Achieving the SDGs: Three New UN Reports Call for Reoriented Policy Priorities
August 26, 2019 - By Anuj Krishnamurthy
This summer, United Nations agencies published three reports that offer a sobering assessment of the current state of international security and development, focusing on multidimensional poverty, hunger, and forcible displacement. As some countries succeed in steadily improving the living conditions of their most vulnerable populations, others have struggled to overcome sustained episodes of political instability and violent conflict. Together, the reports affirm the urgency with which the international community must reorient its policy priorities and take action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
Combating Global Poverty
With SDG 1, United Nations member states committed to ending “poverty in all its forms everywhere.” Released in July, the 2019 Global Multidimensional Poverty Index observes that 1.3 billion people across 101 countries, or 23.1 percent of those countries’ combined population, remain multidimensionally poor. Half of the world’s multidimensionally poor are under age 18; one-third are under age 10.
While the traditional marker of poverty is an income of less than $1.90 a day, the Multidimensional Poverty Index embraces more criteria than simply income. The index incorporates 10 indicators to better capture the intensity and variety of the depravations that the world’s impoverished face. Three central facets of human development—health, education, and standard of living, as measured by metrics like child mortality rates, years of schooling, and access to electricity and drinking water—differentiate the index from other measures of poverty. Still, this year’s report emphasizes that the index is just one of a number of statistical frameworks needed to inform policy change.
Children are more likely to be multidimensionally poor than adults. Most of the world’s 663 million multidimensionally poor children live in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, regions afflicted by particularly acute multidimensional poverty. Nearly two-thirds of children in sub-Saharan Africa are multidimensionally poor. In South Asia, 70 million children under the age of 5 are underweight or developmentally stunted, while 37 million children have not attended school past the eighth grade.
Yet, some countries have made dramatic strides in cultivating broad-based prosperity. A subset of 10 countries examined by the report—spanning the spectrum of national income levels and totaling a population of 2.0 billion people—reduced the number of multidimensionally poor from 1.1 billion to 782 million. India, Cambodia, and Bangladesh experienced the fastest reductions in the index. This progress has extended to the least well-off. In India, the poorest parts of the country achieved greater absolute gains in reducing multidimensional poverty than their wealthier counterparts. And in Vietnam and Peru, the bottom 40 percent of the population enjoyed faster growth in consumption and income than the population as a whole.
Ending World Hunger
As the global population of multidimensionally poor falls, progress towards SDG 2, “zero hunger,” has stalled in recent years, according to the United Nations’ 2019 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report. The report takes a holistic view of food security, advocating for public policies that promote access to healthcare and education, like social safety nets, and structural reforms to reduce inequality.
In 2018, 820 million were hungry, up from 785 million just three years ago. Across the world, 2.0 billion people lack dependable access to “safe, nutritious, and sufficient” food, including 8 percent of the populations of North America and Europe. Undernutrition can irreparably alter a person’s physiology and metabolism, compromising their growth and making them more susceptible to health complications like heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Progress toward other global targets of food security, like reducing rates of stunting and obesity, has also been slow or negligible.
Globally, the economic and social costs of food insecurity are enormous. Malnutrition has reduced the gross domestic product of Africa and Asia by up to 11 percent, while obesity, which afflicts 2.0 billion adults and close to 400 million children and adolescents, costs $2 trillion annually. Women have a 10 percent higher chance of facing food insecurity than men, after controlling for education level, poverty status, and residential environment. The report speculates that the gendered experience of food insecurity may be attributable to less explicit forms of discrimination that make it difficult for women to navigate food-scarce settings and engage in local economic activity. Studies have found that food insecurity can inflict serious harm to the psychosocial well-being and mental health of women and children.
Wider macroeconomic, geopolitical, and climatological forces can complicate the incidence of food insecurity. In 2018, economic shocks featured prominently in 33 of 53 countries that underwent food crises. Of the world’s 113 million people facing food shortages so dire they need immediate humanitarian assistance, 109 million live in countries highly dependent on the export of commodities. Broadly, extreme events like economic shocks, outbreaks of conflict, and natural disasters, caused acute food insecurity for more than 100 million people.
The report observes that “inequalities are one of the myriad reasons why extreme poverty reduction does not necessarily translate into improved food security and nutrition.” As such, the report’s authors recommend that governments implement sustainable food policy and social protection systems that ensure marginalized population’s access to food, even during crises.
The report specifically highlights Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme, established in 2005, as a potential model of such a system. Designed to accommodate both the nutritional needs of beneficiaries and the risk of emergencies, the program disburses cash and food aid to 8 million people. In 2011, when the Horn of Africa faced a drought-induced food crisis, the program proved remarkably effective. The Ethiopian government, responding to an early warning system, injected additional funding into the program, which ended up serving 10 million people, including 3 million people who did not typically receive aid.
Protecting and Caring for Displaced People
At the end of 2018, the population of forcibly displaced people worldwide exceeded 70 million, per the United Nations High Commission on Refugees report Global Trends 2018. That number—which encompasses refugees, asylum-seekers, internally displaced persons and stateless people—includes 14 million newly displaced people in 2018, or 37,000 new displacements per day. For context, the global population of displaced people was 43 million just 10 years ago.
The key drivers of this near-twofold increase are persistent spells of conflict and violence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in addition to newer waves of migration, such as the exoduses of people from Myanmar and Venezuela. Two-thirds of all refugees hail from five countries: Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar, and Somalia. The largest host countries for refugees are Turkey, Pakistan, Uganda, Sudan, and Germany.
The report also monitors the evolution of refugee situations into protracted refugee situations, in which at least 25,000 refugees of the same nationality have resided in the same host country for five consecutive years. In 2018, the United Nations designated nine additional refugee situations as protracted, raising the total number of people in protracted situations to 16 million.
As the number of displaced people grows, the rate of returns and resettlements has not been commensurate
As the number of displaced people grows, the rate of returns and resettlements has not been commensurate. Between 2017 and 2018, the number of refugees who returned to their home countries dropped from 667,400 to 593,800. Moreover, in 2018, 1 million refugees needed resettlement opportunities, but the international community offered just 81,300 places.
In September 2016, the General Assembly ratified the New York Declaration for Migrants and Refugees, a compact meant to establish formally the responsibilities states have to protect displaced people. As part of the declaration, the Assembly declared its “profound solidarity with, and support for, the millions of people in different parts of the world who, for reasons beyond their control, are forced to uproot themselves and their families from their homes.” The New York declaration reaffirmed the rights and dignity of displaced people; made commitments to marginalized subpopulations, such as people afflicted by HIV; and noted that migrants everywhere are entitled to due process and legal protections. Notably, the declaration also explicitly targeted the foundational drivers of sustained refugee crises and waves of migration. “Migration should be a choice,” the declaration said, “not a necessity.”
In a video address issued on June 20, 2019 to commemorate World Refugee Day, United Nations High Commission on Refugees Chief Filippo Grandi discussed the challenges that remain for the international refugee system, like inadequate funding, new restrictions on asylum-seekers, and the sluggish pace of peace talks.
But he ended his address on an optimistic note. “Many generous countries and communities are still welcoming places,” he said. “Ordinary people are donating and volunteering. Voices of humanity are holding their ground.”
As the world continues to grapple with the task of promoting economic, food, and human security, Grandi concluded, “We must have hope.”
About The Author: Anuj Krishnamurthy interned with the Environmental Change & Security Program in the summer of 2017 and is a recent graduate of Brown University.
Sources: Global Trends: Forced Displacement in 2018; Overseas Development Institute Humanitarian Practice Network; State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019: Safeguarding Against Economic Slowdowns and Downturns; 2019 Multidimensional Poverty Index: Illuminating Inequalities.
Photo Credit: Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed (left) with Alison Smale, Under-Secretary-General for Global Communications, at the SDG Ssustainable Development Goals) Media Zone, set up for the week of the General Assembly’s annual general debate. UN Photo/Cia Pak. 18 September 2017. United Nations, New York. Via United Nations Photo.