Professor Martha Davis’ Updated Handbook Makes the Case for Treating Poverty as a Human Rights Violation

08.25.26 — In the second edition of the Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026), Professor Martha Davis and her co-editors make the case that poverty isn’t just an economic condition to be managed, but a violation of human dignity that human rights law is equipped to confront — and the book sets out a research agenda for doing so. Leading scholars interrogate how poverty is defined and measured, and examine its dynamics in relation to race, gender, age, geography and migration status. Chapters address the rights to housing, health, work, education, protest and access to justice, while confronting the challenges posed by corruption, climate change and new technologies. This update builds on the first edition of the book, with new research on the intersections of human rights, poverty and inequality.

“We hope that this book will encourage increased attention to the impacts of poverty and inequality on individuals and communities,” said Davis, faculty co-director of Northeastern Law’s Center for Global Law and Justice. “As inequality grows worldwide, the human rights implications could not be more serious.”

Davis co-edited the first and second editions with Professor Morten Kjaerum of the University of Aalborg, who is an affiliated scholar at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, and Amanda Lyons, executive director and lecturer in law at the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School.

Organized in four parts — Definitions, Measurements and Standards; Cross-Currents; Mechanisms and Policies; and Structural Barriers — the Handbook draws together contributions from scholars including Olivier De Schutter, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, Gerard Quinn, Leilani Farha and Sumudu Atapattu, among many others, to outline a future research agenda for confronting poverty and inequality through a human rights lens. Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, contributed an Opening Note, and Philip Alston of NYU School of Law authored the Forward to the volume.

Reviewer Barbara Oomen of Utrecht University School of Law says the book will “undoubtedly become a key reference for many scholars and practitioners.”

Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty is part of the Research Handbooks in Human Rights series and is available in hardback and eBook formats from Edward Elgar Publishing.

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