Defending Dignity A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Chapter 1: Poverty development and human rights: Making the connections KEY QUESTIONS • Why should NHRIs prioritize economic, social and cultural rights? • What is a human rights-based approach? • How can a human rights-based approach advance gender equality? • How can the human rights framework be useful in analysing development plans and socio-economic policies? INTRODUCTION For many people in the Asia Pacific, the right to live a life of dignity remains out of reach. Despite significant socio-economic gains across the region over the last few decades, too many people have been left behind. The Asia Pacific is home to two-thirds of the world’s poor. Extreme socio-economic inequality – put simply, the gap between rich and poor – is a reality in countries at all levels of development across the region. However, viewing poverty as a denial of ESCR provides us with a deeper understanding of the dimensions of poverty. With this insight, NHRIs are better equipped to propose more comprehensive policy approaches that can address the root causes of poverty and promote the fulfilment of people’s human rights, as both a means and a goal of poverty eradication. Human rights provide a normative framework to analyse development plans and socio-economic policies. They can shine a spotlight on whether these plans and policies are creating or combating deprivation, marginalization and exclusion. As discussed further in Chapter 2, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enshrine rights to food, water, shelter and education. By seeing deprivations of these goods as denials of rights, rather than an inability to meet basic needs, a rights-based approach views poverty as an injustice, not fate. It focuses on the relationship between the State and its citizens (and others within its jurisdiction), in order to hold decision makers accountable for the actions they take that cause, continue or worsen poverty. This chapter seeks to answer the question: why should NHRIs prioritize ESCR? It argues that ESCR are deeply linked to human well-being, as well as being essential to achieving substantive equality for women and girls. It introduces the concept of the “human rights-based approach” and explains how it can be used to investigate whether development plans and socio-economic policies are supporting or hindering the realization of ESCR. 1.1. HOW IS POVERTY A DENIAL OF HUMAN RIGHTS? The lives of people living in poverty are continuously threatened by lack of food, the risk of disease, hazardous work and precarious living conditions. They may experience all types of violence, including discrimination, harassment, humiliation, physical attacks and sometimes even threats of death, often just because they are poor. Every day, thousands of children, women and men die silently from easily preventable illnesses associated with poverty, including starvation, diarrhoea, malaria, tuberculosis, pneumonia, measles and death in childbirth. 6