February 3, 2021
70th Executive Session of the UNCTAD Trade and Development Board
February 3, 2021
The determination of poverty should not be limited to the sole category of “economic development”. As Pope Francis has stressed: “Some economic rules have proved effective for growth, but not for integral human development. Wealth has increased, but together with inequality, with the result that ‘new forms of poverty are emerging’. The claim that the modern world has reduced poverty is made by measuring poverty with criteria from the past that do not correspond to present-day realities… Poverty must always be understood and gauged in the context of the actual opportunities available in each concrete historical period.”