The Hindu : New Delhi News : Millions stand up against poverty

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Friday, Oct 24, 2008
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Millions stand up against poverty

Staff Reporter

116 million people, including 15 million from India, take part in campaign

PHOTO: RAJEEV BHATT

A NEW WORLD RECORD: School children in New Delhi displaying the number 116 million, the grand total of people all over the world who stood up during the week from October 17-19, 2008, for the United Nations’ “Stand Up Take Action Against Poverty” campaign, setting a new Guinness world record for mass mobilisation.

NEW DELHI: At a time when multi-million bail-out packages are being doled out to save big banks, 116 million people from 110 countries have come together to press decision-makers to keep their promises of alleviating poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals set by the United Nations.

As part of the “Stand up against Poverty” campaign, these people -- 15 million of them from India alone -- have set a new Guinness World Record by becoming the single largest coordinated movement of people to come together for a cause.

Certifying the feat, the Guinness citation reads: “The record for most people to stand against poverty in one week was set from October 17 to 19, 2008, for the United Nations Millennium Campaign…and involved a massive total of 116,993,629 participants in 7,777 events around the globe.”

“There is a crisis on the financial, food and oil fronts. It is surprising that while five trillion US dollars are being raised to save banks, the 18 billion US dollars that we fall short of to meet the millennium development goals are hard to come by,” said Minar Pimple, Deputy Director (Asia) of the UN Millennium Campaign, at a press conference here on Wednesday.

He said even as India’s economic growth was on the upswing, there are certain areas in the country where the bitter reality of malnutrition and poverty is similar to that of some disadvantaged areas in Ethiopia.

Members of the campaign rued that “50,000 children die each day of poverty-related causes and more than a billion people worldwide live in extreme poverty, while 700 billion US dollars were raised overnight to bail out the richest bankers and 1,000 billion US dollars can be spent on a single war”.

Referring to the Guinness record, UN Millennium Campaign director Salil Shetty said: “In what was undoubtedly the largest mobilisation since Guinness began keeping records, citizens around the globe put their leaders at the national and global level on notice that their commitments to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015 have to be met -- no more delays or excuses are acceptable.”

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