The Make Poverty History campaign (which is written as MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY) is a British and Irish coalition of charities, religious groups, trade unions, campaigning groups and celebrities who mobilise around the UK'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 blank">'virtual' white band was also available to be displayed on websites.

TV ads ran for many months, urging people to speak to their representatives about stopping poverty. However, the UK _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 campaign said it was "disappointed" in the decision. uk_afp/britainunsummit" target="_blank">http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050912/wl_uk_afp/britainunsummit

The three demands of the campaign were:

• "_Trade justice"
• Drop the debt
• More and "better" aid

It should be noted that none of these aims were new (there have been many attempts over the last few 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 UK coalition had only agreed to come together formally for a limited lifespan, to correspond with the UK holding the presidency of the EU and G8. Around forty groups had argued against the dissolution. Some have been critical of the ending of the coalition; the Left-wing activist Alex Callinicos wrote that "disbanding of mph has a lot to do with the interests of the big NGOs that dominated it" and that "scrapping mph was an utterly shameful decision. It can only promote the belief that those who currently dominate the world are benevolent figures who will, with a few pushes from below, continue to take "small steady steps forwards". http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=8290