New network for governments to tackle global poverty

President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia joined ministers and officials from around 20 governments to launch a network with Oxford University that aims to help emerging countries tackle global poverty. Colombia and Mexico are among the first countries to adopt the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), devised by Oxford University researchers, to underpin their strategies for tackling poverty. Through the creation of the network, governments that have adopted the MPI will pass on lessons they have learned to other emerging economies that want to reduce inequalities in their country. The MPI provides policymakers with a detailed picture of poverty that shows the number of poor people and the overlapping ways in which they are deprived.Called the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network, it has been created in response to overwhelming demand from governments for information and support in implementing the MPI. It was launched at a policy symposium in Oxford attended by ministers or senior representatives of Angola, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, India, Iraq, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECD), the Philippines, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Tunisia, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Uruguay. "Radical social advances are only possible if we understand - through careful observation and analysis - the deep roots of our poverty" - President Juan Manuel Santos Colombia included the Colombia-MPI as an official index for measuring poverty and as a tool to monitor the effect of policies designed to reduce poverty.