More than 1.2 billion people are living on less than US $1.25 a day and 2.4 billion are living on less than US $2 a day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. He told the UN observance of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty that at least 700 million people were lifted out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 and he is determined to help UN make “poverty history.” Since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008, Ban said inequality has grown more pronounced and discrimination against women and girls remains “a blatant injustice.” He warned that “entrenched poverty and prejudice and vast gulfs between wealth and destitution, can undermine the fabric of societies and lead to instability.”