Poverty is not inevitable, it is manufactured
Nu mijn mandaat als speciale VN-rapporteur voor Extreme Armoede en Mensenrechten op 30 april 2026 afliep, wil ik graag een eenvoudige gedachte met u delen: armoede is niet onvermijdelijk, maar een door mensen gecreëerd fenomeen. En als regeringen armoede kunnen creëren, kunnen ze die ook weer uitbannen.
En dat moeten ze heel dringend doen. Meer dan een tiende van de wereldbevolking, 845 miljoen mensen, leeft in extreme armoede. Bovendien is dit cijfer nog erg misleidend, aangezien het is gebaseerd op de extreem lage internationale armoedegrens van 3 dollar per dag. Bij een meer realistische drempel van 8,20 dollar zou zelfs 45 procent van de wereldbevolking als in extreme armoede levend moeten worden beschouwd.
Over the past six years, I have sought to show how poverty is manufactured. I highlighted gaps in how social protection works. I repeatedly insisted that developing countries should receive more international support to establish social protection floors. And I identified financing options to help mobilise such support.
However, while social protection and public services are essential, they cannot compensate indefinitely for economies that generate poverty wages, insecure jobs, unaffordable housing and neglected communities, perpetuating poverty across generations.
Rather than simply compensate those who the economy impoverishes, we should change the way the economy works. That is why I have spent my mandate challenging the conventional wisdom that GDP growth alone will “lift all boats”.
This promise has not been fulfilled. In many countries, economic growth has coexisted with rising precarity, weakened public services and widening inequality – while ecological breakdown, driven by our fixation on growth, accelerates.
In 2024, I launched a consultative process that led to the adoption last month, at the International Labour Organization and under the auspices of the Global Coalition for Social Justice, of a Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth: developed over 18 months with 400+ contributors – from UN agencies, governments, academics, CSOs, trade unions, social and solidarity economy actors, grassroots movements, from both the Global North and South – and guided by the question: how can we end poverty and reduce inequalities without treating GDP growth as our primary condition for progress?
I believe we now have the practical toolbox that answers that question, and it is my greatest hope that future anti-poverty strategies are guided by the many policies listed in the Roadmap (which will continue to develop under the NEEP initiative): https://lnkd.in/eChXX6e6
Finally, I am extremely grateful to all the people and organisations I have worked with in this role, but I conclude with this: no expertise can match the expert knowledge of people living in poverty, who have all too often been ignored in the search for solutions.
Policies that exclude them are bound to fail: only by listening to them, and learning from them, can we succeed.
Olivier De Schutter
Olivier De Schutter is professor aan de Université Catholique de Louvain/SciencesPo (UCLouvain). Hij co-voorzitter van IPES-Food en lid van het European Committee of Social Rights bij de Raad van Europa.
Deze bijdrage verscheen op de LinkedIn-pagina van Olivier De Schutter: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7455592738554548225/?origin=NETWORK_CONVERSATIONS
Lees ook:
– Global Coalition for Social Justice (ILO) https://social-justice-coalition.ilo.org/
– New policy brief highlights the social and solidarity economy as key to poverty eradication beyond growth.
The brief examines how the social and solidarity economy (SSE) can serve as a partner and delivery mechanism for advancing the human rights economy, and identifies policy levers and actions that can strengthen the conducive environment for the SSE. https://www.ilo.org/resource/news/new-policy-brief-highlights-social-and-solidarity-economy-key-post-growth
– A Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth
Rights-based, post-growth policies that make poverty eradication a deliberate outcome of restructured economies — not a trickle-down side effect of destructive growth. https://www.neep-poverty.org/roadmap-for-eradicating-poverty-beyond-growth/
– The Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth (video, 22 April 2026)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzAB4HtJzwA
– Skyrocketing Military Spending Undermines Development Aid to World’s Poor https://cimic-npo.org/2026/01/14/69-012/
– Maarten Van Ginderachter: ‘Arm Vlaanderen. Een wereldgeschiedenis. Honger, ziekte en globalisering in het midden van de 19de eeuw’ https://cimic-npo.org/2026/01/14/69-008/
– Klimaat en vrede: één strijd. Oproep aan de vredes- en klimaatbewegingen https://cimic-npo.org/2025/02/22/60-005/
– Internationale samenwerking, een onmisbare oplossing in een onderling verbonden wereld https://cimic-npo.org/2024/12/12/58-005/
– De onschatbare waarde van het vangnet https://cimic-npo.org/2024/04/30/52-007/
– Fundamentele vragen bij ons huidig economisch systeem: is dat in staat oplossingen te bieden voor onze belangrijkste problemen? https://cimic-npo.org/2023/05/31/43-006/
