Over 2.2 billion people living in ‘multidimensional’ poverty by UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty 7:12pm 17th Oct, 2014   International Day for the Eradication of Poverty - Far more than charity needed to lift 2.2 billion people out of poverty for good.    If poverty is ever really to be eradicated, States will need to adopt a human rights-based approach and to place the right to social protection at the centre of their anti-poverty policies and programmes, according to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston.    On the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the UN expert urged all international actors to go beyond charity by supporting the United Nations Social Protection Floor Initiative to guarantee basic income security and access to essential social services for all.    “Another International Day for the Eradication of Poverty… For many, this will conjure up images of helpless individuals, dependent on charity to survive, but such a stereotype is misleading and deeply problematic”, says Mr. Alston.    “The Biblical notion that ‘the poor will always be with us’ remains true only as long as the international community’s approach to poverty eradication is based on charity and discretionary governmental handouts, rather than on recognition of a human right to social protection”. According to the UN expert, the Governments must fulfil their human rights obligation to guarantee minimum social protection to everyone, rather than relying on a “Band-Aid” solution which perpetuates the need for charity.    Over 2.2 billion people are estimated by the UN to be either near or living in ‘multidimensional’ poverty with overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards.    “This is not an accident”, in Mr. Alston’s view. “It is the result of a series of deliberate and conscious decisions by key actors who have chosen to prioritize other goals. The wiping out of extreme poverty could readily be achieved if it was a genuine priority of governments”.    In his forthcoming report to the UN General Assembly, he calls on the international community to back the very widely endorsed joint United Nations Social Protection Floor Initiative that aims to guarantee basic income security and access to essential social services for all.    He points out that one of the major obstacles to universal implementation of Social Protection Floors is the ambivalence of key international actors towards the concept, especially the World Bank, which remains reluctant to buy in to the Initiative in a meaningful way and has chosen instead to focus on ‘social safety nets’.    “Unless there is a change of heart on the Bank’s part, the development community will continue to be pushed to focus on so-called ‘social safety nets’, aimed at a limited number of the extreme poor”, says Mr. Alston. “Poverty eradication will continue to be addressed as a matter of bureaucratically defined and designed welfare policy, rather than as a matter of human rights.”    http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SRExtremePovertyIndex.aspx    More than 70 per cent of the world population lacks proper social protection - ILO: World Social Protection Report 2014/15.    A new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO) presents the latest social security trends and finds that most people are without adequate social protection at a time when it is most needed.    More than 70 per cent of the world population is not adequately covered by social protection, says a new report by the International Labour Organization (ILO).    According to the “World Social Protection Report 2014/15: Building economic recovery, inclusive development and social justice,” only 27 per cent of the global population enjoys access to comprehensive social security.    “The global community agreed in 1948 that social security and health care for children, working age people who face unemployment or injury and older persons are a universal human right,” said ILO Deputy Director-General Sandra Polaski. “And yet in 2014 the promise of universal social protection remains unfilled for the large majority of the world’s population.”    Social protection is a key policy tool to reduce poverty and inequality while stimulating inclusive growth by boosting the health and capacity of vulnerable segments of society, increasing their productivity, supporting domestic demand and facilitating the structural transformation of national economies.    “The case for social protection is even more compelling in these times of economic uncertainty, low growth and increased inequality. It is also an issue that the international community should embrace prominently in the post-2015 development agenda,” added Polaski.    Social security and the crisis    The multifaceted function that social protection plays in economies and societies became particularly evident during the recent global financial and economic crisis.    In the first phase of the crisis (2008-09), at least 48 high and middle-income countries put in place stimulus packages totalling US$ 2.4 trillion that devoted roughly a quarter to social protection measures. This support acted as an automatic stabilizer that helped the economies to regain balance and protected the unemployed and vulnerable from economic disaster in the countries where it was extended.    But in the second phase of the crisis, from 2010 onwards, many governments reversed course and embarked prematurely on fiscal consolidation, despite the urgent need to continue supporting vulnerable populations and stabilizing consumption.    “Contrary to public perception, fiscal consolidation measures are not limited to Europe,” said Isabel Ortiz, Director of the ILO Social Protection Department. “In fact, as many as 122 governments are contracting public expenditures in 2014, of which 82 are developing countries.”    “These measures include reforms to the pension, health and welfare systems that often involve reductions in coverage or funding of these systems, the elimination of subsidies and cuts or caps to the number of health and social workers or to their wages. In effect, the cost of fiscal consolidation and adjustment is passed on to populations at a time of low employment and when support is most needed,” she added.    The latest trends show that a number of high-income countries are contracting their social security systems. In the European Union, cuts in social protection have already contributed to increases in poverty which now affects 123 million people or 24 per cent of the population, many of whom are children, women, older persons and persons with disabilities.    On the other hand, a number of middle-income countries are expanding their social protection systems, supporting household incomes and thereby boosting demand-led growth and inclusive development. Brazil has accelerated the expansion of social protection coverage and minimum wages since 2009.    Some lower-income countries, for example Mozambique, have also extended social protection, yet often through temporary safety nets with very low benefit levels. Many of these countries are now undertaking efforts to build social protection floors as part of more comprehensive social protection systems.    More investment needed    The report looks at different social protection trends following a life-cycle approach.    For example, it shows that at the global level, governments allocate only 0.4 per cent of GDP to child and family benefits, with expenditures ranging from 2.2 per cent in Western Europe to 0.2 per cent in Africa and in Asia/Pacific. These investments should be scaled up, considering that about 18,000 children die every day and that many of these deaths could be averted through adequate social protection.    Social protection is a key policy tool to reduce poverty and inequality while stimulating inclusive growth by boosting the health and capacity of vulnerable segments of society, increasing their productivity, supporting domestic demand and facilitating the structural transformation of national economies.    “The case for social protection is even more compelling in these times of economic uncertainty, low growth and increased inequality. It is also an issue that the international community should embrace prominently in the post-2015 development agenda,” added Polaski.    Expenditures for social protection for people during working age (for example, in the event of unemployment, maternity, disability or work injury) vary widely across regions, ranging from 0.5 per cent in Africa to 5.9 per cent in Western Europe. Worldwide, only 12 per cent of unemployed workers receive unemployment benefits, ranging from 64 per cent in Western Europe to less than 3 per cent in the Middle East and in Africa.    Regarding old-age pensions, almost half (49 per cent) of all people over pensionable age do not receive a pension. And for many of those who do have one, pension levels may leave them far below poverty lines. Future pensioners will receive lower pensions in at least 14 European countries.    The report also shows that about 39 per cent of the world population lacks any affiliation to a health system or scheme. The number reaches more than 90 per cent in low-income countries. The ILO estimates that there is a global shortfall of 10.3 million health workers required to ensure quality health services for all in need. Despite these challenges, some countries – including Thailand and South Africa – have achieved universal health coverage in just a few years, showing that it can be done.    The ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) reflects a consensus among governments and employers’ and workers’ organizations from 185 countries on the need to extend social security. The roll-out of social protection floors has also been endorsed by the G20 and the United Nations.    It is now a matter of political will to make it a reality. Modern society can afford to provide social protection.    http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/world-social-security-report/2014/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_310210/lang--en/index.htm http://www.socialsecurityextension.org/gimi/gess/ShowMainPage.do http://www.srfood.org/en/social-protection-2 http://www.who.int/social_determinants/en/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SocialProtection.aspx http://www.fao.org/social-protection/en/ http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_socialprotection.html http://www.ipc-undp.org/pub/IPCOnePager247.pdf http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N14/501/65/PDF/N1450165.pdf?OpenElement http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/EPoverty/A-HRC-26-28-Corr1.pdf    October 2014    With a quarter of the world’s population living in urban slums, a sustainable response to improving the living conditions of the urban poor is necessary, the United Nations agency tasked with promoting environmentally and socially sustainable cities and towns said today.    UN Habitat warned that urban poverty was not just a present problem affecting today’s metropolitan environments but “an ever-growing concern posing development and humanitarian threats to humankind.”    UN-Habitat Executive Director Dr. Joan Clos said " slums are a manifestation of rapid unchecked urbanisation – a result of allowing our cities to expand without design or regulation and with disregard to their citizens,” adding that while continuing to upgrade the slums there was an urgent need to focus efforts on robust urban planning and the provision of safe, affordable housing that is appropriate and adequate for our citizens’ growing needs.    The Director of Good People Kenya Ms. Grace Lee said: We exist for the poor people living around us, especially those who are suffering from poverty, disease and other disasters. We want to make their situation known throughout the world, so that we can provide the right services, through health care, environmental changes, and quality education.”    The theme of this year’s World Habitat Day, is Voices from the Slums – an effort to highlight the hardships of slum living through the voices of the urban poor while also giving rise to their experiences and ideas about improving their living conditions.    The UN agency voiced hope that the dialogue will focus on the broad range of issues related to the integration of life in the slum into the city; identify policy formulation and capacity development issues in which the UN can offer contributions; and identify key stakeholders in slum upgrading and adequate housing and actively engage them.    Among the measures, is the creation of the Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme (PSUP) which seeks to work with African, Caribbean and Pacific nations in helping them upgrade the living standards of the urban poor.    “A sustainable response to improving the living conditions of the urban poor can only be achieved through the concerted and coordinated efforts of all relevant urban stakeholders,” the UN Habitat press release declared.    “This is done by improving the capacity of relevant urban actors, from concerned authorities to slum dwellers themselves, to collectively asses their urban development needs, devise city-wide strategies to improve living conditions and to implement these solutions.”    In some cities, up to 80 per cent of the population lives in slums. Fifty-five million new slum dwellers have been added to the global population since 2000. Sub-Saharan Africa has a slum population of 199.5 million, South Asia 190.7 million, East Asia 189.6 million, Latin America and the Caribbean 110.7 million, Southeast Asia 88.9 million, West Asia 35 million and North Africa 11.8 million.    There were at least 863 million people living in slums, according to 2012 figures from UN-Habitat report, in contrast to 760 million in 2000 and 650 million in 1990.    Rapid urbanization places remarkable strain on housing and serviced land.    By 2030, about 3 billion people, or about 40 per cent of the world’s population, will need proper housing and access to basic infrastructure and services such as water and sanitation systems.    Unfortunately, especially in the developing world, supply is often limited by inadequate governance systems and human resource deficiencies, as well as by institutions and regulations which are either obsolete or lacking in capacity, or are poorly informed. So far, the failure of urban planning and the construction sector in matching demand for homes has resulted in a huge housing backlog that has led to the development of slums in a variety of contexts globally.    Due to constraints in formal housing and land delivery systems, more and more people who would otherwise qualify for housing programmes are resorting to slum settlements.    In the sprawling Kenyan slum of Mtwapa, located some 500 kilometres from Nairobi in the African country’s coastal region, the PSUP initiative is already bearing concrete results as pilot activities are undertaken with the aim of benefitting over 20,000 people.    In a recent interview with UN Habitat, Caleb Omondi, a Mtwapa resident, expressed hope at the prospects of an upgrade in living conditions.    “When I heard about this project through our local village association I was happy,” said Mr. Omondi. “We have very many problems in Mtwapa including blocked drainages, poor waste disposal and scarce job opportunities which bites the youth the most.”    http://unhabitat.org/world-habitat-day/ http://www.sdinet.org/ http://www.ohchr.org/en/issues/housing/pages/housingindex.aspx http://www.irinnews.org/film/4911/Kenya-The-Right-to-Stay http://www.irinnews.org/film/4142/Kenya-Slum-Survivors http://tve.org/films/slum-futures/index.html http://www.workwithus2015.org/ http://streetchildren.org/ http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Children/Study/Pages/childrenonthestreet.aspx http://participate2015.org/blog/ http://www.participate2015.org/links/ http://www.participate2015.org/publications/ http://www.ids.ac.uk/project/participate-knowledge-from-the-margins-for-post-2015    2.2 billion people are poor - 2014 Human Development Report. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)    According to income-based measures of poverty, 1.2 billion people live with $1.25 or less a day. However, the latest estimates of the UNDP Multidimensional Poverty Index reveal that almost 1.5 billion people in 91 developing countries are living in poverty with overlapping deprivations in health, education and living standards. And although poverty is declining overall, almost 800 million people are at risk of falling back into poverty if setbacks occur.    Entitled Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience, the 2014 Human Development Report provides a fresh perspective on vulnerability and proposes ways to strengthen resilience. Persistent vulnerability threatens human development. And unless it is systematically tackled by policies and social norms, progress will be neither equitable nor sustainable.    “By addressing vulnerabilities, all people may share in development progress, and human development will become increasingly equitable and sustainable,” stated UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.    The 2014 Human Development Report comes at a critical time, as attention turns to the creation of a new development agenda following the 2015 deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals.    The Report holds that as crises spread ever faster and further, it is critical to understand vulnerability in order to secure gains and sustain progress.    It points to a slowdown in human development growth across all regions, as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI). It notes that threats such as financial crises, fluctuations in food prices, natural disasters and violent conflict significantly impede progress.    “Reducing both poverty and people"s vulnerability to falling into poverty must be a central objective of the post-2015 agenda,” the Report states. “Eliminating extreme poverty is not just about "getting to zero"; it is also about staying there.”    “Reducing vulnerability is a key ingredient in any agenda for improving human development,” writes Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, in a contribution to the Report. “We need to approach it from a broad systemic perspective.”    The 2014 Report takes such an approach, using a human development lens to take a fresh look at vulnerability as an overlapping and mutually reinforcing set of risks.    It explores structural vulnerabilities – those that have persisted and compounded over time as a result of discrimination and institutional failings, hurting groups such as the poor, women, migrants, people living with disabilities, indigenous groups and older people.    For instance, 80 percent of the world’s elderly lack social protection, with large numbers of older people also poor and disabled.    The Report also introduces the idea of life cycle vulnerabilities, the sensitive points in life where shocks can have greater impact. They include the first 1,000 days of life, and the transitions from school to work, and from work to retirement.    “Capabilities accumulate over an individual’s lifetime and have to be nurtured and maintained; otherwise they can stagnate and even decline,” it warns. “Life capabilities are affected by investments made in preceding stages of life, and there can be long-term consequences of exposure to short-term shocks.”    For example, in one study cited by the Report, poor children in Ecuador were shown to be already at a vocabulary disadvantage by the age of six.    Timely interventions—such as investments in early childhood development—are therefore critical, the Report states.    The Report advocates for the universal provision of basic social services to enhance resilience, refuting the notion that only wealthy countries can afford to do this. It presents a comparative analysis of countries of differing income levels and systems of government that have either started to implement or have fully implemented such policies.    Those countries include not only the usual suspects such as Denmark, Norway and Sweden, but also economies such as Republic of Korea and developing countries such as Costa Rica.    “These countries started putting in place measures of social insurance when their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was lower than India’s and Pakistan’s now,” the Report observes.    However, “there may be instances in which equal opportunities require unequal treatment,” notes Khalid Malik, Director of UNDP’s Human Development Report Office. “Greater resources and services may need to be provided to the poor, the excluded and the marginalized to enhance everyone’s capabilities and life choices.”    The Report calls for governments to recommit to the objective of full employment, a mainstay of macroeconomic policies of the 1950s and 1960s that was overtaken by competing policy goals following the oil shocks of the 1970s.    It argues that full employment yields social dividends that surpass private benefits, such as fostering social stability and cohesion.    Acknowledging the challenges that developing countries face with respect to full employment, it urges a focus on structural transformation “so that modern formal employment gradually incorporates most of the workforce,” including a transition from agriculture into industry and services, with supporting investments in infrastructure and education.    The majority of the world’s population lacks comprehensive social protections such as pensions and unemployment insurance. The Report argues that such measures are achievable by countries at all stages of development.    “Providing basic social security benefits to the world’s poor would cost less than 2 percent of global GDP,” it asserts. It cites estimates of the cost of providing a basic social protection floor—including universal basic old age and disability pensions, basic childcare benefits, universal access to essential health care, social assistance and a 100-day employment scheme—for 12 low-income African and Asian countries, ranging from about 10 percent of GDP in Burkina Faso to less than 4 percent of GDP in India.    “A basic social protection package is affordable so long as low-income countries reallocate funds and raise domestic resources, coupled with support by the international donor community,” it states.    The Report also calls for stronger collective action, as well as better global coordination and commitment to shoring up resilience, in response to vulnerabilities that are increasingly global in origin and impact.    Threats ranging from financial crises to climate change to conflicts are trans-national in nature, but the effects are experienced locally and nationally and often overlap. Take the case of Niger, which has faced severe food and nutrition crises brought on by a series of droughts. At the same time, Niger had to cope with an influx of refugees fleeing conflict in neighbouring Mali.    Trans-national threats cannot be resolved by individual nations acting independently; they require a new focus from the international community that goes beyond short-term responses like humanitarian assistance, the Report argues.    To increase support for national programmes and open up policy space for nations to adapt universalism to specific country conditions, the Report calls for “an international consensus on universal social protection” to be included in the post-2015 agenda.    “Setbacks are not inevitable. While every society is vulnerable to risk, some suffer far less harm and recover more quickly than others when adversity strikes,” noted UNDP Administrator Helen Clark.    “By addressing vulnerabilities, all people may share in development progress, and human development will become increasingly equitable and sustainable.”    This year’s report explores structural vulnerabilities – those that have persisted and compounded over time as a result of discrimination and institutional failings, hurting groups such as the poor, women, migrants, people with disabilities, indigenous groups and older people.    It also introduces the idea of life cycle vulnerabilities – the sensitive points in life where shocks can have greater impact. These include the first 1,000 days of life, and the transitions from school to work, and from work to retirement.    Khalid Malik, Director of the Human Development Report Office, highlighted how the 2014 report differs from last year’s, which was more upbeat.    “This year’s report is also trying to look at those who have not done so well. And also look at how the world itself is getting a little bit more fractious, a little less predictable,” he said.    “There is a growing sense of unease as if somehow people are not in control of their own destinies. It’s both at the country level and it’s also on the global level. And this report tries to dig into those issues of vulnerability and then try to understand what policies, what measures are needed to make people and societies more resilient.”    Among other recommendations, the report calls for universal access to basic social services, especially health and education; stronger social protection, including unemployment insurance and pensions; and a commitment to full employment, recognizing that the value of employment extends far beyond the income it generates.    It recognizes that no matter how effective policies are in reducing inherent vulnerabilities, crises will continue to occur with potentially destructive consequences. Building capacities for disaster preparedness and recovery, which enable communities to better weather – and recover from – shocks, is vital.    This year’s report also points to a slowdown in human development growth across all regions, as measured by the Human Development Index (HDI), pointing to threats such as financial crises, fluctuations in food prices, natural disasters and violent conflict that impede progress.    The steepest declines in HDI values this year occurred in Central African Republic, Libya and Syria, where ongoing conflict contributed to a drop in incomes.    A new index featured this year is the Gender Development Index (GDI), which for the first time measures the gender gap in human development achievements for 148 countries. It reveals that in 16 countries (Argentina, Barbados, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Mongolia, Poland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Ukraine and Uruguay), female HDI values are equal or higher than those for males.    For some of these countries, this may be attributed to higher female educational achievement; for others, to a significantly longer female life expectancy – over five years longer than that of males.    Afghanistan, where the human development index for females is only 60 per cent of that for males, is the most unequal country.    * Human Development Report: http://hdr.undp.org http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/events/2014/july/HDR2014.html
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