The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights

by Irene Khan

A powerful argument by the secretary general of Amnesty International that poverty is not just an economic problem but a global human-rights violation. In our rapidly globalizing age with economic growth occurring in almost every corner of the world, it is easy to forget that more than one billion people still live on less than one dollar a day. Poverty is the worst human-rights crisis in the world today, denying billions of people their most basic rights. In a bracing argument enriched by compelling photographs from across the world, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan makes the case that poverty remains a global epidemic because we continue to define it as an economic problem whose only solution is foreign aid and investment. Khan calls for a reevaluation of this longstanding assumption and turns us toward confronting poverty as a human-rights violation. Empowering the poor with basic rights of security is our only chance for eradicating poverty and giving freedom and dignity to those who have never experienced it.35 photos

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published June 5, 2009

About the author

In our rapidly globalizing age with economic growth occurring in almost every corner of the world, it is easy to forget that more than one billion people still live on less than one dollar a day. Poverty is the worst human-rights crisis in the world today, denying billions of people their most basic rights. In a bracing argument enriched by compelling photographs from across the world, Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan makes the case that poverty remains a global epidemic because we continue to define it as an economic problem whose only solution is foreign aid and investment. Khan calls for a reevaluation of this longstanding assumption and turns us toward confronting poverty as a human-rights violation. Empowering the poor with basic rights of security is our only chance for eradicating poverty and giving freedom and dignity to those who have never experienced it.

The Unheard Truth is a powerful argument by the secretary general of Amnesty International that poverty is not just an economic problem but a global human-rights violation.

Irene Khan, as the first woman and first Asian secretary general of Amnesty International, has brought a strong focus to socioeconomic rights and violence against women around the world. Previously, she spent 20 years at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and was appointed in 1995 as the Chief Mission to India, becoming the youngest United Nations representative. She lives with her husband and daughter in London."

Reviews

[Tarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Khan's book details the ways in which human rights abuses are at the center of poverty, and the way in which understanding (and ensuring) human rights is the only way we can make meaningful, lasting change in the fight against poverty. This is more fact-detail written, and so the prose can drag. But an important read and makes the case for the human rights framework in discussion regarding poverty.