Iran war could push 30m people into poverty
The ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran risks pushing more than 30 million people across 160 countries into poverty, the head of the United Nations Development Programme warned on Wednesday — with Bangladesh explicitly named among the nations facing the gravest consequences.
Alexander De Croo, the UNDP chief and former prime minister of Belgium, made the warning on the sidelines of a G7 development meeting in Paris, in remarks to AFP. “It’s development in reverse,” De Croo said.
“It took decades to build stable societies, to develop local economies, and it took only several weeks of war to destroy that.” The UNDP estimates that even if the conflict had ended after six weeks, the damage was already done.
“We did a study after six weeks of war and estimated that even if the conflict ended at that point, 32 million people would be pushed into precarity in 160 countries,” he told AFP.
Bangladesh in the Crosshairs
The UNDP specifically identified Bangladesh, alongside Cambodia and Sub-Saharan African nations, as among the countries facing the most severe fallout. Developing island nations are also expected to be particularly hard hit.
The warning carries immediate resonance for Bangladesh, which remains heavily dependent on imported energy and fertiliser — both of which have seen sharp price increases since the war began.
High “energy costs, a lack of fertiliser, will have an enormous impact in the months to come” on people in these countries, De Croo said.
He also flagged the risk of “political instability and a drop in remittances from abroad because a lot of people working in the Gulf countries send money home” — a concern of acute significance for Bangladesh, where remittances from Gulf-based workers form a critical pillar of the economy.
The war has led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas flows in peacetime. Gulf nations are also major suppliers of oil products and feedstocks used in fertiliser production.
The resulting supply crunch has forced governments across Africa and Asia to impose fuel rationing, shorten working weeks to reduce consumption, and cut fuel taxes to cushion the blow on ordinary consumers.
To prevent a wider poverty crisis, the UNDP estimates around six billion dollars is needed in subsidies to support those most vulnerable to soaring food and energy prices. De Croo said discussions were already underway within the IMF and World Bank.
He put the figure in sharp perspective. “You can say that six billion dollars is a lot — the war cost nine billion dollars per week,” he told AFP.
The appeal comes at a particularly difficult moment for global development finance. Development aid fell by more than 23 percent last year — a historic low — driven primarily by sweeping cuts from major donors, led by the United States.
