The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) expected on Wednesday that more than eight million Arabs will join the "counter of the poor" in the region, due to the spread of the emerging Corona virus.
And the committee stated in a study published by it entitled "Corona Virus: Reducing the impact of the epidemic on poverty and food insecurity in the Arab region" that "the number of the poor will rise in the Arab region with an additional 8.3 million people in poverty."
"As a result, it is expected that the number of undernourished will also increase by about two million," it warned.
Based on these estimates, the committee stated, "A total of 101.4 million people in the region will be classified as poor, and the number of the undernourished will be approximately 52 million."
"The consequences of this crisis will be severe for groups at risk, especially women, youth and young women, and those working in the informal sector, who do not benefit from social protection services or from unemployment insurance," the committee´s executive secretary Rola Dashti said in a statement.
She stressed that "Arab governments must implement an urgent and urgent response in order to protect their people from falling into poverty and food insecurity as a result of the implications of the Coruna epidemic."
Arab countries lose, according to the committee, about sixty billion dollars annually due to food loss and waste, while reducing these two phenomena by 50 percent would increase household income by at least 20 billion dollars, and enable the region to improve the level of food availability significantly Reducing food imports and improving trade balances.
The ESCWA committee estimate came after it warned two weeks ago that Covid-19 could cause more than 1.7 million jobs in the Arab world.
And it expected that "the GDP of Arab countries will decrease by no less than 42 billion dollars" this year due to the decline in oil prices and the repercussions of the outbreak of the new Corona virus.
