Strengthening families vital to the struggle against poverty, UN official says

Formulating policies to strengthen families must be a key component of worldwide and national efforts to eradicate poverty, a senior United Nations official said today.

"It is clear that the stress of poverty can destroy family cohesion and lead to social exclusion and social disintegration. Yet, despite these challenges, families all over the world remain a most vital force in the battle to eradicate poverty," the Under-Secretary-General heading the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), José Antonio Ocampo, said in a speech ahead of the 12th International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on Sunday.

"Families are the providers of first resort and the providers of last resort. The mutual caring, sharing and nurturing that family members provide for one another are the essential elements that allow people living in poverty to survive each and every day."

Mr. Ocampo was a panellist discussing a study by the international anti-poverty non-governmental organization (NGO), ATD Fourth World, called "How Poverty Separates Parents and Children." Halving extreme poverty by 2015 is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the UN membership agreed on at a summit in 2000.

Summarizing its study, ATD Fourth World said, "In the face of poverty, parents can show unstinting resilience and courage on behalf of their children, making enormous efforts to safeguard relationships and keep the family together."

Mr. Ocampo said the centrality of the family in society often had escaped the attention of policymakers and they had shown insufficient regard for the contributions families make to the well-being of their members. DESA was promoting the integration of a family perspective into policy-making, he said.

"Ten years after the (March 1995) Social Summit, it is evident that sustained and broad-based economic growth remains critical to poverty reduction," he said.

"Yet, in the context of an equity-enhancing growth strategy, other fundamental aspects of development, such as employment, education, health care and social integration, including adequate and stable funding for social policies and programmes, need to be forcefully brought back into policy formulation if the causes of poverty - and not merely its symptoms - are to be successfully addressed."