UN Report Finds 165 Million Were Pushed Into Poverty Over Past Three Years
By Brett Wilkins
Successive economic shocks over the past three years—including the Covid-19 pandemic, wars and other violence, and extreme weather disasters driven by human-caused climate change—have pushed around 165 million people into poverty around the world, leaving debt-saddled nations unable or poorly prepared to deliver vital social services, a United Nations report published Friday revealed.
The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) policy brief—entitled The Human Cost of Inaction: Poverty, Social Protection and Debt Servicing, 2020-2023—notes that “over the past decade, debt service payments have steadily been consuming a larger and larger share of public revenue and expenditure in developing economies,” with “the latest data suggests that the average low-income country devotes between double and triple the share of revenue or expenditure to servicing interest payments” compared with wealthier nations.
Photo courtesy of UN Women Asia and the Pacific.
Source: Common Dreams (link opens in a new window)
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