October 17th is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

The 2013 Commemoration of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty (IDEP) will be held on Thursday, 17 October at United Nations Headquarters in New York, focusing on the theme - "Working together towards a world without discrimination: Building on the experience and knowledge of people in extreme poverty".

This year's event is organized in partnership with the International Movement ATD Fourth World, the NGO Sub-committee for the Eradication of Poverty and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, supported by the Missions of France and Burkina Faso to the United Nations.

The 2013 theme highlights the discrimination that people face on a daily basis because of poverty, their marginalization in the political, economic and social spheres of their societies, and their lack of voice and representation in the conceptualization, implementation and evaluation of policies and programs that affect them directly and indirectly.

Our societies too often ignore or undervalue the knowledge of people living in the worst situations of poverty because we assume wrongly that people who lack so much in terms of material wealth, social position and political power, must also lack any knowledge or understanding that could be useful to others. Despite the best intentions of governments, development agencies and donors, our current efforts to formulate, implement and evaluate policies and programs to eradicate poverty have largely overlooked or ignored the unique knowledge based on the experience that people living in the worst conditions have accumulated, in some cases, over several generations. As a result, all too often, the policies and programs meant to eradicate poverty are ill-adapted to the needs, realities and expectations of the people they are supposed to be helping.

As the United Nations prepares its global development agenda for the post-2015 period, it is critical that people living in extreme poverty should have sufficient space and attention within the process in order to elaborate on and add to existing knowledge about poverty, discrimination and human rights violations.