Wars and poverty: the more conflicts increase, the more people flee from where they live and the most affected are always children

ROMA – One billion and 100 million people live in a state of multidimensional poverty; almost half a billion of these live in areas where there are ongoing conflicts. The new research of United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and theOxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) highlights the close link between war and poverty: the rate of people struggling to survive, in fact, in countries affected by conflicts is almost three times higher than that recorded in slightly more stable countries.

The numbers. 455 million poor people around the world live in countries involved in violent conflicts and afflicted by political instability: these are the data from the latest update of the global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) published in recent days by OPHI and UNDP. The study offers a detailed analysis of the relationship between conflict and poverty and finds that of the 1.1 billion people living in acute poverty, 40 percent live in a country at war.

Countries in conflict. In areas where political and social instability or even war reigns, more than one person in four does not have access to electricity, while in more stable regions the problem affects one person in twenty. Similar disparities are evident in crucial areas such as education, nutrition and access to clean water and infant mortality. The report dedicates an in-depth study to Afghanistan, where 5.3 million people fell into a condition of multidimensional poverty between 2015 and 2023. The data examining the post-conflict situation in the Asian country is alarming: in 2022/ 23 almost two-thirds of citizens, or 64.9 percent of the population, were poor.

Who are the poor. Over half of the 1.1 billion people living in acute poverty are children under the age of 18: 584 million in total. Globally, 27.9 percent of children – compared to 13.5 percent of adults – live in poverty. The main shortages concern sanitation, housing and cooking fuel. Over half of families struggling to survive have an undernourished person among their relatives and these numbers become particularly serious in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Without peace there is no economic recovery. “This study provides the first global analysis examining how people in conflict contexts are also the poorest. In countries at war, more than one in three people are poor, while in countries not affected by conflict, one in nine people are poor, according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. And unfortunately poverty reduction is slower in conflict zones, so this means that the poor in conflict contexts are left behind. These numbers require an answer: we cannot end poverty without investing in peace,” comments Sabina Alkire, director of the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative.