitation sector.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2016
Paragraph
Development cooperation in the water and sanitation sector 2016, para. 69
- Paragraph text
- Funders must face those challenges head-on to create proper arrangements to ensure that funding actually reaches its destination, thereby effectively generating benefit for the poor and realizing the human rights to water and sanitation.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2016
Paragraph
Different levels and types of services and the human rights to water and sanitation 2015, para. 59
- Paragraph text
- Even low-cost on-site solutions may still be unaffordable for people living in poverty, particularly owing to the associated maintenance costs such as pit-emptying. For those populations living on very low incomes, household-level latrines may be inadequate or unaffordable unless significant technical and financial support is provided. While there has been considerable debate about sanitation marketing techniques to encourage people to invest in sanitation, the reality is that without subsidies, many of these on-site solutions are not affordable for households facing extreme poverty.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2015
Paragraph
European Social Charter (Revised) 1996, para. 30
- Paragraph text
- The Parties accept as the aim of their policy, to be pursued by all appropriate means both national and international in character, the attainment of conditions in which the following rights and principles may be effectively realised: 30. Everyone has the right to protection against poverty and social exclusion.
- Body
- Council of Europe
- Document type
- Regional treaty
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 1996
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
Paragraph