Brussels, 16 October 2009 - This Saturday, Oct. 17^th, is the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. In 2000, at the UN Millenium Summit, the world agreed to complete the UN Millennium Development Goals by 2015. Unfortunately, the last UN report on the matter clearly shows that the world is not going in the right direction. While the world richest have poured enormous amount of money (trillions of euro in the EU only) to bail out banks and other financial institutions, extreme poverty continues to trap more than 1 billion people, who live with less than 1 dollar a day.

Caritas’ values are human dignity, solidarity and the preferential option for the poor. Especially in this time of increased social and economic hardship, these values call for enhanced and shared responsibility on behalf of the public authorities, the political forces, the economic sector, the organised civil society and the people.

The world’s market economy must incorporate the principles of distributive and social justice, rather than continuing to act under the purely commercial logic as it has done up until now. Today, we are all suffering under the financial, enviromental and social meltdown that this logic has produced.