Guardian Global Development

Millennium Development Goal 1

To eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

If the people in these photographs lived in our street, we would share our food with them.

These are some of the poorest people in the world. Sucked into the cities in search of work, they live in shacks made of corrugated iron, near an open sewer. Though poverty is now in decline in Bangladesh, malnutrition rates are still among the highest anywhere in the world.

One in every six people in the world lives on less than a dollar, or 65p, a day, and more than 800 million people are malnourished.

The people you see in these pictures just happen to have been born in the wrong place. While we drink clean tap water, they drink water from a sewage-infested river. While we consume more than is good for us, they eat rice with a little chicken skin if they are lucky.

We can't help having been born here and not there; we can't stop eating or drinking or shopping. But if people in our street didn't have enough to eat, we would share our food with them.

Just because poverty is a long way away doesn't mean there is nothing we can do to tackle it.

In 2000, world leaders made a promise to halve extreme poverty and the number of malnourished people by 2015. They can do it - but only if we keep up the pressure. As Nelson Mandela said: "Ending poverty isn't about charity. It's about justice."

· Photos by Zed Nelson at the Urban Health and Nutrition project run by Concern in Dhaka, Bangladesh
Sponsored by Concern

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