A/HRC/44/40 erosion of labor protections and stable employment, increasing real estate prices in lowincome neighborhoods, and tax cuts.140 Large corporations like Facebook, Google, and Apple are touting philanthropic initiatives all while engaging in large-scale tax avoidance, depriving governments of billions while budget cuts are endangering social protection programs.141 78. Philanthropic giving is not a democratic or transparent process, moving efforts to address poverty behind closed doors. It is a form of private political power, one in which wealth can dictate policy without regulation or accountability. 142 Above all, it is no replacement for an equitable tax system or robust publicly funded programs that fulfill the human rights of all people and work to eliminate extreme poverty.143 F. Embrace participatory governance 79. For all of the talk of participation and partnership, people who have experienced poverty are largely shut out of policymaking processes. When they oppose policies ostensibly designed to help them, they are ignored. Instead, ideological arguments, misinformation, stereotypes, and anecdotes are used to advance the goals of the powerful under the guise of reducing poverty.144 Policymakers routinely blame poor people for their situation, ignoring systemic factors, such as the unavailability of decent work, unaffordable living costs, adverse institutional arrangements, and the perverse actions of policymakers themselves. Governments need to listen more attentively and to foster genuine public discussion of policies to eliminate poverty and promote an adequate standard of living for all. G. Adapt international poverty measurement 80. The current IPL should not be the main focus of the international community in characterizing the extent of global poverty. The UN should prioritize its own measures, which often more meaningfully reflect deprivations. The Bank should explore measures that are explicitly tied to the satisfaction of basic needs and capabilities. Although doing so would not address core criticisms, the Bank should at least foreground measures that give a more complete picture in their publications and research, such as the societal poverty line or higher monetary lines. 81. An important starting point is to generate crucial data. This includes information on within-household inequality and on groups underrepresented in and excluded from surveys. As valuable as a more realistic global headcount would be, no one measure can replace the broad dashboard of multidimensional indicators that reflect modern expectations of a life free of poverty, aligned with human rights guarantees. V. Conclusion 82. In evaluating poverty eradication, the international community should stop hiding behind an international poverty line that uses a standard of miserable subsistence. The UN should have the courage of its convictions and acknowledge that the scale of global poverty is far more accurately reflected in its own indicators and reporting. 83. Supporters of the SDGs should acknowledge that there is a deep deficit of political motivation underlying the current malaise in which key goals such as poverty eradication, economic inequality, gender inequality, and climate change are very far from being achieved. To avoid sleepwalking towards assured failure while pumping out endless bland reports, new strategies, genuine mobilization, empowerment, and accountability are needed. Recalibrating 140 141 142 143 144 18 Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth,” available at https://www.carnegie.org/about/ourhistory/gospelofwealth/; Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All (2018), p. 165. Callahan, Givers, p. 49; Jesse Drucker and Simon Bowers, “After A Tax Crackdown, Apple Found a New Shelter for Its Profits,” The New York Times, 6 November 2017. Reich, et al., Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, pp 2, 68-69, 72. See Tim Schwab, “Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox,” The Nation, 17 March 2020. Ravallion, The Economics of Poverty, pp. 5-6.