Making poverty history.

This article discusses how 2005 could be a significant year in the fight against poverty. We have the cash, we have the drugs, we have the science--but do we have the will? Do we have the will to make poverty history? That is quite a question: big, crucial and--so long as "we" is defined broadly--entirely valid. And it is a question to which--according to Bono, the rock star and modern-day prophet who posed it--the coming year will go a long way towards providing an answer. In 2005, poverty reduction is scheduled to dominate the global policymaking agenda as never before. First will come some visionary reports, led by Jeffrey Sachs's study for the United Nations (in January) and Tony Blair's Commission for Africa (probably in March). In July, if Mr Blair does not unexpectedly lose a British general election in the meantime, he will host a G8 summit of rich-country leaders which will focus on tackling poverty, especially in Africa. In September, the UN will hold a special General Assembly Summit to review progress towards the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000, which include a commitment to halve the proportion of the world's population living in poverty by 2015. For so much high-level attention to be paid to the needs of the poor is unambiguously welcome. So, too, is the spirit of optimism with which policymakers and campaigners view next year. Yet it does not take a cynic to wonder whether so much international summitry might, in the end, generate far more hot air than action. There is a genuine danger of this. So before giddy rhetoric gives way to disappointment, it is worth asking what battles, realistically, might be won in the war on poverty in 2005.