UN report: More than a billion people suffer from poverty around the world

Bethlehem - Ofoq News - The United Nations Development Program announced, in its report for the year 2026, that the number of people suffering from multidimensional poverty around the world has increased for the first time since it began monitoring it in 2010.

The program explained in its 2026 report that the number of people suffering from multidimensional poverty around the world has reached about 1.2 billion people, an increase of 51.5 million people compared to the last recorded statistics.

Alexander De Croo, director of the programme, said that this rise should be “an alarm bell for the whole world”, noting that poverty deprives millions of food, education, clean water and electricity, and that children constitute more than half of those affected.

The program explained that population growth contributed to an increase in the number of poor people by about 15.4 million people, pointing out that 33 countries out of 89 countries for which data are available succeeded in reducing the multidimensional poverty index by half in less than 15 years, including 6 African countries.