The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says to actively shape alternative futures, countries must set the conditions to create decent jobs.
This, the UNDP suggests should be done in cooperation with the private sector.
In a statement authored by the UNDP’s Administrator, Achim Steiner, to commemorate the 2023 International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the UNDP noted that nations must have the means to extend vital support to people experiencing poverty.
The Programme reveals that for one out of five global workers, a job is no guarantee of decent living conditions and that “some 630 million people are still considered as working poor.”
On October 17 annually, the international community join hands to commemorate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
This year’s celebration is on the theme, “Decent Work and Social Protection: Putting Dignity in Practice for All.”
The UNDP believes that as part of countries setting the conditions to create decent jobs and doing so in collaboration with the private sector, “a focus on inclusive growth, jobs and poverty reduction must be reconciled with decarbonization and a just energy transition.”
According to UNDP’s Administrator, because women are also a focus of UNDP support, the programme is creating conditions to ensure that women have the skills and resources to build their own wealth.
Meanwhile, he says “analysis by UNDP found that some 165 million people fell into poverty between 2020 to 2023 as debt servicing crowded out expenditures in critical areas like social protection, health, and education.”
“Low-income countries are likely, on average, to allocate more than twice as much funding to servicing net interest payments as they do to social assistance,” he continued.
Mr Steiner, however, noted that UNDP’s proposal for a Debt-Poverty Pause could mitigate this surge of poverty and lift out of it the 165 million people living on less than $3.65 a day.
“The estimated cost is approximately $14 billion or a meagre 0.009% of global gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022,” he further indicated.
He also intimates that “if we are to truly tackle the root causes of poverty and advance progress across the Global Goals, there is a need to go beyond GDP and design the metrics of the future.”
To him, countries must leverage a range of data and not merely categorize people as ‘poor’ or ‘not poor’ depending on whether they earn $2.15 per day.
“Rather, there is a need to examine the intersectionality of deprivations, which is recurring patterns of poverty that commonly impact the day-to-day lives of people globally to better tackle it,” Mr Steiner opines.
Nevertheless, the UNDP says it is committed to pushing new boundaries to consign poverty to history.
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Source: Rosemond Asmah/ATLFMNEWS
