KHALID HUSSAIN MIR
Poverty can be defined as the general scarcity or the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or wealth. A multifaceted notion, which includes social, economic and political elements, poverty emerges and exists in different forms like intellectual poverty, physical poverty and economic poverty; nowadays it is a devastating problem of global scope due to the inevitable crises produced either by natural disaster or by man-made interference in the form of war and violation, unavailability of jobs, raising and insufficient living wages.
Besides these common causes, there are number of other factors as well which are responsible for the increasing incidence of poverty, like overpopulation, lack of education, epidemic diseases as articulated by the International Food Study Institute. Why is the world still unable and unsuccessful to overcome to eradicate this distressing problem despite having many resources? What are the solutions to solve the problem of poverty around the world? There are so many questions that need be answered but are still unanswerable.
The recent reports of the IFSI (International Food Study Institute) also ratify that hunger is the main cause behind the increasing ratio of deaths in the world as compared to other factors. Similarly, war and violation of human rights in the form of corruption, incompetency and inadequate management of the government towards the utilization of resources and unnecessary changes in economic policies due to which the rich become richer and poor are always struggling for their survival. (This disparity will be more obvious when there is a wider income breach between the rich and the poor)
Human rights violation have ravaged the social and economic life of the indigent especially those who belong to minority groups or lower social classes of the society. Similarly, war affected countries including those who have faced the worst forms of natural disasters like earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis and famines in recent years represent a distinct description and categories of misery. People of such areas are struggling for the survival because of the scarcity of food, shelter and drinking water and are constrained to eat indigestive things due to extreme hunger which renders them to become the victims of severe diseases.
The recent political wars and civil wars in Middle East and Asia Minor led by the Soviet nations and Euro-American collations have witnessed the world’s largest number of migrants which have led to the overpopulation and scarcity of food items. The wars and displacement of peoples in Myanmar, Syria, Chechnya, Myanmar and in Yemen civil war between Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebel group have created the world’s largest humanitarian crises with more than 10 million children at risk of famine but the whole world is watching the devastating conditions of sufferers as silent spectator without doing any sort of countermeasures.
As per official records about 46.5 million People are living below poverty lines; 925 million people are facing hunger in which 578 million live in Asia Minor and in Middle East. More than 20% infants are born with a low weight in these countries and according to UNICEF report, around 22,000 children die each day due to poverty due to hunger, lack of sanitation and access to clean water and lack of resources for proper health care. Similarly, Infectious diseases due to the deficiency of proper food and malnutrition continue to cause the death of the poor people around the world. The ratio of poor people in Sub-Saharan Africa continued to increase from last few years and went up from 205 million to 414 million. Around 1.1 billion people in developing countries don’t have access to water and food and 2.6 billion live in poor conditions lacking basic sanitation.
It is a necessary and an immediate need to assemble together and eliminate the factors responsible for the devastating problem of poverty by making suitable arrangements to safeguard the integrity of poor by providing them every possible supports to help them overcome adversities(to be effective in fighting against poverty, we need to understand the truth about it).
These poverty factors shine some light onto the reality of poverty around the world. There is an exigent need to provide quality education, access to health care, water sanitation, economic security and protection against violation of human rights in the form of corruption and crime. Similarly, those government and private organizations, that are working for the alleviation of poverty and prosperity of poor instead of doing such efforts should also categorize and design programmes on regular bases like wage employment, self-employment, food security, social security and urban poverty alleviation programmes.
Reducing poverty is doable now more than ever; we have the technology and the tools we need to eliminate it. What we need is to increase our efforts and support all such initiatives that are playing an active role in the goal to eradicate poverty and motivate our society to come forward for this universal mission. By virtue of this, with everyone’s help and the willingness of our poor population, we might just succeed. Breaking this cycle of poverty will begins when every individual will understand his responsibilities and duties towards others who expect and need our help.

—The author can be reached at: [email protected]

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