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south asia
Violent Conflicts Trap World's Poorest as 1.1 Billion Face Acute Poverty
"We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis," said one U.N. expert
Oct 17, 2024
Violent conflicts have contributed to pushing nearly half a billion people across the globe into acute poverty, and have made it harder for people to find their way out of extreme deprivation, according to a new United Nations report released on Thursday, the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.
The U.N. Development Program (UNDP) joined the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) in publishing the latest update of the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which measures acute poverty in 112 countries that are home to 6.3 billion people—a majority of the global population.
Researchers determined that 1.1 billion people are living in poverty, and 455 million of them are struggling to afford basic necessities while "living in the shadow of conflict."
"Conflicts have intensified and multiplied in recent years, reaching new highs in casualties, displacing record millions of people, and causing widespread disruption to lives and livelihoods," said Achim Steiner, administrator of UNDP.
The new research, he said, "shows that of the 1.1 billion people living in multidimensional poverty, almost half a billion live in countries exposed to violent conflict. We must accelerate action to support them. We need resources and access for specialized development and early recovery interventions to help break the cycle of poverty and crisis."
The communities studied by the groups face persistent deprivation of adequate housing, sanitation, electricity, cooking fuel, nutrition, and education, with well over half of the 1.1 billion poor people in the study facing undernourishment or living with someone who is malnourished.
UNDP and OPHI did find that countries have been able to significantly cut down on poverty in recent years, with 74 countries significantly reducing the incidence of poverty through investment in policies like cash transfer programs, child benefits, and nutritional services.
The index released Thursday showed that roughly 584 people under 18 are now experiencing extreme poverty, accounting for nearly 28% of children worldwide. Comparatively, about 13.5% of adults are living in acute poverty.
"Poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings—so the poor in conflict settings are being left behind."
"Ending child poverty is a policy choice," said the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). "Countries that have made this choice have drastically reduced the number of children growing up in poverty."
India is home to the largest number of people in extreme poverty, affecting 234 million of its population of 1.4 billion people. Nearly half of the world's 1.1 billion poor people live in India, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Steiner emphasized that many countries in the Global South are being suffocated by debt repayments to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, hindering efforts to reduce or eradicate poverty.
"Onerous debt burdens continue to impede progress on tackling poverty in many developing countries," said Steiner. "On average, low-income countries allocate more than twice as much funding to servicing net interest payments as they do to pay for health or education services."
Without accelerating poverty reduction efforts, fewer than 3-in-10 countries are expected to be able to halve poverty rates by the end of the decade.
With nearly half of the world's acute poverty affecting people in conflict zones or countries with "low peacefulness," OPHI director Sabina Alkire warned, "We cannot end poverty without investing in peace."
In countries and territories with protracted conflicts, like South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Yemen, and Gaza, "poverty is not their only struggle," said Alkire.
"In countries at war, over one in three people are poor (34.8 percent) whereas in non-conflict-affected countries it's one in nine (10.9 percent) according to the Uppsala Conflict Data Program," Alkire added. "And sadly, poverty reduction is slower in conflict settings—so the poor in conflict settings are being left behind. These numbers compel a response."
Communities in places with violent conflicts experience "markedly more severe" disparities in nutrition, electricity access, and access to clean water and sanitation, said OPHI.
The index was published as the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, a global authority on food insecurity, found that 41% of Palestinians in Gaza will face "catastrophic" levels of hunger in the coming months. Independent U.N. experts have already determined that Israel's yearlong assault on Gaza has pushed the enclave into famine.
Famine was declared in a refugee camp in North Darfur, Sudan in August, after more than a year of a civil war that has displaced 10 million people and blocked aid deliveries.
Steiner said that on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the U.N. is calling for the consideration of "a neglected dimension of poverty: the social and institutional maltreatment faced by people living in poverty augmented by conflict and lack of peace."
"Whether experienced through negative attitudes, stigma, discrimination, or through the structural violence embedded in institutions, it represents a denial of fundamental human rights," said Steiner. "From unequal access to education, healthcare, social protection, jobs, or legal identity, prejudicial policies that exclude those living in poverty further perpetuate cycles of inequality and exclusion."
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Accusations of US Regime-Change Operations in Pakistan and Bangladesh Warrant UN Attention
The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan in Pakistan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
Aug 19, 2024
Two former leaders of major South Asian countries have reportedly accused the United States of covert regime change operations to topple their governments. One of the leaders, former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan, languishes in prison, on a perverse conviction that proves Khan’s assertion. The other leader, former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina, fled to India following a violent coup in her country. Their grave accusations against the U.S., as reported in the world media, should be investigated by the UN, since if true, the U.S. actions would constitute a fundamental threat to world peace and to regional stability in South Asia.
The two cases seem to be very similar. The very strong evidence of the U.S. role in toppling the government of Imran Khan raises the likelihood that something similar may have occurred in Bangladesh.
In the case of Pakistan, Donald Lu, Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia and Central Asia, met with Asad Majeed Khan, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the U.S., on March 7, 2022. Ambassador Khan immediately wrote back to his capital, conveying Lu’s warning that PM Khan threatened U.S.-Pakistan relations because of Khan’s “aggressively neutral position” regarding Russia and Ukraine.
The Ambassador’s March 7 note (technically a diplomatic cypher) quoted Assistant Secretary Lu as follows: “I think if the no-confidence vote against the Prime Minister succeeds, all will be forgiven in Washington because the Russia visit is being looked at as a decision by the Prime Minister. Otherwise, I think it will be tough going ahead.” The very next day, members of the parliament took procedural steps to oust PM Khan.
On March 27, PM Khan brandished the cypher, and told his followers and the public that the U.S. was out to bring him down. On April 10, PM Khan was thrown out of office as the parliament acceded to the U.S. threat.
We know this in detail because of Ambassador Khan’s cypher, exposed by PM Khan and brilliantly documented by Ryan Grim of The Intercept, including the text of the cypher. Absurdly and tragically, PM Khan languishes in prison in part over espionage charges, linked to his revealing the cypher.
The U.S. appears to have played a similar role in the recent violent coup in Bangladesh. PM Hasina was ostensibly toppled by student unrest, and fled to India when the Bangladeshi military refused to prevent the protestors from storming the government offices. Yet there may well be much more to the story than meets the eye.
According to press reports in India, PM Hasina is claiming that the U.S. brought her down. Specifically, she says that the U.S. removed her from power because she refused to grant the U.S. military facilities in a region that is considered strategic for the U.S. in its “Indo-Pacific Strategy” to contain China. While these are second-hand accounts by the Indian media, they track closely several speeches and statements that Hasina has made over the past two years.
On May 17, 2024, the same Assistant Secretary Liu who played a lead role in toppling PM Khan, visited Dhaka to discuss the US Indo-Pacific Strategy among other topics. Days later, Sheikh Hasina reportedly summoned the leaders of the 14 parties of her alliance to make the startling claim that a “country of white-skinned people” was trying to bring her down, ostensibly telling the leaders that she refused to compromise her nation’s sovereignty. Like Imran Khan, PM Hasina had been pursuing a foreign policy of neutrality, including constructive relations not only with the U.S. but also with China and Russia, much to the deep consternation of the U.S. government.
To add credence to Hasina’s charges, Bangladesh had delayed signing two military agreements that the U.S. had pushed very hard since 2022, indeed by none other than the former Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the neocon hardliner with her own storied history of U.S. regime-change operations. One of the draft agreements, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), would bind Bangladesh to closer military-to-military cooperation with Washington. The Government of PM Hasina was clearly not enthusiastic to sign it.
The U.S. is by far the world’s leading practitioner of regime-change operations, yet the U.S. flatly denies its role in covert regime change operations even when caught red-handed, as with Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call in late January 2014 planning the U.S.-led regime change operation in Ukraine. It is useless to appeal to the U.S. Congress, and still less the executive branch, to investigate the claims by PM Khan and PM Hasina. Whatever the truth of the matter, they will deny and lie as necessary.
This is where the UN should step in. Covert regime change operations are blatantly illegal under international law (notably the Doctrine of Non-Intervention, as expressed for example in UN General Assembly Resolution 2625, 1970), and constitute perhaps the greatest threat to world peace, as they profoundly destabilize nations, and often lead to wars and other civil disorders. The UN should investigate and expose covert regime change operations, both in the interests of reversing them, and preventing them in the future.
The UN Security Council is of course specifically charged under Article 24 of the UN Charter with “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” When evidence arises that a government has been toppled through the intervention or complicity of a foreign government, the UN Security Council should investigate the claims.
In the cases of Pakistan and Bangladesh, the UN Security Council should seek the direct testimony of PM Khan and PM Hasina in order to evaluate the evidence that the U.S. played a role in the overthrow of the governments of these two leaders. Each, of course, should be protected by the UN for giving their testimony, so as to protect them from any retribution that could follow their honest presentation of the facts. Their testimony can be taken by video conference, if necessary, given the tragic ongoing incarceration of PM Khan.
The U.S. might well exercise its veto in the UN Security Council to prevent such a investigation. In that case, the UN General Assembly can take up the matter, under UN Resolution A/RES/76/, which allows the UN General Assembly to consider an issue blocked by veto in the UN Security Council. The issues at stake could then be assessed by the entire membership of the UN. The veracity of the U.S. involvement in the recent regime changes in Pakistan and Bangladesh could then be objectively analyzed and judged on the evidence, rather than on mere assertions and denials.
The U.S. engaged in at least 64 covert regime change operations during 1947-1989, according to documented research by Lindsey O’Rourke, political science professor at Boston Collage, and several more that were overt (e.g. by U.S.-led war). It continues to engage in regime-change operations with shocking frequency to this day, toppling governments in all parts of the world. It is wishful thinking that the U.S. will abide by international law on its own, but it is not wishful thinking for the world community, long suffering from U.S. regime change operations, to demand their end at the United Nations.Keep ReadingShow Less
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