Global Poverty, can it really be reduced?

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Global Poverty.

Can the United Nation reduce the amount of poverty in the world by 15 percent by the end of 2015 as they proposed?

This is just one of the many questions I have about this goal that the U.N. have. Is it achievable? Can poverty really be prevented?

I was born in the country of Philippines with a population of 91,983,000. Poverty in this country can be seen everywhere.

When I think of poverty, these words and images comes in my mind; hunger,

corruption, lack of shelter (shanty

towns), AIDS, lack of drinking water, malnutrition and once again, CORRUPTION. To me, corruption is something that feeds violence, as long as there is corruption there will always be poverty. It creates lost opportunity. It takes massive resources out of countries.

In fact, many countries that should be rich today are actually very poor because resources are being improperly redirected and politicians are also apart of this corruption circle that adds to the problem. And this hurts the people, particularly the world’s poorest people. There’s no money available to build water structures, to help with health services, even to help prevent AIDS.

The report said 32.6 percent of Filipinos were below the poverty line in 2006, and suggested the Philippines could miss the U.N. goal of Millennium Development Goal for 2015, but apparently they saw a "high probability" of halving the proportion who cannot afford to buy the food they need (NZ Herald, 2010). It just seems a bit to high to achieve for the U.N. when majority of the poor area in some countries are populated with sick, disabled, uneducated, too old or weak, possibly single parents that relies on their children to work hard for a small amount of money for them to get by.

It is hard to imagine that young children are forced to work and help their parents work when they should be in schools learning to get a better future for them. Even though it may sound easy to plan and say that the U.N.'s goal to reduce global poverty, to educate up to half of the poor children around the globe to at least a primary school level. Reality strikes and not everyone are getting or are capable to get educated due to unavoidable circumstances. Even so, some countries that have more capabilities or less complication to get an education are not getting it. So what is going on? Are the goals being carefully looked at and implemented to the right places/countries at the right time?

The statistics graph shown above, this proves how much work the U.N. has left to do in the 5 year duration to reach their Millennium Development Goal for 2015. The progress is patchy and slow, makes you wonder what they are actually doing to achieve this? My thoughts that, United Nations and the aid coming from countries that are more richer an has a better economy, where are the

money going. With the amount that they announced they gave or received like donations you'd think it would be enough to help and continuously supply much needed assistance, medical care, food and water. But some how corruption slip in there, much "needed" amount of expenses get taken out of the amount from the money that is meant to be for the poor. It makes me think about private organizations that help the needy, how is the money allocated and spend to help these people in need?

Poverty is the reason to why people become so desperate that they will be willing to do anything for anything to help them get their basic daily needs to survive. This can lead to prostitution, people working overseas as domestic helpers to the rich, which can result to modern day slavery, corruptions, politician using the poor for their own means to an end. It doesn't seem that ethical at all. Would it be okay if everybody also did it all time, does not matter if you are rich or poor, politician or citizen. If everyone was to do this action, would the world be a desirable place to live in? If not? Then this is not okay. I don't think that everyone thinks ethical these days due to selfishness. Treat humanity always as an end rather than a means to an end. There are too many egoist in this world, we need more caring and giving people.

Can the United Nation really reduce the Global poverty by 2015? I don't believe that they can. Though this sounds doable if the implementation of their actions is continuous and not handpicked just to one spot of the world.

I believe that for this goal to be achieve better planning, implementation and better rules to be applied to really make a difference. United Nations Officials can continuously discuss the issues, how to fix it, but the amount of time they discuss is more than them and everyone else putting this into action.