ABSTRACT
This chapter shows whether and under what conditions severe poverty violates human rights in the moral sense. Human agents may participate in imposing social institutions only if they are also willing to help ensure that the human rights of those subjected to these institutions are fulfilled insofar as this is reasonably possible. One might deem the clearcut human rights violation, provided the people upstream can foresee the likely effects of their conduct and have a reasonable alternative. Human rights are indeed widely understood as giving persons a moral claim to protective action by their government. The moral charge is that governments, by imposing a global institutional order under which great excesses of severe poverty and poverty deaths persist, are violating the human rights of many poor people.
