SUBMITTED TO: United Nations Development Programme
TOPIC: Eradication of Poverty
Mexico is deeply concerned that most recent poverty reports from the World Bank declared that almost half the world’s population — 3.4 billion people — still struggle to meet basic needs with a majority of families living off $1.90 – $5.50 a day, depending on their location in the world. To try and address the entire extent of poverty, Mexico has established its first all-encompassing poverty plan known as the Mexican Multidimensional Poverty Measurement. Rather than functioning on an income-only basis, the multidimensional basis includes education, access to health services, access to social security, shelter characteristics, access to basic services, access to food, and level of social cohesion for approximately 43% of citizens that fall below the national poverty line with basic plans laid out in the 2012 Voluntary National Report Article 4.3: Eradicating Poverty and Promoting Prosperity in a Changing World: SDGs 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 14. The delegation of Mexico strongly promotes worldwide sustainable agricultural methods such as hydroponics and agroforestry which can increase crop productivity and relieve unnecessary expenses. Access to financing for farmers will contribute to improving logistics and the food supply. Mexico recommends that health service programs be modeled after Seguro Popular, a public health insurance in Mexico that covers a wide range of services without co-pays for its affiliates. Furthermore, the Mexican Public Education Secretariat launched the early educational program, A Good Start, which adopts a new focus on early childhood development and a framework of affectionate care as the basis of early education in Mexico. Mexico actively encourages Member States to work with local and regional governments to develop youth/K-12 educational programs for impoverished adolescents. The delegation of Mexico recommends to nations where the gender gap is above a certain percentage to work with NGOs including Women’s Global Empowerment Fund and School Girls Unite which aim to serve under-privileged women and subsidize funds so they can continue education by encouraging them to expand beyond their current confines.
Recognizing that in the 2017 Global Education Monitoring Report, internationally, 264 million children were recorded to not be attending school, Mexico previously established a program called PROSPERA. Although recently abolished, PROSPERA, a strategy that targets the country’s poorest families for incentivised benefits tied to school attendance, vaccinations or trips to the doctor, increased school attendance by 20% among girls and 10% among boys, and significantly improved child health with payments starting at about $10.50 per month for children in the third grade of primary school and can be as high as $58 for boys and $66 for girls in the third year of secondary school. In initiating a similar program based off of the mandates within Mexico’s PROSPERA is encouraged but will require collaboration with UNESCO on expansion and receiving funding from the World Bank, The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and/or regional NGOs like Pratham (an Indian-based educational program) or Forum for African Women Educationalists (an African-based education advocacy), who are all generally willing to contribute to these operations and would aid in furthering the incentives to developing nations and the respective families.
The delegation of Mexico is immensely alarmed by the 2019 demographic report by the International Telecommunications Union and Internet World Statistics, stating that roughly 60% of the world’s population still lacks access to the Internet with continents like Africa having under 50% penetration rate. In order to alleviate and get the remaining 37% of Mexican citizens on the internet, Mexico launched a series of connected networks known as the Learning and Innovation Network (RIA). In partnership with Enova, a social enterprise devoted to bringing technology to Mexicans, the initiative comprises of roughly 209 classrooms, 2,514 computers and 25 specialized digital libraries, which contain 50 classrooms, 1,200 computers and 125 tablets which aim to minimize the digital divide within the country. To maximize the efforts of the movement, Enova enabled a tracking system called MAKO which equips all students with a digital file and gives feedback on their individualized learning goals. Mexico encourages that the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) work with initiatives like RIA to expand similar directives to developing nations with more rural populations where technology is low and populations are heavily dispersed in order to reach more people. If considered, funding may come from regional NGOs like the African Technology Foundation and TechSoup Asia Pacific which have interests in spreading knowledge about technological services, building new products in underdeveloped areas, and decreasing the digital divide.
Extremely disturbed that the vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries where 12.9 percent of the population is undernourished and based on the Global Immunization Vision and Strategy 2006-2015 Report, 2.5 million deaths a year continue to be caused by vaccine-preventable diseases, mainly in Africa and Asia among children less than 5 years old, Mexico has ratified the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 2015-2030 with major focuses on Goal 1 and 2. Each year, Mexico participates in a voluntary report to record progress made. The delegation of Mexico recommends that a nonpartisan committee be established in order to review all nation’s advancement towards the 17 SDG Goals. Mexico anticipates that the UNDP sessions will result in a clear and cohesive resolution regarding poverty and looks forward to hearing other delegation’s proposals.
- Katie McCarthy
