UNDP Poverty Report 2000

At the Social Summit developing countries made firm commitments to eradicate extreme poverty and substantially reduce overall poverty. Yet they have run into numerous roadblocks - financial crises, onerous debt burdens, protectionism, war and civil conflict, and a string of natural disasters. Also apparent has been a lack of political will to make poverty reduction a policy priority in developing countries. Progress has been stalled while donors continue to fall short in providing the support needed to reactivate advances.

The global campaign against poverty needs reinforcements and a more focused and effective strategy. UNDP has pledged to provide more targeted assistance, concentrated on helping countries improve national policy-making and reform governance institutions - less spread out across a wide array of small-impact projects. In line with Social Summit commitments, it has placed increased emphasis on assisting national poverty programmes.

Overcoming Human Poverty has made a special effort to assess a broad range of national poverty programmes - to find out what is working and what is not, and to draw out some general lessons for better policies. One lesson is clear: such programmes need to be multisectoral and comprehensive. Human poverty is, after all, a multidimensional problem, cutting across the sectoral responsibilities of government departments.

Another lesson: confining poverty programmes to a set of small-scale - often disjointed - projects "targeted" at the poor is not an effective use of resources. Programmes need a more strategic approach. Many need not only more funding but also better coordination by government ministries with sufficient clout. Also essential is active participation of civil society and the private sector in a broad, united front against poverty.

It is critical that poverty programmes be country driven, not donor determined. Often the reason that they are disjointed is that external donors provide much of the funding - outside regular government channels - for individual projects. Instead, we should aim to help build up the capacities of government, at both national and local levels, to assume control and direct their own poverty initiatives. This is the vitally important capacity-building agenda for external assistance.

An important finding of this report is that ineffective governance often short-circuits the connection between anti-poverty efforts and poverty reduction. Shifting decision-making closer to poor communities can improve the connection. Supporting organizations at the community level is the other half of this governance equation. Accountability in the use of funds and accountability to people's needs are also integral dimensions of pro-poor governance.

But when external donors give assistance to governance reforms, it cannot be a new form of conditionality. Based on their Social Summit commitments, countries set their own poverty reduction targets, and they implement their own anti-poverty plans accordingly. External assistance must be geared to help them build the capacity to follow through on these decisions.

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