New York. More than 1.1 billion people – one in every eight citizens of the planet – suffer from acute poverty, half of them children, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) denounced this Thursday, warning that the situation is three times worse. in conflict zones.
Acute poverty in conflict zones affects an average of 34.8 percent of the population, compared to 10.9 percent in countries at peace, according to the Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) that the UNDP and the Oxford Initiative on Poverty and Human Development have been preparing since 2010.
Unlike the World Bank, which establishes extreme poverty when a person earns a maximum of $2.15 a day, the MPI is prepared with indicators such as the lack of adequate housing, sanitation, electricity, fuel for cooking, nutrition and schooling.
“The MPI 2024 paints a sobering picture,” says the head of statistics for the UNDP Human Development Report, Yanchun Zhang, who warns that of the 1.1 billion multidimensional poor, “455 live in the shadow of conflict.”
“In war-torn nations, poverty rates are three times higher than in more peaceful environments, and the deprivations people face – whether in nutrition, water, sanitation, electricity or education – are three to five times more serious,” he told AFP.
“For the poor in conflict-affected countries, the fight for basic needs is a much harder and more desperate battle,” he adds.
In 2023, there were more conflicts than at any time since World War II, the report recalls.
The conclusions of this report that studies the situation of 112 countries, where 6.3 billion people live, are that poverty affects rural areas more (28 percent) than urban areas (6.6 percent); that young people under 18 years of age are more affected (27.9 percent) than adults (13.5) and that the majority (83.2 percent) of the world’s poor live in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia.
The five countries with the highest levels of poverty are India (234 million), Pakistan (93 million), Ethiopia (86 million), Nigeria (74 million) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (66 million).
In Latin America, 5.8 percent of the population – 34 million – suffers from multidimensional poverty. Haiti tops the list in the region, with 41.3 percent of the population in acute poverty, followed by Guatemala with 28.9 percent.
For Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Initiative, wars and conflicts not only leave “deep and lasting scars on lives in many ways”, but “make it difficult to reduce poverty.”
“This presents the international community with the unavoidable challenge to focus on poverty reduction and foster lasting peace,” he says in a message to AFP.
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