The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights
Important, potentially transformative ideas are nearly lost in this noble but botched treatise by Khan, secretary general of Amnesty International. Describing poverty as the world's worst human rights crisis, the author refutes the view that economic growth alone can address the problem, arguing that corruption, disenfranchisement and other ills perpetuate poverty even as a country's GDP rises. Shifting her focus to the United Nations, she reveals how the organization's antiquated human rights and antipoverty approaches—still heavily influenced by cold war ideological battles—impede the causes they are intended to assist. Unfortunately, readers must wade through the book's tedious first half to reach these insights; Khan squanders space and her audience's patience reporting truisms like poor people often have inadequate shelter, that they lack food and often go to bed hungry and that war and genocide impoverish their victims. Not only do these unnecessary sections obscure Khan's very valuable messages, but they read more like a textbook than the work of a leading expert in her field. Photos.(Oct.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.