Poverty: The Cost-Of-Living-Perma-Crisis and the UDHR

This article takes the opportunity of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) to reflect on the relationship between the UDHR and the recently labelled cost-of-living crisis. It argues that it is inaccurate to suggest that the cost-of-living crisis is a new crisis. Rather, the cost-of-living crisis is merely the label given to the intensification in depth and scale of a longstanding and neglected perma-crisis: poverty. It is contested that poverty represents a lack of resilience (vulnerability) to broader crises; that there is a need to recognise and respond to economic, social and cultural rights (ESCRs) to address poverty; and that through doing so human rights can be harnessed to facilitate societal and individual resilience to prevent future intensifications of poverty (cost-of-living crises). At the same time as facilitating resilience, increased recognition of, and responsiveness to, ESCRs would also serve to fulfil the promise of the UDHR.