Alan C. Posted January 15, 2013 Posted January 15, 2013 UN’s $5.7B anti-poverty agency doesn’t do much to reduce poverty, according to its own assessment According to the document, UNDP’s efforts often have “only remote connections with poverty.” Its anti-poverty programs are “disconnected,” and are frequently “seriously compromised” by a lack of follow-up to help poor countries learn “what works and why.” Bottom line: after spending more than $8.5 billion on anti-poverty activities between 2004 and 2011—and just how much more is something of a mystery-- UNDP has only “limited ability…to demonstrate whether its poverty reduction activities have contributed to any significant change in the lives of the people it is trying to help.” . . . ...UNDP evaluators had trouble establishing how much money the agency actually spends on its anti-poverty efforts, in part because the money is spread across a variety of areas at the highly-decentralized UNDP, which maintains offices and programs in at least 162 countries, as well as its New York headquarters. According to other U.N. figures examined by Fox News, UNDP spends, officially at least, roughly $5 billion annually on activities labeled as “development,” which could be understood as at least loosely related to anti-poverty action. The purpose of anti-poverty programs is to finance the salaries of the people who work in the anti-poverty agencies. The free-market is the best and most effective anti-poverty program.
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