A/HRC/7/15 page 3 I. INTRODUCTION 1. Since 1989, the Commission on Human Rights has been discussing extreme poverty as a major source of deprivation, affecting all human rights. It was felt that extreme poverty and exclusion from society constituted a violation of human dignity and that urgent national and international action was required to eliminate them.1 In 1998, the Commission decided to establish the mandate of the independent expert on the question of human rights and extreme poverty. A.M. Lizin served as the independent expert from 1998 to 2004, and Arjun Sengupta succeeded her in 2004. 2. In its resolutions 1998/25, 2004/23 and 2005/16, the Commission invited the independent expert to focus on the relationship between the enjoyment of human rights and extreme poverty, the obstacles encountered and progress made by women living in extreme poverty and the impact of discrimination on extreme poverty. 3. The present report is the last report by Dr. Sengupta in his capacity as the independent expert on extreme poverty. The author is grateful to Ipshita Sengupta and Avani Kapur of the Centre for Development and Human Rights, and to the staff of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), for their assistance in the preparation of the present report. The report is a summary of the key findings of his work since 2004. The independent expert hopes that his findings will be examined by the Human Rights Council during its review of this mandate and inform the next mandate-holder accordingly. 4. Pursuant to Commission resolution 2001/31, and other related resolutions, the Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights set out to draft a set of guiding principles on human rights and extreme poverty. In its resolution 2/2, the Human Rights Council requested OHCHR to circulate those draft guiding principles among stakeholders to obtain their views and suggestions. In that regard, the final section of the present report contains a discussion on the independent expert’s views on the guiding principles. II. BACKGROUND 5. During his tenure, the independent expert clarified the conceptual relationship between human rights and poverty and analysed the basic issues concerning poverty reduction strategies, highlighting the importance of employment-generation, ensuring legal entitlements to basic services and providing social safety nets for the poorest of the poor, paying special attention to the situation of women. 6. In 2005, in the first report submitted by the independent expert to the Commission (E/CN.4/2005/49), he outlined his general approach to the mandate by defining extreme poverty as a combination of income poverty, human development poverty and social exclusion. 1 General Assembly resolution 51/97.