Poverty remains one of the greatest challenges humanity faces. While a number of people have been lifted out of extreme poverty (people living on less than $1.90/day), 10 per cent of the world’s population still live in extreme poverty –  struggling to fulfill their most basic human needs such as food, health, education, access to clean water and sanitation .  

SDG 1 aims to end poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030. This goal seeks to reduce by half the number of people living in poverty, by implementing social protection interventions, achieving substantial coverage of all poor and vulnerable people, building resilience to environmental and climate related extreme shocks and ensuring that men and women have equal rights to resources and basic services. The share of the world’s population living in extreme poverty reduced from 15.7 per cent in 2010 to 10.0 per cent in 2015. Nevertheless, the pace of global poverty reduction has been declining. It is estimated that 71 million additional people will be living in extreme poverty due to COVID-19 with Southern Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for the largest increase in extreme poverty.

All over the world, governments, policy makers, multilateral cooperation, donor agencies, private entities, NGOs, communities and individuals continue to take diverse actions towards the achievement of SDG 1. Although these efforts have yielded positive results over past decades, research warns that the economic fallout from COVID 19 could drastically increase global poverty.  How then can we accelerate action towards this goal so that by 2030 no one is left behind? Indeed, the crises has made the attainment of this goal more challenging, yet, presents an opportunity to revolutionize development approaches. This calls for rapid socio-economic response to COVID 19, immediate scale up of support for middle and low-income countries, support for inclusive agriculture and off-farm economies, and strengthening of universal social protection, which prioritizes extremely poor and vulnerable groups.

Every single action counts as a step towards achieving this goal!

Find out more: https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal1