Justice and development: Challenges to the legal empowerment of the poor

We have made great strides in reducing poverty and enabling human development. Ever since poverty trends began to be monitored, the number of people living in extreme poverty and poverty rates declined in every developing region, including in sub-Saharan Africa. The global poverty rate at $1.25 a day declined in 2010 by less than half the 1990 rate. The first target of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)—halving the extreme poverty rate to its 1990 level—will have been achieved at the global level well before 2015.