Global Poverty

What is Poverty?

There are plenty of statistics and data about global poverty--these are just a few:

• Each year, more than 8 million people around the world die because they are too poor to stay alive.
• Over 1 billion people—1 in 6 people around the world—live in extreme poverty, defined as living on less than $1 a day.
• More than 800 million go hungry each day.
• Over 100 million primary school-age children cannot go to school.

Based on definitions established by the World Bank (see sidebar), nearly 3 billion people—half of the world's population—are considered poor. But poverty isn't simply a numbers game. It's about scores of men, women and children enduring unimaginable obstacles that keep them from fulfilling their most basic human rights and achieving their individual potentials.

When the United Nations created the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, signatories proclaimed that all people have the right to education, work, health and well-being. But today, millions around the world are too crippled by poverty to fulfill these basic rights. Millions continue to go hungry. Scores of children never step inside a classroom. Families watch their loved ones die from largely preventable causes because they do not have access to adequate medical care. In essence, poverty is a denial of human rights.

A Global Partnership to Fight Poverty

According to the United Nations and its affiliated development experts, an end to extreme poverty can be achieved. Effectively tackling global poverty demands a multi-pronged approach and there is no single cure-all. Issues of poverty are many and complex: Initiatives must address interwoven but distinct issues such as children's rights, women's rights, epidemics such as HIV/AIDS, access to clean water and sanitation, and preservation of the world's natural resources—just to name a few.

The Millennium Development Goals, agreed to by the international community in 2000, represent an unprecedented opportunity for the world to usher in a new era of collaboration in fighting poverty. The Goals set forth concrete targets for significantly reducing extreme poverty and related ills by 2015. We are now one-third of the way to the deadline, and with just a decade to go, there is much work to be done.

Based on current trends, most developing countries will fail to meet the majority of the MDG's by 2015. The world has heralded 2005 as a milestone year in the fight against poverty, and has even been given the moniker of "The Year of Development."

Many believe that achieving the MDGs must involve a real and measurable focus on Goal 8: partnerships for development. Governments working together with civil society, multilateral institutions and private sector entities is not just a nice idea, it is indeed what is needed to make poverty history.

Sources: Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty (2005); World Bank; UN