State of Play and the Road Ahead

This introductory chapter draws from, and builds on, the three chapters on human rights and poverty in this edited volume. It explores those contributions with an eye to what they advocate and as a basis for exposing obstacles to bringing human rights to bear on poverty and material inequality. Three key features that characterize the world today are addressed: a multilevel democratic deficit, a harmful commitment to growth, and a categorical absence of accountability for the state of poverty and inequality. This chapter reflects on the state of play and the road ahead and concludes by, querying whether international law in fact values people living in poverty and the limits of the human rights project in seeking to ensure that that it does.