The extreme poverty in which more than a billion people are trapped in the world at the beginning of the 21st century is a violation of human rights on a massive scale. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects the rights of all people to an adequate standard of living and well-being, including food, clothing, housing, and medical care.

Efforts to tackle poverty and deliver sustainable development, as pledged in the Millennium Declaration, are grossly inadequate. Governments too often fail to address the needs of their citizens, aid from rich countries is inadequate in both quality and quantity, and promises of debt cancellation have not materialised. Rich countries have yet to act on their repeated pledges to tackle unfair trade rules and practices.

There is great diversity within our group, but we know that we will be more effective working together. We are not aiming to reach absolute agreement on a detailed global policy platform, but we do want to pressure governments to eradicate poverty and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

In Johannesburg, in September 2004, the International Facilitation Group identified some broad policies to unite our actions.

We want:

• Trade justice
• Debt cancellation
• A major increase in the quantity and quality of aid
• National efforts to eliminate poverty and achieve the Millennium goals that are sustainable and developed and implemented in a way that is democratic, transparent, and accountable to citizens

Crosscutting issues

In all the aforementioned objectives, we call on governments, international institutions and civil society actors to uphold principles of human rights, accountable governance, and sustainable development, to oppose social exclusion and discrimination based on race, caste, HIV status and minority classification (including on sexual and religious grounds) and, further, to ensure gender justice and uphold women´s rights as well as child rights.