Human Rights and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, Analysis, and Reduction
Taking a rights-based approach to poverty measurement requires recognising poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon not reducible to income poverty but a combination of health, education, employment, and housing-related deprivations, worsened by political disempowerment. Although different international and regional frameworks and mechanisms recognise poverty this way, many poverty reduction and measurement approaches continue to view poverty in narrow, monetary terms.
The Co-organisers of the Informal ASEM Human Rights Seminar series, in partnership with Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), delivered a capacity-building training programme on human rights-based poverty measurement on 21-23 October 2024 in Oxford, UK. Entitled “Human Rights and Multidimensional Poverty Measurement, Analysis, and Reduction” , the 3-day on-site training was held as part of the 22nd Informal ASEM Seminar on Human Rights (ASEMHRS22) which explored the relationship between human rights and poverty reduction.
The training, which engaged 19 participants from 12 ASEM nationalities, was directed at ASEM government agencies, civil society organisations and national human rights bodies responsible for initiating, formulating or implementing human rights-based poverty reduction strategies. The programme aimed to increase participants’ knowledge of the interlinks between human rights and poverty and how human rights norms and obligations can provide an effective framework for poverty reduction planning, policy, and practice efforts at the national, regional, and international levels. More specifically, the participants learned to:
- Describe the human rights-based approach to conceptualising, measuring, and reducing (multidimensional) poverty from a theoretical and practical point of view.
- Interpret and implement human rights-based multidimensional poverty measures.
- Explain why and how multidimensional poverty measures add value to previous poverty measurement approaches and can be used to inform policymaking and advance human rights.
- Describe how to compute and analyse a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
- Identify evidence-based best practices on human rights-based poverty measurement and reduction with their peers from Asia and Europe, and also through interactions with the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN).
The participants had the opportunity to learn from expert presenters about the process of building the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) in different country contexts, including the former vice-president of Costa Rica and lifetime human-rights advocate, Ana Helena Chacón Echeverría; Commissioner of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Sanyukta Samaddar; and Director of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN-OPHI) from Mexico, Dr Gonzalo Hernandez Licona. Besides lectures and presentations by the OPHI Team and external speakers, the format of this three-day highly participatory training workshop included interactive plenary discussion sessions, case studies, and working groups for hands-on learning.
ASEMHRS22 – Training Programme
View more photos here.
For more information about the Informal ASEM Seminar on Human Rights, please go here.