15 October 2012
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| Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York |
In Message on International Day to Eradicate Poverty, Secretary-General Says
Investing in Poor best Way to Build Stronger, More Prosperous Societies
Following is UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Day for
the Eradication of Poverty, commemorated on 17 October:
Poverty is easy to
denounce but difficult to combat. Those suffering from hunger, want and
indignity need more than sympathetic words; they need concrete support.
We mark this year’s
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty at a time of economic
austerity in many countries. As Governments struggle to balance
budgets, funding for anti-poverty measures is under threat. But this is
precisely the time to provide the poor with access to social services,
income security, decent work and social protection. Only then can we
build stronger and more prosperous societies — not by balancing budgets
at the expense of the poor.
The Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) have galvanized global action that generated great
progress. We have cut extreme poverty by half and corrected the gender
imbalance in early education, with as many girls now attending primary
school as boys. Many more communities have access to clean drinking
water. Millions of lives have been saved thanks to investments in
health.
These gains represent a
major advance toward a more equitable, prosperous and sustainable
world. But more than a billion people still live in poverty, denied
their rights to food, education and health care. We have to empower
them to help us find sustainable solutions. We should spare no effort
to ensure that all countries reach the MDGs by 2015.
At the United Nations
Conference on Sustainable Development, held in June of this year,
leaders from around the world declared that poverty eradication is “the
greatest global challenge facing the world today”.
We are now developing the
UN development framework for the period after 2015, building on the MDGs
while confronting persistent inequalities and new challenges facing
people and the planet. Our aim is to produce a bold and ambitious
framework that can foster transformational change benefiting people now
and for generations to come.
Rampant poverty, which has
festered for far too long, is linked to social unrest and threats to
peace and security. On this International Day, let us make an
investment in our common future by helping to lift people out of poverty
so that they, in turn, can help to transform our world.
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