Today I am releasing my final report as UN Special Rapporteur. I find that global poverty is rising, and that a decade of misplaced triumphalism has exacerbated the worst impacts of the pandemic.

My statement: https://chrgj.org/2020/07/05/philip-alston-condemns-failed-global-poverty-eradication-efforts/.

The full report: https://chrgj.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Alston-Poverty-Report-FINAL.pdf.

COVID-19 is projected to push hundreds of millions into unemployment, hunger and poverty. But the international community’s abysmal record on tackling poverty, inequality and disregard for human life far precede this pandemic.

In recent years, the UN, world leaders and pundits have promoted a self-congratulatory message of impending victory over poverty, but almost all of these accounts rely on the @WorldBank's international poverty line, which is flawed and yields a deceptively positive picture.

The result is a Pyrrhic victory, an undue sense of satisfaction and dangerous complacency. Using more realistic measures, the trends are extremely discouraging. Pre-pandemic, 3.4 billion, or nearly half the world, lived below $5.50/day. That number had barely declined since 1990.

Economic growth is frequently presented as the engine for eradicating poverty but the primary beneficiaries are often the wealthiest. Decades of unbridled growth have brought extreme inequality, widespread precarity in a world of plenty, roiling discontent and climate change.

The Sustainable Development Goals are currently not going to be met, yet the UN and its member states are sleepwalking toward failure. COVID-19 and the accompanying economic debacle should provide an impetus to revisit the framework of the 2030 Agenda.

It’s time for a new approach to poverty eradication that tackles inequality, embraces redistribution, and takes tax justice seriously. Poverty is a political choice and it will be with us until its elimination is reconceived as a matter of social justice.

My successor @DeSchutterO will be presenting my report to the UN Human Rights Council July 7. His presentation will be streamed live here: http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/human-rights-council/. You can follow his excellent work at @srpoverty.