And yet there is more at stake in Alston's intervention than a concern for poverty and inequality in their own right. This long-time human rights lawyer is also concerned to salvage the 'legitimacy of the overall human rights enterprise'. If the human rights movement is currently facing powerful contestation globally, he writes, this is largely due to the perception that its preoccupations 'do little or nothing to address the most abiding and pressing challenges confronted by a large part of humanity'. Although Alston's attention to social and economic rights, poverty and economic equality is salutary, the interests of the 'human rights enterprise' are not necessarily identical with those of that 'large part of humanity' whose most pressing concerns it has so far failed to address. It is therefore not obvious that bolstering the threatened legitimacy of that 'enterprise' is the surest way to address humanity's most pressing challenges. Despite their claim to work in the interests of all human beings, the strength of official human rights organisations and institutions is not necessarily an index of the state of humanity itself.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 444