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Most of the countries of the Middle East and North Africa will not reach MDG1 if they do not undertake substantial additional efforts in the coming years. While it is true that the percentage of the population that is affected by hunger or lives on less than 1 US$ per day is lower here than in other regions of the world, since 1990 the relevant average regional figures have not declined, indeed they have risen.

Income poverty

In 1990 only 2.1 % of all people in the MENA region had incomes lower than 1 US$ per day in purchasing power parities (PPP). This percentage was lower than in all other parts of the developing world, which led UNDP to conclude, in its 2003 HDR, that the MENA region had already reached Target 1 (to halve income poverty) of the MDGs (UNDP 2003a, 33).

But implementation of the MDGs also depends on trends, and the trend for the percentage share of income poverty among the population of the Mid-dle East and North Africa has not declined. Instead, between 1990 and 2001 the figure even rose slightly to 2.2 %. The respective share of in-come-poor people in 2001 was 3 % in Egypt, 7 % in Lebanon, 2 % in Mo-rocco, 46 % in Mauritania, and 4 % in Jordan. There are no recent data available for the other countries of the region (see Table A2, Annex).

Furthermore, the one-dollar indicator is appropriate only in a limited sense for the MENA region (ESCWA 2005). First, most countries in the region are middle-and low-income countries whose wage and price levels are so high that people there cannot, even over the short term, live from 1 US$

per day (Martens 2005). The practice of converting sums of money into PPPs does not do full justice to this state of affairs. Conversion is based on a market basket reflecting the composition of a country’s gross national product. A market basket of this kind may reflect the consumption patterns of the average citizen, but the corresponding basket of poorer households is made up quite differently. Poor households mainly consume staple foods and other essential goods (Bhalla 2004; Pogge / Reddy 2003a; Pogge / Reddy 2003b; Satterthwaite 2003; Zapado 2003). Second, several MENA countries have oil resources and are thus able to sell gasoline, heating oil, and other oil derivatives at low prices. These play a substantial role in

cal-in turn results cal-in very low figures cal-indicatcal-ing that only a very low percent-age of the population is living in absolute poverty. The problem here is that very poor households neither need gasoline (because they are without cars) nor purchase heating oil or gas (because they cannot afford to heat with gas or oil).

In a certain sense, every poverty line is arbitrary. This is illustrated by the fact that the incomes of many people in the MENA region are only slightly below or slightly above the one-dollar-per-day-line, and many are slightly above the line in one year and below it in the next. Replacing the one-dollar-line with a two-one-dollar-line would therefore make one little sense. It would appear more reasonable to use national poverty lines for identifying poverty trends. These national lines are as a rule based on empirical stud-ies that indicate what income a national in fact needs to secure his or her survival over the short or long term (Fair 2003; OECD/DAC 1998).

The drawback of national poverty lines is that it is not possible to calculate average regional data based on them. Furthermore, while there are data available for far more countries of the region indicating figures for income poverty based on national criteria rather than on the one-dollar criterion, this is, unfortunately, not the case for all countries of the region.

Still, based on the data available, we can state that the problem of income poverty has shown an upward trend in the region. This is especially true for Yemen, where national criteria indicate that in 1990 roughly 30 % of the population were living in absolute income-poverty, and 42 % in 2000.

But the figures for other countries are also noteworthy: In Algeria the share of income-poor by national criteria has risen from 12 % (1987) to 15 % (2000), in Iraq from 30 % (1987) to 45 % (2000), in Morocco from 17 % (1990) to 19 % (2000), and in the Palestinian Territories from 19 % (1995) to 46 % (2000). The only countries in which, according to the fig-ures available, the share has declined are Egypt (1990: 25 %, 2000: 20 %), Iran (1990: 26 %, 2000: 21 %), Mauritania (1995: 50 %, 2000: 46 %), and Tunisia (1990: 7 %, 2000: 4 %). The data available for the other countries in the region are either inadequate or unreliable (see Table A2, Annex).

Figure 1 shows that of all the countries, for which we have reliable data, only Tunisia is making headway towards reaching Target 1 of MDG1. Be-tween 1990 and 2000, it was able to cut nearly by half the percentage of its income-poor. Egypt and Jordan might also reach Target 1.

Figure 1: Trends in the implementation of MDG1 / Target 1

(Halve the proportion of people with less than 1 US$ a day) ³

Source: Designed by the author on the basis of data in Table A2, Annex Note: Countries for which the available data are either markedly

contra-dictory or unreliable are omitted.

Most of the MENA countries, however, will not reach this target if they do not succeed in reversing present trends (ESCWA 2005). This goes in par-ticular for Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, Oman, and Mauritania, which have been classified by UNDP as ‘high-priority countries’ with regard to MDG1 – Algeria, Yemen, Iraq, and Oman because they have as yet made no pro-gress at all in reducing income poverty, and Mauritania because income poverty is so widespread in the country that it will be as good as impossi-ble to further step up efforts to reduce it (UNDP 2003a, 43 and 53).

3 This and the following figures show – for reasons of clarity – only relative changes: The initial level has been normalized to 0. This is problematic in the way that the diagrams do not show what absolute changes have occurred and how large the differences are be-tween the absolute base values for the individual countries. Still, this form of

presenta-Figure 2: Trends in the implementation of MDG1 / Target 2 (Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger)

Source: Designed by the author on the basis of data in Table A3, Annex Note: Countries for which the available data are either markedly

contra-dictory or unreliable are omitted.

But the situation is also critical in the Palestinian Territories, where the percentage of the population affected by income poverty has more than doubled since 1995 – largely because of Israel’s policy of occupation and border closures. It would be possible to reverse this trend, but only if Israel withdraws from the Palestinian Territories, opens their external borders for the movement of goods and capital, and issues Israeli work permits for as many Palestinians as possible – at least during a transitional period.

Hunger

As to Target 2 of MDG1, the situation in the MENA countries is even worse: On average, the percentage of people that suffer from quantitative malnutrition has risen from 6.8 to 8.5 % (see Figure 2). One exception is Tunisia, which has already succeeded in halving the proportion of its

un-dernourished population. Egypt and Syria could also succeed in reaching this target until 2015 (see Table A1, Annex). In Egypt, for example, the proportion of people suffering from hunger has declined from 5 to 4 % be-tween 1990 and 2001.

At the same time, however, at least seven countries in the region are unlikely to achieve Target 2 of MDG1. Two of them – Yemen and Iraq – have even been categorized by UNDP as “top-priority countries” because they have made hardly any progress since 1990 in eradicating hunger (UNDP 2003a, 43). Indeed, the proportion of undernourished families in Yemen has declined only slightly from 36 % in 1990 to 33 % in 2001, while it has risen sharply in Iraq from 7 % (1990) to 27 % (2001). Like-wise, the indicator has deteriorated in Jordan (from 4 to 6 %), Iran (from 4 to 5 %), Algeria (from 5 to 6 %), Lebanon (from 2.5 to 3.0 %), and Mo-rocco (from 6.5 to 7.0 %), while it has slightly improved in Mauritania (from 14 to 12 %) and in Sudan (from 31 to 21 %).

Nor has the region fared much better on the other official indicator for Target 2, the prevalence of underweight among children under five years of age (see Table A3, Annex). Between 1990 and 2001, this figure has de-clined in Egypt (from 10 to 4 %), in Tunisia (from 10 to 4 %, as well), and in Algeria (from 10 to 6 %), but also in Mauritania (from 48 to 32 % and in Sudan (from 34 to 11 %). In some countries, however, it has risen very sharply – e.g. in Iraq from 12 to 16 % and in Yemen from 30 to 46 % – which means that it is likely that the average figure for the whole region has risen as well (UNDP 2003b).