1. Policy Background
2. Useful Documents
3. Links

1. Policy Background

The extent of poverty in the world remains massive. Half the world's population live on less than €2 per day. Inequalities between countries and even within countries are extremely high. And in many places they are still rising.

In 1960, the ratio between the incomes of the richest 20% of the world's population to the poorest 20% was 30 to 1. Today it is 90 to 1. The richest 20% of the world account for 86% of total private consumption expenditures. This is not just a case of the rich becoming relatively richer: the poor are becoming poorer in the absolute.

An average African household spends today 20% less than it did 25 years ago. Today in Africa the average per capita consumption of motor fuel - a reasonable indicator of prosperity - is less than 50 litres. Contrast this with North America where it is over 1600 litres. In fact the average per capita household energy use in developed countries is ten times higher than in developing countries.

The main objective of European Union development policy is to reduce and, eventually, to eradicate poverty. This policy takes, as its basic assumption, that the key problem of poverty in the world is not absolute scarcity of resources, but the distribution of those resources and the opportunities to take advantage of using them.

The EU defines poverty not simply as a lack of income and financial resources. The definition gos wider and encompasses the notion of vulnerability as a result of such factors as lack of access to adequate food supplies, or to education and health facilities. Beyond this a lack of natural resources, drinking water, land, employment, credit facilities, information, political involvement, services and supporting infrastructure all contribute to keeping people poor.

For the truth is that all of these many factors are needed to enable disadvantaged peoples to have control over their development, to enjoy equality of opportunity and to live in a safe (certainly a safer) environment. Conflict, for instance, is inimical to poverty - and anti-poverty policies need to address this.

In the EU's view, eliminating poverty must therefore entail support for sustainable development, in all its guises - economic development, social development and environmental development. The Community's development policies therefore include the gradual integration of developing countries into the world economy and a determination to combat inequality. To help reach this goal poverty reduction was made the principal objective of the new partnership agreement signed on 23 June 2000 between the European Union and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries in Cotonou, capital of Benin.

The EU's poverty reduction strategies are therefore multi-faceted, embracing various dimensions including the consolidation of the democratic process, maintaining peace and preventing conflict. Here they are also designed to reform existing institutional frameworks or to introduce new appropriate frameworks that will strengthen public and private sector capabilities.

The strategies also aim to develop beneficial social policies and to integrate social and environmental goals into programmes of macro-economic reform. A notable example of this process was the conclusion of the World Trade Organisation's Ministerial Meeting in Doha at the end of 2001 when for the first time these wider objectives were written into the brief for the forthcoming negotiations on a new Trade Round.

Naturally, the EU expects all its poverty reduction strategies to show respect for equality between men and women.

Sustained economic growth arising from a liberal trade regime is clearly an essential prerequisite for poverty reduction. And a precondition for that growth, and the sustainable economic and social development which potentially follows is the integration of developing countries into the world economy. Nevertheless, despite the importance of sustained growth to poverty reduction, growth is not alone sufficient. The EU therefore determined that the various tools at its disposal to fight poverty - economic, trade, political, institutional, social, cultural, environmental and so on - should be co-ordinated in order to achieve maximum impact.

Two years ago the EU embarked on such a programme designed to achieve greater coherence and co-ordination of the international activities of the Community itself and its Member States, particularly in the political, trade and development dimensions. At the same time (April 2000) the Commission adopted a integrated framework designed to refocus development policy on poverty reduction.


2. Useful Documents

A. Commissioner Poul Nielson's statement on the two implementation reviews of the Enhanced Initiative for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers delivered at the IMF/World Bank Annual Meeting in Prague, September 2000

In my two letters to Michel Camdessus and Sven Sandström in March 2000, I had the opportunity to welcome strongly the new approach of the Bretton Woods Institutions and our support for the Poverty Reduction Strategy process. I also welcomed the opportunity for the EC to be involved in this process, both at headquarters and field level. Since that time, in parallel with regular consultation between the IMF, WB, EC and other donors, the Commission has taken some important decisions. More……


B. Humanitarian Crises: Challenges for the 21st Century: Poul Nielson European Commissioner for Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Aid, International Conference : Partners in Humanitarian Crises, U Thant International Conference Hall, United Nations University, Tokyo, 25 January 2001

Globalisation is a dominant feature of our time and many talk about the global village. In my view we do not have a global village; in a village we would not accept to live with such a big divide between the rich and the poor as we have in this world. The low level of ODA flowing from the north to the south in this world shows that we do not have a global village, we have a world full of deep and dangerous problems. There is a lot of talk about donor fatigue. I think one of the problems here is that many expectations have been unrealistic. Against that background it is important to clarify the fact that development co-operation and assistance has in fact worked. When we look at many of the childhood diseases in the world some of them are eradicated, others have much less of an effect that they used to. If we look around globally, large parts of the Third World are no longer considered to be developing countries. This was very different 25 years ago. At that time all of the Third World, for good reason, was considered the poor, developing part of the world. A lot of progress has in fact been made. More…

C. Fight Against Poverty: The Basis of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy: Mr Jacobus Richelle, Director-General DG Development: Seminar on Globalisation, Sustainable Development and the EU's External Policies, organised by the Green Globe Task Force and the World Wide Fund for Nature, 22 October 2001.

Current events on the international scene demonstrate once again the big reality gap between external policy processes and the global developments. In spite of UN-summits, Göteborg conclusions, Cardiff processes and Johannesburg preparations, it turns out that the way we have organised our world and our societies is still not good enough to pass the sustainability test. Regardless of the numerous paper efforts to make the global development process more sustainable, it is painfully clear that some fundamental problems are yet to be addressed. More…

D. The Context of Poverty: Rural Policy Report for European Commission: Development Policy: (Extracts) September 2000

One in every four people alive today live in absolute poverty. Within this group of absolute poor, some 800 million go hungry on a regular basis (UNDP 1998). These bare data underline the fact that, although very considerable progress has been made in recent decades, the challenge of eradicating poverty remains enormous. …….Some three quarters of the 1.3 billion poor live in South Asia and East Asia/Pacific, with a further 17% living in sub-Saharan Africa. Within each region, however, the trends with respect to poverty are diverging. Although the economic crisis in East Asia has reversed recent gains, the share of the East Asian and Pacific population falling below the $1/day poverty line has been in long-term decline. South Asia has experienced a similarly positive trend. Yet in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, the trends are in the opposite direction. Latin America/Caribbean and sub-Saharan Africa are the two regions where both the total number of people living in absolute poverty, and the share of the population living in poverty, have increased. More…


E. The Environment and Poverty: Legal Dimensions and Moral Responsibility: Athanassios Theodorakis, Deputy Director-General DG Development, Summer Seminar on Halki 98: Halki, June 14-20, 1998

It is a great pleasure to be invited to address this distinguished gathering on the subject of poverty reduction. This is a central plank of the European Union's development policy, and has been subject to much discussion recently within the institutions of the Union. So it is timely to be able to share with you our recent thinking on this subject. The topic of the seminar is one of the most important issues in the world today - the need to arrest the increase in poverty, and indeed to engage in a process of eradicating the most extreme forms. More…


3. Links

United Nations Development Programme http://www.undp.org
World Bank http://www.worldbank.org
EuropaWorld Development and Debt Relief Pages
EU Commission DG External Relations http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/external_relations/index_en.htm
EU Commission DG Development and Humanitarian Affairs
http://europa.eu.int/comm/dgs/development/index_en.htm