High-level side event at the UN General Assembly, New York

 27 September 2015, Conference Room 3 (CR3), 1:15-2:45 pm 

Watch Video of the Event

At this critical juncture in the process of finalising how the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be measured, this important side event showed the importance of embedding a multidimensional measure of poverty within the new framework. Specifically the 20 eminent speakers stressed how a Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), as a core (tier one) indicator within the SDGs, can energise a coordinated, effective and multi-sectoral attack on poverty in all its dimensions (and thus help to measure Target 1.2 of the SDGs).

The event is organised by the Republic of Costa Rica and nearly 40 governments represented by the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN), a South-South network of senior government officials that is championing the use of multidimensional poverty measures alongside traditional income measures at both the national and global levels.

Download the agenda of the event

The speakers included:

H.E. Mr. Wu Hongbo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, United Nations who delivered a message from Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations.

Heads of state addressing the event, with excerpts from speeches:

H.E.  Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, President of Costa Rica

H.E. Mr. Tshering Tobgay, Prime Minister of Bhutan

“Bhutan’s national MPI is not only a measure, it is also a tool – a policy tool. We use it to inform our allocation of resources. It identifies people who are poor because of gaps in infrastructure and social services, even where people are not income poor, as in one of our remotest district.”

 “I support the call to have a Global MPI as a Tier 1 indicator of the SDGs, and to support others to develop the use National MPIs.”

H.E.Mr. Juan Orlando Hernández, President of Honduras

H.E.Mr. Kenny Anthony, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia

“A Global MPI helps us know and understand poverty better, allows us to compare clearer, and gives us a stronger platform to remove the scourge of poverty from the human family.”

“The multidimensional poverty index finally gives us a tool to measure poverty across borders, across ideologies, across peoples. Let us redeem our brothers, sisters and every human being from the bondage of poverty. Now that we have proclaimed and committed to this hope, let us make it real for all humanity.”

The other distinguished speakers were:

H.E. Dr. Arsenio Balisacan, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary of the Philippines

H.E. Tatyana Orozco de la Cruz, Director of the Department for Social Prosperity of Colombia

H.E. Jeff Radebe, Minister in the Presidency for Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation, South Africa

H.E. Marcos Barraza Gómez, Minister of Social Development of Chile

H.E. Mr. Dang Huy Dong, Deputy Minister, Ministry of Planning and Investment of Vietnam

“Vietnam’s headline MPI will give visibility to our social progress. Vietnam is well-known for its high rate of economic growth and for its dramatic reduction in income poverty. In fact, our income poverty is very low now. So we need to turn to other basic needs and to social disparities. A headline national MPI will enable us to make the outcomes of our social policy as visible as our economic progress.”

H.E. Cecilia Vaca Jones, Minister Coordinator of Social Development of Ecuador

Dr. Savas Alpay, Chief Economist of the Islamic Development Bank

H.E. Mr Mikheil Janelidze, First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia

H.E. Amadou Ba, Minister of Economy and Finance, Senegal

Tarek Nabil El Nabulsi, Director of Development and Social Policies Department, League of Arab States (a joint statement with Khalid Abu-Ismail, Chief Economic Policy Section, UN Economic and Social
Commission for Western Asia)

Dr. Ingolf Dietrich, Deputy Director-General, Head of the Special Unit of Post-2015 Agenda, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany

H.E. Mrs. María Luisa Navarro, Deputy Minister for Multilateral Affairs and Cooperation of Panama

Mr. Noam Unger, Deputy Assistant for Policy, Planning and Learning, USAID of the United States 

Dr. Gabriel Rivera Conde, Chief Strategic Projects, Office of the President of Mexico

“The multidimensional approach to poverty in Mexico has shown that such a measure is actually feasible and that it can become an essential tool for implementing and monitoring the evolution of all the multiple dimensions of poverty.”

L-R: H.E. Mr. Tshering Tobgay, Prime Minister of Bhutan; H.E. Mr. Juan Orlando Hernández, President of Honduras; H.E. Mr. Luis Guillermo Solís Rivera, President of Costa Rica

L-R: H.E. Marcos Barraza Gómez, Minister of Social Development of Chile; H.E. Dr. Arsenio Balisacan, Socioeconomic Planning Secretary of the Philippines; H.E. Tatyana Orozco de la Cruz, Director of the Department for Social Prosperity of Colombia

Photo credit: Zach Damberger

OPHI and the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network – a group of senior representatives from over 40 governments and international institutions – hosted a special side-event on multidimensional poverty measurement at the 46th session of the UN Statistical Commission on Monday 2 March 2015.

The side event, which was standing-room only, highlighted how multidimensional poverty measurement can help to ‘end poverty in all its forms everywhere’ – a key component of the first goal of the final Open Working Group proposal for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and of the Secretary General’s Synthesis report.

Featuring presentations by eminent panelists and discussion among all participants, the event demonstrated how national MPIs and an improved Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (the MPI 2015+), supported by a data revolution, can help to eradicate extreme poverty post-2015 as part of the core poverty indicators of the SDGs.

The MPI 2015+ complements income poverty measures and shines a high-resolution lens on poverty, showing who is poor and revealing the different types of disadvantage that each poor person experiences at the same time – for example, poor sanitation, malnutrition, unemployment or a lack of education – to ensure the SDGs ‘leave no-one behind’.

Multidimensional poverty measures have generated substantial interest and support in recent years. The governments of Mexico, Colombia, Bhutan, the Philippines, Chile and the state government of Minas Gerais (Brazil), and Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam), use official multidimensional poverty measures, while many other governments are in the process of developing or exploring their use.

Presentations from the panellists at the event are available to download below:

• Lisa Bersales, National Statistician and Head of Philippine Statistics Authority

• Gonzalo Hernández, Executive Director, CONEVAL, Mexico

• Yemi Kale, Statistician General of the Federation and Chief Executive Officer, National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria

• Pali Lehohla, Statistician General, Government of South Africa

• Pablo Tactuk, Director of the National Statistics Bureau of the Dominican Republic

• Félix Vélez Fernández Varela, Vice-President, Governing Board, National Statistical and Geographic Institute (INEGI), Mexico

• Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative, University of Oxford

Further information

Read more about the Global MPI 2015+ in the SDGs.

Download OPHI’s 4-page briefing document: Multidimensional Poverty Index 2015+.

At a high-profile side-event attended by approximately 300 people at the 69th UN General Assembly, senior leaders from eight governments and institutions called on the UN to adopt a new multidimensional poverty measure to support the eradication of poverty in all its forms in the post-2015 development agenda.

Together officials from nations as diverse as Mexico, China, South Africa, Colombia, Ecuador and the Seychelles proposed that the next round of global development targets – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – should incorporate a new Multidimensional Poverty Index (the MPI 2015+).

The distinguished panellists outlined how such a critical innovation would support efforts to ensure that globally we “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” – the first goal of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals final Outcome Document (19 July 2014). They illuminated how a comparable and global MPI 2015+ could complement income poverty measures by shining a high-resolution lens on poverty, showing who is poor and how they are poor, helping to ensure that the SDGs “leave no one behind”. To make the comparisons universal they called for the new MPI2015+ to have two levels: one reflecting acute multidimensional poverty, and another of moderate povertyor vulnerability.

Many of the governments represented showcased national MPIs. Some are official statistics (for example Mexico and Colombia) which are used for an interlocking set of policy objectives; others are in policy use (China, South Africa) and others are under development (Ecuador, Seychelles) – that measure poverty and inform policies to eradicate it at the domestic level. Substantive interventions from Indonesia, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Nigeria introduced other measures that are under design, and how they will be used. The event thus demonstrated how national poverty eradication policies can be scaled up to the global level.

To show just how feasible it is to create this new measure, the event showcased proposals for a poverty data revolution in the form of improved household survey modules. These ‘light but powerful’ modules can help to collect more and better data on poverty across multiple dimensions such as education, health and nutrition, living standards, employment, and physical safety.

The event was co-hosted by the governments of Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Germany, and supported by the Government of Colombia and the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN) which brings together senior officials from nearly 40 governments and international and regional institutions.

The first speaker at the event, José Antonio Meade Kuribreña, Secretary of Foreign Affairs in the Government of Mexico, introduced Mexico’s national MPI and advocated for a global multidimensional approach to poverty reduction to be adopted at the international level, saying “we will not be able to defeat poverty unless we measure it correctly”.

The event chair, Gonzalo Hernández Licona, Executive Secretary of Mexico’s National Evaluation Council (CONEVAL), said that “It is essential for the UN to build on the work of national governments and the Human Development Report MPI to develop a new, robust global poverty measure as part of the new MDGs”, adding that Mexico strongly endorses the creation of multidimensional poverty measures at the national, local and especially global levels.

Sabina Alkire, Director, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI),  University of Oxford, then outlined how to build an MPI and how it is a high resolution lens. First, it provides a clear poverty headline. Second, it can be broken down in two ways – by region and by indicator – giving a detailed picture of how poverty is composed. Third, it brings into visibility different groups from income poverty, and reflects different policy successes. An MPI is able to monitor change and reflect effective policy interventions quickly, show the interconnected deprivations poor people experience, and enable policy coordination rather than a silo approach. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION.

Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary General of The Ibero-American General Secretariat, and former UN Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), said that “we have known for a long time that income poverty can be misleading” and as such it is “vital to have a multidisciplinary approach to measure poverty”. She also highlighted how the development of a global MPI2015+ would “drive discussion and dialogue at the international level” and allow us “do things differently”. The MPI2015+ enables policy actors to “work with the poor” to bring forward sustainable change.

Jean-Paul Adam, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Seychelles highlighted the particular vulnerabilities of Small Island Developing States and the value that an MPI provides, complementing other economic statistics by capturing the difficulties unique to isolated nations. Development, he said, is more than about income – it aims at full and meaningful lives. For this reason multidimensional poverty measures are being actively explored in the Seychelles.

Minister of Social Development Cecilia Vaca Jones outlined Ecuador’s ongoing work to use an MPI within the framework of Good Living (Suman Causia), with which it fits naturally, to bring structural change. The MPI will target the most marginal for policies to reduce poverty and promote ‘good living’ implemented by nine sectors. Ecuador’s MPI, she explained, will help the government to comprehend the real needs of families and to use resources efficiently. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION.

Tatyana Orozco de la Cruz, Director of the Department for Social Prosperity of the Government of Colombia, gave a rich overview of the use of the MPI – which is an official statistic in Colombia – as a tool for coordinating better government policies to eradicate poverty. Drawing on these experiences, as well as recent innovations with child and indigenous MPIs, she said that: “Yes, poverty is about income. But it is also about the many social deprivations that the poor suffer every day. We cannot ignore this basic reality. We must adopt an international measure to help us keep track of how we are doing in the fight against poverty, to keep us accountable to the billions of poor people whose voices too often go unheard”.

Tan Weiping, Deputy Director-General, International Poverty Reduction Center, outlined how the Government of China is currently developing a national multidimensional poverty index as part of the country’s “war on poverty”. Observing, pragmatically, that “practice is the sole criterion for verifying the truth” he described how this year the government has identified 25 million MPI poor households, with 90 million poor people. Such an index, he stressed, has important policy benefits:

“A multi-dimensional index that measures poverty can determine more accurately among the poor population, the dimensions, indicators, and extent of poverty, as well as allow for better coordination among anti-poverty (government) departments”.

Internationally, Dr Weiping stressed the need for a global MPI “to guide the development of all countries”, remarking that since the announcement of the MPI in the 2010 UNDP Human Development Report “there has been a revolution in the field of poverty measurement, expanding the definition of what constitutes poverty, identifying perspectives, allowing a more realistic reflection of poverty”.

Pali Lehohla, Statistician General of South Africa explained how South Africa’s MPI (SAMPI) has been a critical tool in mapping the drivers of poverty in the country, highlighting the important role played by education in the country’s poverty levels and showing reductions in incidence and intensity over a decade in each locality. Such rich statistics, he stressed, help to improve transparency and accountability, in turn helping to transform societies. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION.

There was a wealth of expertise among the conference room audience. Representatives from the governments of Indonesia, Costa Rica, Nigeria and Honduras offered substantive comments from the floor. For example Pak Heru Prasetyo, Minister and Head of the REDD++ Agency in Indonesia, shared Indonesia’s experience of measuring poverty multidimensionally which show that more people are multidimensionally than income poor. These findings, he said, showed that we need to change statistics so they better capture the sources of poverty, including in rural and urban areas as well as forest and coastal regions.  Other countries also are in the process of working with a national MPI.

The benefit of an MPI 2015+ to monitor multidimensional poverty globally has also been favourably raised and considered by the OECD, ECLAC, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, the Islamic Development Bank and UNDP’s Human Development Report Office, most with senior representation in the room as well.

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