Urban poverty is a challenge for the whole world

The Alliance - a response to the challenge of poverty

The Alliance is a worldwide network of cities set up by UNDP to help municipalities face up to the challenge of poverty on the spot.

The network makes it easier to build bridges between municipal authorities by enabling them to take advantage of pooling their experience. It also provides a framework for pooling their human, material and financial resources in order to achieve specific objectives that make it possible to reduce poverty and reduce its effects.
It does not carry any constraints, and is made freely available to the cities. The benefit they gain from it is all the greater once elected representatives and municipal civil servants get into the habit of using it as a resource to be used in favour of their strategies and programmes for combating poverty. The Alliance is rooted in UNDP, and this expands the prospects for municipal action and gives municipalities access to all the experience, skills and even the resources of the range of the United Nations agencies and their partners.

The Alliance – a contribution to achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

In September 2000, 189 governments signed the "Millennium Declaration" on which are based the eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that are known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The first goal in this international commitment involves halving extreme poverty and hunger. This cannot be achieved without the contribution of the municipalities.
The Alliance enables elected representatives and municipal staff – and, beyond them, the fabric of local businesses and associations – to contribute to achieving the MDGs.

UNDP – the United Nations Development Programme

– is the global development network of the United Nations. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.
At the Millennium Summit in 2000, world leaders pledged to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, giving priority to the
overarching goal of halving poverty by 2015.
The UNDP network coordinates the efforts made at national and
international level with a view to achieving these goals.

UNDP mainly focuses its activities on:

democratic governance

poverty reduction

crisis prevention and recovery

energy and environment, and

HIV/AIDS

Appeal of the Cities against Poverty

We, cities of all countries, cities of a world in which poverty still kills thousands of human beings every day, endangers natural resources indispensable to life, and compromises the future of all the planet's children, request:

that our societies make the fight against poverty an absolute priority;

that to do so they mobilise more human resources as well as the additional national and international financial means needed while assuring the transparency of their use;
that they give substance to the commitments made by the heads of State and government of every continent during the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen and to the programme of action adopted by the international community on that occasion;
that they take up this challenge together, in an enduring partnership