Book Review: Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty by Marthe F. Davies, Mortem Kjaerum, Amanda Lyons (eds.)

Abstract

There is a general agreement in international human rights law that no social phenomenon is as comprehensive in its assault on human rights as poverty. Poverty is seen as an erosion of human rights and is the result of cumulative violations to economic, social, civil and political rights. The Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty offers both a critique and praise to this human rights approach to poverty. The handbook starts with a foreword by former UN Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, who offers a rather critical take on the institutional efforts to address, let alone eradicate, poverty, and suggests that poverty is a ‘political choice’. Many other authors of the book join this critique to the existing institutional setting to fight poverty, while simultaneously building on the current structural design to find innovative solutions or approaches to poverty from a human rights approach. An impressive number of leading experts in the field of human rights contribute to this research handbook by exploring the link between human rights and poverty and provide a critical look to key challenges in the field. The volume both suggests that more research needs to be done on poverty through a human rights lens and at the same time challenges assumptions of contemporary human rights concepts. It criticizes, inter alia, the marginal human rights obligations private actors bear considering their involvement in the global power dynamics and in exacerbating inequalities. Overall, the 35 chapters that compose the research handbook sketch the state of play of poverty and human rights and raise probing questions about the very same status quo. The research handbook is divided in four parts. Accordingly, the first few chapters put into question the very foundations of a human rights approach to poverty by challenging shared definitions, measurements and standards of poverty commonly used in the international community, which are essential for crafting, implementing and assessing policy responses. The second part analyses the poverty and inequality dynamics in relation to cross-cutting issues. This second part is divided into three sub-parts that address issues linked to identity (age, disability, gender or sexual orientation), circumstantial aspects of poverty (migration or geography) and participation issues where the link between poverty and political rights is explored. Part three, in turn, turns into a discussion over the policy approaches to poverty and human rights and includes important contributions regarding housing, healthcare, privatisation, workers’ rights and taxation. The fourth and closing part of the Book Reviews