PRESS CONFERENCE on ‘stand up against poverty campaign’

 

From soccer game fans in Mexico to cricket game enthusiasts in India, over 20 million people stood up in solidarity against poverty in events held worldwide on 15 and 16 October, breaking an official Guinness World Record, said today Under-Secretary General for Public Information, Shashi Tharoor, at a Headquarters press conference to mark the United Nations fourteenth International Day on the Eradication of Poverty.

“This would have been the largest single coordinated movement of people in the history of the Guinness World Record”, said Mr. Tharoor, adding that the Stand Up events were an initiative of the United Nations Millennium campaign, in partnership with the Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP).  They were held to coincide with the United Nations Eradication of Poverty day.  Accompanying Mr. Tharoor were the General Assembly President Chef de Cabinet, Ahmed Al Haddad; the Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere; and Nan O’Brien, an anti-poverty activist from Ireland.

Reading a message from Assembly President Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa, Mr. Haddad said that “given the chance, it is the poor who can empower themselves”, as proven by initiatives like the micro-credit projects sponsored by Grameen Bank and Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.  The Assembly President had been scheduled to address the conference, but was presiding over an Assembly meeting to select a candidate for the Security Council Latin America and Caribbean regional seat.  She was scheduled to participate in this year’s commemoration ceremonies to be held at 1:15 p.m. in the North Lawn at Headquarters.

France’s United Nations Representative, Jean-Marc de La Sabliere, used the occasion to pay tribute to the late Father Joseph Wresinski, a French priest and founder of ATD Fourth World, a non-governmental organization dedicated to overcoming extreme poverty and working in partnership with families living in persistent poverty.  He said his country was committed to keeping poverty eradication high on the United Nations agenda.

Addressing the press conference, Irish anti-poverty activist Nan O’Brien, said some of the poverty cases she had seen around the world were “not poverty, but hell”.  O’Brien was in New York to participate in the commemorative events as a representative of ATD Fourth World.

In response to a question from a correspondent about trade tariffs and the impact they had on world poverty, Mr. Tharoor said greater trade reform was needed, and that a lot of countries would rather trade themselves out of poverty.

For this year’s Stand Up campaign, a total of 23,542,615 people stood up in 11,626 events in 91 countries.  In Latin America, over 150 events were held, while in the Philippines, 1 million people participated, including President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.  And in the Middle East, some 500 thousand Palestinian children attending schools ran by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) participated in Stand Up events.

Concerning a reporter’s query as to why Venezuela was not among the list of Latin American countries that participated in the Stand Up campaign, a Millennium Campaign official said participation was voluntary and organized by local United Nations offices and non-governmental organizations.

The United Nations International Day on the Eradication of Poverty seeks to promote increased awareness of the need to eradicate poverty and serves to remind all people that sustained and concerted effort is vital to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in poverty by 2015.  Established on 22 December 1992, it invites Member States every year to devote the day to presenting and promoting concrete activities to eradicate poverty.

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For information media • not an official record