Global Poverty and Resilience

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other national and international agencies now recognize that building resilience is one of the foundational strategies to enable poor and vulnerable communities to surmount increasingly harsh and multifaceted calamities– hunger, disease, and destruction of habitat and livelihood. Integral resilience and international human rights most closely intersect in this last and most tragic domain.

It is increasingly recognized by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and other national and international agencies that building resilience is one of the foundational strategies to enable poor and vulnerable communities to surmount increasingly harsh and multifaceted calamities– hunger, disease, and destruction of habitat and livelihood. Integral resilience and international human rights most closely intersect in this last and most tragic area.

In September 2015, all 193 Member States of the United Nations adopted a plan for achieving a better future for all – setting out a path over the next 15 years to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and protect our planet. At the heart of “Agenda 2030” are the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that clearly define a world we seek, applicable to all nations, leaving no one behind. Forbes reports that there are now a record 2,208 billionaires in the world. These individuals possess a collective net worth of $9.1 trillion USD, one percent of which could close approximately half of the SDG financing gap in the world’s lowest income countries.

A new global initiative has just been launched, Move Humanity, to raise these funds and deployment to building resilience especially in the poorest communities and thereby reaching the SDGs by 2030. It envisions mobilizing an additional $91 billion per year that will:

• Bring 1 billion humans living on less than $2 per day out of extreme poverty.
• Save more than 6 million children per year from dying before their fifth birthday from preventable diseases.
• Put 263 million children through school.

Give future generations a chance by protecting the planet from climate change.

Notes:

• Announcing SDSN’s Newest Initiative: Move Humanity
• Move Humanity – Ending Extreme Poverty
• The UN Sustainable Development Goals 
• Millions of Latin Americans risk sliding back into poverty; new generation of public policies crucial to prevent setbacks, UNDP
• The Moral Egregiousness of Poverty is Worse than Ever Before in History
• Building the Resilience of the Poor in the Face of Natural Disasters

Next: Resilience, Health Justice, and International Human Rights