E/CN.4/2006/43 page 6 10. Based on his findings, the independent expert recommends that the Commission on Human Rights adopt the following resolution/declaration: Extreme poverty must be regarded as a denial of basic human rights, and all States, either directly or in cooperation with each other, must urgently take steps to eradicate extreme poverty from the face of the earth, as a “core” obligation to be carried out with immediate effect. For this purpose, each State must identify a small percentage (less than 10 per cent) of its population as the most vulnerable group suffering from extreme poverty, which is a composite of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion. Any person belonging to that group is either suffering from all of these forms of deprivation, or most severely from any one of them. This can be resolved by the fulfilment of the minimum level of some of the rights recognized in the international covenants. The cost of fulfilling these rights, in terms of resources and changes in legal and institutional systems, as necessary, must be borne by all States, superseding all other demands on them, and taking all steps needed through international cooperation to help any State making its best efforts to eradicate the conditions of extreme poverty. I. THE ADDED VALUE OF THE DIFFERENT CONCEPTS OF DEVELOPMENT 11. The notion of extreme poverty has gained wide currency in recent years in the literature on development and international policies. In most discourses on development it appears that eradication of extreme poverty is accepted universally as the objective of all national and international policies, by all State authorities and international agencies. In today’s world of prosperity, growth and technological progress, the existence of extreme poverty is considered an affront to universal moral values, especially because a modest redistribution of the world’s wealth and income could eradicate such poverty. If the world were slightly more rational, and the ruling Governments of different nations were a little more cooperative with each other and willing to coordinate their actions, they could effectively abolish conditions of extreme poverty from the face of the earth.1 12. In spite of all this, poverty, and in particular extreme poverty, continues to plague the world. What can be done to change the situation? How can the world’s decision makers and policy authorities be persuaded to act in practice to realize the elemental moral objective of removing poverty, which they seemed to have accepted, at least in their public pronouncements and declarations? It is in trying to answer these questions that the notion of extreme poverty is being presented in the perspective of human rights. 13. There are many different ways of defining extreme poverty but the definition used by this independent expert in his first report was built on the earlier definition of extreme poverty as a lack of “basic security”. That definition combined the notions of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion. It can be shown that this definition is most suitable to be treated as the denial or violation of human rights which would call for carrying out the obligation of policy action of all agents in a national society and the international community to effectively eradicate all forms of extreme poverty. Defined in this manner, extreme poverty is a distinct value addition to the notion of poverty as discussed in the literature. Extreme poverty is not just a question of the severity and intensity of poverty; it is a notion that adds to policy implications that are not fully captured by the usual notion of poverty.