A/HRC/5/3 page 9 that the inclusion of social exclusion in the definition would shift the notion of extreme poverty to a holistic and more political level, and thus would serve to emphasize the political dimension of extreme poverty. Another expert underlined that social exclusion is a central element of extreme poverty in developed countries, where basic social services exist but do not reach the extremely poor due to their exclusion. 16. The independent expert considered that the inclusion of the notion of social exclusion in the definition of extreme poverty has a distinct value added because deprivation resulting from social exclusion may be quite different from deprivation of income and of human development. Measuring social exclusion may be difficult because it will have to focus on specific failures and social relations, which may be both context-specific and inter-temporal in nature. However, the difficulties in measuring social exclusion, should not lead to its omission from the notion of poverty, because it introduces a different dimension to the problem. Several attempts have been made in different countries of the European Union, notably Belgium and the United Kingdom, to estimate social exclusion, and to establish a relationship between social exclusion and other aspects of poverty which lead to the denial of basic freedoms or of security of different people. In many developing countries, statistics do exist of the number of people who are socially marginalized, excluded or ostracized as well as of their living conditions. In India, a substantial debate is taking place on the living conditions of people belonging to the lower castes and tribes who are socially excluded, and whether affirmative action treatment by the Government should be extended to all such people or be confined to those among them who are income poor. The independent expert maintained the view that accepting that people who are socially excluded are suffering from extreme poverty would add substantial value to the discourse in both developed and developing countries. 17. An exchange of views took place regarding the independent expert’s rationale of focusing on extreme poverty as constituting a deprivation of human rights, since this might be more politically acceptable to the authorities of different countries and therefore would strengthen the call for obligations to eradicate those conditions. One opinion was that poverty and extreme poverty are in a “continuum of scale” and the policies aimed at the removal of extreme poverty would be quite similar to those needed to eradicate poverty as such. This of course relates to empirical exercises of poverty eradication, for which policies have to be context-specific. Often the conditions of extreme poverty could be tackled more effectively through a limited number of policy instruments, than by applying the whole gamut of policies needed for the removal of poverty. Another argument suggested that the notion of extreme poverty as the intersection of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion might not always end up effectively benefiting the bottom rung of the poor. A preferred version, as indicated in the independent expert’s second report on extreme poverty,10 is first to identify subsets of people suffering from the extreme forms of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion, by adopting a threshold determined by consensus. The union of these subsets of the extremely income poor, human development poor and socially excluded could then demonstrably deal with the most vulnerable sections of the population. 10 E/CN.4/2006/43.