Africa: pandemic fills the ranks of extreme poverty around the world

The United Nations has predicted that 235 million people worldwide – 1 in 33 people in the world – will need humanitarian assistance in 2021

The coronavirus pandemic is pushing the number of people around the world who need humanitarian assistance to survive to new highs, the United Nations said on Tuesday, drastically increasing the ranks of extreme poverty in just one year.

One in 33 people will need aid to meet basic needs such as food, water and sanitation in 2021, a 40% increase from this year, the UN reported in its 2021 global humanitarian overview.

That’s 235 million people around the world, with concentrations in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, he said.

“The crisis is far from over,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said in a statement. “Humanitarian aid budgets face serious shortcomings as the impact of the global pandemic continues to worsen.”

Countries gave a record $ 17 billion in 2020 for collective humanitarian response, reaching 70% of people receiving aid, a 6% increase from 2019, the report said.

But the United Nations has warned that it has raised less than half of the $ 35 billion needed to avoid widespread famine, fight poverty and keep children in school and called on rich countries around the world for financial contributions.

“The rich world can now see the light at the end of the tunnel,” UN humanitarian aid chief Mark Lowcock said in a statement. “The same is not true in the poorest countries”.

It said countries around the world had made steady progress since the 1990s in reducing extreme poverty – defined by the World Bank, a multilateral development lender, living on $ 1.90 a day or less.

United Nations calculations show that one in 33 people need assistance compared to one in 45 this year, already the highest figure in decades, he says.

School closures have affected nine out of 10 students worldwide, with nearly 24 million children at risk of not returning to school in 2020, the United Nations said.

And as the pandemic hinders food systems, hunger is on the rise and the United Nations has predicted that as many as 270 million people will not have reliable access to food by the end of 2020.

The cost of meeting food aid needs this year was $ 9 billion, up from $ 5 billion in 2015, the report said.

The coronavirus infected 62.6 million people and killed 1.46 million people worldwide, according to a Reuters tally.