In progress at UNHQ

SG/SM/6750

WORLD COMMUNITY MUST NOT RETREAT ON VERGE OF 'VICTORY OVER WANT', SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL IN POVERTY DAY MESSAGE

14 October 1998


Press Release
SG/SM/6750
OBV/63


WORLD COMMUNITY MUST NOT RETREAT ON VERGE OF 'VICTORY OVER WANT', SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL IN POVERTY DAY MESSAGE

19981014 Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message on the occasion of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, observed 17 October:

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty offers all of us an opportunity to reflect on the most pressing task of our time.

For the past three decades, we have witnessed the most rapid improvements in the lives of billions. A child born in a developing country today can expect to live 16 years longer than a child born 35 years ago. Infant mortality has been more than halved since 1960, and the share of rural families with access to safe water has risen from 10 per cent of the total to 60 per cent.

This is encouraging progress. It has come about with as much thanks to the herculean efforts of developing countries and poor people, as to advances in medicine and in food production technologies. It has also come about thanks to more than 50 years of development cooperation. I am proud that the United Nations has been at the forefront of this global movement.

But, as recent events demonstrate, such gains can be reversed. The financial crisis has led to falling primary export prices, reduced spending on social sectors and rising levels of unemployment. Everywhere, it is the poor who are paying the highest price for the financial crisis. In many countries, the crisis is rapidly reversing the gains in poverty elimination so painfully made in these three decades, and the persistence of poverty threatens the whole edifice of globalization. This situation is neither morally acceptable nor economically sensible. It is also a recipe for continuing political instability.

A commitment to end absolute poverty must be at the top of the international agenda. Developing countries are doing their share. The United Nations Development Programme's new report, "Overcoming Human Poverty", issued today, reminds us that close to two thirds of all countries have formulated

- 2 - Press Release SG/SM/6750 OBV/63 14 October 1998

plans and programmes to end poverty. Yet, only one third of the countries have set concrete, time-bound targets. The international community must do more.

The struggle for the eradication of poverty has reached a critical phase. We can choose to win it -- to end mass poverty in the early years of the twenty- first century -- or we can let this opportunity pass. Let our message to the world's poor be a message of hope, not the silence of despair. Let it not be said by future generations that we, who had the power to do so much, retreated on the verge of victory over want.

* *** *

For information media. Not an official record.