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After brief discussion of the general losses refugees incur in connection with displacement, the paper examines empirically the structural and institutional factors that discourage refugees from taking initiatives to recoup their losses and to construct sustainable livelihoods in countries of asylum, as well as the conditions that perpetuate poverty, vulnerability, and marginalisation. The paper argues that in developing countries refugee status, regardless of duration, leads to the acquisition of neither nationality nor denizenship. Basic rights and sources of livelihoods are apportioned on the basis of nationality and not residence. Lack of belonging to a spatially bounded community or geo-political state entity is therefore the single most important factor that prevents formulation and implementation of long-term development programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the relationship between poverty and human rights, with particular emphasis on situations where issues of ethnicity and discrimination are present. Hitherto, the relationship between poverty and human rights has not been clearly understood and little empirical research is available on the matter. As a result, seemingly sharply contrasted perspectives continue to exist. The prevailing view in economic development is that poverty alleviation programmes are so diverse and encompassing that it will be via poverty alleviation programmes that human rights will be fulfilled. However, in the human rights community, the prevailing view is that violations of human rights are a major cause of poverty and, as a corollary, to deny people their rights is, by definition, a way to keep them poor. In fact, both approaches hold substantive truth and value added. Human rights should be regarded as a human endowment, and thus as a form of capital. They are, to that extent, as important as all the other forms of capital that participate in the development process and in the process of poverty alleviation. To disregard the importance of human rights is tantamount to keeping people in poverty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]