6 - Not a favour

I go to the nearest Internet Café and I type in a key word. My floppy disk now contains a document that, to my dismay, has never been shown to me before. I download what should arguably be the most widely read document in history: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The fact that I have never read this document stands smack in the face of the General Assembly. For right after this act was signed in 1948, the assembly called upon all member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and "to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories." [1]

Reading our Universally accepted Human Rights is likely to rouse some senses. Knowing that we are not alone, but linked by a set of values that transcend all man-made barriers is very heartening.  Moreover it can alter one’s perspective of a given snapshot of reality, or even one’s perception of his or her own predicament. What might have once been perceived as a fact of life, as “that’s how things have always been” or “it’s too bad” becomes an unacceptable breach of Human Rights. It shifts from awful to illegal. People’s needs become people’s rights. Access to these rights becomes a matter of justice, not a favour. Meeting one’s rights becomes a matter of duty, not choice.

These entitlements automatically imply an obligation from some kind of entity capable of rendering justice where it belongs. This is what Itamar was referring to when he said the government should invest in these favelas as a matter of duty, not a favour. Take a look at article 25 agreed upon by the General Assembly of the United Nations, implying the agreement of every represented country on this planet: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services...” Next is article 26: “Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit”.

Not surprisingly, many argue that poverty is a result of the denial of basic human rights. In fact the Chair of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights sent a letter to the Office of the High Commissioner asking him "to develop substantive guidelines for the integration of human rights in national poverty reduction strategies" This was part of an initiative to “integrate human rights into the whole of the Organization's [the UN’s] work”. This guideline was also intended as a tool to be used by national governments and institutions “that are committed to the eradication of poverty” [2]

It was created by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) with the collaboration of many organisations, institutions and individuals including the European Network on Debt and Development, the Food and Agricultural Organization, the Ford Foundation, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Development Assistance Cooperation, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the World Health Organization to name just a few. “The text draws upon both the experience of the international human rights system over the last 50 years, and more recent scholarship by social scientists”. 
 
The driving force behind this report was the belief that “poverty cannot be banished without the realization of human rights”. In the words of the Human Development Report 2000: “A decent standard of living, adequate nutrition, health care, education and decent work and protection against calamities are not just development goals – they are also human rights”.
As I began reading this historic guideline to solving problems facing billions of poor people all over the world, this is what I read in the introduction: “It is now widely recognized that effective poverty reduction is not possible without empowerment of the poor. The human rights approach to poverty reduction is essentially about such empowerment”.

This point is emphasised many time in this report: “A human rights approach to poverty reduction also requires active and informed participation by the poor in the formulation, implementation and monitoring of poverty reduction strategies...the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs... is a crucial and complex human right that is inextricably linked to fundamental democratic principles…A human rights approach to poverty reduction is thus holistic in nature, encompassing civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights”.

The next big issue to jump out at me is the question of accountability. Here is what a document created with the contribution of the World Bank and the IMF states about accountability: “While a State is primarily responsible for realizing the human rights of the people living within its jurisdiction, other States and non-State actors are also obliged to contribute to, or at the very least not to violate, human rights. This has important implications for the conduct of international affairs. It calls for an adequate flow of financial and technical assistance from the rich to the poor countries and for active efforts to establish equitable systems of multilateral trade, investment and finance that are conducive to poverty reduction”. 
The issues of participation and accountability are reinforced: “Unlike old-style approaches to poverty reduction, the human rights approach …emphasizes the importance of ensuring people’s participation, especially participation by the poor and otherwise marginalized groups, in all aspects of decision-making. The importance of participation is being increasingly recognized.” 

A few paragraphs later: “Perhaps the most important source of added value in the human rights approach is the emphasis it places on the accountability of policy-makers and other actors whose actions have an impact on the rights of people”. 

This idea of participation is echoed by Prince Charles, on a visit to Casa de Cultura, a community project supported by Actionaid Brazil. In response to a question posed by 8-year-old Victor, the Prince explains that in his opinion the way to end world poverty "is to work through different organisations to try to make a difference in particular area, … picking the people in communities who have real personality and leadership and helping to empower them.

The report develops into guidelines intended for use when “formulating, implementing and monitoring a poverty reduction strategy if it is to be consistent with a human rights approach”. This far-reaching and scrupulous report dives straight into the major human rights issues it identifies, and analyses them one by one. They are the right to adequate food, health, education, decent work, adequate housing, personal security, the right to appear in public without shame, the right of equal access to justice, political rights and freedoms and the right to international assistance and cooperation.
For each one of the above rights identified by the OHCHR, the report highlights the importance of the issue, its relevance to poverty reduction strategies and its scope. Then it breaks each one down with a set of comprehensive targets. So for each issue it identifies several targets, and each target has several indicators. The right to education, for example, has eight targets and twenty-two indicators. The right to adequate housing has seven targets and fifteen indicators. (See targets and indicators to adequate housing in box1).
Box 1:

Key targets and indicators 

Target 1: All people to have a home

Indicators:  

·        Proportion of homeless people in the overall population

·        Number of homeless shelter beds per homeless person

Target 2: All people to enjoy security of tenure

Indicators:  Proportion of people in the overall population:

·       With legal title (e.g. freehold, leasehold, collective tenure) to their homes

·       With statutory or other (e.g. common law) legal due process protections with             respect to eviction

·       Living in informal settlements

·       Squatting

·       Forcibly evicted within a given period

Target 3:     All people to enjoy habitable housing

Indicator: 

·      Average number of square metres per poor person or poor household 

Target 4:      All people to enjoy housing situated in a safe and healthy location

Indicator:  

·    Proportion of poor households within 5 kilometres of a hazardous site (e.g. toxic waste, garbage dump)

Target 5: All people able to afford adequate housing

Indicator:  

·   Monthly housing expenditure by median poor household as a proportion of its monthly income 

Target 6: Adequate housing physically accessible to all

Indicator: 

·    Proportion of multi-unit residential buildings occupied by the poor that are accessible to persons with physical disabilities 

Target 7: All people to enjoy housing with access to essential services, materials, facilities and infrastructure

Indicators: Proportion of households with: 

·        Potable water

·        Sanitation facilities

·        All-weather roads

·        Electricity

The World Bank measures poverty using the universal benchmark of one-dollar per day per person, based on 1985 purchasing power parity. It is widely believed, and in light of the above it makes sense, that this figure underestimates poverty, let alone giving no indication of its causes. You see it doesn’t matter if I earn just under a dollar or a dollar fifty per day if my house has no access to water, sanitation and electricity, and if my kids can’t go to school. Either way I am denied my basic human rights.

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[1]UN document celebrating 50 years anniversary of the Universal declaration of Human Rights.

[2] Draft Guidelines: A Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies.