FI adopts a human rights-based approach towards extreme poverty, convinced that extreme poverty is a human rights violation.  Governments have the responsibility to uphold the rights of people living in extreme poverty.

The majority of the world’s population is trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, inequality, landlessness, unemployment, environmental degradation, marginalisation and violence, which prevent it from enjoying basic civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. 
In 2012, the UN adopted a set of guiding principles that focus on the human rights of people living in poverty, in which the UN defined extreme poverty as a human rights violation, rather than the mere result of lack of income and financial means, and thereby designated government as first duty bearer, ie the one responsible for addressing the issue.

Franciscans International is committed to promoting a rights-based approach to extreme poverty primarily based on participation, empowerment, inclusion, transparency, equality and non-discrimination.  With its partner organization ATD Fourth World, FI has translated the UN Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights into an accessible and comprehensible tool: