A/HRC/40/29 standards and unequal access to social services. The root causes of these inequalities lay in deeply entrenched patterns of discrimination based on race, gender, religion, disability and migrant status or country of origin (see E/2016/58, para. 27). 7. Recognizing the urgent need to address rising inequalities within and among countries, enormous disparities of opportunity, wealth and power, and persistent gender inequality, Member States put the imperative to combat discrimination and inequalities at the heart of the 2030 Agenda, through: (a) an overarching commitment to leave no one behind and focus on the furthest behind first; (b) dedicated goals and targets to combat discrimination and inequalities (Goals 5, 10, 16 and 17); (c) a commitment to develop specific indicators to measure progress in the implementation of laws, policies and actions to address discrimination and inequalities; (d) special attention to specific groups, including women, children, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, older persons and migrants; and (e) a call for disaggregation of data on a broad set of grounds, including in target 17.18. 8. Addressing economic inequality is necessary but insufficient alone to eradicate extreme poverty or to achieve other Goals and targets. Poverty is multidimensional and affects an individual’s ability to enjoy a wide range of human rights. It can be defined in human rights terms as a human condition characterized by sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights (E/C.12/2001/10, para. 8). Therefore, efforts to reduce poverty and economic inequality will not achieve their objective without also combating political, social and environmental inequality.2 9. Human rights offer an analytical framework to better understand these multiple dimensions of inequality and their underlying causes, as well as their impacts on individuals and communities leading to the perpetuation of extreme poverty. Power imbalances within societies increase inequalities through laws, policies and decisionmaking processes that favour the richest and the most powerful. In many instances, parts of society, such as people living in informal settlements and homeless people, are left voiceless and unaccounted for in surveys and statistics. In other places, openly discriminatory laws criminalize poverty and homelessness and put up barriers to the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals, in particular Goals 1, 6, 10 and 11. Gentrification and the rise of segregated cities resulting from urban renewal processes have shifted the power balance and exacerbated inequalities. The poor are increasingly being priced out of city centres and pushed into peripheral areas, making it harder for them to access essential services and decent work (E/2018/57, para. 48). 10. Even laws, regulations, policies or practices that seem neutral at face value can in effect lead to discrimination and exclusion. For instance, requiring a municipal registration certificate to subscribe to the local water provider may seem neutral but may in fact discriminate against persons that live in informal settlements and who lack security of tenure. 11. Human rights offer normative guidance for States and other stakeholders in addressing these inequalities. While many dimensions of economic, social and cultural rights are to be realized progressively, States have an immediate obligation to ensure equality and non-discrimination in law and practice. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights stated that guarantees of non-discrimination and equality in international human rights treaties mandate both de facto and de jure equality. 3 12. For example, gender bias results in discrimination and inequality both in law and in practice. Some civil and customary legal systems contain provisions granting “marital power” to one spouse – generally the male over the female. It assumes that “husbands are 2 3 4 In his 2017 report (A/72/502), the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights pointed out that when the situation of people living in poverty is addressed in development or human rights frameworks their civil and political rights are often completely ignored. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 16 (2005) on the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all economic, social and cultural rights, para. 7.