UN Report Warns Of Increasing Poverty Rate In Yemen

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) has warned that Yemen will become the poorest country in the world if the conflict continued until 2022.

The Program noted that the war has caused an increase in the poverty rate in Yemen from 47% to 75% by the end of 2019 according to forecasts.

“If the fighting continues until 2022, Yemen will be classified as the poorest country in the world,” UNDP said in a report entitled “Assessment of war Impact in Yemen on Achieving Sustainable Development Goals.”

The report pointed out that 79% of the population of Yemen live below the poverty line and 65% of them are classified as very poor.

In the absence of conflict, Yemen could have made progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, the global framework for combating poverty agreed in 2015 with the target date of 2030, the report said.

“But more than four years of fighting have hampered human development for 21 years, and Yemen is unlikely to achieve any of the SDGs even if the war stops today,” the report added.

The report predicted that by 2022 Yemen would suffer from the largest poverty gap in the world (the distance between the average income and the poverty line).

UNDP’s report attributed the high poverty rate in Yemen to factors related to the ongoing war, including the collapse of the economy in which the country has lost $ 89 billion of its economic activity since 2015.

The report referred to the disruption of markets and institutions and the destruction of social and economic infrastructure, noting that the GDP per capita fell from $3,577 dollars to $1,950 dollars, a level not seen in Yemen since before 1960.