People: End poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions.
The People section of this report consists of Sustainable Development Goals 1 - 5 along with selected targets from those goals.
The international community’s re-commitment to end poverty in all its forms everywhere
has been enshrined in the first Goal of the United Nation’s Agenda 2030 and is essentially a continuation of Millennium Development Goal 1. While the priority is to end extreme poverty, Goal 1 of the Sustainable Development Goals encompasses a broader view of poverty, recognizing it as a multifaceted and multidimensional phenomenon with a complex mix of economic, social and environmental causes.
Hunger can mean very different things in different parts of the world and to different people. Hunger can express various degrees of eagerness or craving for food, ranging from simply being “hungry” between meals to starving after not having eaten in days; the distinction between day-to-day hunger and chronic hunger.
Today people are living longer both in developing and developed countries leading to significant changes in demographic patterns, with important implications for the length of working lives, pension provision and access to health-care services. The importance of physical health has been long recognized, but in recent years there has been increasing attention given to improving our understanding of what constitutes subjective well-being and the factors that influence it.
Education is critical to self-reliance and self-determination. But education is more than simply the key to overcoming hunger; it is the key to overcoming baseless superstition and illogical argument. Education is essential for good decision-making, accountability and understanding. It is the seed from which ethics, cooperation, growth and health all grow.
Article 1 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights
. All men and women are entitled to live in dignity, in freedom from want and from fear. But gender equality is also a precondition for development and poverty reduction. Empowered women contribute to the health and productivity of families, communities and nations.