Ou Qingping, the vice minister of The State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development speaks at the workshop. /CGTN Photo
After making great strides in eliminating poverty in the past 40 years, China is now joining forces with UN agencies to gain further insight on global poverty alleviation strategies.
Although Global poverty continues to fall rapidly, more than 800 million people around the world still struggle for the most basic human needs and live on less than 1.25 US dollars a day. It is a big challenge to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) set by United Nations.
To address the challenge, a high-level delegation of the Chinese government, representatives from Italy, several African countries and United Nations officials, participated in a workshop aimed at boosting the sharing of knowledge and building partnerships to achieve the SDG on eradicating hunger and extreme poverty by 2030.
The workshop, attended by over 90 international experts, and including participants from academia and the private sector, was jointly organized by the three Rome-based UN agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the World Food Programme (WFP), and the International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC) and the China Internet Information Centre (CIIC).
"The SDG one calls for elimination of extreme poverty in 12 years, in 2030. It will be very difficult to achieve that goal of eliminating poverty in the world." said Benjamin Davis, strategic program leader at Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, "I think government and international organization can make great strides in terms of getting us as close as possible to that goal."
Over the past 40 years, China has lifted 700 million people out of poverty, accounting for over 70 percent of poverty reduction globally. China has set a target to eliminate the remaining rural poverty by 2020, a decade ahead of UN’s goal.
"I think the great lesson for the world from China's poverty reduction isn't just policies they had, but the focus on poverty reduction," said Paul Winters, associate vice president of IFAD, noting that an obvious objective brings effective strategies, policies and investments.
Meanwhile, China and FAO, IFAD, WFP, IPRCC and CIIC issued a joint statement, to strengthen their partnership in the fight against poverty.
They also launched a campaign to request poverty reduction case studies from around the world in order to facilitate exchanges and enrich database.
As part of the efforts to enhance knowledge sharing in poverty reduction, the Global Solicitation and Challenge Prize on Best Poverty Reduction Practices was presented at the workshop.
The prize was jointly launched by CIIC, IPRCC, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, FAO, IFAD, and WFP at the 2018 China Poverty Reduction International Forum that took place on May 23 in Beijing.
As the first global solicitation for poverty reduction case studies, the initiative seeks to obtain 100 case studies that have proven to be successful in fighting poverty.
"The event today is particularly timely and welcome because it does offer opportunities to share experiences from China, from Rome-based agencies, but also from the participants who are present from the African countries. So we can understand what their experiences are actually on the ground and provide sustainable and inclusive rural transformation," said Ashwani Muthoo, Director of the Global Engagement at the International Fund for Agricultural Development.
By CGTN's Zhang He
