Below you will find a regularly updated collection of poverty-related news and reports:

The international peasant organization Via Campesina has published its third annual report on the situation for peasants world wide. In their introduction they write: “this report shows that, together with political marginalization, one can find a process of political oppression of small holder organisations. Violations of economic, social and cultural human rights go together with violations of civil and political rights. Peasant leaders, agrarian reform activists, rural women leaders etc. face severeoppression and often persecution, particularly if economic assets are involved. Freedom of expression, the right to organize themselves, to demonstrate politically, to act as social movements are rights that havefrequently been attacked. If social movements, such as peasants' organisations, begin to assert their rights,they face persecution or even assassination, as many cases in this report show.” Read More

FIAN (FoodFirst Information and Action Network) and Via Campesina have strongly criticised the new World Bank rural development strategy, called “Reaching the Poor”. FIAN and Via Campesina hold that the new strategy will “deepen the process of land privatization and continue impoverishing and depriving women and rural communities of their means of life.” Read More

The United National Millennium Development Goals was adopted by 189 countries in 2000. The goals are, amongst others, to half the number of people suffering from hunger globally, half the number people living without access to clean water and sanitation facilites and ensure education to every child in the world by 2015. The 2006 report from the United Nations shows some signs of optimism, but there is still a long, long way to go. Read More

In July 2005, world leaders gathered in Scotland and committed themselves to cancel the foreign debt in the 3d world, increase aid and make changes in international trade policies, benefiting developing countries. The Jubilee movement, an international organization working for the cancellation of foreign debt, has written a report on what has been done, one year later. They write: “On the positive side, some debts have been cancelled for 21 nations, and the money is being put to good use. But much more remains to be done: 9 out of 10 people in the developing world will see no benefit from the 2005 debt deal”. Read More

What produces poverty, and what solutions are there to put an end to it? A myriad of organizations and networks across the world are engaged in addressing these questions. Below you will find a collection of international movements and organizations which are approaching poverty and marginalization from different angels:

Via Campesina

Via Campesina is an international movement which coordinates peasant organizations of small and medium sized producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, America, and Europe. Its origin goes back to April 1992, when several peasant leaders from Central America, North America, and Europe got together in Managua, Nicaragua, at the Congress of the National Union of Farmers and Livestock Owners (UNAG). The principal objective of Via Campesina is to develop solidarity and unity in the diversity among small farmer organizations, in order to promote economic relations of equality and social justice; the preservation of land; food sovereignty; sustainable agricultural production; and an equality based on small and medium-sized producers. Read More

FIAN International

FIAN International, the FoodFirst Information and Action Network, is the international human rights organization that advocates for the realization of the right to food. FIAN International consists of national sections and individual members in over 60 countries around the world. FIAN is a non-partisan not-for-profit organization and has consultative status to the United Nations. FIAN envision a world free from hunger, in which every woman, man and child can fully enjoy their human rights in dignity, particularly the right to adequate food, as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments. Read More

The Bretton Woods Project

The Bretton Woods Project works as a networker, information-provider, media informant and watchdog to scrutinise and influence the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through briefings, reports and the bimonthly digest Bretton Woods Update, it monitors projects, policy reforms and the overall management of the Bretton Woods institutions with special emphasis on environmental and social concerns. By encouraging information exchange and debate, it seeks to move the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and IMF) away from simplistic approaches to development. Read More

50 Years Is Enough

50 Years Is Enough: U.S. Network for Global Economic Justice is a coalition of over 200 U.S. grassroots, women's, solidarity, faith-based, policy, social- and economic-justice, youth, labor and development organizations dedicated to the profound transformation of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Network works in solidarity with over 185 international partner organizations in more than 65 countries. Through education and action, the Network is committed to transforming the international financial institutions' policies and practices, to ending the outside imposition of neo-liberal economic programs, and to making the development process democratic and accountable. We were founded in 1994, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the World Bank and IMF. We focus on action-oriented economic literacy training, public mobilization, and policy advocacy. Read More

Jubilee USA Network

Jubilee USA Network began as Jubilee 2000/USA in 1997 when a diverse gathering of people and organizations came together in response to the international call for Jubilee debt cancellation. Now over 60 organizations including labor, churches, religious communities and institutions, AIDS activists, trade campaigners and over 9,000 individuals are active members of the Jubilee USA Network.

Debt slavery means poor people working harder and harder in a vain effort to keep up with the interest payments on debts owed to rich countries including the US and international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Jubilee USA Network brings together people to turn this reality around by active solidarity with partners worldwide, targeted and timely advocacy strategies and educational outreach. Read More

The World Social Forum

The World Social Forum is an open meeting place where social movements, networks, NGOs and other civil society organizations opposed to neo-liberalism and a world dominated by capital or by any form of imperialism come together to pursue their thinking, to debate ideas democratically, for formulate proposals, share their experiences freely and network for effective action. Since the first world encounter in 2001, it has taken the form of a permanent world process seeking and building alternatives to neo-liberal policies.

The World Social Forum is also characterized by plurality and diversity, it is non-confessional, non-governmental and non-party. It proposes to facilitate decentralized coordination and networking among organizations engaged in concrete action towards building another world, at any level from the local to the international, but it does not intend to be a body representing world civil society. The World Social Forum is not a group nor an organization. Read More

Corporate Watch

Corporate Watch is a small independent not-for-profit research and publishing group which undertakes research on the social and environmental impact of large corporations, particularly multinationals. We aim to expose the mechanisms by which corporations function and the detrimental effects they have on society and the environment as an inevitable result of their current legal structure.

Corporate Watch strives for a society that is ecologically sustainable, democratic, equitable and non-exploitative. Progress towards such a society may, in part, be achieved through dismantling the vast economic and political power of corporations and developing ecologically and socially just alternatives to the present economic system. Read More

Attac

Attac (Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens ) started in France in 1998. The organization has now has 85 000 members on five continents. Attac is a decentralized organization, but some of its main priorities are to fight for a control over the global flows of capital, to end tax havens, to defend the public sector from privatization and to cancel the foreign debt of developing countries. Attac opposes the contemporary mechanisms and effects of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization; demanding just, democratic and politically controlled international trade-and investment mechanisms. Read More

The Green Belt Movement Kenya

The Green Belt Movement (GBM Kenya) is a grassroots non-governmental organization (NGO) based in Kenya that focuses on environmental conservation, community development and capacity building. Prof. Wangari Maathai established GBM Kenya in 1977, under the auspices of the National Council of Women of Kenya.

Our vision is to create a society of people who consciously work for continued improvement of their environment and a greener, cleaner Kenya. Our mission is to mobilize community consciousness for self-determination, equity, improved livelihoods and securities, and environmental conservation. We are guided by the values of volunteerism, love for environmental conservation, pro-action for self-betterment, accountability, transparency, and empowerment. Read More

Navdanya (the Vandana Shiva movement)

The Navdanya program works for promoting ecological agriculture based on biodiversity, for economic and food security. Navdanya started as a program of the Research Foundation for science, Technology and Ecology (RFSTE), a participatory research initiative founded by world-renowned scientist and environmentalist Dr. Vandana Shiva, to provide direction and support to environmental activism. Navdanya is actively involved in the rejuvenation of indigenous knowledge and culture. It has created awareness on the hazards of genetic negineering, defended people's knowledge from biopiracy and food rights in the face of globalisation.

Navdanya’s mission is to promote peace and harmony, justice and sustainability. We strive to achieve these goals through the conservation, renewal and rejuvenation of the gifts of biodiversity we have received from nature and our ancestors, and to defend these gifts as commons. The setting up of community seed banks is central to our mission of regenerating nature’s and peoples wealth. Keeping seeds, biodivdersity and traditional knowledge in people’s hands to generate livelihoods and provide basic needs is our core programme for removal of poverty. Read More

Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST)

Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is the largest social movement in Latin America with an estimated 1.5 million landless members organized in 23 out 27 states.

Since 1985, the MST has peacefully occupied unused land where they have established cooperative farms, constructed houses, schools for children and adults and clinics, promoted indigenous cultures and a healthy and sustainable environment and gender equality. The MST has won land titles for more than 350,000 families in 2,000 settlements as a result of MST actions, and 180,000 encamped families currently await government recognition. Land occupations are rooted in the Brazilian Constitution, which says land that remains unproductive should be used for a “larger social function."Read More