71 million people have fallen into poverty as a result of war-related inflation in just three months since March 2022, according to data released on Thursday by the UN Development Program.
Global development agency: “The impact on poverty rates is far faster than the shock of the Covid-19 outbreak.”
Rising commodity prices are already having severe effects on the poorest households, according to the research of 159 developing nations, with Sub-Saharan Africa, the Caspian Sea area, and the Balkans standing out as hotspots.
According to UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner, “unprecedented price rises imply that for many people around the world, the food that they could purchase yesterday is no longer reachable today.”
According to Steiner, “We are witnessing an alarming expanding divergence in the global economy as whole poor nations face the possibility of being left behind as they try to deal with the ongoing Covid-19 epidemic, crippling debt levels, and now an escalating food and energy crises.”
Targeted financial transfers are allegedly more equal and economical than general subsidies, according to the paper.
Author of the report and head of strategic policy engagement for UNDP George Gray Molina stated, “While blanket energy subsidies may help in the short term, in the long term they drive inequality, further exacerbate the climate crisis, and do not soften the immediate blow of the cost-of-living increase as much as targeted cash transfers do.”
They may provide some temporary relief, but they run the risk of making the injury worse in the long run, he claimed.
The World Bank estimates that the Covid-19 epidemic alone has increased debt in poor nations to a 50-year high, which is equal to more than 2.5 times their earnings.
Armenia and Uzbekistan in Central Asia, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, and Sudan in Sub-Saharan Africa, Haiti in Latin America, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka in South Asia are the nations that are most severely affected by the problem on a global scale by poverty.
The repercussions may be particularly severe in countries with the lowest levels of poverty, such as Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Yemen, although they may be more severe in countries like Albania, and the Kyrgyz Republic, Moldova, Mongolia, and Tajikistan.
To read our blog on “Pakistan is on the UN’s list of drought-stricken nations,” click here.
