Credit: United Nations
By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2026 (IPS)
The international day for the eradication of poverty, commemorated last week, was a grim reminder that the UN will not achieve its highly-ambitious target of helping eradicate extreme poverty—”in all its forms”– by 2030.
According to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres eradicating poverty by 2030 requires urgent political will, massive investments, and a commitment to justice rather than charity.
But that is unlikely to happen by the targeted date?
UN Deputy Spokesperson Farhan Haq told reporters last week the message to donors is that there is a crucial importance towards focusing aid on eliminating poverty as much as possible.
“It’s a disgrace that so many people – really, hundreds of millions of people around the world – still face acute poverty. Because of that, and because there’s still such a large gap in the needs that are to be addressed, it’s unlikely that we’re going to meet the targets by 2030. But the Secretary-General, as you know, continues to push for determination. The idea being, as he puts it, that he is neither hopeful nor pessimistic, but determined. And that’s what we have to do in the fight against poverty.”
Guterres has described poverty as an “insult” to human dignity, a denial of fundamental human rights, and an issue of social justice.
In 2026, an estimated 826 million people (or 1 in 10 people worldwide) were living in extreme poverty. If current trends continue, 9% of the world’s population will still live in extreme poverty by 2030.
Richard Ponzio, Director of the Global Governance, Justice & Security Program and a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Center, told Inter Press Service (IPS) ending poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030 is Goal #1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
“While we saw tremendous progress on a similar Millennium Development Goal poverty alleviation effort from 2000-2015 — thanks in large part to advances in two large developing countries at the time (China and India) — we have seen less progress overall during the present period (2015-2030) for multiple reasons, including growing debt burdens, the COVID-19 pandemic, continued environmental degradation, and the drag on global economic growth stemming from tariffs and new major wars.”
Despite these obstacles, he pointed out, the Secretary-General and his UN system’s continued determination to fight acute global poverty merits the support and commensurate levels of commitment and determination by the world body’s 193 member states.
In the run-up to next September’s SDG Summit in New York, international efforts, including innovative developments strategies and new financing approaches, should be redoubled in support of the “No Poverty” SDG — while ensuring that steps to eradicate extreme poverty remain a central plank of an emerging Post-2030 Development Agenda, he declared.
Max Lawson, Oxfam International’s Head of Inequality Policy, told IPS extreme poverty can be ended by 2030—“but only if we radically reduce inequality.”
“Right now, for every new dollar of wealth created in the world, the richest one percent pocket 41 cents ―and the entire bottom half of humanity gets just a single cent. While everyday people are hit hard by rising prices, wars, and pandemics, billionaires have more than doubled their fortunes,” said Lawson.
According to one report, poverty has many dimensions. Its primary causes include unemployment, social exclusion, and the high vulnerability of certain populations to disasters, disease, and other crises that prevent them from earning a productive living.
The UN’s SDGs are a collection of 17 global goals and 169 specific targets adopted by UN Member States in September 2015 under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
These goals also include an end to worldwide hunger, the need for quality education, good health and well-being, among others.
Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director, The Oakland Institute, told IPS: “As we look for solutions to end poverty, we need to focus on the causes of poverty.”
The international day for the eradication of poverty should be the day to eradicate wars around the world, she argued.
Global military spending continues to rise. Trump’s proposed defense budget for 2027 – a record high of US$1.5 trillion, nearly doubling the 2023 budget – is in line with projections estimating global military spending could reach $6.6 trillion by 2035.
The buildup of the military industrial complex comes at the expense of common good. A small fraction of annual military budgets – less than $300 billion could help eliminate extreme poverty. $93 billion per year – less than 4% of yearly global military spending – could help address global hunger, she said.
Today, over half the world’s 1.1 billion poor live in conflict situations. War diverts necessary funds for public health, education, and social safety nets. Destruction and pillage of war manufactures poverty and then maintains it,” said Mittal.
Danielle Nierenberg, President and Founder, Food Tank, told IPS “determination is good but in order to be effective, we need to have courage.”
With the cutbacks to international aid including the systemic dismantlement of USAID, we need to stand up to those who the aid is a waste of money, she said.
Millions of people are dying unnecessarily when only a very small percentage of rich countries budgets could help save them. Aid benefits us all—it’s not only the moral thing to do, but it helps strengthen national security, declared Nierenberg.
Frederic Mousseau, Policy Director at the Oakland Institute, told IPS focusing on “donors” to address the poverty and climate crises that the world faces today is misdirected.
Poverty goes hand in hand with growing inequities and cannot be addressed separately. There is plenty of money to go around to solve both these crises.
According to Oxfam, US$9 trillion could be raised just from increasing taxes on the wealth and income of the top one percent richest people and the profits of 722 of the world’s biggest corporations.
As the wealth of the billionaires and the largest corporations keeps increasing to insane levels, there is no other way to address poverty than to tax it. The UN should lead the way on an international tax reform that will allow a redistribution of the wealth towards the poor and the adaptation to the climate crisis, declared Mousseau.
According to the SDG 2026 report, poverty has many dimensions. Its primary causes include unemployment, social exclusion, and the high vulnerability of certain populations to disasters, disease, and other crises that prevent them from earning a productive living.
Why should I care about other people’s economic situation?
There are many reasons, but the simplest is that as human beings, our well-being is deeply interconnected. Growing inequality hurts economic growth and undermines social cohesion. This raises political and social tensions and, in some circumstances, drives instability and conflict.
Why is social protection so important?
Strong social protection systems are essential to cushion the blow of economic shocks and prevent vulnerable families from falling into poverty.
While social protection measures did expand during the COVID-19 crisis, approximately 46% of the world’s population—about 3.8 billion people, including 1.4 billion children—remained entirely unprotected in 2023.
In response to the subsequent cost-of-living crisis, 105 countries and territories announced nearly 350 social protection measures between February 2022 and February 2023. However, 80% of these programs were only short-term. To truly achieve the SDGs, nations must build permanent, universal, and sustainable social protection systems for all.
The contribution of science to end poverty has been significant. For example, it has enabled access to safe drinking water, reduced deaths caused by water-borne diseases, and improved hygiene to reduce health risks related to unsafe drinking water and lack of sanitation.
- • If current trends continue, 9% of the world’s population may still live in extreme poverty by 2030, and only one in five countries will succeed in halving their national poverty levels.
• In 2025, 7.9% of the global workforce (284 million workers) lived in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2015.
• For the first time on record, over half of the world’s population receives at least one social protection benefit. Despite this milestone, 3.8 billion people remain completely uncovered.
• Development aid focused on poverty reduction has fallen sharply, erasing a decade of progress and returning to 2015 levels.
• Advanced economies spend a significantly higher share of government budgets on essential services (like education, health, and social protection) compared to emerging and developing nations.
• Guaranteeing basic social security floors in low- and middle-income countries requires an additional $1.4 trillion annually, equal to 3.3% of their combined GDP in 2024.
Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2026
IPS UN Bureau Report
