Make Poverty History

The Make Poverty History campaign is a Great Britain and Ireland coalition of charities, religion groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities who mobilise around the Britain's prominence in world politics, as of 2005, to increase awareness and pressure governments into taking actions towards relieving absolute poverty. The symbol of the campaign is a white "awareness bracelet" made of cotton or silicone. Usually on the band the words would be written in black, with the 'Poverty' word a lighter shade. A 'virtual' white band was also available to be displayed on websites.

Television advertisements ran for many months, urging people to speak to their representatives about stopping poverty. However, the Office of Communications (Ofcom) banned the ads, deciding that the ads were "wholly or mainly political" in nature, since they aimed to "achieve important changes".

The three demands of the campaign were:

• "Trade Justice"
• Drop the debt
• More and "better" aid

None of these aims were new (there were many attempts over the preceding decades to promote them), but the scale of the 2005 campaign dwarfed previous efforts.

On January 31, 2006, the majority of the members of the campaign passed a resolution to disband the organisation, arguing that the British coalition had only agreed to come together formally for a limited lifespan, to correspond with Britain holding the presidency of the EU and G8. Approximately forty groups argued against the dissolution.