More than 2.2 billion people 'poor or near-poor': UN report

TOKYO // More than 2.2 billion people are “poor or near-poor”, with financial crises, natural disasters, soaring food prices and violent conflicts threatening to exacerbate the problem, a United Nations report said on Thursday.

While poverty was in decline worldwide, growing inequality and “structural vulnerabilities” remained a serious threat, stated the report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), released in Tokyo.

Nearly 1.5 billion people in 91 developing countries lived in poverty while another 800 million were teetering on the edge, it found.

“Eliminating extreme poverty is not just about ‘getting to zero’. It is also about staying there,” said the agency’s 2014 Human Development Report.

“Those most vulnerable to natural disasters, climate change and financial setbacks must be specifically empowered and protected.

“Making vulnerability reduction central in future development agendas is the only way to ensure that progress is resilient and sustainable.”

The report, Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience, called for basic social services to be made available to all and for full employment to be put at the top of the development agenda.

“Providing basic social security benefits to the world’s poor would cost less than two per cent of global GDP [gross domestic product],” it said.

“A basic social protection package is affordable so long as low-income countries reallocate funds and raise domestic resources, coupled with support by the international donor community.”

About 1.2 billion people survived on the equivalent of US$1.25 (Dh4.5) or less per day, the report found.

“If you are poor, you are less able to handle several shocks; you may also be disabled, you may also be older. So you have more layers of things against you,” Khalid Malik, the report’s lead author, said before the release of the document on Thursday.

Key to dealing with the problem was focusing government policy on jobs and social safety nets, the report said.

“Structural vulnerabilities are often manifested through deep inequalities and widespread poverty,” it said.

“The poor, women, minorities [ethnic, linguistic, religious, migrant, or sexual], indigenous peoples, people in rural or remote areas or living with disabilities, and countries landlocked or with limited natural resources, tend to face higher barriers.

“Unemployment tends to be associated with an increase in crime, suicide, violence, drug abuse and other social problems.

“Therefore, the social benefits of a job far exceed the private benefit – the wage.”

* Agence France-Presse