UN+Response+to+Poverty

At the Millennium Summit in 2005, the United Nations adopted a series of time-bound goals and targets. One such target is the eradication of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition. The conference agreed that poverty and hunger targets must be achieved by improvements in basic health services, productive employment, agricultural production, environmental sustainability, gender equality, and education. In the secretary-General’s “In Larger Freedom” report, he highlighted that despite the reduction in extreme poverty over the last 25 years, inequality is increasing due to unevenly distributed benefits of development. The report emphasized looking at development through the conflict-prevention lens: “a long-term strategic approach that simultaneously addresses both peace and development should guide policies and programmes while addressing causes of violent conflicts and post-conflict peace building”. One target of the goal of eradicating hunger is to half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reveals that countries with faster economic growth, specifically faster growth in agriculture, were successful at reducing hunger and exhibited slower population growth rates and lower levels of HIV infection. These findings indicate “strong interlinkages between economic growth, particularly agricultural rates, and the eradication of poverty, disease and reduction of hunger. The report points out that in countries that have succeeded in raising people out of poverty, changes were “made possible by attaining and sustaining higher rates of economic growth and investing in people and being responsive to their basic needs and aspirations”.

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