On 22 April 2026, a landmark conference at ILO Headquarters in Geneva brought together leaders from across the world to confront a question that can no longer be avoided:

How do we end poverty without an economic model that is failing people and the planet?

The answer, increasingly, is that we can’t get there from here — not with growth as the only tool in the box.

The conference marked a pivotal moment for the Roadmap for Eradicating Poverty Beyond Growth, co-constructed since 2024 by a broad alliance of UN agencies, governments, civil society organisations, trade unions, and academic experts. With over 400 contributors globally, the Roadmap offers concrete policy pathways organised under five pillars with democratic planning and governance underpinning them all:

  • Transforming economic systems
  • Labour, care and economic democracy
  • Universal basic services and social protection
  • Ecological justice
  • Transforming the international economic order

Convened under the mandate of UN Special Rapporteur Olivier De Schutter, the conference was honest about the tensions involved. Growth is not the enemy — but growth as it has been pursued, extractive and exploitative, is not serving the people who need it most. The task is to build economic systems that put human rights and wellbeing first.

Nada Al-Nashif, UN Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, put it plainly: economic systems are tools that must serve people and planet. Yet it is abundantly clear how poorly our current economies meet people’s everyday needs — for healthy food, clean water, warm homes, and safe environments.

There was also a note of genuine hope. As Thobile Chittenden of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance reminded the room, many of these ideas are not new, they are already embedded in cultures, histories, and ways of seeing community, waiting to be rediscovered.

P4NE Director Jo Swinson attended the conference and offered a reflection

“Questioning the foundations of what we think we know can be uncomfortable, for sure. But it’s also sensible as we start to realise how many of our structures and institutions are built on sand.”

We are delighted to have supported the Beyond Growth Roadmap. Olivier and his team (François, Praachi, Kate, and others) have done amazing work to translate research into action, build alliances, and advocate for a more human rights-based economy.

The Roadmap will be formally presented to the Human Rights Council in summer 2026, a signal that these ideas are no longer considered extreme. They are considered necessary.

Beyond that, New Economies for Eradicating Poverty(NEEP) will become its permanent institutional home, sustaining the research, coalition-building, and policy engagement needed to shape the post-2030 global development agenda, including support for an International Panel on Inequality and guidance for governments redesigning poverty eradication strategies for a fundamentally changed world.

If your organisation is interested in contributing, the NEEP team welcomes new partners and collaborators.

Discover the full roadmap at https://www.neep-poverty.org

Back to Stories