ABSTRACT
A poor man is murdered in a sectarian riot, forced by his poverty to work in an area where he was an outsider and an easy target; a widow battles to survive in a society that barely recognizes her right to exist without a husband—cases like these that exemplify deprivation and insecurity, bad rather than good lives, are the starting point for the capability approach (CA). Pioneered by the development economist Amartya Sen and feminist philosopher Martha Nussbaum, both dissatisfied with conventional approaches to public policy and development, CA is an ambitious project to elaborate a broad liberal consensus on the fundamental requirements of a decent human life as a basis for international comparison and policy formation.
