Eradicating Poverty: Human Dignity at the Core of Policy Dialogue

Year 2015 is a signpost for international cooperation, partnership and solidarity. Time for assessing processes\r\nand outcomes of the MDGs; and for understanding whether, how and why\r\nprogresses were made. Time to spell out the post-2015 SDGs’ Targets in details,\r\ninto a true policy perspective – and everybody knows that details can make a\r\nlot of difference. This special moment may simply end up with a consensus on a new, more\r\ncomplete and encompassing, “book of dreams” for the future of our world.\r\nMore cynically, this consensus may result from “aggregation”: individual actors\r\n– countries, public agencies and non-governmental organizations – agree on a\r\nlong list of targets, each loosely defined so to accommodate all perspectives,\r\nto preserve or expand their political and economic space, to promote their\r\nspecial priorities and agendas, to gain political visibility or some command over\r\nresources.\r\nWe on the contrary need to hope and work and for more than that. People,\r\nreal people with a face and a name, are suffering from hunger, deprivation,\r\ninjustice, denial of elementary freedoms, environmental degradation. Heeding\r\ntheir call means activating and decidedly supporting those processes that\r\ncan effectively lead to ending poverty and hunger. Here, in a sense, all that\r\nmatter are the details. Real names, real faces. Choosing reality – with all its contradictions – as the starting point for cooperation, partnership and solidarity\r\nprovides a realistic, unitary starting point for spelling out policies details. In a\r\nsense, the political framework shifts from mapping the policy space, so that\r\neach actor’s particular agenda can be adequately represented in the overall\r\nemerging consensus, to sustaining processes of development, building on\r\nhuman dignity and sustaining bottom-up initiatives.