INTER-AMERICAN COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS PRELIMINARY REPORT ON POVERTY, EXTREME POVERTY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAS 2016 www.iachr.org PRELIMINARY REPORT ON POVERTY, EXTREME POVERTY, AND HUMAN RIGHTS IN THE AMERICAS INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 I. LEGAL FRAMEWORK AND THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF POVERTY AND EXTREME POVERTY ........... 7 A. The Universal and Inter-American Regulatory Framework relating to Poverty .............................................. 7 1. Universal System ................................................................................................................................................................ 7 a. Human Rights Mechanisms and Steps toward ESCR ................................................................................... 7 b. The 2030 Agenda Sustainable Development Goals ...................................................................................... 9 2. Inter-American System for the Protection of Human Rights ........................................................................1 2 a. Efforts by the Organization of American States (OAS) Aimed at Eradicating Poverty and Extreme Poverty .....................................................................................................................................12 b. The Inter-American System for Protecting Human Rights and the Work of the IACHR ............ 15 c. Working Group to Examine the National Reports Envisioned in the Protocol of San Salvador ..................................................................................................................................................................42 B. Conceptualizing poverty and extreme poverty in the Americas ............................................................................43 1. Conceptualizing international and national poverty ........................................................................................43 2. Definition of poverty and extreme poverty for the purposes of this report .......................................... 54 II. IMPACT OF POVERTY ON THE EXERCISE OF ESC RIGHTS OF PERSONS, GROUPS, AND COMMUNITIES HISTORICALLY SUBJECTED TO DISCRIMINATION ............................................................. 57 A. Brief Overview of General Poverty and Extreme Poverty Figures for the Americas .................................... 57 B. Impacts of Poverty and Extreme Poverty on Persons, Groups, and Communities Historically Subjected to Discrimination ..........................................................................................................................58 1. Women ..................................................................................................................................................................................59 2. Children and adolescents ..............................................................................................................................................62 3. Migrants ................................................................................................................................................................................73 4. Persons Deprived Of Liberty .......................................................................................................................................76 5. Persons with disabilities ...............................................................................................................................................80 6. LGBTI Persons, Groups and Communities ............................................................................................................83 III. ACCESS TO JUSTICE: CHALLENGES AND PRIORITY ISSUES FACING PERSONS LIVING IN POVERTY IN GAINING ACCESS TO THE COURTS AND OBTAINING AN EFFECTIVE RESPONSE TO THEIR CLAIMS .....................................................................................................................................................88 IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...........................................................................................................................96 | Page 3 INTRODUCTION 1. The inter-American system, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in particular, have been progressively taking stock of the poverty and extreme poverty of a significant number of people in the Americas. In 2001, the Commission issued a Report on the Human Rights Situation in Paraguay which suggests that poverty is, overall, a major human rights concern in the Americas,1 and a phenomenon that constitutes "an across-the-board violation of all human rights: civil, political, social, economic, and cultural."2 2. Now, as it prepares this report, the IACHR considers that poverty constitutes a human rights problem manifested in obstacles to the enjoyment and exercise of human rights on a genuinely equal basis by the persons, groups and communities experiencing it. Under certain circumstances, it also involves violations of human rights for which the State may bear international responsibility. At the same time, extreme poverty constitutes a serious human rights issues because of the intensity with which it undermines the enjoyment and exercise of human rights. 3. Bearing in mind that human rights are indivisible and interdependent, the Inter-American Commission (hereinafter the "IACHR" or "Commission") has pointed out that the violation of economic, social, and cultural rights usually also entails a violation of civil and political rights. Through its various mechanisms, the Commission has observed that the high degree of structural discrimination and social exclusion to which certain groups living in poverty are subjected renders citizen participation, access to justice, and the effective enjoyment of human rights illusory as far as they are concerned.3 In that sense, from a human rights perspective, poverty and extreme poverty impair both categories of rights and overcoming them, therefore, is associated with access to, and satisfaction of, human rights across the board. 4. The Commission considers that, while poverty is usually associated with a shortage of financial resources, that does not necessarily mean that economic factors are the only determinants of poverty. Economic growth does not automatically translated into a higher standard of living for excluded and marginalized individuals and groups, unless appropriate measures or public polices, with a human rights perspective, are adopted so as to generate conditions for real equality. Likewise, notwithstanding the close ties between democracy, the rule of law, and human rights, they do not mean that democracy per se and the rule of law translate into full and effective enjoyment of human rights by persons living in poverty. 5. One of the great challenges faced by persons living in poverty is the fact that they go unnoticed (their "invisibility"), a circumstance that makes it more likely that their human rights are violated. The IACHR has highlighted that bias when it has pointed out that "“The torture of a single individual rightly raises public outrage. Yet the deaths of more than 30,000 children every day from mainly preventable causes go unnoticed."4 Consequently, a key first step is to pay due heed to the poverty problem and bring it out into the open. 1 IACHR, Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Paraguay, OEA/Ser./L/VII.110 doc. 52, March 9, 2001,, par. 5 2 IACHR, Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Paraguay, OEA/Ser./L/VII.110 doc. 52, March 9, 2001, par. 17; IACHR, The Work, Education and Resources of Women: The Road to Equality in Guaranteeing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.143. Doc. 59, November 3, 2011, par. 1. Available at: http://www.cidh.oas.org/pdf%20files/mujeresdesc2011.pdf 3 IACHR, Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Paraguay. OEA/Ser./L/VII.110 doc. 52, March 9, 2001, para. 4. 4 IACHR, Third Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Paraguay, 2001, Chapter V, par. 10. See, Human Development Report, op. cit. p. 8. Page 4 | Preliminary Report on Poverty, Extreme Poverty,aAnd Human Rights in the Americas 6. The IACHR has received abundant information indicating that natural and climate-related disasters can exacerbate the vulnerability of people living in poverty and extreme poverty in the Americas. A World Bank study has shown that the possible effects of climate severely and disproportionately affect persons living in poverty, given that they are more exposed to climate-related hazards such as drought, flooding, heat waves, and so on. That disadvantage is even more pronounced when there is a sharp drop in food output.5 7. As to how the problem should be conceptualized, since the 1990s the IACHR has been insisting that a human rights approach is indispensable in all State-sponsored public policies and in actions by multilateral organization to address the issue.6 Intergovernmental organizations, such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and specialized agencies have published numerous reports addressed the issue of poverty from an economic and social perspective, based mainly on indicators of changes in the level of development. 8. For its part, within the United Nations, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has pointed out in one of its more recent