Progress against extreme poverty is urgently needed

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.

The global population is racing toward 9 billion people in 2050, with nearly 3 billion expected to join the middle class in the next two decades. Meanwhile, 1.3 billion people are still trapped in extreme poverty ($1.25 per day), with another billion hovering on the brink (between $1.25 and $2.00). Countries will need to make an even deeper commitment to achieve the ambitious goal of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030.

Today, the issue of extreme poverty needs mass advocacy and action more than any other. Although the past decade has seen the most successful anti-poverty push in human history, life remains bleak for hundreds of millions of people affected by poverty.

The challenges of education, disease, poor sanitation and gender discrimination still weigh heavily. Additionally, the increase in wealth inequality threatens to ignite new waves of social upheaval. The current covid-19 pandemic is also potentially catastrophic for millions already hanging by a thread. It is a hammer blow for millions more who can only eat if they earn a wage. Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs.

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.

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 could also 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. We can focus our development efforts and aid spending on the following seven 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.

·         Collectively act now to mitigate the impact of COVID19 pandemic.

·         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.

2020 should be remembered as the year we put extreme poverty on the defensive, but getting there will require world leaders to match bold ideas with strong leadership and immediate action, we now also need to think more broadly and recognize the greater complexity inherent in the concept of poverty around the world. #HumanityFirst #SDGI #EndingPoverty #sustainablecommunities #zerohunger #SDGs #foodsecurity #poverty