E/CN.4/2006/43 page 12 34. The obligation of State parties for implementing poverty removal programmes in the human rights perspective changes the character of State involvement in the economic and social arrangements and the State may intervene whenever necessary. In a human rights regime, States would be subject to monitoring and continuous review by civil society and human rights institutions. This would imply that all parties concerned must embed State intervention in a mechanism that ensures participation and the State would be held accountable for all its actions. This role of the State is different from its traditional dirigiste role. The State plays its role as a party to human rights-based social arrangements, on equal terms with civil society and grass roots-level organizations. 35. The obligation of the international community to cooperate to enable the realization of human rights would strengthen the case for treating poverty removal as a human right objective, as it would clearly increase the likelihood of implementing poverty removal policies. If such policies are technically feasible, which almost invariably they can be, the only reason why they may not be implemented would be that the dominant interest groups in the country are unwilling to accept even the modest sacrifice of their interests that would be implied by the redistribution of resources to follow the priority accorded to poverty removal policies. The international community, by providing assistance and framing favourable rules of the game of trade and financial transactions, could reduce the burden of adjustment in State policies. Often that may be sufficient to fully implement poverty removal policies if the State parties concerned make their best effort towards their implementation. 36. All these discussions should be able to establish the value added in treating a social objective as a human right and the increased likelihood of achieving that objective through the fulfilment of the obligations entailed by that human right. The next question that needs to be answered now is in what manner poverty can be described as deprivation of human rights, or poverty alleviation can be taken as fulfilment of human rights objectives. 37. The conceptual ground of that argument can without much difficulty be established following Amartya Sen’s capability approach explaining the notion of human development. For Sen, development is essentially an expansion of capabilities, with capability defined as a person’s ability to lead a life of freedom, or as Sen puts it, “the opportunity to achieve valuable combinations of human functionings: what a person is able to do or be”.3 Human development indicators represent different aspects of that capability, such as the freedom to be well fed and well nourished, to be healthy, educated and adequately sheltered. 38. When development is seen as human development or expansions of capabilities, its objectives are described in terms of freedoms, which are goals universally accepted as desirable values comparable to human rights. However, that does not automatically make development objectives equated to human rights. There are a number of steps before such “freedoms” can be elevated to “rights”. As Sen puts it, “rights involve claims (specifically claims on others who are in a position to make a difference)” and “freedoms are primarily descriptive characteristics of conditions of persons”.4 Society has to recognize certain freedoms to be enjoyed by its members as a fundamental value or norm, binding them in the society and claimed by them as “rights”. These freedoms have to be universal, enjoyed by all equally and without discrimination. They must, as we discussed earlier, fulfil the criteria of “legitimacy” and “coherence”, and they must be claimed following “due” procedures, through an accepted “norm-creating” process.