Why recast the problem of poverty in terms of human rights, as you do in your new book The Unheard Truth?
What I'm trying to say in the book is that understanding the problem in terms of enrichment only takes you so far. You have to look at power, too - poverty is an issue of power. The poor are subject to discrimination, insecurity, exclusion and so on. And these are human rights abuses. In an age of economic growth, it is important to be clear that simply moving people from one dollar a day to two dollars a day doesn't solve the underlying issues.

Is that a rebuke to the cheerleaders for globalisation who say that growth is all that matters?
I'm not saying that economic growth doesn't bring benefits. What I'm saying is that growth alone is not enough. There has to be something else. In the last chapter of the book, I also acknowledge that there are many different strategies being put forward, but whichever strategy you push - whether it's the Millennium Development Goals or whatever - you need to put a human rights perspective at the heart of it. Human rights should be the common element binding the different strands of poverty and development policy together.

So you're arguing for a richer conception of what counts as a fulfilled life?
Exactly. And that is coming out of one of the World Bank's own reports and testimony, which shows how the poor themselves are defining poverty. For them, deprivation, a lack of income, is just one issue among many. And paying attention to what the poor themselves actually think is crucial. Part of the ethos of Amnesty International is to involve people in bringing about change. For me, it seemed very important that this element - popular participation - be emphasised. Remember, we are a membership-based, people-based organisation. And we are convinced that lasting change only occurs when people organise themselves to bring it about.

What effect has the global recession had on poverty and development policy?
The accepted wisdom has been that growth has lifted millions out of poverty. With the recession, there's been a lot of noise made by international organisations that we'll need more economic growth to bring the people who've fallen back into poverty up again. But what I'm saying is that you can't hold poor people to the cycle of boom and bust. That's why you need to empower people, have them participate in processes, projects and programmes. And you need a change in the system of economic governance.

Do you think the economic crisis offers an opportunity to transform the terms of the debate about poverty?
I do think there was such an opportunity, but it was squandered. We haven't drawn the right lessons from the crash or tried to figure out a system that might be fairer. By the time the World Economic Forum at Davos came round in January, it was all just rhetoric, not reality.

Your time as secretary general of Amnesty has been defined by the question of poverty. Are you critical of the way the organisation approached the problem before?
Partly because of the cold war, when some of the early human rights documents were drafted, there was a sense that economic and social rights would somehow lead to socialism, and so the human rights movement became associated in some ways with a free-market approach. What
I'm arguing is that you need rights of both sorts - economic and social rights on the one hand, and political and legal rights on the other. Both are essential to a just society.

It's been a long journey for Amnesty, because when we started in the 1960s, there was a heavy emphasis on civil liberties. But we came to a gradual recognition that unless we addressed all rights, we wouldn't be able to change people's lives dramatically. The issue that really brought this to the fore for Amnesty was violence against women. We recognised that you couldn't really help women through civil and political rights alone, because the problem of violence was also related to their economic status. Economists need to recognise that growth alone is not the answer. Human rights activists need to recognise that rights play a critical role in the eradication of poverty.

Interview by Jonathan Derbyshire
Irene Khan's "The Unheard Truth:Poverty and Human Rights" is published by W W Norton & Co (£13.99)

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website