Workshop Recommendations
Poverty Eradication

This section summarises the recommendations developed in the workshops “Social Integration”, “Poverty and Giving Power to the Poor” and “Democratization of Local Power and Participatory Budgets”. The participants agreed that citizen participation, local power and democratic decision-making are key factors for development.

Recommendations to Civil Society:

• Distribute information providing concrete examples regarding the increasing socio-economic inequalities in poorer nations in order to increase efforts to move beyond the notion that the fight against poverty is based primarily on statistics and the assessment of existing physical infrastructures. Draw attention to the relativity of indicators and the risk that they become the only means of assessing and evaluating public policies aimed at poverty reduction.
  
  
• Promote the concept of the integral well-being of people, including such aspects as education, cultural diversity and access to markets.
  
  
• Support the proposal development capacity of populations and public participation in its broadest forms, going beyond isolated and experimental initiatives.

Recommendations to Governments:

• Implement comprehensive national programmes geared toward human development, equity and the eradication of poverty. Set objectives to reduce the number of people living in extreme poverty by half and to reverse the trend toward increased inequality in the region by 2015. Ensure that these programmes include the perspectives of civil society and promote the equitable redistribution of wealth, income, property and resources as well as an increased appreciation of the culture and capacity of populations.
  
  
• Incorporate the equity aspect in the poverty analysis, as it questions the methods used to distribute wealth, as well as the strategies, methodologies and various measures aimed at strengthening the capacities and opportunities of populations, in particular the more vulnerable segments.
  
  
• Take steps to ensure that policies promote increased equity in the distribution of national revenues, resources and income as well as the tax burden.
  
  
• Implement effective anti-corruption programmes for which strong political will is required.
  
  
• Make a commitment to adopt anti-poverty measures that have been successful at the local level, promote the aspects that make them feasible and introduce mechanisms that will facilitate their application, such as
  1) strengthening the processes of decentralization and social participation, and
  2) promoting the decentralization of national programmes aimed at human development and fighting poverty to the local level, in order to ensure effective citizen participation in these programmes by 2005.
  
  
• Set goals for universal access to quality elementary and secondary education by 2005 and 2010 respectively.

Recommendations to International Organizations:

• Strengthen the United Nations system and adopt the necessary mechanisms to ensure that the Bretton Woods Institutions and the World Trade Organization answer to UN decisions on development, equity and human rights and that commitments made are respected. The introduction of social clauses in trade agreements, for example, should be formulated under the tutelage of the United Nations.
  
  
• Propose that modifications to the poverty reduction programmes of international organizations (change from the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF) to the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF), for example) translate into real changes in national public policies that promote the development of poorer nations.