The United Nations said that soaring global food and energy prices have led to widespread poverty, affecting 71 million people in low-income countries in just three months.
The United Nations Development Program warned in a statement that this acceleration in poverty is “much faster than the shock of the Covid-19 pandemic”, stressing that the countries concerned will need the support of the multilateral system “to meet their needs”.
He said: “At a time when interest rates are rising in response to an inflationary boom, there is a risk that new poverty will emerge as a result of deflation, further exacerbating the crisis, which in turn will accelerate and deepen world poverty.”
The report examines the situation in 159 countries, while noting that the countries that suffer from the most dangerous situations are located in the Balkans, the Caspian Sea and sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the Sahel region.
“Unprecedented price increases mean for many people around the world that food they may have had access to yesterday is no longer available today,” UNDP Administrator Achim Steiner said in a statement.
He believed that “this crisis in the cost of living is pushing millions of people into poverty”, which threatens to spread “famine at an astonishing rate” at a time when “the risk of exacerbating social unrest increases day by day”.
The countries most affected by high prices are Yemen, Sudan, Ethiopia, Armenia, Uzbekistan, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Haiti, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Tanzania.
Source: AFP