October 17: International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Thanks to celebrations held by several Non Governmental Organizations during the early nineties on every October 17th for the eradication of poverty, the General Assembly in 1992 declared this day as the official observation date for the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the next day following the World Food Day. Through this declaration, the United Nations invited all States to devote this day to presenting and promoting concrete activities on initiatives to eradicate poverty while paying due attention to the specific problems of the destitute.

Both the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank have made poverty reduction a central objective within their activities. Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger is the first of the Millennium Development Goals. One of the targets set by the UN is to "Halve the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day and those who suffer from hunger. " The 2003 Human Development Report makes an assessment of the improvements made until now and analyses what can be done to effectively reach the Millennium Development Goals. According to a FAO report on The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2002, the reduction of hunger during the nineties was fast only for several countries, very slow for others and non-existent for the rest. If this uneven trend continues the number of people suffering from hunger by 2015 will exceed 750 million, said the report.

In December 1995, the General Assembly also proclaimed the First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) under the theme "Eradicating poverty is an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind."

For more information on:

• The UN press release on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, please click here.
• The First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty please click here.
• The activities to be carried out during the International Day for the eradication of Poverty in 2003 please click here
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