Implementation of the 1st United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006), Including the Initiative to Establish a World Solidarity Fund for Poverty Eradication

A/RES/55/210View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 99 Implementation of the 1st United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty, published in 2001.

What subjects does this mandate have?

19 subjects

Basic Services Capacity Building Consultations Debt Relief Debt Servicing Development Assistance Development Strategies Economic Growth Economic Policy Education Gender Mainstreaming Globalization Governance Hiv/Aids Prevention Human Development Microcredit Poverty Mitigation Primary Education Technology Transfer

What’s in this document?

26 operative paragraphs

Stresses that the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty should contribute to achieving the targets of halving, by 2015, the proportion of the world’s people whose income is less than one dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer from hunger, through decisive national action and strengthened international cooperation;

Calls for strengthened efforts at all levels to implement fully and effectively the relevant resolutions and decisions of the United Nations and all agreements and commitments adopted at the major United Nations conferences and summits organized since 1990, as well as the United Nations Millennium Declaration,4 as they relate to the eradication of poverty, with a view to achieving tangible results;

Stresses the importance of tackling the root causes of poverty and the necessity of meeting the basic needs of all, and, in this context, emphasizes the fundamental role in the eradication of poverty of strong and sustained economic growth that favours the poor, creates substantive expansion in productive opportunities and employment, increases incomes, promotes equitable income distribution and minimizes environmental degradation;

Reaffirms that the causes of poverty should be addressed in an integrated way, taking into account the importance of sectoral strategies in such areas as education, development of human resources, health, human settlements, rural development, productive employment, population, environment, freshwater, food security and migration, and the specific needs of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups, in such a way as to increase opportunities and choices for people living in poverty and to enable them to build and to strengthen their assets so as to achieve social and economic development;

Stresses the importance of increasing access to and control by the poor over resources, including land, skills, knowledge, capital and social connections, and of improving access for all to basic social services;

Recognizes the importance of the adoption of appropriate policy responses to the challenges of globalization at the national level, in particular by pursuing sound and stable domestic policies, including sound macroeconomic and social policies, in order to realize the objective of the eradication of poverty;

Reaffirms that, within the context of overall action for the eradication of poverty, special attention should be given to the multidimensional nature of poverty and the national and international conditions and policies that are conducive to its eradication, fostering, inter alia, the social and economic integration of people living in poverty, thus empowering them to participate in decision-making with regard to the policies that affect them, the promotion and protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, including the right to development, bearing in mind the relationship between all human rights and development, and an efficient, transparent and accountable public service and administration;

Also reaffirms, as set out in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, that success in meeting the objectives of development and poverty eradication depends, inter alia, on good governance within each country; it also depends on good governance at the international level, on transparency in the financial, monetary and trading systems and on commitment to an open, equitable, rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory multilateral trading and financial system;

Calls upon all countries to formulate and implement outcome-oriented national strategies and programmes, setting time-bound targets for poverty reduction, including the target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty, which requires strengthening of national action and international cooperation;

Urges the strengthening of international assistance to developing countries in their efforts to alleviate poverty, including by creating an enabling environment that would facilitate the integration of developing countries into the world economy, improving their market access, facilitating the flow of financial resources and implementing fully and effectively all initiatives already launched regarding debt relief for developing countries, and emphasizes that the international community should consider further measures that would lead to effective, equitable, development-oriented and durable solutions to the external debt and debt-servicing problems of developing countries so that they can share equally in the benefits of globalization, cope with its negative effects, avoid being marginalized in the process of globalization and achieve full integration into the world economy;

Reaffirms that all Governments and the United Nations system should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes aimed at the eradication of poverty, at both the national and international levels, and encourages the use of gender analysis as a tool for the integration of a gender dimension into planning the implementation of policies, strategies and programmes for the eradication of poverty;

Expresses its appreciation to the developed countries that have agreed to and have reached the target of 0.7 per cent of their gross national product for overall official development assistance, and calls upon the developed countries that have not yet done so to strengthen their efforts to achieve the agreed target as soon as possible and, where agreed, within that target, to earmark 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of their gross national product for the least developed countries;

Reaffirms the role of United Nations funds and programmes, in particular the United Nations Development Programme, in assisting the national efforts of developing countries, including in the eradication of poverty, and the need for their funding in accordance with relevant resolutions of the United Nations;

Welcomes favourably the proposal submitted regarding the establishment of a world solidarity fund for poverty eradication, which will contribute to the eradication of poverty and the promotion of social and human development in the poorest regions of the world, and requests the Secretary-General to undertake the necessary consultations with Member States and all relevant stakeholders on this issue, bearing in mind the voluntary nature of the contributions, and to report to the General Assembly at its fifty-sixth session;

Emphasizes the role of microcredit as an important anti-poverty tool that promotes the generation of production and self-employment and empowers people living in poverty, especially women, and therefore encourages Governments to adopt policies that support the development of microcredit institutions and their capacities, and calls upon the international community, in particular the relevant organs, organizations and bodies of the United Nations system and international and regional financial institutions involved in the eradication of poverty, to support and explore the incorporation of the microcredit approach into their programmes and the further development, as appropriate, of other microfinance instruments;

Calls upon the developed countries, by means of intensified and effective cooperation with developing countries, to promote capacity-building and facilitate access to and transfer of technologies and corresponding knowledge, in particular to developing countries, on favourable terms, including concessional and preferential terms, as mutually agreed, taking into account the need to protect intellectual property rights, as well as the special needs of developing countries, by identifying and implementing practical steps to ensure the achievement of progress in this regard and to assist developing countries in their efforts to eradicate poverty in an era influenced in large measure by technology;

Emphasizes the critical role of both formal and non-formal education, particularly basic education, and training, in particular for girls, in the empowerment of those living in poverty, and, in this context, welcomes the Dakar Framework for Action adopted at the World Education Forum,⁷ including the reconfirmation of the mandate of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to coordinate Education for All partners and maintain their collective momentum, and invites the organs and bodies of the United Nations system, in particular the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund, to promote the inclusion of education in anti-poverty strategies;

⁷See Final Report of the World Education Forum, Dakar, Senegal, 26-28 April 2000, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Paris, 2000.

Recalls the commitments of the United Nations conferences and summits to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005 and to promote universal primary education in all countries by 2015, and, in this regard, urges Member States to take immediate measures to remove obstacles to young girls’ school attendance and to reduce drop-out rates;

Welcomes the efforts made by the United Nations system to assign priority to the eradication of poverty and to enhance coordination, and, in this regard, encourages the organizations of the United Nations system, including the Bretton Woods institutions, and other partners in development to continue to support all Member States in carrying forward their own strategy for the achievement of the objectives of the Decade;

Reaffirms the importance of agreeing on a mutual commitment of interested developed and developing country partners to allocate, on average, 20 per cent of official development assistance and 20 per cent of the national budget, respectively, to basic social programmes, and welcomes the efforts made to implement the 20/20 initiative,⁸ which emphasizes that promoting access for all to basic social services is essential for sustainable and equitable development and is an integral part of the strategy for the eradication of poverty;

⁸See A/51/140, annex, and A/53/684, annex.

Recognizes the devastating effect of the human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) epidemic on human development, economic growth and poverty reduction efforts in many countries, in particular African countries, and urges Governments and the international community to give urgent priority to the HIV/AIDS crisis, in particular addressing the special needs of developing countries by strengthening the relevant commitments through partnerships as agreed by the General Assembly at its twenty-fourth special session, and, in this regard, welcomes the convening of a special session of the General Assembly to review and address the problem of HIV/AIDS in all its aspects;

Urges the implementation of the enhanced programme of debt relief for the heavily indebted poor countries without delay and the cancellation of all official bilateral debts of those countries, in the context of poverty eradication, in return for their making demonstrable commitments to poverty reduction as part of their overall development strategy;

Recognizes the difficulties of heavily indebted middle-income developing countries in meeting their external debt and debt-servicing obligations, and notes the worsening situation in some of them in the context, inter alia, of greater liquidity constraints, which may require debt treatment through various national and international measures designed to assist those countries to make their debt burden sustainable in the long term and to combat poverty effectively;

Encourages the continuing examination in all relevant intergovernmental forums of ways and means to integrate poverty reduction objectives and strategies into discussions on international financial and development issues;

Requests the Secretary-General, in the context of the follow-up to the United Nations Millennium Declaration, to submit to it at its fifty-sixth session a comprehensive report containing an evaluation of progress made towards achieving the goals of the Decade, as well as in the achievement of the 2015 targets on poverty reduction, and recommendations for further action to achieve the 2015 targets, including the identification of resource requirements and possible sources of funding;

Decides to include in the provisional agenda of its fifty-sixth session the item entitled “Implementation of the first United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997–2006)”.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

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