E/CN.4/1999/48 page 31 114. The exponential increase in prostitution is a reflection of the spread of poverty. Prostitution is a cancer that must be excised from the activities on which trafficking, Mafia operations and corruption are based. The ultimate goal is a complete ban on prostitution, for its very existence is an affront to women's dignity. VII. CONCLUSIONS 115. Extreme poverty means denying the enjoyment of all human rights to 1.3 billion people in the world, a majority of them women, thus violating their human dignity. Poverty is therefore the most massive cause of human rights violations in the world. Human dignity and the international community cannot accept this situation any longer, because eradicating poverty is an ethical, social, political and economic imperative. 116. Extreme poverty is thus a violation of all human rights, striking as it does at the two main human rights principles: the equal dignity of all human beings and the principle of non-discrimination. The poverty trap in which the poorest of the poor find themselves shows how human rights are indivisible and interdependent: the right to an adequate standard of living, to housing, to education, to work, to good health, to employment, to the protection of the family, to respect for privacy, to legal status and registration as a citizen, to life and physical integrity, to justice and participation in political, social and cultural life. 117. Society must also alter the way it looks at the poorest of the poor: the sense of dignity that inspires the very poor is no different from the human dignity of any other person. The socially excluded do not feel that their dignity is recognized or respected, since the most common response they receive from society is a policy of welfare rather than human rights for all. 118. Deep poverty can exclude people from society, placing them in an illegal situation in their own country. Such people perceive social service or police intervention as actions they cannot appeal, since justice is by and large out of their reach. Society should see the poor as people who are capable of thinking, reflecting and having something to say about poverty, the world and human rights. A better understanding of poverty and better policies to eradicate it can be developed only by understanding the poor themselves and therefore by working in partnership with them. 119. Human rights must be the basis for any policy to combat social exclusion and poverty, for they are a powerful tool for creating social cohesion and genuine democracy. Social exclusion should therefore be looked at from the standpoint of the indivisibility of human rights; social policy should be tolerant of cultural diversity; a voice should be given to those who have no voice; and violations of the human rights of the most deprived should be outlawed in the same way as torture. 120. Bodies responsible for curbing poverty should therefore collaborate more closely with NGOs working with very poor groups in the field. The contribution of those living in extreme poverty could be of decisive importance in current thinking on “sustainable human development” and the right to development, especially since the concept of development is no longer viewed only from an economic standpoint, but also in social and cultural terms.