More than 330m children still in extreme poverty: Unicef

WASHINGTON: The Covid-19 pandemic caused a sharp slowdown in the fight to end child poverty, with 333 million children still living in extreme poverty, according to a report published on Wednesday.

The report from the United Nations Children´s Fund (Unicef) and the World Bank found that the pandemic led to the abolition of extreme poverty for 30 million fewer children than was previously predicted.

As a result, around one in six children still live on less than $2.15 per day, according to the report. “Compounding crises, from the impacts of Covid-19, conflict, climate change and economic shocks, have stalled progress, and left millions of children in extreme poverty,” Unicef Executive Director Catherine Russell said in a statement.

The report´s findings throw a spanner in the works of the UN´s ambitious goal to eradicate extreme child poverty by 2030. “A world where 333 million children live in extreme poverty -- deprived not only of basic needs but also dignity, opportunity or hope -- is simply intolerable,” World Bank Global Director for Poverty and Equity, Luis-Felipe Lopez-Calva, said in a statement.

The report found that 40 percent of children in sub-Saharan Africa still live in extreme poverty -- the highest percentage of anywhere in the world. A series of factors including rapid population growth, Covid-19 and climate-related disasters have exacerbated extreme child poverty in sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, even as all other regions in the world have seen a steady decline.