Poverty has been reduced by too little, or not at all, in recent years. A fifth, perhaps a quarter, of the world's population are living in extreme poverty. The measurement of the phenomenon, and especially of annual trends in the rates and severity of poverty, is not acceptably precise, consistent, and generally agreed. Nor is policy being analyzed and justified in precise correlation with such trend reports as have been published. The first Millenium Development Goal — to halve world poverty by 2015—has become an unlikely prospect. The reasons lie in the present form of the globalization of the market, together with continuing preference shown to neo-liberal economic and social policies. If poverty is to be systematically reduced, the orthodoxies of definition, measurement, explanation and resolution, which as key elements of the problem necessarily reinforce each other, have to be re-examined and re-formulated quickly. In re-examining approaches to measurement and policy the new human rights instruments, endorsed by a majority and in some cases by an overwhelming majority of governments, must play a vital role. Their potentialities are considerable for the measurement of poverty, deprivation, exclusion and development. But, crucially, they can help to engineer an international, as well as scientific, consensus in the war on poverty. One priority illustration would be a UN Child Investment Fund to finance the universal right of children to social security.
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