The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) represent a global partnership to reduce extreme poverty by setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015. In 2000, world leaders made a historic commitment: at the United Nations Headquarters in New York to eradicate extreme poverty and improve the health and welfare of the world’s poorest people within 15 years. The commitment, adopted at the Millennium Summit in September 2000, was described in the United Nations Millennium Declaration. It was expressed in eight time-bound goals, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). As part of a continuing series to assess where Guyana is in terms of the targets outlined, Stabroek News today looks at progress on goal 1: eliminating extreme poverty.

In 2001, government introduced the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which outlined a programme of reforms to re-orient the country’s economic and social policies towards poverty reduction and the achievement of the MDGs, but while there has been movement in some areas progress has been seen as marginal.

There has been no significant reduction in moderate and extreme poverty levels countrywide since 2001; …..