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	Empowering the Poor through Human Rights Litigation by Pilar Alvarez Laso Assistant Director-General for Social and Human Sciences, UNESCO   Fundamental transformations in societies should be based on human dignity, freedom and equality. Democracies therefore have to enable the participation of all actors of the globalized world – meaning that men and women should be treated as equals. Poverty excludes human beings from participation in society and creates the conditions for material and legal marginalization.   This is often intensified by a lack of concrete and pertinent policies addressing the needs of the poor, and the persistence of policies, processes and ideologies that enable poverty.   UNESCO’s project is a response to this challenge. It advances the idea that linking poverty and human rights creates an opening where the former concept can be understood and addressed in terms of deprivation of capabilities or lack of empowerment, as a denial and even a violation of human rights, rather than in terms of income or charity.   People living in poverty may lack formal rights or, where formal rights exist, be denied substantive, equitable access to the rights formally accorded to them. These people are placed in a situation of injustice, of vulnerability and are deprived of dignity – a core element of all human rights. When people are unable to enjoy rights such as adequate food, water, clothing, the highest attainable standard of health and adequate housing, they are unable to live decent lives.   Poverty also places pressure on institutions and civil society to undertake legal courses of action to define effective public policies to fight against this threat.   The creation of standards within legal frameworks on the reality of poverty is crucial to this endeavour.   Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are among the main brokers between policy-makers and the poor, and have proposed innovative approaches to eradicate poverty.   They occupy a unique position between the poor and marginalized sectors of society and institutions, where they focus on development, the causes of poverty and its consequences, social protection, empowerment, and so on.   NGOs not only participate in the monitoring and followup of court decisions, but also bring cases with significant potential for the poor to national and international attention. UNESCO has therefore decided to develop a manual to assist NGOs in this endeavour.   Poverty as a violation of human rights   Approaching poverty as a violation of human rights, converts poverty into an unavoidable imperative. Indeed, human rights provide a framework for poverty eradication in different ways. Poverty is at the same time the cause and the consequence of human rights violations: a cause because the poor remain invisible and, thus, far from attempts to help them claim their rights, and because the manifestations of poverty are hunger, homelessness and illiteracy, among many others; a consequence, because poverty can derive from an action or omission, that is, a violation of a human right, such as the lack of access to basic healthcare resources and forced eviction for example.   In other words, poverty reflects a violation of human rights where the poor are deprived of the enjoyment of those human rights, or simply have no rights at all. It is therefore consequently a violation of their human dignity.   The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has stated: ‘the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights.   It is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies, at both the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfilment of all human rights for all.   Applying the human rights perspective to poverty also establishes a relationship between strategies to fight against and reduce poverty and the overall framework of human rights and consequent legal obligations and responsibilities.   The human rights framework offers poverty strategies a concrete parameter for providing legal remedies and measuring state compliance with international human rights obligations. In addition, a ‘human rights-oriented’ policy will indicate that States have to take into account the comprehensive human rights framework whenever formulating a policy for combating poverty. The State would thus ensure that obligations and responsibilities derived from the human rights framework are inserted into the design, implementation and evaluation/monitoring of public policies to fight poverty.   * Below is a link to the manual as a PDF document, note it is over 100 pages. Visit the related web page
	Nigerians too poor to sue over corporate abuse, say jurists by ICJ, Agence France-Presse Nigeria   February 2012   Victims of environmental disasters or other abuses inflicted by corporations in Nigeria are being denied justice as they are too poor or do not know how to seek legal recourse, jurists say.   "Poor rural victims of corporate human rights abuse are usually unaware of their legal rights and don''t have the financial resources to file court process, gather information and evidence, and afford legal services," said Carlos Lopez, the International Commission of Jurists'' senior legal advisor in a report.   Even though a legal aid scheme exists, it "suffers from chronic underfunding."   "As a result, it fails to help those most in need to access judicial remedies," added Lopez.   The problem is illustrated by the small numbers of litigations against corporations, despite several instances of serious pollution generated over the decades of oil or mineral extraction.   Of the few that make it to court, even fewer manage to obtain rulings in favour of victims, noted the report.   In October, a Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court on behalf of his people against oil giant Shell, seeking $1 billion in compensation for extensive pollution that sickened the population and damaged their lands.   The plaintiffs said they decided to file the suit in a US court because of Shell''s history of a "culture of impunity" and "disregard" for the Nigerian judicial process.   They note that the Shell has refused to comply with a 2005 order to end gas flaring in the Iwherekan community or to pay a 2006 judgment to pay $1.5 billion to the Ijaw Aborigines for damages caused by decades of pollution.   The UN environment agency had said that decades of extensive oil pollution in the Ogoniland region -- which lies in the Niger Delta -- may require the world''s biggest ever clean-up.   Oil giant Shell had accepted responsibility for the spills, but disputes the magnitude of the pollution estimated by activists to have reached hundreds of thousands of barrels.
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