Happy International Day for the Eradication of Poverty! Observed by Blog4dev, world Bank, YALI and FMJIG in Angola

Monday 18 October 2021

Happy International Day for the Eradication of Poverty! Observed by Blog4dev, world Bank, YALI and FMJIG in Angola

This year's theme is “Building forward together: Ending Persistent Poverty, Respecting all People and our Planet.”

The International Day for the Eradication of Poverty is an international observance celebrated each year on October 17 throughout the world. The observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty can be traced back to 17 October 1987. On that day, over a hundred thousand people gathered at the Trocadéro in Paris, where the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was signed in 1948, to honour the victims of extreme poverty, violence and hunger. They proclaimed that poverty is a violation of human rights and affirmed the need to come together to ensure that these rights are respected.

The observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty in Angola.

In reference to the International Day for the eradication of poverty celebrated on October 17, the GPC Ambassador Sofonie Dala has joined the YALI committee of Angola in partnership with the World Bank, Blog4dev, FMJIG and the Mindset office, that held in this area, a roundtable conversation under the theme acting together for environmental resilience".

The objective was to address climate change in the process of poverty eradication and food production, as well as to analyze the current situation of social phenomena such as hunger and poverty in Angola.

Dozens of young people who worry about climate change and poverty joined the event that took place in Luanda Island Forest.

An excursion was held, in addition to the roundtable conversation where the prelector was the environmentalist José Silva, from the Ecological Youth association.

October 17th presents an opportunity to acknowledge the effort and struggle of people living in poverty, a chance for them to make their concerns heard, and a moment to recognize that poor people are the first ones to fight against poverty.

The World Bank (WB), which in 2013 had set a target of reducing extreme poverty to a maximum of three percent of the world's population by 2030, now states that the pandemic and global recession could cause more than three percent of 1.4 percent of the planet's inhabitants fall into this situation.

The goal established in 2013 became unattainable. This would require implementing significant policies and making substantial changes in the current world economic system.

The crisis caused by the new coronavirus “intensifies the vulnerabilities and inadequacies of the global food system”, which represents all the activities and processes of production, distribution and consumption of food.

As of 2021, over 17.6 million people in Angola lived in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 1.90 U.S. dollars a day. The number of poor people in the country has been following an upward trend. In 2016, there were around 13 million Angolans in extreme poverty. By 2025, it would increase to 19.2 million.

In the main cities, hungry people walk around to beg and pick up scraps of food and cast iron in the garbage for sale.The worsening of hunger and poverty in Angola is so serious that many organizations, especially the Catholic Church, have already asked the Executive to declare a state of emergency in the southern region of the country.

October 17th is a date that forces deep reflections on the delicate moment that humanity is experiencing, marked by a pandemic that shook the world economy and accentuated the great gap between rich and poor.

The event also had the support of the forum of women journalists for gender equality, and had the active participation of the Ecological Youth of Angola.

For 15 days, GPC Ambassador Sofonie Dala led an Angola-wide campaign - "Anatomy of Action Challenge" that covered 5 main domains: food, things, change, money and fun, and mapped out high priority actions that individuals everywhere can carry out to reduce their carbon footprint.

Given the challenges of making individual changes in the food we eat, the things we buy, how we spend our money, how we move and what we do for fun, we can create new ways of life with more positive impacts on the planet .

It should be remembered that Sofonie Dala was the only Angolan who had the privilege of participating in this global challenge and was awarded a certificate of completion coordinated by UN Environmental Program, for supporting the Global Changes to achieve the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.