Poverty and Human Rights: Building on the Capability Approach

Abstract

This paper explores the conceptual connections between poverty and human rights through the lens of the capability approach. The concept of capability can be seen as the bridge that links poverty with human rights because it plays a foundational role in the characterisation of both poverty and human rights. Once this common foundation is noted, poverty can be defined as denial of human rights. Furthermore, the capability approach also helps us to address the question of whether just any denial of human right should count as poverty or whether there should be some restriction in this regard admitting only certain cases of denial of human of rights into the domain but not others. The capability perspective suggests that the domain should indeed be restricted in some well‐defined ways. Finally, the paper argues that such restriction of domain need not be inconsistent with the principle of indivisibility of human rights.