According to Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, ‘poverty itself is a violation of numerous basic 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. Robinson has pushed the international agenda on poverty and human rights forward by characterising extreme poverty as one of the key human rights problems that the world faces. The recognition of poverty as a human rights issue is also increasingly r ... More

According to Mary Robinson, former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, ‘poverty itself is a violation of numerous basic 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. Robinson has pushed the international agenda on poverty and human rights forward by characterising extreme poverty as one of the key human rights problems that the world faces. The recognition of poverty as a human rights issue is also increasingly reflected in the work of international organisations such as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), and of campaigning organisations such as Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International. This book analyses the importance of the work of Amartya Sen for contemporary debates about poverty and human rights. The book provides an analysis of Sen's contributions and examines the ways in which his work has promoted cross-fertilisation and integration across traditional disciplinary divides. It demonstrates that Sen has made a major contribution 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. The book 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 characterisation of fundamental freedoms and human rights.