Mark McGreevy, Depaul Group CEO, this week addressed the United Nations – highlighting homelessness within poverty eradication strategy.
On 29 January Mark was speaking as part of an esteemed panel invited by the UN Commission for Social Development in New York to advise on poverty reduction. The Commission is the advisory body responsible for UN strategy on social development. Known as the ‘2030 Agenda’, this comprises the Sustainable Development Goals which set global targets on poverty reduction, among other issues. 
Mark pushed for greater representation of street homelessness within the 2030 Agenda. ‘I can think of no more powerful image of global poverty,’ he said, ‘than homeless people living and sleeping on the streets of our major towns and cities.’ He outlined the known solutions to ending homelessness and stressed the need for international collaboration to achieve these.
As part of this, Mark called for better collection of data on street homelessness. Whilst a UN report 17 years ago suggested around 100 million people have no access to shelter across the world, Mark said that: ‘In truth, we just don’t know [the scale of street homelessness], we don’t measure it’.
Depaul International’s partner agency, the Institute of Global Homelessness, has composed the first global definition of homelessness. This provides the basis for a global understanding and measurement of homelessness.
You can read the transcript of Mark’s 29 January speech below or watch it online here starting at 1:10:20.
Mark also spoke at a UN side event on ending homelessness on 31 January, organised jointly by the Vincentian Family and Permanent Mission of Ireland to the UN. You can find his keynote speech for the side event below.
