Mainstream poverty debates have tended to focus on meeting the
basic needs of poor people and maximising their opportunities,
rather than seeing poverty as an issue of social inequality or
injustice. More radical perspectives, often adopted by NGOs, do
see poverty as an issue of injustice and focus on organising and
building capacity for the assertion of rights by the marginalised.
The idea of poverty as an issue of rights is growing in influence in
the development discourse, however, as for example in the DFID
White Paper.