17 October marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. From the first goal of the MDG’s call to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger to SDG 1’s objective to end poverty in all its forms everywhere, global development cooperation has a strong focus on poverty.
Even though the share of the world population living in extreme poverty has declined from 36% in 1990 to 8.6% in 2018, baseline projections suggest that 6% of the world population will still be living in extreme poverty in 2030, missing the target of ending poverty. Importantly, poverty is multidimensional and encompasses much more than income. Some 1.3 billion people live in multidimensional poverty, and half of them are younger than 18 years, according to the 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI).
This high-level panel discusses efforts to end poverty in the context of multilateral arrangements and actions at the global, regional, and local level. Questions addressed include:
· What are key developments in multilateral cooperation on efforts to end poverty in different settings? This includes the implications of the reform of UN country teams and the resident coordinator system.
· What are challenges for the UN and multilateral approaches to further help the eradication of poverty, including political, technical, normative, or implementation challenges?
· How do multilateral approaches take into consideration that poverty is caused and exacerbated by a variety of factors, including climate change, conflicts, disasters and that it is affected as much by rights, access to justice, as it is by education, health services, and economic opportunities?
