United Nations Development Program

Multidimensional Concept

Poverty is viewed by UNDP as a multidimensional concept that derives from politics, geography, history, culture, and societal specificities and is linked to systems and structures of international trade, debt, and finance. Poverty has numerous complex and interlinked causal factors that make people powerless and vulnerable, such as gender discrimination, lack of employment opportunities, inadequate means of livelihood, and lack of access to healthcare, knowledge, and information. These factors are connected to power relations, policies, systems of government and structures, cultural traits, gender [Page 1105]issues, human rights, education, diet and nutrition, and health.

Through volumes of conducted studies UNDP generated new evidence of the causes and dimensions of poverty, which pushed the organization to call for a broader agenda to attack it. This agenda includes equity, social inclusion, women's empowerment, and respect for human rights, which matter very much for poverty reduction.

In order to fight poverty at its source, UNDP is now actively working with governments and civil society. It promotes partnership that involves people in planning, implementing, and sustaining activities to improve their lives. UNDP does it through helping countries to achieve sustainable human development by helping them to build their capacity to design and carry out development programs in poverty eradication, employment creation, and sustainable livelihoods, the empowerment of women, and the protection and restoration of the environment, giving first priority to poverty eradication.

Millennium Development Goals

This plan of action was charted in the Millennium Declaration signed by the leaders of 189 nations at the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000. They committed to a set of internationally agreed targets called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which aim at reducing poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, and environmental degradation and combating HIV/AIDS and discrimination against women by 2015. Through the Millennium Declaration, UNDP plays a leading role by providing developing countries with consulting services and by building national, regional, and global coalitions for change.

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