Strategies for Eradicating Poverty to Achieve Sustainable Development for All

E/RES/2018/5View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the Economic and Social Council, under agenda item 19b Social development, published in 2018.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

3 entities

(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited
Subprogramme 2	Inclusive social development	59
Programme 18	Economic and social development in latin america and the caribbean	234
Programme 16	Economic and social development in asia and the pacific	254

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

3 entities

(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
Subprogramme 2	Inclusive social development	59	—
Programme 18	Economic and social development in latin america and the caribbean	234	—
Programme 16	Economic and social development in asia and the pacific	254	—

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

What subjects does this mandate have?

5 subjects

Development Strategies Poverty Mitigation Social Development Social Policy Sustainable Development

What’s in this document?

57 operative paragraphs

Takes note of the report of the Secretary-General;³

³E/CN.5/2018/3.

Recognizes that poverty eradication, full and productive employment and decent work for all, including promoting social dialogue, and social integration are interrelated and mutually reinforcing, that an internal and external enabling environment therefore needs to be created so that these objectives can be pursued simultaneously and that policies to pursue these objectives must promote social justice, social cohesion, intergenerational solidarity and economic recovery and growth, and must be economically, socially and environmentally sustainable;

Emphasizes that the international community, through the outcome documents of the major United Nations conferences and summits, including the World Summit for Social Development1 and the twenty-fourth special session of the General Assembly,2 the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development⁴ and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development,⁵ has reinforced the urgency of eradicating poverty in all its forms and dimensions, combating inequality within and among countries, preserving the planet, creating sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth and fostering social inclusion within the United Nations development agenda;

⁴General Assembly resolution 70/1.

⁵General Assembly resolution 69/313, annex.

Stresses that Member States should take all measures necessary in order to leave no one behind, while respecting the human rights of all and promoting social protection and equal access to quality essential public services for all, such as quality education and health care, including maternity, newborn, child, long-term and palliative care and social care services, and recognizes that this involves the active participation of every member of society, without any kind of discrimination, in civic, social, economic, cultural and political activities and in decision-making processes at all levels;

Also stresses that special efforts should be made to foster and enhance the participation of all members of society, including people living in poverty and those who are vulnerable or marginalized, in all aspects of political, economic, social, civic and cultural life, in particular the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, as appropriate, of policies that affect them;

Recognizes that eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity require collective and transformative efforts, putting the furthest behind first and adapting institutions and policies to take into account the multidimensional nature of poverty and the inherent interlinkages between different Goals and targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

Calls upon the international community, including Member States, to continue their ambitious efforts to strive for more inclusive, equitable, balanced, stable and development-oriented sustainable socioeconomic approaches to overcoming poverty, and, in view of the negative impact of inequality, including gender inequality, on poverty, emphasizes the importance of structural transformation that leads to inclusive and sustainable industrialization for employment creation and poverty reduction, investing in sustainable agriculture and quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all, enhancing interconnectivity and achieving access to energy, and improving access to financial services, as well as promoting decent rural employment, improving access to quality education, promoting quality health care, including through the acceleration of the transition towards equitable access to universal health coverage, advancing gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, expanding social protection coverage, climate change mitigation and adaptation and combating inequality and social exclusion;

Recognizes that the creation of full and productive employment and decent work for all should be a central objective of national policies and that macroeconomic policies should contribute to creating more and better job opportunities and an environment that supports investment, growth and entrepreneurship, which is essential for the creation of new jobs, and calls for the respect, promotion and realization of fundamental principles and rights at work, in accordance with the International Labour Organization Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work;

Also recognizes that, to keep up with the growth of the global working population, more than 600 million new jobs will need to be created by 2030, while at the same time poor job quality, underemployment and informal work, which remain pervasive worldwide, particularly in developing countries, will need to be addressed, and underlines the need to support innovative approaches in the design and implementation of employment policies and programmes for all, including the long-term unemployed, such as public investment in infrastructure, the promotion of decent work and support to entrepreneurs;

Emphasizes that addressing these challenges requires a mix of policies that sustain growth of output and decent jobs, which could include existing labour market policies that have been strengthened, redefined and reoriented, and in this regard acknowledges the vital role that the private sector can play in generating new investments, employment and financing for development and in advancing efforts towards full and productive employment and decent work for all, and encourages the private sector, including small and medium-sized enterprises and cooperatives, to contribute to decent work for all and job creation for both women and men, and particularly for young people, including through partnerships with Governments, the United Nations system, civil society and academia;

Urges Member States to ensure active labour market policies, in order to provide decent work for people living in poverty and a fair share for workers of gains from increased productivity resulting from structural transformation and trade, and to accelerate efforts to eliminate barriers to social inclusion and to promote full participation in all aspects of society by people living in poverty and in vulnerable situations, including women, children, youth, indigenous peoples, local communities, older persons, persons with disabilities, migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and people of African descent;

Also urges Member States to promote and respect the right to education throughout the life cycle at all levels, especially for those who have been left furthest behind, including by providing universal access to quality education, ensuring inclusive, equal and non-discriminatory quality education, enhancing the recruitment and training of teachers, promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all and the completion of primary and secondary education and eliminating gender disparities in access to all areas of secondary and tertiary education, promoting financial and digital literacy, ensuring that women and girls in particular have equal access to career development, training, scholarships and fellowships and adopting positive action to build the leadership skills and influence of women and girls, and to adopt measures that promote, respect and guarantee the safety of women and girls in the school environment and that support persons with disabilities at all levels of education and training;

Reiterates that access to quality formal and non-formal education, at all levels, including, as appropriate, catch-up and literacy education and lifelong learning, including in information and communications technologies, for those who did not receive formal education, information and communications technologies and volunteerism are important factors that enable people of all ages, particularly young people, to acquire the relevant skills and to build their capacities, including for employability and entrepreneurial development, and to gain decent and productive work, and calls upon Member States to take the action necessary to ensure that young people in particular have access to such services and opportunities;

Urges Member States to continue their efforts to reduce the burden of disease and improve the health and well-being of their people by addressing the social determinants of health, promoting universal health coverage, increasing the coverage of child immunization, expanding HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis prevention, diagnosis and treatment programmes, supporting community-based service delivery, providing safe drinking water and sanitation and improving nutrition;

Calls upon Member States to accelerate progress towards the goal of universal health coverage, which implies that all people have equal access, without discrimination of any kind, to nationally determined sets of quality promotive, preventive, curative, rehabilitative and palliative basic health services needed and essential, safe, affordable, effective and quality medicines, while ensuring that the use of such services and medicines does not expose the users to financial hardship, with a specific emphasis on the poor, vulnerable and marginalized segments of the population;

Calls upon the international community and global health partners, as well as regional and national stakeholders, to support Member States in carrying out their primary responsibilities to accelerate the transition towards universal health coverage, and tackle social, economic and environmental determinants of health, as well as demographic challenges, including population ageing, provide social protection and adopt integrated, people-centred, community-based and gender-responsive health services based on human rights, which will help to empower those who are vulnerable or in vulnerable situations, enhance health equity and equality, end discrimination and create a more inclusive society;

Expresses deep concern that maternal health remains one area constrained by some of the largest health inequities in the world, and over the uneven progress in improving newborn, child and maternal health, and in this context calls upon States to implement their commitments to preventing and reducing newborn, child and maternal mortality and morbidity through, inter alia, equitable and universal access to affordable and quality health-care services and preventive health-care information, including in the area of sexual and reproductive health;

Encourages Member States to provide universal and age-, disability- and gender-sensitive social protection systems, which are key to ensuring poverty reduction, including, as appropriate, targeted cash transfers for families in vulnerable situations, such as when headed by a single parent, in particular those headed by women, and which are most effective in reducing poverty when accompanied by other measures, such as providing access to basic services, high-quality education and health services;

Also encourages Member States, in the context of their national sustainable development frameworks and the associated integrated financing frameworks, to formulate and implement national strategies to extend social security and essential social services to all, that are responsive to shocks, sustainable in the long run and focused on those furthest below the poverty line, within their economic and fiscal capacities;

Urges Member States, in accordance with national circumstances, to establish as quickly as possible and maintain the social protection floors that comprise basic social security, so that all persons in need have access to essential health care, including maternity, newborn, child, long-term and palliative care, that meets the criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality, and to ensure basic income security for children, basic income security for persons of active age who are unable to earn sufficient income, in particular in cases of sickness, unemployment, maternity and disability, inter alia, in the context of efforts to enable employment, and basic income security for older persons, as set out in the Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No. 202) of the International Labour Organization;

Encourages Member States, when designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating social protection programmes, to ensure gender mainstreaming and the promotion and protection of all human rights, in accordance with their obligations under international human rights law, throughout the process;

Recognizes the importance of providing social protection schemes for the formal and informal economy as instruments for achieving equity, inclusion and stability and cohesion of societies, and emphasizes the importance of supporting national efforts aimed at bringing informal workers into the formal economy;

Welcomes the importance accorded by the Economic and Social Council forum on financing for development follow-up at its 2017 session, inter alia, to the need to ensure that social protection systems and measures for all, including social protection floors, are well designed, efficiently operated, responsive to shocks and sustainable in the long term, appreciates in this context the commitment to expand peer learning and experience-sharing among countries and regions and the encouragement given to international capacity-building support to help countries to identify the right financing mixes to match their respective needs, capacities and national circumstances, and also appreciates the invitation by the forum to its Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development to compile an inventory of relevant domestic and international financial instruments and modalities and existing quick-disbursing international facilities and the requirements for accessing them, for assured provision of social protection, for discussion at the 2018 session of the forum;

Also welcomes the progress on financial inclusion across all income groups and all regions in recent years, while being concerned that 2 billion people, primarily in rural areas in developing countries, still do not have access to formal financial services and remaining concerned about the gender gap in financial inclusion;

Calls upon States to promote more equitable participation in and access to economic growth gains, such as through policies that aim to ensure inclusive labour markets, socially responsive macroeconomic policies in which the creation of more and better job opportunities has a key role and social inclusion strategies that promote social integration, and by providing fiscally sustainable and nationally appropriate social protection systems, including floors, for all members of society, including those who are vulnerable or marginalized;

Also calls upon States to support innovative and inclusive finance that promotes universal access for individuals and micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, and in particular women, youth and other disadvantaged groups, at a reasonable cost, to a wide range of financial services, given that such services can be an effective tool to significantly reduce poverty and lower income inequality when delivered through a coordinated and sustained effort among Governments, the private sector, development partners and consumers;

Emphasizes the importance of strengthening the productive capacities of the least developed countries in all sectors, including through structural transformation, and adopting policies that increase productive capacities, productivity and productive employment; financial inclusion; sustainable agriculture, pastoralist and fisheries development; sustainable industrial development; universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy services; sustainable transport systems; and quality and resilient infrastructure;

Also emphasizes the essential role of inclusive and sustainable industrial development as part of a comprehensive strategy of structural economic transformation in eradicating poverty and supporting sustained economic growth and thus in contributing to achieving sustainable development in developing countries;

Encourages States to make public investments in infrastructure and, where viable, to promote an increase in private investments in infrastructure that prioritize social and economic inclusion and accessibility, boost interconnectivity, trade and regional integration and meet the needs of poor people, disadvantaged areas, local communities and others that are in vulnerable situations;

Also encourages States to promote equitable, affordable, accessible and sustainable basic physical and social infrastructure for all, without discrimination, including affordable serviced land, rural roads, irrigation, affordable housing, modern and renewable energy, electrification, safe drinking water and sanitation, nutritious and adequate food, waste disposal, sustainable mobility, mass transit systems, health-care facilities and family planning, education, culture, and information and communications technologies;

Urges Member States to develop gender- and youth-responsive policies, programmes and strategies in agriculture and fisheries that revitalize and reinvest in the rural non-farm economy, smallholder farmers and fishers, particularly women farmers and fishers, by, inter alia, increasing public and private investment in agricultural research and extension services, developing rural and urban areas and sustainable agriculture and fisheries, undertaking small-scale mechanization, increasing the usage of high-yielding seed varieties and fertilizers and improving infrastructure and access to markets, as well as improving strategies for transferring readily adaptable technologies to local farmers;

Expresses deep concern that climate change and environmental degradation pose a challenge to poverty eradication and the achievement of sustainable development, threaten food security and increase the risks of famine, and that those living in poverty, especially in developing countries, are disproportionately affected by the impacts of desertification, deforestation, sand and dust storms, natural disasters, persistent drought, extreme weather events, sea level rise, coastal erosion and ocean acidification, and underlines the need for climate-related vulnerability to be well incorporated into national development plans and strategies for eradicating poverty and reducing inequality and for social protection systems to be established and developed to withstand emergency situations, in order to protect those who are most vulnerable;

Stresses that the impacts of natural disasters, climate change, conflicts and major outbreaks of disease are severely hampering efforts to achieve poverty eradication, in particular in developing countries, and calls upon the international community to give priority to addressing them;

Reaffirms the commitment to achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls, including through the mainstreaming of a gender perspective into all development efforts and recognizes that these will make a crucial contribution to progress across all of the Sustainable Development Goals and targets, including efforts to combat hunger, poverty and disease, to strengthen policies and programmes that improve, ensure and broaden the full and equal participation of women in all spheres of political, economic, social and cultural life, to improve their access to and remove barriers from all resources needed for the full exercise of all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including ensuring equal access to full and productive employment and decent work, to ensure equal access to quality education for women and girls to strengthen their economic independence, and to improve access to equal opportunities with men and boys in employment, leadership and decision-making at all levels, which is essential for poverty eradication and the empowerment of women and girls;

Recognizes the important role that families can play in the fight against poverty and social exclusion, and highlights the importance of investing in family-oriented policies and programmes in areas such as education, training, decent work, work-family balance, health care, social services, intergenerational relationships and solidarity, and targeted cash transfers for vulnerable families, in order to reduce poverty and hunger and promote the well-being of all persons of all ages, as well as to contribute to better outcomes for children and other vulnerable family members and help to break the intergenerational transfer of poverty;

Invites Member States to invest in a variety of family-oriented policies and programmes, as important tools for, inter alia, fighting poverty, social exclusion and inequality, promoting work-family balance and gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and advancing social integration and intergenerational solidarity, to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

Encourages Member States to strengthen laws and regulatory frameworks that promote the reconciliation and sharing of work and family responsibilities for women and men, including by designing, implementing and promoting family-responsive legislation, policies and services, such as parental and other leave schemes, increased flexibility in working arrangements, support for breastfeeding mothers, development of infrastructure and technology, and the provision of services, including affordable, accessible and quality childcare and care facilities for children and other dependants, and promoting men’s equitable responsibilities with respect to household work as fathers and caregivers, which create an enabling environment for women’s economic empowerment;

Reaffirms the rights of persons with disabilities and the commitment to achieving their full and equal participation in all parts of society, including through the mainstreaming of a disability perspective in all development efforts, and recognizes that this will make a crucial contribution to progress across all of the Sustainable Development Goals and targets, including efforts to combat hunger, poverty and disease, and that social integration and economic policies should seek to reduce inequalities, promote access to basic social services, education, employment and health-care services for all, actively work to eliminate discrimination, increase the participation and integration of social groups, particularly persons with disabilities, and address the potential challenges posed to social development by globalization and market-driven reforms in order for all people in all countries to benefit from globalization;

Recognizes the essential contribution that older persons can continue to make to the functioning of societies and towards the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, while noting with concern the high incidence of poverty among them, and in this regard encourages Member States to take into account the multidimensional nature of the vulnerability of older persons to poverty and economic insecurity, including through the promotion of good health, care and well-being, in their implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals at the national level;

Encourages Governments to pay greater attention to building capacity to eradicate poverty among older persons, in particular older women and older persons with disabilities, by mainstreaming ageing issues into poverty eradication measures, women’s empowerment strategies and national development plans, and to include both ageing-specific policies and ageing-mainstreaming efforts in their national strategies; as well as to consider expanding, in accordance with domestic legislation and policies, the reach of sustainable pension schemes, including but not limited to strategies such as social pensions, and increasing their benefits, with a view to ensuring income security in old age;

Acknowledges the positive contribution of youth, as agents and beneficiaries of development, to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as well as to the general well-being, progress and diversity of society, as a way of contributing to a progressively fairer distribution of opportunities for youth, which will constitute a step forward in economic development, social justice, social integration and equity, and emphasizes the need to substantially increase the number of youth who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship and to ensure, by 2020, that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy;

Reaffirms that the strengthening of international cooperation regarding youth, capacity-building, the enhancement of dialogue, mutual understanding and the active participation of young people are crucial elements in efforts towards achieving the eradication of poverty, social inclusion, full employment and full participation in society, and in this regard stresses the importance of promoting access to health-care services, nationally owned social protection and social services as an essential instrument for empowering youth;

Encourages Member States to consider the impact of rapid technological change and increased interconnectivity on the delivery of social services, and underlines the importance of supporting innovation, fully respecting the right to privacy, mitigating potential related risks that may undermine people’s livelihoods and well-being and supporting the exchange of information, knowledge and good policies and practices at the national, regional and international levels where innovation and new technologies have helped to advance social development, with particular attention to the most marginalized;

Encourages Member States, the United Nations system and all relevant stakeholders to improve data collection, analysis and monitoring to measure and achieve progress in advancing equality, social justice and participation for development policy planning, implementation and evaluation, taking regional contexts fully into account, and to share, where appropriate, relevant data and statistics with relevant agencies and bodies within the United Nations system, including the Statistical Commission, through appropriate mechanisms, and underlines the need to significantly increase the availability of high-quality, timely and reliable disaggregated data, including by sex, age and disability;

Calls upon the United Nations system, in line with the outcomes of the high-level political forum on sustainable development and the Economic and Social Council forum on financing for development follow-up, to support countries, upon their request, in collecting and analysing data and formulating policies on poverty in all its forms and dimensions, in support of national efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

Recognizes that each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development and that significant additional domestic public resources, supplemented by international assistance, as appropriate, will be critical to realizing sustainable development and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, and also recognizes the commitment to enhance revenue administration, in particular through modernized, progressive tax systems, improved tax policy and more efficient tax collection;

Reaffirms the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, and recognizes the need to take steps to significantly increase investment to close resource gaps, including through the mobilization of financial resources from all sources, including public, private, domestic and international resource mobilization and allocation;

Recognizes, in this regard, that national development efforts, including social development efforts, need to be supported by an enabling international economic environment, including coherent and mutually supporting world trade, monetary and financial systems and strengthened and enhanced global economic governance;

Reaffirms that international cooperation has an essential role in assisting developing countries, including the least developed countries, in strengthening their human, institutional and technological capacity;

Encourages developed countries to implement their official development assistance commitments, including the commitment by many developed countries to achieve the target of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance to developing countries and 0.15 to 0.20 per cent of gross national income for official development assistance to the least developed countries;

Acknowledges that South-South cooperation is not a substitute for but rather a complement to North-South cooperation, and recognizes the contributions of South-South and triangular cooperation to the efforts of developing countries to eradicate poverty and pursue sustainable development;

Stresses the essential role that official development assistance plays in complementing, leveraging and sustaining financing for development efforts in developing countries and in facilitating the achievement of development objectives, including the internationally agreed development goals, in particular the Sustainable Development Goals, and welcomes steps to improve the effectiveness and quality of aid based on the fundamental principles of national ownership, alignment, harmonization, managing for results and mutual accountability;

Acknowledges that investment in human capital and social protection has been proven to be effective in reducing poverty and inequality, and invites Member States to mobilize innovative sources of financing, including through public-private partnerships, to secure adequate levels of social expenditure necessary for expanding coverage towards universal access to health, education, innovation, new technologies and basic social protection and to address the issues of illicit financial flows and corruption;

Reaffirms that social development requires the active involvement of all actors in the development process, including civil society organizations, corporations and small and medium-sized businesses, and that partnerships among all relevant actors are increasingly becoming part of national and international cooperation for social development, also reaffirms that, within countries, partnerships among the Government, civil society and the private sector can contribute effectively to the achievement of social development goals, and acknowledges the importance of efforts to promote the exchange of information and knowledge on decent work for all and job creation, including decent work initiatives and related skills, and to facilitate the integration of relevant data into national economic and employment policies;

Invites all relevant stakeholders, including organizations of the United Nations system and civil society organizations, to promote the exchange of information on measuring poverty beyond income, and highlighting in this regard the important work of the United Nations system in supporting multidimensional measurements and assessment of poverty;

Also invites all relevant stakeholders, including organizations of the United Nations system and civil society organizations, to share good practices relating to programmes and policies that address inequalities for the benefit of those living in extreme poverty and promote the active participation of those living in extreme poverty in the design and implementation of such programmes and policies, with the aim of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals;

Calls upon the United Nations system, and invites civil society, to provide technical and other assistance to Governments, upon their request, to formulate and implement national strategies to extend social security and social services to all, including for social protection floors.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

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Who cites this mandate in the budget?

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