Book Review: The Battle Against Poverty

The Battle Against Poverty: Colombia A Case of Leadership is the most recent book by Juan Manuel Santos, Nobel Peace Laureate, member of the Elders, and former President of Colombia, published by Oxford University Press. The book is a comprehensive tool to address multidimensional poverty alleviation with high-impact actions amidst rising interconnected challenges such as poverty, conflict, and climate change.

Professor Santos shares his experiences implementing the Colombia Multidimensional Poverty Index during his tenure as President (2010-2018) together with his regional insights and views on global leadership in the fight against poverty.

This book is a resource for decision-makers and leaders seeking to implement the MPI as a high-impact tool to guide policies to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 1. The Battle Against Poverty includes technical, political and leadership insights, and serves as a logbook of challenges and avenues of action for government and agency leaders, and their teams, on how to develop and monitor coordinated action across stakeholders, and to successfully track national progress against the SDGs.

The Battle Against Poverty offers a detailed overview of the technical aspects, political dynamics, and leadership strategies involved in the implementation and use of the Colombian MPI. This comprehensive approach to multidimensional poverty led to its significant reduction in Colombia, from 30.4% in 2010 to 19.6% in 2018.

The introduction of the book narrates how Professor Santos committed to achieving peace alongside poverty eradication as a pillar of his government agenda. Following this, in chapters one and two, Professor Santos gives an overview of the Alkire-Foster method, the design of the Colombian MPI in 2010, and later, the official adoption of the measurement in 2012, positioning Colombia as a pioneering country for adopting and including the MPI as an indicator in the government’s development plan in Latin American and the Caribbean (after Mexico).

In chapter three, Professor Santos highlights how as President he coordinated with multiple ministries and agencies. This was accompanied by a top-level follow-up and monitoring strategy, explained in chapter four, that included the establishment of two mechanisms, the Cross-Cutting Poverty and Inequality Roundtable  and a dashboard with a traffic light system to monitor the progress of each State entity’s commitments.

Furthermore, in chapters five and six, Professor Santos explains some programmes and policies such as ‘Familias en Acción,’ adopted in Colombia to reduce multidimensional poverty, including the use of the MPI for targeting, and highlights how the coordinated effort also involved the private sector.

Professor Santos presents in chapters seven and eight the unavoidable relationship between conflict and poverty, and the pledge to address these and other global goals on the SDGs pioneered and championed by Colombia.

Finally, the last chapter of the book is an invitation to reflect on the meaning of social inclusion and restates the merits of coordinated and targeted work using the MPI to achieve positive and measurable results in multidimensional poverty reduction.

Professor Santos’ book, The Battle Against Poverty, now available in Spanish, stands as a comprehensive technical and policy manual to reduce multidimensional poverty and a testament to committed leadership amidst global challenges. It serves as an inspiring and useful tool for a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

 

This article was published in Dimensions 16