This Thursday, Jordan and the world will celebrate the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, which falls on October 17 of each year. This international day comes this year under the slogan: "Acting together to Empower Children, their Families and their Communities to End Poverty."
This year, the theme of "Empowering Children, their Families and their Communities” comes as November 20th marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which defines the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of every child, regardless of race, religion or abilities.
In a special press release on this occasion, the Higher Population Council stated that Jordan is committed, through the Jordan 2025 document; “A National Vision and Strategy”, to charting a path for the future and defining an integrated general framework that will govern economic and social policies based on creating opportunities for all. The most essential principles of document include the promotion of the Rule of Law, equalization of opportunities, increasing participation in policy formulation, and achieving financial sustainability and strengthening institutions; noting that achieving such goals requires raising the level of infrastructure, education and health, by taking further measures that contribute to launching the development process in many sectors in order to achieve high and sustainable rates of growth, reducing unemployment and poverty rates, and increasing economic participation rates, especially for women and the youth.
The Council stressed that Jordan is also committed to achieving the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, especially the first goal; the eradication of poverty. The UN Framework for Sustainable Development is fully in line with Jordan's Vision 2025 and other key policy documents and successive operational development programs.
With regard to Jordan’s achievements in the field of poverty eradication, the Council indicated that the Government adopted the first poverty reduction strategy in 2002. The development planning system in Jordan also included a number of sectoral strategies which are planning tools for the implementation of the national agenda, most notably the National Employment Strategy (2002 - 2011), and Poverty Reduction Strategy (2025-2019), as well as the preparation of the National Social Protection Strategy, in addition to the implementation of equity-based and equitable social protection programs that ensure optimal and effective use of existing resources, and the implementation of a series of programs aiming to increase employment opportunities, reduce unemployment, eradicate poverty and provide financial and in-kind assistance to the poor and neediest in society.
Moreover, the Higher Population Council contributed in this area as the national reference for all issues and information related to population and development, where the Council issued a Population Opportunity Policies document in 2017, which is a comprehensive national document, and a guide complementary and supportive of the executive development program “Jordan Vision (2025)”, the Economic Growth Plan (2018-2022), and other national and sectoral strategies. The document proposed a set of policies for optimal investment and utilization of population opportunity returns, social protection policies, and policies relating to the optimal employment of internal and external migration. The Council stated that the expected results of the positive investment of population opportunities include contributing to improving citizens’ quality of life, increasing employment rates, reducing unemployment rates, reaching relatively high levels of development, and achieving savings in various sectors of education and social services resulting from the change in the age structure of the population as a result of the decline in reproduction rates.
The Council noted that despite the achievements made by Jordan in the area of poverty reduction at economic and social levels, it still faces a number of challenges that affect the rate of poverty, most notably, the developmental gap between governorates, high unemployment rates, especially among the youth, and the low economic participation rate of women. According to the results of the Household Expenditure and Income Survey (2017-2018) issued by the Department of Statistics, the poverty rate among Jordanian individuals reached 15.7%, which means that 1.069 million Jordanians are within the poverty line, and the rate of food poverty in Jordan reached 0.12% which is equivalent to 7993 individuals. As for the poverty gap ratio, the rate was 3.5% and the poverty severity ratio was 1.2%.
The Council added that there are still significant challenges facing the full implementation of a comprehensive policy to reduce poverty in Jordan, the most important of which are the effects of the global economic crisis, which contributed to the decrease of foreign direct investment and remittances of Jordanians working abroad, and limited the percentage of productive jobs, in addition to the elevation of fiscal deficit, which impacted the necessary financial resources required for the implementation of the job creation and social protection programs. In addition, the effects of asylum, forced migrations, most notably the Syrian asylum, which placed a significant amount of pressure on Jordan’s sectors, services and natural resources, as well as inflecting additional costs and burdens on education, health, water resources and other, which has negatively impacted the quality of life of Jordanians, Syrians, and the Jordanian government plans towards poverty reduction.
In the field of empowering children in aims of the reduction of poverty, the Council noted that Jordan, aware of the importance of child care, has made great strides in the areas of economic and social development, education and health care, and is active in the field of safeguarding the rights of the children, noting that with all these achievements, some children, especially those who affected by economic and social conditions, suffer from poverty, which forces them to leave their education behind early on, and join the labor market.
The Council stressed the need to eradicate poverty in the Jordanian society to ensure human and children's rights, and achieve the goals of sustainable development, justice and equality, noting the importance of concerting and unifying all national efforts in this area.
Globally speaking, statistics indicate that in spite of the fact that poverty rates have fallen by more than half since 2000, one-tenth of the population of developing countries still lives on less than $ 1.9 a day, high poverty rates are often found in small, fragile and conflict-affected countries, and 1 in 5 children in the world lives in extreme poverty. Moreover, according to the statistics, in 2018, 55% of the world's population lacked social protection, and 8% of employees and their families worldwide suffered extreme poverty.
