Over the next six years – at least – Amnesty International will initiate the biggest piece of research, campaigning and empowerment work in its history.

Over the next six years – at least – Amnesty International will initiate the biggest piece of research, campaigning and empowerment work in its history. Building on 50 years of rigorous and impartial investigation into human rights abuses and successful lobbying of governments and the UN to improve international and domestic laws and demand accountability when they are broken, it will work to shift the power balance towards the poor themselves and to provide the space for them to tell their own stories and engage in the processes that determine their own future. Our task is to show that poverty is the world's worst human rights crisis.

We will work initially on a few key areas and patterns of human rights abuse where Amnesty International has gained experience, where we think our efforts can help, and which show particularly sharply the interplay of deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and voices ignored. Our overall goal is to end the human rights violations that keep people poor.

Maternal mortality

Almost every one of the more than half a million women who die each year of pregnancy-related complications would have been saved by proper medical care at the right time. User fees for health services, including essential obstetric services and contraception, often keep women who are living in poverty from obtaining the care they need. For those in poverty or in remote areas it is hard to reach health facilities – transport costs may be prohibitive or routes may be impassable. Women and girls in poverty may have no access to information about the risks of complications, particularly if they have had no schooling or are illiterate.

The vast majority – more than 95 per cent – of women and girls who die in childbirth are poor and come from less developed countries. But there are thousands of women who die in childbirth in rich countries too. A disproportionate number of these come from marginalised or poor communities. In the USA, the maternal mortality rate among African American women is three-times higher than that of white women. More than 46 million people in the USA have no health insurance, and it is common for people to delay or go without healthcare because of the cost.

Women have the right to life, but they die in large numbers because of poverty, injustice and powerlessness – in their intimate relationships, families and communities. They face institutional discrimination, which is then replicated on a domestic level. Women and girls may be forced by their families into early or forced marriages, once in these marriages they may be treated as indentured servants, denied adequate food, imprisoned in their homes and denied access to money. Women have the right to the highest attainable standard of health, but they face economic, cultural and social obstacles in access to healthcare. Women have the right to determine when they become pregnant, but they are often denied access to contraception or to information that would allow them to control their fertility. Furthermore many women and girls are denied control of their own bodies.

When a woman dies in childbirth her family is impoverished further – through loss of livelihood, unpaid work for the family, the care and education of children.

Slums

More than 200,000 communities in the world can be defined as slums. Referred to by many names – bidonvilles, ghettos or the hood, bustees or chawls, favelas, barrios populares, informal settlements, or simply slums – they are home to more than 1 billion people across all continents.

These neighbourhoods share common characteristics such as inadequate housing, sanitation and drainage; poor or nonexistent water and electricity services; overcrowding; and high levels of violence. Many are classified as "illegal" or "unregularised". In all of them, residents have very insecure rights of tenure, placing them at constant risk of forcible eviction, and with no power to fight for redress.

The global slum population is growing at an alarming rate. Some projections suggest that by 2030, 2 billion people will be living in slums. Because of the absence of other affordable housing, people migrating to the cities from under-served rural areas are left with no alternative.

People living in slums face obvious deprivation of resources and assets. They also face high levels of insecurity due to the constant threat of violence from police and criminal gangs, and from being forcibly evicted with little or no warning. They are excluded from basic services such as safe water, sanitation, health and education. Access to justice is routinely denied because of discrimination and the criminalisation of poverty. In the processes and decisions that impact on their lives, the voices of people living in slums are routinely ignored. They are not consulted or allowed to participate in decision-making process about upgrading their homes or alternative housing after forced evictions.

Far from being a problem exclusive to developing countries, there are similar issues of deprivation and exclusion of whole communities in and around European cities, poor neighbourhoods in the USA, or in areas reserved for Indigenous Peoples in Canada and Australia.

Women are particularly vulnerable in slums. In Brazil, women face difficulties when trying to report domestic or other forms of violence to the police. In areas where there is no sanitation, women have to walk to remote areas or wait until dark for privacy in order to go to the toilet, increasing their risk of sexual violence and harassment.

Corporate accountability

Corporations and other businesses have an enormous impact on the rights of individuals and communities.

This impact can be positive, for example the creation of new jobs and an increase in state revenue that can be used to fund basic services and other initiatives. Yet all too often, human rights are violated as corporations exploit the corrupt, weak or non-existent systems of regulation in countries, and the people affected have no way to hold those corporations to account.

Particularly in the extractive industries, projects are often undertaken without adequate assessment of the potential impact on human rights, including environmental and social impacts. Communities are often forcibly relocated from their lands. But even if they are not, their traditional livelihoods – and lives – can be destroyed or threatened as their land is contaminated and their water supply polluted. Conflict and violence can escalate as companies seek to protect their assets. In the worst cases, corporations and governments collude to shut down peaceful expressions of concern and demands for justice – through violence, intimidation, or trying to impose gag orders to reduce bad publicity.

This insecurity and deprivation are compounded when the affected communities are systematically denied access to information about the impact of company operations and consequently excluded from participating in decisions that affect their lives. This is compounded when they are denied access to justice, and governments either failed to include human rights protections in the initial agreements or refuse to hold companies to account for their actions despite comprehensive agreements.

People living in poverty in developing countries often bear the brunt of corporate bad practice and abuses; with these abuses and practices arguably enriching stockholders. Weak domestic regulation, ineffective enforcement, corporate double standards, and the lack of effective international or extraterritorial oversight and accountability mechanisms create a devastating combination in developing countries. Indigenous peoples, in particular, are among the most vulnerable to human rights violations, the least protected, and the least likely to have access to effective remedies.

Many of the world's most resource-rich countries are also the world's poorest, particularly those that rely on natural resources for the majority of their national income. Twelve of the world's 25 most mineral-dependent states, and six of the world's most oil-dependent states, are classified by the World Bank as "highly indebted poor countries" with the world's worst human development statistics.

The combination of natural resource wealth and high levels of poverty seems paradoxical. It should be possible, as many companies in the extractive sector contend, for investment in natural resource extraction to make a significant contribution to sustainable development and poverty alleviation. It should also be possible for extractive activities to proceed in ways that respect human rights.