Anniversaries always present an opportunity to look back. But today, as we commemorate the establishment of the United Nations on 24 October 1945, we must not focus solely on past lessons and progress. We must also consider the potential of a UN that is being revitalised to respond to a world vastly different than it was 72 years ago. The world now faces myriad problems, from climate change, conflict, and terrorism to migration, rapid urbanisation, and growing inequality. The current pace of glo...
We recently caught up with Dr. Andrea Franco-Correa of Colombia, who graduated from our PhD programme in January 2017. She defended her thesis ‘On the measurement of multidimensional poverty as a policy tool: The case of Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru’ — and has since started work at the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare....
Poverty rates have halved in recent decades: from 1.9 billion to 836 million people, mainly thanks to economic growth in countries like China and India. Nonetheless, more than 800 million people are still living on less than US$1.25 a day. In some regions, like Sub-Saharan Africa, the absolute number of poor individuals has even increased since 1990, according to World Bank data from 2016. ...
Social protection is not only a human right — in the long term it also boosts economies, says Prof. Franziska Gassmann, as she takes up her new Chair in ‘Social Protection and Development’ at Maastricht University. Below she explains why and how social protection works, and how much more needs to be done. Click here for the inaugural lecture event, and here to download the speech. … If the first Sustainable Development Goal (“End poverty in all its form everywhere”) is to be taken se...
Is eradicating poverty, a goal the United Nations’ hopes to achieve by 2030, actually feasible? New research out of Ecuador says yes – if governments are willing to pay for it....