Goal #1End Hunger & Extreme Poverty
Introduction
Over the years, we've been inundated with the statistics and the pictures of poverty around the world-so much so that many people in both the North and South have come to accept it as an unfortunate but unalterable state of affairs. The truth, however, is that things have changed in recent years. The world today is more prosperous than it ever has been. The technological advances we have seen in recent years have created encouraging new opportunities to improve economies and reduce hunger.
The targets
Goal 1 of the Millennium Development Goals sets out by the year 2015:
1. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar a day.
2. Achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all, including women and young people.
3. Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Did you know?
Did you know that in our world today:
- One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes. That’s 270 million people since 1990, the majority women and children, roughly equal to the population of the US. (Reality of Aid 2004)
- Every year more than 10 million children die of hunger and preventable diseases – that’s over 30,000 per day and one every 3 seconds. (80 Million Lives, 2003 / Bread for the World / UNICEF / World Health Organization)
Achieving the Goals
Doctors at a local health clinic in Brazil learned the reason their patients who regularly came in with health problems related to poverty stopped coming was due to a national anti-hunger program that gave children three meals a day.
“It was simply that these children were starting to eat better,” says Nélia Maria Cruz, the clinic’s chief.
The children were among thousands who have benefited from Fome Zero (“Zero Hunger”), a national effort to eliminate hunger in Brazil.
The program’s formula is simple: Give each Brazilian the opportunity to have at least three meals a day. It might not seem like such a bold challenge but approximately one quarter of Brazil’s 170 million people currently live below the poverty line.
To meet the immediate needs of everyone who goes hungry in the country, the government needs to provide emergency help to 11 million families, according to official estimates. At the same time, the effort must include long-term actions to enable the population to manage on its own, so that in the future every family is able to buy its own food.
by Rogerio Waldrigues Galindo from Perspectives in Health
Goal News
Following reports that the Philippines, including other Asian countries, is in danger of not halving extreme poverty rates by 2015, the United Nations (UN) Millennium Campaign, together with various civil society organizations, urged the administration of President Aquino to immediately come up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Breakthrough Plan for the country in time for the UN General Assembly next month in New York.
New Analysis Reveals African Countries Top List of 20 Countries Making Most Overall Progress on MDGs
As G-8 and G-20 leaders prepare to gather in Canada, new analysis issued by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the United Nations Millennium Campaign finds that, in absolute terms, many of the world’s poorest countries are making the most overall progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the set of promises world leaders made to significantly reduce extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease by 2015.
European citizens took their demands that world leaders end poverty to the European Parliament today, where a giant petition symbolic of the voices of 505,823 Europeans who have signed an e-card to their leaders was handed over to the President of the
European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, by the UN Millennium Campaign, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and dozens of civil society organizations. The petition was presented as the European Council prepares to meet on June 18 to decide the European Union’s (EU) position on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
On March 29, Members of Parliament from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe launched a network of Parliamentarians for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a consultative meeting held in Abuja, Nigeria. Through this network, they committed to speak with one voice to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achieved.
The network members called for an ambitious agenda to address the poverty and inequality bedeviling the African continent and stressed that achieving the MDGs is an important first step.
Scoring goals
In the western Kenyan village of Sauri, near Lake Victoria, the crops don’t fail, nearly all the children attend school, malaria is almost non-existent and medical care is free.
