UN joins WB in echoing concern over global crisis
Sunday, 20 September 2009
From Fazle Rashid
NEW YORK, Sept 18: Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, has joined the World Bank (WB) chief in echoing the concern over the global financial crisis slamming some of the working poor around the world.
The UN Secretary General's report called "voices of the vulnerables" was distributed to all foreign missions last Thursday. More than 100 heads of state and government are expected to descend on New York for what the organisation is calling its biggest annual assembly ever. The accent will however be on climate change.
Although the ability of the United Nations or any other global entity to collect accurate figures about poverty is in dispute, a point Ban conceded, there is consensus that the poorest people in the world are staggering from the impact of the crisis, the New York Times (NYT) reported the other day.
Ban Ki-Moon will highlight the need to keep aid flowing in the middle of still turbulent economic times.
This will be the centerpiece of his speech at the UN.
His speech will embrace a variety of grim figures -- as many as 222 million workers run the risk of joining the ranks of the poor, earning less than $1.25 a day according to ILO; remittance flows which soared to a hefty $328 billion in 2008 will drop by 23 per cent in 2009 as the World Bank (WB) report said; hunger rates are up in every regions of the world as Food and Agriculture Organisation said and more than 1.3 billion people will be living under poverty line up by more 100 million in 2009.
If it wasn't for the crisis the number of impoverished would have been 50 million lower, the NYT quoted Martin Ravallion, director of development research at the WB as saying. All data are disputed. One of the proposals of the UN Secretary General will be to urge the international community to provide fund for perfecting the global data collecting system.
The economic crisis generally has hit the poor countries later than it did the rich world, NYT quoted spokesman of Oxfam International as saying. Rather than hit by the financial collapse, they (poor countries) were hit by falling trade flows, falling investments and falling remittances, he said.
NEW YORK, Sept 18: Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General, has joined the World Bank (WB) chief in echoing the concern over the global financial crisis slamming some of the working poor around the world.
The UN Secretary General's report called "voices of the vulnerables" was distributed to all foreign missions last Thursday. More than 100 heads of state and government are expected to descend on New York for what the organisation is calling its biggest annual assembly ever. The accent will however be on climate change.
Although the ability of the United Nations or any other global entity to collect accurate figures about poverty is in dispute, a point Ban conceded, there is consensus that the poorest people in the world are staggering from the impact of the crisis, the New York Times (NYT) reported the other day.
Ban Ki-Moon will highlight the need to keep aid flowing in the middle of still turbulent economic times.
This will be the centerpiece of his speech at the UN.
His speech will embrace a variety of grim figures -- as many as 222 million workers run the risk of joining the ranks of the poor, earning less than $1.25 a day according to ILO; remittance flows which soared to a hefty $328 billion in 2008 will drop by 23 per cent in 2009 as the World Bank (WB) report said; hunger rates are up in every regions of the world as Food and Agriculture Organisation said and more than 1.3 billion people will be living under poverty line up by more 100 million in 2009.
If it wasn't for the crisis the number of impoverished would have been 50 million lower, the NYT quoted Martin Ravallion, director of development research at the WB as saying. All data are disputed. One of the proposals of the UN Secretary General will be to urge the international community to provide fund for perfecting the global data collecting system.
The economic crisis generally has hit the poor countries later than it did the rich world, NYT quoted spokesman of Oxfam International as saying. Rather than hit by the financial collapse, they (poor countries) were hit by falling trade flows, falling investments and falling remittances, he said.