Development Initiatives

We believe that poverty is multidimensional. A poor person faces a daily battle for survival, confronting severe deprivation of basic human needs. Her reality is not just a low level of income, but also limited or no access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation facilities, limited health services, incomplete education and information that is inconsistent or inaccessible.

Up to 445 million people are currently trapped in chronic poverty – people who will remain poor for much or all of their lives.

Poverty is made worse by exclusion and exploitation. Poor people typically have no meaningful political voice and lack effective political representation. They often live in remote areas, restricting their participation in their country’s economy. Socially, they encounter discrimination and can be denied access to basic services and support. Their work opportunities are limited and open to exploitation – allowing them enough to survive from day to day, but no more. And they are surrounded by insecurity – wars, natural disasters and violence all lead to major shocks and stresses that further dilute their limited resources. Global phenomena such as climate change and financial crises only make this worse.

Women and children make up the majority of the chronically poor.

Poverty is intergenerational. The children of chronically poor people are often destined to inherit their parents’ poverty.

Around a billion people will remain in absolute poverty even if we meet the Millennium Development Goals in 2015.

But, we believe that absolute poverty can be eliminated by 2025. All it needs is a guarantee.

Building a global stop-poverty guarantee

To eliminate poverty, we need to do more than just create growth and opportunity. We must also recognise and deal with poverty’s multidimensional nature, and put an end to exclusion and exploitation. And we need to recognise that addressing poverty is relevant in every country.

At Development Initiatives, we believe that an end to poverty involves building a global stop-poverty guarantee – and that underwriting this guarantee is the proper role of reformed aid.

The six-part guarantee – a right for everyone – involves continuing work to facilitate access to health services and education, ensure enough drinking water and adequate sanitation, and create opportunities for a minimum level of income. But this important work is not enough. To really end poverty, we need to add two more building blocks: making freedom from insecurity a reality, and supporting access to the transformative power of information.

This means that we need to change how we look at aid and development. To start with, aid must be refocused on achieving all six building blocks of the guarantee. We also need to make aid more effective – providing predictable resources, focusing squarely on reducing vulnerability, achieving poverty elimination targets.

We need to commit flexible resources to match the changing pattern of global poverty – and to meet the 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) that rich country governments have repeatedly pledged to Official Development Assistance. We must also recognise and support the role of other resources that support poverty reduction – including funds aimed at climate change adaptation, defence spending to improve security, national taxes, and remittances from family members abroad. Underpinning all this is the power of information to improve aid effectiveness – transparent information and feedback, making aid work for everyone: especially the poor.

And finally, we need to address poverty wherever it exists – including in our own back yards.