5.4.2 NHRIs and Poverty Reduction Strategies

While poverty has traditionally been considered primarily an economic issue (relating to income levels or financial capacity), rights issues, such as the denial of opportunities and equality, also play a role. This section will discuss how NHRIs support the poverty reduction process, again taking a human rights-based approach.

Poverty reduction is a gradual process: many states develop a poverty reduction strategy (PRS) as a vehicle for achieving this objective. A PRS is a “national cross-sectoral development framework, designed and implemented by national governments, specifically to tackle the causes and impact of poverty in a country.”18

The adoption and implementation of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) is a way for a state to demonstrate its commitment to realizing all human rights for citizens. The WHO reports that by 2005, 44 countries had completed full PRSPs and these strategies are now being re-examined and re-implemented.19 Many authors agree that a successful PRSP requires a strong human rights perspective. The WHO explains the importance of a strong human rights perspective in a national PRSP:20

• Rooting a national policy in an international legal framework strengthens the centrality of the state in design, implementation and oversight of PRSPs.
• A PRSP founded on human rights principles is an effective mechanism through which a state can gradually achieve its longer-term obligations.
• Any PRSP, to be effective, legitimate and sustainable, depends upon the empowerment of the poor, and human rights are effective tools of such empowerment.
• While other approaches focus on raising average indicator levels, a human rights approach can ensure that it is the most vulnerable, including the poorest of the poor, that are targeted.
• The resource constraints facing poor countries are recognized by both PRSPs and human rights law under the principle of progressive realisation. Both frameworks recognise the importance of an enabling environment, including the dependence upon the wider international community and non-state actors.

NHRIs can contribute to giving a PRSP a human rights perspective in several ways:

• seek to be involved in the development of a PRSP.
• offer to contribute their expertise in human rights issues of the country, for example by linking poverty reductions strategies to human rights.
• encourage governments to develop a PRSP that is sufficiently broad so as to address the structures of discrimination that generate and deepen human poverty.
• help to encourage countries to formulate PRSPs in an inclusive manner, by facilitating access to relevant institutions and by adding legitimacy to the demand for meaningful participation of poor people and other vulnerable groups in the decision-making and planning processes.

Once a PRSP has been developed, an NHRI can continue to play a key role in its implementation. A particularly important factor in the success of a PRSP is monitoring, in which NHRIs may be able to play a key role. Since poverty has such a strong human rights dimension, the monitoring of a PRSP must be linked to a country’s human rights framework. NHRIs can help to measure the progress of a PRSP, help identify gaps in a strategy, flag situations where implementation infringes on other human rights and can assist in developing strategies to overcome these problems.

Further, depending on its mandate, an NHRI can also play a key role in both “cautioning against retrogression and non-fulfilment of minimum core obligations in the name of policy trade-offs” and in “strengthening institutions through which policy-makers can be held accountable for their actions.”21 There will likely be concrete actions it can identify and take in support of initiatives identified in the PRSP. At a minimum, the NHRI should, in its strategic planning process, use the PRSP framework as a template for identifying strategic areas of intervention that may be possible and ensure that its action plans include these. For example, since it is known that female earning capacity is linked very directly to improvements in gender equality and to the reduction of poverty, an NHRI could target barriers to the employment of women as a strategic initiative. This would allow the NHRI to take a variety of measures, including educating employers, auditing human resources systems, fast-tracking and prioritising gender-related employment cases, and so on, to address and improve this issue.

18 “Human Rights, Health and Poverty Reduction Strategies” World Health Organization, 2005

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid.

21 Jahan, op cit. 7.