A Human Rights Context for Addressing Poverty and Homelessness

Abstract

This article discusses the interdependence of human rights, poverty reduction, access to adequate housing, and health. Social and human rights frameworks can assist in designing and implementing programs and strategies to address poverty and homelessness. The authors examine the history of international rights-based approaches and reviews increasing calls for similar approaches in Canada. Various international declarations, guidelines and treaties have called for Canada to use rights-based strategies to address poverty and homelessness. UN human rights oversight bodies have ex-pressed grave concern about Canada’s failure to address systemic poverty and homelessness across the country.While international human rights treaties are ratified by the federal government, provinces also assume responsibility for ensuring compliance. In the case of socio-economic rights, provinces often have the greater share of jurisdictional responsibility. Most provincial strategies lack enforceable targets for eliminating homelessness and fail to provide for effective monitoring, complaints procedures, hearings and remedies as required by international human rights standards. Government commitments to international human rights must include measures to ensure that those who have been denied rights to housing and an adequate standard of living can claim and enforce these rights. Understanding and challenging homelessness and poverty as human rights violations, and empowering those who are affected to claim their rights would ensure that such strategies address the structural disadvantage, social exclusion and denials of equal citizenship and dignity behind these problems. A human rights framework provides an invaluable approach to understanding and addressing problems of poverty and homelessness in Canada.