‘Power, not Pity’: Poverty and Human Rights

‘Power, not pity’ is a demand articulated by the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign in the United States. The article discusses the ways in which some poverty activists are deploying an ethical discourse of human rights as a way of thinking about, talking about and mobilising against poverty and as a way of articulating concrete demands. They are staking a claim to power and to recognition as well as redistribution. It concludes that as an ethical discourse human rights performs an important symbolic and mobilising function but that its effectiveness as a political tool in combating poverty is yet to be proven.