Una Partida Justa | Hello Future | Temporada 2, Episodio 2 - Desigualdad
1 Video View·Nov 3, 2023
Las crisis actuales del costo de vida y la inseguridad alimentaria, derivadas en parte por los efectos de la COVID-19 y la guerra en Ucrania, están teniendo impactos en el mundo entero. Sin embargo, no afecta a todas las personas por igual.
I really think that inequality is the biggest challenge of our age.
For me, it represents a breakdown of civilization, so we're not actually a civilized world
if we're presiding over societies where you have such deep inequalities.
Poverty grows when there are no opportunities in the population to access education,
which is a fundamental factor in social mobility.
Historically, young people are the ones who come up with innovative solutions that change the world.
So if they're excluded from decision-making and leadership opportunities,
we'll be missing out on all these new solutions and innovations.
That's why it's so important, and to be able to recover those 15 years
that are said to have been lost, unfortunately, due to the impact of the pandemic.
About 50 million more people fell into extreme poverty in Africa as a result of COVID.
Combine that with the war in Ukraine, which basically stopped the flow of food,
of commodities, raised prices of fuel, of fertilizer,
and created a massive cost-of-living crisis globally.
The world is not the same after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The borders disappeared, and there came a time when we were all equally vulnerable.
COVID did not create inequalities. It was always there, right?
What COVID and the war in Ukraine have done is deepen that inequality.
It affects the entire world.
Poverty and inequality violates basic human rights,
and that is why we should all be concerned about it.
We should all be working together.
Inequality, where other phenomena begin to emerge, such as crime,
makes the world a more insecure place.
Today, it is not worth making decisions without having data.
The Multidimensional Poverty Index is an instrument that has been used
to measure poverty beyond income poverty.
To understand the causes that lead to a family, a person,
having some specific deficiencies,
these can be from low human capital to have informal jobs,
also the state of their home.
When we develop policy, the data has to be disaggregated,
and it has to reflect the special needs of marginalized groups,
whether we're talking about disabled people or young people, as the case may be.
Who was busy caring for the sick during the pandemic? Mostly women.
And that, of course, will also have an impact immediately
on their ability to earn income.
And this is why, in UNDP, we're really working on this.
The idea is to really force this issue,
with civil society holding policymakers to account
in terms of how to reduce, redistribute,
but also recognize unpaid care work.
The more women and other minority groups can get the right education
and can develop their skills,
the more they can participate in the workforce
and in the development of the countries.
The IPM Global 2023 report has shown
that 25 countries around the world have reduced their poverty
in the last 15 years.
That's really good news.
But we still have 1.1 billion people living in poverty,
of which 485 million people are in extreme poverty,
which is unacceptable, ethically unacceptable.
Most of the people in Bangladesh actually use public transportation,
but they don't feel safe, they don't find it comfortable.
We wanted to address this issue, especially for women.
Shuttle is a transport tech company that is making daily commutes convenient
and affordable for the middle-income people in Bangladesh.
UNDP's innovation focus has been working with the private sector
as an ally for development,
especially addressing the job deficits that the world faces.
Youth Collab is an accelerator program by UNDP and Citi Foundation
that helps young entrepreneurs to establish their social businesses.
We were part of Youth Collab's cohort back in 2019,
and they're still connecting us with potential partners and investors.
I think it's important to understand when we say private sector,
I mean, sometimes in some quarters this means big corporates,
but for UNDP, actually, private sector is a farmer's association,
and it's the entrepreneurs that are solving development problems with their enterprises.
Young people like us, we are more willing to take risks,
we are more willing to try out new ideas.
I think it's very important to have the right infrastructures,
to have the right ecosystem,
and also availability of funding for young people to take new initiatives
that will help us to create a more equitable and sustainable future for all.
The day we signed the Development Goals,
I had the honor of signing them in Costa Rica,
and I think it's one of the instruments that I've signed with the greatest joy in my life, really.
The 2030 Agenda was able to mark a route for us, a very clear route.
We have little time left for 2030.
It's important that we double our efforts.
We've already seen massive progress in developing countries,
and the way young entrepreneurs are implementing solutions to achieve sustainable development goals,
I'm really excited about the future.
From the deep of my heart, I believe that we'll be able to achieve the goals.
The world has never been wealthier.
When you think about the knowledge that we have,
when you think about the technology, the science, the innovation,
this world, it's a world that should be able to serve all of humanity.
We can afford it.