Over the course of the last generation global extreme
poverty declined rapidly, but many are still very poor and progress against
extreme poverty is urgently needed. However, we are currently far off track to
ending extreme poverty – we expect half a billion people to still live on less
than $1.90 per day by 2030.
Poverty was not concentrated in Africa until recently. In
1990 more than a billion of the extremely poor lived in China and India alone.
Since then those economies have grown faster than many of the richest
countries in the world. The concentration of the worlds poorest shifted from
East Asia in the 1990s to South Asia in the following decade. Now it has
shifted to Sub-Saharan Africa.
The good news is that 2019 started with the lowest
prevalence of extreme poverty ever recorded in human history—less than 8
percent. In all likelihood, this level will set the “ceiling” for a new era of
even lower single-digit global poverty rates for the foreseeable future.
The bad news, though, is that poverty reduction rates
are expected to keep slowing down considerably over the next decade.
Consequently, only 20 million people are likely to escape extreme poverty in
2019. At this rate, it will take five years for the global number to fall below
500 million—making it nearly impossible to end poverty by 2030.
Poverty is expected to continue for a while as many are projecting
that sub-Saharan Africa in general, and Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of
Congo in particular, are set to house the majority of the world’s poor.
These problems are concrete but hardly glamorous, possible
to solve, but often without a known solution. No one person can solve all of
them and, in any case, getting them all fixed will not end poverty tomorrow and
maybe not even in 50 years. But if we could give up the lofty goals and empty
promises, and focus all our energies on the concrete steps we are able to take
here and now to improve the lives of the poor worldwide, we would at the very
least bring some real comfort to the lives of many millions.
Personally, I would like to suggest some factors which would
be helpful in our journey to reduce poverty. The globe must continue to fight
poverty, respond quickly and effectively to natural and man-made emergencies to
ensure that 'no one is left behind' as the SDG agenda promises, this is where
we need to focus our efforts. We must also focus our development efforts and
aid spending on the following six areas where we can make the most difference.
·
Fighting Global Hunger.
·
Increased focus on countries that are fragile
·
Putting Climate change and development at
the heart of all we do.
·
Promoting Trade and Economic growth.
·
Ensuring access to quality essential services
such as Education, HIV and Aids, Health and Social
Protection.
·
Ensuring the protection of Human rights and
promoting Accountability.
Moving towards a world
free of poverty:
Poverty must be analyzed in its dynamics, and although many of today’s
policies succeed in reducing severe poverty, they fail in terms of the
long-term objectives of poverty eradication, The interaction of different
dimensions such as education, work, infrastructures and housing – to name only
a few – are to be taken into account because progress in one field alone is
insufficient to eradicate poverty.
Development and poverty
eradication are impossible without peace and security of life and property. Conflict
is an obstacle to ordinary economic and social activity in a society, among
other things because it undermines opportunities for long-term investment. If
poverty does not directly lead to conflict, war and terror, it helps create a
breeding ground for it and an increased risk of its breaking out. Thus, poor
countries can easily become the source of problems that spread to other parts
of the world.
Recipient responsibility must be strengthened, governance
improved and corruption combated. The conditions for growth and
development are far from good in many developing countries. In countries where
corruption is endemic and governance – both in the political and in the
administrative sense – is poor, national and international investors will stay
away. And the poor are the ultimate losers. Good governance is a precondition
for development. This is something we must all wish to promote.
The war on poverty is about promoting human rights. This
is an ethical and an altruistic project, but promoting human rights is much
more than that. It is also about creating conditions that promote the
sustainable development of societies both locally and globally. It is about
giving the population the opportunity to create a better society and to
function well within it.
Poor people must therefore be empowered to make positive
changes in their situation. In many poor countries such conditions are absent.
The human rights of the poor are particularly inadequately protected. This
applies to children’s rights, both in war and in normal situations, it applies
to women, who are systematically oppressed in many countries, and it applies to
the most vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the disabled.
Human rights must be
an inseparable part of the development process, because development is
precisely about realizing the freedoms and possibilities implied in the concept
of human rights. This is especially evident in the present context, where the
focus is on the poorest.
Developing countries must be given back control over their
own development. Development agencies have for far too long unempowered
their cooperation partners by doing their work for them or ignoring their
wishes. At the same time the lack of coordination of donors’ efforts has led to
serious administrative problems in many countries. Industrialized countries
must leave the implementation and coordination of measures to the partner
countries themselves, so that they can acquire real ownership of their
challenges and tasks.
Education and health are to be promoted. HIV/AIDS must be combated.
When a large part of the population is illiterate, weakened by HIV/AIDS and
other diseases, and has neither income nor property; this hinders economic and
social development. Education is perhaps the most important precondition for
development. Without education, the state receives less income that can secure
basic social services, costs are high and the private sector has less access to
the human and economic resources it needs. Investment in education and health
is one of the most effective measures we must have for combating poverty.
Basically we have to take necessary steps to reduce the
population in our world. Natural resources don’t increase according to the
population which is increasing at a high speed. When we consider the families
in poor countries, they have at least six or seven kids.
If every African woman had access to contraception and could
choose both when she wanted to have children and how many children she wanted
to have, the population increase on the continent could be 30% smaller by the
end of the century–one key to reaching the goal of ending poverty there.
This would mean that more girls and women could expand their
horizons, they could stay in school longer, they could have children later,
they could earn more as adults, and they could invest more in their children.
But those kids do not have a proper health or the parents
cannot provide proper education for them. And also those parents cannot provide
good foods filled with suitable nutrients to their kids due to lack of wealth.
Because of that their healthiness decreases by a considerable amount. The
development of their brains becomes insufficient and due to that their ability
to get a proper education decreases.
A sound environmental policy is in the interests of the
poor. The poor are often those who are most affected by local and global
environmental degradation, such as climate change or pollution of air and
drinking water. Thus it is often the poor who benefit most from improvements in
living conditions resulting from measures that prevent and reduce pollution and
help to maintain ecological functions. Sound environmental and resource management
prevents a worsening of the living conditions of vulnerable groups. This
applies especially to indigenous peoples.
Donors must be willing to be coordinated by partner
countries. They must also cooperate more closely among themselves. The
form of national poverty strategies and the accompanying processes now require
donors to rethink their planning. There is no need any more for the long,
elaborate and donor centered planning documents of the past.
Donors should rather make short business plans to consider
how they can put their technical and economic resources to the best possible
use, while taking account of the other actors. This applies to all donors,
public, non-government and private. The UN and the World Bank as key
instruments in this coordination.
NGOs must have an active and constructive attitude to this
coordination process, although they will continue to have their own agendas,
principles and functions. Coordination in line with national poverty strategies
presupposes an active dialogue in which partners express themselves clearly
about the strengths and weaknesses of the strategies and about what they can
and cannot finance.
Finally, I believe that we should
dedicate our time, efforts and policy-making to the removal of barriers, including
corruption, cronyism, opaque processes and subsidies that prevent capitalistic
mechanisms from working. we must also encourage
organizations,individuals,governments etc who have volunteered to provide
facilities such as pure water, foods filled with nutrients, living places to
poor people and also those who’re conducting charity services to develop their lives,
by offering special rewards and admiring them in various ways would be a good
way to increase the number of voluntary workers. So I believe my opinions and
suggestions would be a good help to conclude poverty. #GlobalFightAgainstPoverty
#BetterLifeforAll #HumanityFirst #Sustainability #SDGI #EndingPoverty
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