April 2011
By John Gershman and Jonathan Morduch
Credit is Not a Right
The notion of “credit as a human right” flows from the argument that if we are concerned with universal access to food, shelter, and health, then we must be committed to providing access to the tools that are most likely to deliver those basic elements of life. For the sake of argument (and there is, of course, argument), we will follow Article 25(1) of the Universal Declara- tion of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in December 1948, and begin with the idea that access to food, shelter, and health constitute basic human rights. Yunus can then be interpreted as saying: access to credit is so powerful in reducing poverty, that access to credit should be a right itself.