Some 2.5 billion human beings live in severe poverty, deprived of such essentials as adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, adequate shelter, literacy, and basic health care. One third of all human deaths are from poverty-related causes: 18 million annually, including over 10 million children under five. However huge in human terms, the world poverty problem is tiny economically. Just 1 percent of the national incomes of the high-income countries would suffice to end severe poverty worldwide. Yet, these countries, unwilling to bear an opportunity cost of this magnitude, continue to impose a grievously unjust global institutional order that foreseeably and avoidably perpetuates the catastrophe. Most citizens of affluent countries believe that we are doing nothing wrong. Thomas Pogge seeks to explain how this belief is sustained. He analyses how our moral and economic theorizing and our global economic order have adapted to make us appear disconnected from massive poverty abroad. Dispelling the illusion, he also offers a modest, widely sharable standard of global economic justice and makes detailed, realistic proposals toward fulfilling it. Thoroughly updated, the second edition of this classic book incorporates responses to critics and a new chapter introducing Pogge's current work on pharmaceutical patent reform.

This interdisciplinary volume examines the potential of human rights to challenge economic inequalities and their adverse impacts on human wellbeing.

Over the last twenty years, India has enacted legislation to turn development goals such as food security, primary education, and employment into legal rights for its citizens. But enacting laws is different from implementing them. A Human Rights Based Approach to Development in India examines a diverse range of human development issues over a period of rapid economic growth in India. Demonstrating why institutional and economic development are synonymous, this volume details the many obstacles hindering development. The contributors ultimately ask whether India's approach to development is working and whether its right to develop is at odds with its international commitments.

'Poverty itself is a violation of numerous basic human rights.' (Mary Robinson, former UN High Commissioner on Human Rights)The idea that freedom from poverty is a basic human right that gives rise to moral and legal obligations of governments and other actors has received increased international attention in recent years. Mary Robinson, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has pushed the international agenda on poverty and human rights forward by characterizing extreme poverty as one of the key human rights problems that the world faces. The recognition of poverty as a human rights issue is alsoincreasingly reflected in the work of international organizations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and of campaigning organizations such as Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International.In Poverty and Human Rights Vizard analyses the importance of the work of the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen for contemporary debates about poverty and human rights. Bringing together perspectives from ethics, economics, and international law, Vizard provides a detailed and concise analysis of Sen's contributions and examines the ways in which his work has promoted cross-fertilization and integration across traditional disciplinary divides. She demonstrates that Sen has made a majorcontribution to the development of an 'interdisciplinary bridge' between human rights and theoretical and empirical economics, and to the establishment of poverty as a human rights issue.Vizard demonstrates that Sen's work has deepened and expanded human rights discourse in important and influential ways. In ethics, Sen is shown to have challenged the exclusion of poverty, hunger, and starvation from the characterization of fundamental freedoms and human rights, and to have contributed to the development of a framework in which authoritatively recognized international standards in this field can be meaningfully conceptualized and coherently understood. In economics, Sen isshown to have set out a far-reaching critique of standard frameworks that fail to take account of fundamental freedoms and human rights, and to have moved the economics and human rights agenda forward by pioneering the development of new paradigms and approaches which focus on theseconcerns.

Over the past two decades, the percentage of the world’s population living on less than a dollar a day has been cut in half. How much of that improvement is because of—or in spite of—globalization? While anti-globalization activists mount loud critiques and the media report breathlessly on globalization’s perils and promises, economists have largely remained silent, in part because of an entrenched institutional divide between those who study poverty and those who study trade and finance. Globalization and Poverty bridges that gap, bringing together experts on both international trade and poverty to provide a detailed view of the effects of globalization on the poor in developing nations, answering such questions as: Do lower import tariffs improve the lives of the poor? Has increased financial integration led to more or less poverty? How have the poor fared during various currency crises? Does food aid hurt or help the poor? Poverty, the contributors show here, has been used as a popular and convenient catchphrase by parties on both sides of the globalization debate to further their respective arguments. Globalization and Poverty provides the more nuanced understanding necessary to move that debate beyond the slogans.

We are at a point in history where economic inequalities are more widespread each day. The situation of extreme poverty experienced by the majority of the populations in developing countries ("Third World" countries) often coincides with an absence of democracy and the violation of the most fundamental rights. But in so-called "First World" countries a non-negligible proportion of inhabitants also live in impoverished conditions (albeit mainly "relative" poverty) and are denied their rights. The European situation, which this publication aims to analyse, is painful: the entire continent is afflicted by increasing poverty and consequently by the erosion of living conditions and social conflicts.The economic and financial crisis has resulted in the loss of millions of jobs, and created job insecurity for many still working. Economic insecurity raises social tensions, aggravating xenophobia, for instance. Yet the economic and financial crisis could present a good opportunity to rethink the economic and social system as a whole. Indeed, poverty in modern societies has never been purely a question of lack of wealth. It is therefore urgent today to devise a new discourse on poverty. In pursuit of this goal, the Council of Europe is following up this publication in the framework of the project "Human rights of people experiencing poverty", co-financed by the European Commission.