Rabat – Soaring inflation rates worldwide has plunged 71 million people in developing countries into poverty in the past three months.
Poverty rates have increased considerably faster than the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed debt in developing countries to a 50-year high, equivalent to more than two and half times their revenues.
The UN Development Program (UNDP) in its latest report urgently called for the global community to help low and middle-income countries who are grappling with depleted fiscal reserves and rising interest rates on global financial markets.
With the Ukrainian war leading to the largest commodity price shock since the 1973 oil crisis, the UNDP analyzed 159 countries where the increase in prices “is already having immediate and devastating impacts on the poorest households.”
The most critical states are in the Balkans, the Caspian Sea region, and sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in the Sahel region.
The UNDP’s report also estimates that the high interest rates could further “trigger recession-induced poverty that will exacerbate the [inflation] crisis even more.”
“Unprecedented price surges mean that for many people across the world, the food that they could afford yesterday is no longer attainable today,” says UNDP Administrator, Achim Steiner.
Steiner warned that the cost-of-living crisis is pushing millions into poverty and starvation “at breathtaking speed.”
The report pointed out that the main challenge developing nations face is how to “balance meaningful short-term relief to poor and vulnerable households, at a moment when most of these countries are struggling with shrinking fiscal space and ballooning debt.”
“The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have re-emphasized the importance of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as the blueprint for a liveable and just future for everybody,”Steiner added.
800 million suffered from poverty in 2021
UNICEF’s latest State of Food Security and Nutrition (SOFI) report shows that the number of people affected by hunger globally rose to more than 800 million in 2021, an increase of 150 million since the COVID-19 outbreak.
As the percentage of the hunger crisis has sharply jumped between 2019 and 2021, more than 2.3 billion people have moderately or severely suffered from food insecurity last year – 350 million more compared to pre-COVID-19 numbers.
The gender gap in food insecurity also continued to rise, reaching 31.9% among women against 27.6% for men.
Statistics also show that an estimated 45 million children under the age of five “were suffering from wasting, the deadliest form of malnutrition, which increases children’s risk of death by up to 12 times.”
Projections estimate that nearly 8% of the world’s population (670 million) will still face hunger in 2030, the report concluded.
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