E/CN.4/2006/43 page 18 59. In terms of the discussions on the nature of poverty, it can be argued that poverty has the characteristics of all three elements of deprivation: income, human development and inclusiveness in social activities. The total universe of the poor in a country should then be regarded as the summation of all three groups: those who are income poor, deprived of human development and socially excluded. One way of looking at extreme poverty would then be a portion of each of these categories selected in terms of extreme severity of the conditions of deprivation. In some countries, people below half the poverty line, as agreed upon in the country, or suffering from extreme deprivation of human development according to some criteria and similarly that of social exclusion, have been recognized as meeting the criteria for selecting the set of those living in extreme poverty. 60. That way of looking at it would be consistent with the independent expert’s description of extreme poverty. However, the total universe of such extremely poor people can be very large in many developing countries and the society may choose a set of criteria that would limit the number of people suffering from extreme poverty to a smaller number of people who can be taken care of without an enormous cost of resources. For this reason, the independent expert has discussed extreme poverty in terms of an intersection of the three sets of people who are income poor, human-development poor and socially excluded. This means that a person suffering from extreme poverty would be suffering from a combination of all three categories of poverty. One advantage of this definition is that it not only makes the number of people involved a manageable set in any country, but it also clearly brings out the severity of the form of poverty. To sum up, people suffering from extreme poverty would then be a small portion of the total number of people who are suffering from all forms of poverty and the severity of their conditions of poverty would be apparent to every member of society, inducing them to take action to eradicate those conditions. 61. In all countries, the religious texts or general descriptions of social values clearly appeal to the sentiments of all agents, in particular the Government and other State authorities, to take action to mitigate the conditions of poor people. In most societies, the Government and people in general have been taking actions to mitigate the conditions of poverty. That would qualify poverty eradication procedures to conform to customary laws. 62. The principal reason why poverty eradication has not become a general objective of social policy in all societies, superseding all other objectives, as the case would be for human rights norms, would be the unmanageability of the total number of people suffering from such poverty. The definition of extreme poverty set out in this report would meet this problem by reducing the total number of people affected. 63. There is another argument that would support the case to consider a small number of people affected by extreme poverty as equivalent to a human rights norm. This is the Rawlsian principle of justice which considers taking care of the welfare or “liberty” of the most vulnerable sections of society. This is perfectly consistent with the above-mentioned notion of extreme poverty defined as denial of freedom affecting a small fraction of the population. Most societies, particularly Western democracies, have in principle accepted these notions of justice. It should be possible then to appeal to their sense of justice and persuade them to accept the obligations associated with the removal of extreme poverty which makes a small section of the population extremely vulnerable, suffering from the loss of all liberties or freedom of action.