International Day for the Eradication of Poverty: Advancing People-Centred Approaches

The 17^th of October marks the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The day underscores that ending poverty goes beyond income, and is also about dignity, justice, and belonging. This year, the Day focuses on ending social and institutional maltreatment by ensuring respect and effective support for families. It calls to put the furthest behind first, and to build institutions that help families stay together, thrive, and shape their own futures.

Social and institutional maltreatment is often systemically embedded, through mechanisms like intrusive surveillance of households, burdensome eligibility checks, humiliating service encounters, or under-resourced programs that default to separation. Single mothers, Indigenous families, and historically discriminated groups report judgment and control leading to erosion of trust and agency.

To tackle maltreatment, the Day highlights three shifts:

1. From control to care: Design services that start with trust. Reduce punitive conditionalities, streamline documentation, and prioritize respectful, person-centred interactions.
2. From surveillance to support: Rebalance investments away from monitoring and removal toward family-strengthening services: income support, quality childcare, adequate housing, mental health care, parenting support, and access to justice.
3. From top-down to co-created solutions: Involve families living in poverty at every stage—assessment, design, budgeting, delivery, and evaluation—so policies reflect real needs and constraints.

Supporting families also advances critical SDGs, such as No Poverty (SDG 1), Zero Hunger (SDG 2), and Quality Education (SDG 4) and more. It is an intersectional issue where coherent policies are needed across different sectors.

This year, the Day takes place just weeks before the Second World Summit for Social Development, where the spotlight will be on people-centred social development. Poverty eradication lies at the heart of the Summit agenda, to accelerate social progress. In a world characterized by economic development, technological means and financial resources, a world free from extreme poverty is within reach. The Day calls for respect and protection of families, to turn commitments into concrete change.

Learn more about the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty here.