KATHMANDU, SEPTEMBER 25

Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli addressed, through a pre-recorded video, a high-level side event titled ‘Poverty at a Crossroad: Using Leadership and the Multidimensional Poverty Index to Build Back Better’, organised on the margins of the 75th Session of United Nations General Assembly today.

The prime minister said that with only a decade left to achieve the United Nations 2030 agenda, progress made in poverty reduction should be a primary indicator of assessing our overall development efforts.

Prime Minister Oli said investing in people and preventing them from re-lapsing into poverty would be a key challenge amidst the current health and economic crisis.

He underlined Nepal’s policies aimed at ending all forms of discrimination and deprivation, and promoting economic growth based on equity and social justice. “We are committed to ensuring that no one remains hungry and no one dies of hunger,” he said.

Highlighting Nepal’s approach of looking at poverty as a multidimensional problem, the prime minister highlighted the government’s programmes on reducing poverty, illiteracy and unemployment.

According to Prime Minister Oli, COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted government’s efforts to end the abject form of poverty and move to reducing all other forms of poverty.

The government has been making best efforts to protect the lives of citizens against both the health and economic threats posed by the pandemic, he said.

“Safe and decent housing schemes of the government have been offering better housing facilities for the poor,” Prime Minister Oli said. “Income generating activities through government targeted programmes, micro-finance services and intervention of cooperative and community organisations have been successful to reduce absolute poverty more than one percentage point every year for some years now.”

The high-level event was co-hosted by the governments of Chile and Pakistan in collaboration with Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network and United Nations Development Programme.

Presidents of various countries including Afghanistan, Chile, Costa Rica and Honduras, vice-president of Ecuador and prime minister of Pakistan addressed the event.