(Oct. 17, 2012) Poverty is easy to denounce but difficult to combat said United
Nation’s Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon in his message for the International Day for
the Eradication of Poverty observed on Wednesday Oct. 17. He said 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.