Today, 4.3 per cent of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean live on less than $1.90 per day and 6.3 per cent, near 37 million, are multidimensionally poor. UNDP´s Signature Solution One of the Strategic Plan 2022-2025 aims to empower the poor, marginalized, and excluded populations to escape persistent multidimensional poverty and vulnerabilities. For UNDP, helping people to get out and prevent them from falling or getting back into poverty is our primary focus. It is featured in our work with governments, communities, and partners across the LAC region. To tackle inequality of opportunities we invest in enhancing the capabilities people need to move above the poverty line and keep moving forwards. With such purpose we focus our actions on identifying, protecting and empowering.

To identify we conduct analysis and studies on poverty, and more technically we bring support in the design and implementation of social registries and social programmes information systems, and of Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) and Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) that allow for identifying vulnerable and poor population, construct poverty maps and contribute to the evidence-based policy making.

To protect we work hand in hand with governments to advocate for more inclusive, gender responsive and universal social protection policies. We also give support in the design and implementation of programmes and policies that, in times of higher uncertainty, adequately protect the most poor and vulnerable from losing their capabilities to have a decent life, ensuring their access to basic services, and keeping in mind the Leaving No One Behind (LNOB) principle which leads to always considering women, children, the economy of care, food security, the rural population, MSMEs, ethnic groups, LGBTIQ+, migrants and the youth.

Protecting also means preventing by increasing the individuals and community resilience and simultaneously decreasing their vulnerabilities to risks and shocks. To do so we advocate for more risk-informed social protection systems that “integrate disaster risk management with social protection instruments and green recovery”.

To empower our work focuses on enhancing capabilities and increasing and generating productive capacities within individuals and MSMEs. With this aim we support the development of comprehensive national policies on inclusive growth, decent jobs, to foster inclusion in informal settings and facilitate their transition to the formal economy. In addition, our areas of support include improving the business ecosystem and empowering SMEs by strengthening their contribution and participation in the supply chains.

Empowering means also work hands in hands with governments to build together a more just and equitable finance system. In fact Funding the implementation of social protection and inclusive growth policies and programmes is a major challenge in a context of narrow fiscal space, especially after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

Thus, to advance in the implementation of existing and new public policies the Inclusive Growth and Poverty Reduction Team provides technical advice, guidance, tools and access to experts on Finance for Development across key areas of SDG finance, trainings (e.g., SDG Finance Academy) focusing on 1) Public Finance for the SDGs; 2) Private Investment for the SDGs; 3) SDG Impact Management and Finance Tracking; and 4) Integrated National Financing Frameworks and Country Portfolios.

In this way, our integrated offer articulates around the actions on targeting, measuring multidimensional poverty and vulnerability, implementing social registries, the access to decent jobs, inclusion in informal settings, promoting transition to the formal economy, supporting MSMEs, and supporting countries in the expansion of fiscal space, identification of private investment opportunities and supporting innovative financing institutions. This is an integrated solution to reduce inequality, foster inclusion and prosperity.