Eradicate poverty by 2015

Activists are mobilized around the world today to scold governments for falling short on promises to eradicate poverty by 2015, Sarah Seltzer reports today. Participants in women's tribunals will detail the female features of the shortfall and its solutions.

Seven years into the United Nations' 15-year effort to implement global antipoverty goals activists are urging worldwide governments to keep their promises and recommit to the eradication of poverty.

As part of this, millions on Oct. 17 are expected to join an annual day of global demonstrations spearheaded by the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, an alliance of international trade unions, nongovernmental organizations and other groups.In a Netherlands stadium performers will sing a "poverty requiem." In New Jersey, students from a charter school will recite an antipoverty pledge.

In Bangladesh, people will rally on the steps of parliament and Nigerian fans will stand for a moment of solidarity during a soccer match.

Organizers hope that when taken together the demonstrators will surpass last year, when they made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most people to stand up for a single cause on a single day: 23.5 million.

The day of demonstrations, which began last year, includes an emphasis on women's rights, on the premise that poverty is not combatable until females--who U.N. agencies agree represent 70 percent of the world's poor--are tapped as part of the solution. In the United States, nearly 60 percent of the people living below the poverty line are women, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2006.

The female aspect of poverty will be dramatized with a series of women's tribunals in countries such as Egypt, India, Malta and the United States where women will testify about the effects of poverty on their lives.

"What is going to happen is that stories will be told, but also the root of those stories is going to be analyzed: what is the cause, what can be transformed and what political measures need to be taken," says Ana Agostino, the Global Call to Action Against Poverty's co-chair and a coordinator of the group's Feminist Task Force.

Not Equal in OpportunityChris Grumm, president of the San-Francisco-based Women's Funding Network, which has teamed up with the United Nations Development Fund for Women to spearhead the project, says that "women are a huge part of the economic engine, but often not an equal part of economic opportunities.

For more information:

Stand Up! Campaign Home Page:
http://www.standagainstpoverty.org/
Global Call to Action Against Poverty:
http://www.whiteband.org/
Women's E-card to Fight Poverty:
http://www.womenfightpoverty.org/ecard/index.php