Thus all parts of the international development community have a role to play in these countries and effective co-ordination among them, reflecting the comparative advantages of each, is critical. It is equally important that DAC Members work to ensure coherent policies towards these countries across their government systems. The participants underlined the need for stronger dialogue among all actors, including development agencies, in order to achieve a fuller consensus on the approach to be adopted in difficult cases. Developing countries have achieved remarkable, although uneven, improvements in living standards over the past 30 years, and development co-operation has played a strong supportive role. But poverty reduction, in the context of sustainable development, remains a major challenge.
Extreme poverty ravages the lives of one person in four in the developing world.
Social and economic inequality within nations is an obstacle to sustainable poverty reduction. Globalisation offers promising avenues for spurring growth and reducing poverty, but special effort will be required to ensure poor countries and poor people share adequately in its opportunities and benefits. We are profoundly concerned with the plight of people living in severe poverty. Beyond our shared moral concerns for those less fortunate, we consider that reducing poverty and global inequalities is essential to our common interest, given the potential impact on regional and global security, international co-operation, sustainable development and prosperity. Developing countries must assume leadership and formulate effective national strategies for reducing poverty.