Beyond the state: holding international institutions and private entities accountable for poverty alleviation

Lucy Williams

Chapter 32 in Research Handbook on Human Rights and Poverty, 2026, pp 550-569 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter explains why a state-centered focus on poverty elimination is limited and problematic. Williams argues that efforts to reduce poverty must consider not only the state's actions (and inactions), but also the actions of private and mixed government-private actors. These non-state actors maintain poverty through discriminatory market behavior, inequitable legal remedies, and other practices that sustain poverty. To fill this void, Williams explores the possibility of suing international organizations that do not serve the purpose of reducing poverty, or that actually contribute to increasing poverty and holding multinational corporations accountable for the actions of their subsidiaries in less developed countries. This chapter urges human rights activists to invest energy in refining human rights standards to include accountability for non-state actors.

Keywords: Non-state actors; Private actors; Poverty alleviation; NGO; Human rights; International development banks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035350506
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035350513.00047 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:24133_32

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().