“Poverty as a violation of human rights”: a liberating force. What is at stake? What are the prospects?

Taking human rights seriously implies, at a basic level, guaranteeing every human being the means to live a life worthy of a human being. In the face of today’s phenomena of mass pauperization, it seems essential to recognize the urgent need to combat poverty, all the more so when we realize that "mass poverty" is not just a feature of many countries: it is a feature of our whole world, the world to which our discussions of human rights as "universal" are supposed to apply. The gap, in absolute as well as relative terms, between the "haves" and the "have nots" keeps on growing wider; as we watch, more and more people are being shut out from our "global village