‘ Let’s not waste this opportunity’ was the appeal made by Sania Nishtar, Pakistan’s

Minister of Poverty Alleviation, at a high-level event on the side lines of the UN

General Assembly, organised by the MPPN and OPHI, and co-hosted by the Governments

of Chile and Pakistan and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

At this gripping event, covered in this edition by Bestin Samuel, presidents, prime

ministers, ministers, and representatives of international organisations stressed the need

to use a Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) as a tool to coordinate, target and design

public policies which confront the crisis provoked by COVID-19. We highlight insightful

quotes from that event and return to one of the participating institutions, the Swedish

Cooperation Agency (Sida), in an interview with Sida’s Lead Economist, Elina Scheja, by

Felipe Roa-Clavijo.

One good example of how to use multidimensional measures to support countries’ efforts

in responding to the pandemic is Honduras’ ‘Single Voucher’ (Bono Único). Honduras

has developed a robust identification and selection process using the Multidimensional

Vulnerability Index to measure who is most vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19.

Maya Evans and Mónica Pinilla-Roncancio give us more details on this tool.

In this edition we also talk about dimensions and indicators. Jakob Dirksen shares

an update of the dimensions and indicators most used by countries in their national

multidimensional poverty indices, while Mónica Pinilla-Roncancio tackles the question of

whether disability should be included in an MPI. These discussions are very relevant to the

challenge of better measuring poverty in order to create informed public policies.

SOPHIA Oxford, a non-profit organisation linked to OPHI and in charge of

implementing the business MPI, is working on incorporating a gender dimension. John

Hammock and Ana Vaz briefly present this work. Finally, Frank Vollmer and Harriet

Smith analyse the relationship between land use and the reduction of multidimensional

poverty in Mozambique.

We invite you to read Dimensions, a new perspective for understanding poverty.

Carolina