The 49th Sessions for the Commission for Social Development recently convened at the UN in New York where  a re-examination of the traditional measures for the eradication of poverty through global development was called for. Most societies continue to be characterised by significant economic and social disparities with sharp contrasts of growing wealth leading to increasingly unequal societies.  The World Bank estimates that the world’s poor has in fact increased from 1.4 billion in 2005 to 1.7 billion in 2010.

Basic reform of the international financial architecture, which is based on a  free market, has had negative economic and environmental consequences.  UN Secretary General Ban Ki- moon calls for an integrated approach to poverty; one that funds  human rights based development over war.  Attempts to eradicate poverty  will lack credibility if government decision makers continue to fund a vast portion of the world’s wealth on military and weapons.  Every year the world spends 1.4 trillion dollars on weapons.

 Soroptimists and other representatives of civil society should keep the real sources of poverty, the lack of education, health care, food, water and shelter,  before their  lawmakers and governments.  See the recent DESA Report, Rethinking Poverty: Report on the World Social Situation 2010 (United Nations, 2010) at http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/rwss/docs/2010/fullreport.pdf