PRESS BRIEFING ON UNDP RACE AGAINST POVERTY AWARDS

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING ON UNDP RACE AGAINST POVERTY AWARDS

Many economists, including those at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), felt it was feasible to halve the 1.3 billion people living in absolute poverty by the end of the first decade of the new century, UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch Brown said at a Headquarters press briefing this morning. The war against poverty was not in danger of being lost, he added.

He said that while the number of people living out of poverty had been growing very rapidly, it had not run significantly ahead of population growth rate. Though global unemployment remained level at 1.3 billion as a result of that rate of population growth, hundreds of millions of people had been lifted out of poverty. While globalization might undermine traditional communities' way of life, global integration and sustainable rates of economic growth were the vehicle for lifting the world out of poverty if they could be combined with socially equitable policies.

Mr. Malloch Brown was responding to questions after introducing six winners of UNDP's third annual Race Against Poverty awards. Victor Estrada Quispe (Bolivia), Athanase Rwamo (Burundi), Abdallah Mohamed Omar Baghi (Egypt), Dietrich Fischer (Germany), Mookda Intrasan (Thailand) and Elmaz Alimovna Appazova (Ukraine) will be honoured at a special ceremony to be held in the General Assembly Hall at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow.

Mr. Malloch Brown said each awardee had categorically refused to accept the age-old notion of poverty as a permanent element of the human condition. Each had recognized that the struggle against that condition must take place in its own way within every society. Grass- roots initiatives were the absolute essential partner to the correct national and global policies and the national and global political will to fight poverty. All actions taken in the United Nations and other forums were merely the sum of efforts made by dedicated individuals at the country and community levels.

United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador Nadine Gordimer, who attended the press conference, said that last February's World Economic Forum had emphasized the necessity for the masters of world finance to realize their responsibility for the world's more than 3 billion poverty-stricken people. Since those figures had been computed in 1997, many more people had been pushed into poverty through conflicts, including those made homeless in Kosovo, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But rather than throwing up their hands in despair, people should intensify efforts to combat poverty.

UNDP Briefing - 2 - 7 September 1999

Noting that her native South Africa had 4 million unemployed people aged between 16 and 27 years old -- more than 10 per cent of the normally active work force -- she stressed the need not only to provide employment, but also to provide skills training. That was one of the most important aspects of UNDP's work.

Praising the new initiative between UNDP and NetAid, a global website that would help raise public awareness and support for the fight against poverty, she said the partnership had great possibilities. But its base must lie in community projects that lifted people's capabilities. Those projects would not happen without the initiative and help of UNDP.

Ms. Gordimer said that people from deprived communities felt they lacked the means to have a say in decisions about how World Bank, European Union or other aid was deployed. It would be important if NetAid could fill that gap. While not everybody had access to electronic communications, bringing that kind of technology to places that had formerly not had electricity would be another step towards abolishing poverty in the new millennium.

Asked about the criteria for selecting the awardees, Mr. Malloch Brown said that the six individual winners were deliberately representative of millions of people working against poverty. It was hoped that every year would represent an increasingly broad base of other activists who were playing a big role.

Would UNDP's high-visibility events affect the donor community's interest in raising funding? another correspondent asked.

The Administrator replied that it was important first of all to reverse public cynicism about development. People had to see again that development worked.

Asked how the visibility in New York would help them back in their communities, Mr. Baghi said it was hoped that they would have more cooperation with UNDP.

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