Extreme poverty has fallen sharply worldwide in recent decades, yet progress has slowed and gains have been uneven, with inequalities persisting or growing. Overlapping and complex crises are compounding these challenges, placing additional pressures on those furthest behind. Meanwhile, shrinking development co-operation budgets and competing priorities risk sidelining poverty and inequalities from the development agenda, even as the case for keeping them central grows stronger.
This Guidance clarifies how poverty and inequalities are deeply intertwined: reducing one accelerates progress on the other. It recognises the structural causes and multidimensional nature of these issues and how they shape people’s resources, rights, opportunities and resilience, cutting across income, gender, racial and other lines. It presents actions for development partners to sharpen the poverty and inequality focus and impact of their development co-operation, drawing on evidence and good practices from across the development community. It outlines approaches to embed these goals in strategic planning and design, target and mobilise resources for those who need them most, foster equitable partnerships, and strengthen data, monitoring and evaluation systems for greater accountability and results. The Guidance serves as a resource for strengthening development co-operation’s contribution to more equitable, rights-based, people-centred societies that leave no one behind.
