Countries around the world gathered on September 25, 2015, to adopt a set of goals that ends poverty, protects the planet, and ensures prosperity for all as part of a Sustainable Development Agenda. With the help of governments, private sectors, and people like you and me, we plan to achieve each goal’s specific target within the next 15 years to create the world where everyone can live in peace and prosperity.
Sustainable Development Goal – SDG1 aims to end poverty in all its manifestations by 2030. With an estimated 233 million people in Africa living on less than $1.25 a day, 12.4 million people being internally displaced, and 18,000 children dying daily around the globe due to poverty-related causes, there is no wonder why this is our first goal.
There are many organizations who are working night and day to make sure poverty becomes a thing of the past. In Agenda 21, which is a voluntarily implanted action plan created by the United Nations; there are seven priority actions on the poverty eradication agenda. These seven actions are:
- improving access to sustainable livelihoods, entrepreneurial opportunities, and productive resources;
- providing universal access to basic social services;
- progressively developing social protection systems to support those who cannot support themselves;
- empowering people living in poverty and their organizations;
- addressing the disproportionate impact of poverty on women;
- working with interested donors and recipients to allocate increased shares of ODA to poverty eradication; and
- intensifying international cooperation for poverty eradication.
Though progress is being made in Africa, there is still a ways to go. According to the UN:
- 70% of its population still suffer from lack of access to improved sanitation facility, 41% of its inhabitants still live, in 2015, with less than $1.25 a day and out of the 57 million of global out-of-school children of primary school age in 2015, 33 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- In the past two decades, Northern Africa has not registered any improvements in women’s access to paid employment, with women still holding less than one out of five paid jobs in the non-agricultural sector.
It is time for all of us to come together and put an end to poverty once and for all. If you are interested in learning more about the Sustainable Development Goals please visit https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
Related Sources:
United Nations – https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdgs
IDMC – http://www.internal-displacement.org/publications/2016/africa-report-2016 Accessed 21, January 2017
IDMC – http://www.internal-displacement.org/sub-saharan-africa/kampala-convention/ Accessed 21, January 2017
UNDP – http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html Accessed 21, January 2017
Wiki – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agenda_21 Accessed 21, January 2017