A/RES/53/198 Page 4 15. Emphasizes the importance of increasing the control of the poor over resources, including land, skills, knowledge, capital and social connections; 16. Emphasizes also the role of microcredit as an important anti-poverty tool that promotes the generation of productive self-employment and empowers people living in poverty, especially women, and therefore encourages Governments to adopt policies that support the development of microcredit institutions and their capacities, and calls upon the international community, in particular the relevant organs, organizations and bodies of the United Nations system and international and regional financial institutions involved in the eradication of poverty, to support and to explore the incorporation of the microcredit approach in their programmes and the further development, as appropriate, of other microfinance instruments; 17. Welcomes the initiative taken by the Economic and Social Council to strengthen coordination for an integrated implementation of the outcome of the major United Nations conferences and summit conferences in the 1990s, where the eradication of poverty had been a cross-cutting theme; 18. Notes with appreciation the efforts made within the United Nations system to enhance interagency coordination among relevant organizations, funds and programmes and the Bretton Woods institutions for the integrated follow-up to the United Nations major conferences and summit conferences, including the adoption by the Administrative Committee on Coordination of the statement of commitment for action to eradicate poverty,3 and encourages those agencies to take more effective action in support of Member States in their efforts to achieve the objectives of the Decade; 19. Reiterates its call to all donors to give high priority to the eradication of poverty in their development assistance programmes, on both a bilateral and a multilateral basis, and invites the relevant funds, programmes and agencies of the United Nations system to support developing countries, in particular African countries and the least developed countries, in their efforts to achieve the overall goal of eradicating absolute poverty, to reduce substantially overall poverty and to ensure basic social services, by supporting national efforts to formulate, coordinate, implement, monitor and assess integrated poverty strategies, including capacity-building, and by supporting efforts to empower people living in poverty; 20. Notes with appreciation all initiatives aimed at or contributing to the eradication of poverty that have been undertaken by countries and international organizations, and encourages continuous action and further cooperation among the various initiatives; 21. Reaffirms the importance of agreeing on a mutual commitment between interested developed and developing country partners to allocate, on average, 20 per cent of official development assistance and 20 per cent of the national budget, respectively, to basic social programmes, and welcomes the efforts made to implement the 20/20 initiative, which emphasizes that promoting access for all to basic social services is essential for sustainable and equitable development and is an integral part of the strategy for the eradication of poverty;4 3 See TD/B/EX(18)/INF.1. 4 See Report of the World Summit for Social Development, Copenhagen, 6–12 March 1995 (United Nations publication, Sales No. E.96.IV.8), chap. I. /...