Good governance goes hand in hand with alleviating poverty. Governments must be engaged in ensuring access to health care, housing, nutrition, education, infrastructure, and access to land to help the poor. In fighting poverty governments must strengthen, encourage and protect civil society, local independent agencies, women's groups and non-governmental organizations working in their countries. Poverty alleviation has to be a national priority for all. Support of macroeconomic and microeconomic policies are necessary for enabling small and microbusinesses to flourish.
Daily experience shows that the strongest corollary with poverty alleviation is economic growth.
The wisest policy a government can adopt to reduce poverty is to lay a sound macroeconomic and structural foundation for sustainable growth. That means open and undistorted markets, transparent regulatory systems, strong financial oversight and participatory decision-making. These, in addition to improvements in basic living conditions, are the building blocks of prosperous societies. Recognizing my nation's responsibilities in the war against poverty, President Clinton is seeking to forgive 100 percent of the official bilateral debt owed by the poorest, most heavily-indebted countries to the United States. This unprecedented debt relief initiative, in addition to our commitments under the Cologne Initiative , will help these countries to channel their resources from servicing debt to providing for basic human needs and development.