“ To pin down the links between extreme poverty and human rights, it is first necessary to examine some of the fundamental principles of human rights in the light of the experiences of very poor people. ”

“ Restoring the right to culture in areas of great poverty is thus an essential dimension of the fight against poverty. This is what is meant by UNESCO’s constant plea for the "cultural dimension of development". [18] Cultural activities enable us to develop new relationships with the very poor, to benefit from their experience and learn about their expectations and thus come to genuinely recognize them as human beings with abilities to be cultivated, their own ideas to share and their own responsibilities. ”

“ Someone living in extreme poverty is not, it seems, a free individual: he is not in a position to exercise his public and individual freedoms. The two international covenants on human rights acknowledge that "the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from ... want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights". ”

“ Action by the social services can be seen as arbitrary invasion of privacy. "When you live in poverty, they sometimes tell you, ’If you stay with your husband - or your wife - we will find another home for your children.’ They have no right to say that. ”

“ The foregoing analysis shows that life in extreme poverty consists of an accumulation of mutually reinforcing misfortunes: poor living conditions, insalubrious housing, unemployment, ill health, lack of education, marginalization, etc., a veritable "horizontal vicious circle" of poverty, to use the words of those concerned. ”

“ Hence there is a need to draw on their experience the better to understand and secure the foundations of human rights, especially as, by virtue of their permanent resistance to hardship, the very poor - those families, for instance, who invite other families from the streets into their own overcrowded dwellings - are de facto defenders of human rights. ”

“ Families constantly faced with material, administrative and other problems and the dignity and health of whose members are often under threat, can disintegrate at any moment: parents, particularly fathers, sometimes have to look for work far from home and children can be removed and placed with another family or in an institution, or are sometimes forced to go away to find work or to live in the street. ”

“ We always have to be thinking about our accommodation, the food we have to find for our children and for ourselves. We keep wondering what we are going to do to ensure that our children can grow up properly. All this is like a cloak of worry which covers us and prevents us from exercising any responsibilities. ”

“ With regard to the criteria for a definition, it should be borne in mind that, not only do the various misfortunes have undesirable effects on each other (the concatenation of misfortunes) but, as they increase and intensify, exclusion becomes worse, insecurity is accentuated, the possibility of actually exercising human rights diminishes and the difficulty of assuming one’s own responsibilities increases. ”

“ Very poor people are thus unable, as emphasized in paragraph 9 of the Copenhagen Declaration of the World Summit for Social Development, "to contribute to the well-being of their families, their communities and humankind". ”

“ Without shelter, drinking water, electricity, adequate food, work, a minimum income or other resources, one simply cannot conceive of living a life in good health, having one’s children go to school, participating in local activities, including annual festivities or even birthday parties, participating in any political process as citizens, or even having one’s family life respected. ”

“ Without it, no proper study can be made of the extent to which each misfortune exacerbates the others until the state of extreme poverty is reached.
182. In other words, the aim of this method is not to measure what people earn, but to find out what really happens to them. Consequently, we cannot do without the people themselves if we are ever to find out how much and what they are suffering - for the very simple reason that it is the people themselves that we are interested in. ”

“ It is against this background that the Copenhagen World Summit for Social Development affirmed the absolute need to find a new balance between economic development, social development and cultural development, stressing how closely linked fundamental human needs are in fields as varied as health, water, education, employment, housing and participation in cultural and social life. ”

“ Child labour is an immediate consequence of the extreme poverty in which the parents live. The great majority of these juvenile workers are exposed to conditions tantamount to slavery, that constitute a denial of human rights, in particular of articles 4 and 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ”

“ When one lives in extreme poverty, without education, it is difficult to get work. Without resources, it is impossible to get decent housing or pay bills. Our family has no electricity, or even water. ”

“ Another, equally malign factor is the clear tendency of the phenomenon to perpetuate itself by being passed on from one generation to the next. This trend, which has been the subject of numerous investigations at various times, is clearly reflected in the monographs made available to the Special Rapporteur which describe the life of a single family over a number of generations. It is surprising to see how poverty perpetuates itself and becomes increasingly difficult to escape from. ”

“ And one person from western Europe completed the picture by saying: "This all has repercussions for social life: we lose our freedom of movement; sometimes we have to hide; we dare not attend local celebrations or even exercise our rights as citizens." ”

“ Since we have had a steady income to count on we have had the courage to try something different. Those of us who used to have absolutely nothing, no security, had to learn how to live with a fixed amount of money. Then they could start learning to read and write."
126. It is interesting from the legal standpoint to note that the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights [7] has expressed the view that "a minimum core obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of each of the rights is incumbent upon every State party. ”

“ It has already been shown how living in extreme poverty exposes the very poor to serious health risks. Statistics also show that mortality rates are very high and life expectancy is considerably reduced among very poor populations. [11] Pregnancy and childbirth are particularly risky and lack of money makes it generally difficult to get medical treatment. Health services are frequently inaccessible, inadequate and ill equipped. In addition, the very poor worry about the potential repercussions of medical treatment on other aspects of their lives. ”

“ Many accounts highlight the fact that people living in extreme poverty rarely have access to this right to a secure existence. The pervasive insecurity makes any development project impossible. On the other hand, access to an adequate and regular income may be a veritable springboard. ”

“ For example, in a number of countries, particularly in Latin America, many persons known as "expendables", such as children and vagrants, are killed by death squads with complete impunity. The Inter American Commission on Human Rights has received a number of complaints of such incidents. [15] The Special Rapporteur believes it is urgent for the Sub Commission, and in particular the Special Rapporteurs on impunity, to study this new form of gross human rights violation. ”

“ Insufficient family income often means that children have to join in the daily quest for family subsistence or work outside the home, and this reduces their availability for learning and sometimes prompts them to leave school or live in the streets. ”

“ The fact of not being registered makes it extremely difficult to obtain the papers necessary to prove parentage, to marry, to exercise political rights, to be able to travel freely within and outside national frontiers, to stand surety before the courts, to obtain employment, to benefit from social services, to avoid being imprisoned, etc. ”

“ Thus, for example, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has qualified the right to housing referred to in article 27 of the Convention as an essential component of the right to a standard of living adequate for the child’s overall development. ”

“ One person stated "In my building there is a lady who is in poor health. She has a lung problem and doesn’t want to get treatment because her husband can’t take care of their four children on his own. She is afraid that the children will be placed in an institution if she goes to hospital." ”

“ It has already been seen that vagrancy and lack of civil registration are major obstacles to the exercise of this right. Illiteracy, lack of education or even social discrimination also represent major obstacles to the responsible exercise of political rights. ”

“ A monograph about an Asian family establishes a direct link between inability to arrange proper schooling and the question of residence: "As the family dwelling is built on squatted land, it cannot be considered a legal residence and, in this country, without a legalized link with the land neither property nor people can legally exist. ”

“ The expression ’inherent right to life’ cannot properly be understood in a restrictive manner, and the protection of this right requires that States adopt positive measures. In this connection, the Committee considers that it would be desirable for States parties to take all possible measures to reduce infant mortality and to increase life expectancy, especially in adopting measures to eliminate malnutrition and epidemics. ”

“ In the future, in this as in other fields, the development of the information society to enable referendums, for example, to be conducted electronically, may create new forms of exclusion among the poorest and least educated population groups. ”

“ Collection of information from the people living in such conditions themselves, who are normally not consulted even about studies or programmes aimed at them. This is indispensable, not simply because it is an intrinsic requirement of any human rights oriented approach, but because it is otherwise impossible to understand the internal dynamics of poverty ”

“ These affronts to dignity follow people living in extreme poverty to the very end of their lives, as witnessed by the following incident reported by a social worker. In a shanty town in Latin America, a woman had illicitly taken in her sick brother when he came out of hospital. ”

“ There is a strong possibility that they would be reproached with some unlawful aspect of everyday life quite unrelated to the grounds for the petition; the poorest have learned that, in seeking their due in a given matter, it is often preferable not to be in the wrong in some other respect ”