THE SECRETARY-GENERAL
Just over a year ago, Member States of the United
Nations gathered at the Millennium Summit to set out an agenda for the 21st century -- a plan for achieving
freedom from fear, freedom from want, sustaining the resources of our planet,
and renewing the United Nations. They pledged to free their peoples from
"the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty, to which more
than a billion people of them are currently subjected” and resolved “to halve,
by the year 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less
than one dollar a day”.
Just over a month ago, tragic
events brought home to us the need for the international community to work
together even more closely in addressing the complex challenges of our time.
Our mission to fight poverty, to improve the lives of peoples everywhere and
decrease their vulnerability, has become more important and urgent than ever.
For the impact of 11 September threatens to reverberate around the world in
ways that will render many millions of people more vulnerable to poverty than
before.
Today, more than 1.2 billion
people live in extreme poverty. Following the 11 September attacks, the world economy is expected to slow down
significantly, threatening to unravel hard-won gains in development. The World
Bank already estimates that as a result, a
further 15 million people could find themselves living in poverty next year.
The effects of falling commodity prices, political tension, lower oil prices,
lower investment, loss of tourism revenues, escalating trade costs and
movements of refugees will take their toll on many of those who can least
afford it.
It
is clear that additional efforts
will be required urgently if we are to meet the goals set out in the Millennium
Declaration. Countries must devise more effective poverty reduction strategies,
centered on the Millennium Development Goals and supported by the international
community. Growth must be encouraged, but the benefits of growth must also be
distributed more widely. Governments must ensure that their expenditures on
education and health reach the poor. Access to microfinance must be improved.
Development strategies need to focus on rural areas, where three quarters of
the world’s poor live.
Development partners in the international community
must provide a supporting environment for development. We must ensure that a
new round of trade negotiations is launched next month, with a focus on
development. Official flows of capital must increase, to make up for smaller
private flows. Broader, faster and deeper debt relief is needed. And we must
mobilize the political will necessary to make next year's International
Conference on Financing for Development a success.
On this International Day for the Eradication of
Poverty, let us resolve to keep our focus firmly on the goals that the world's
leaders have set for the new millennium. Governments worked together to give us
the Millennium Declaration, and they must work together, for the sake of the
most vulnerable on this earth, to translate that vision into reality.