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Abstract

The striking feature of our civilisation, as it globalises around the aspiration to unprecedented prosperity, is the persistence and even increase of poverty, which affects half the world's population. We care, justifiably, about the victims of genocide and of natural disasters. But there is no coherent basis for the ethical double standard whereby we accept the poverty manufactured by our society, even though it kills more surely and methodically than machetes and militias, more widely and systematically than floods or earthquakes. To address the contradiction between the equality proclaimed in the granting of rights and growing inequality in access to life‐giving resources is essential for the preservation of our own humanity. And the only way to do this is to recognise that poverty is, by its very nature, a violation of human rights, which thus cries out not for alleviation or even eradication, but for abolition.

Abstract