What do we want the world to be like in 2030? It will certainly be more crowded, with another billion people expected to take the planet’s population above 8bn. But will millions of our fellow humans still be living in extreme poverty, barely scraping enough together to keep themselves and their families alive?

A new report delivered to the UN secretary-general at the end of May argues that we can eradicate extreme poverty altogether by 2030. The 27-member panel – of which one of us is a member – has taken a big step forward; it has recognised that justice, human rights, and the rule of law are weapons as powerful as education, healthcare and housing in the war against poverty.

Why? Because an estimated 4bn people live outside the protection of the law, mostly because they are poor. They can easily be cheated by employers, driven from their land, preyed upon by the powerful and intimidated by violence. But in places where people can access justice, they are pulling themselves out of poverty and into better lives.