Achim Steiner: Latest News

COLOMBO (News 1st) – Cascading global crises have left 54 countries including Sri Lanka – home to more than half of the world's poorest people — in dire need of debt relief, the UN said Tuesday (11).In a new report, the United Nations Development Programme warned that dozens of developing nations were facing a rapidly deepening debt crisis and that "the risks of inaction are dire".UNDP said without immediate relief, at least 54 countries would see rising poverty levels, and "desperately needed investments in climate adaptation and mitigation will not happen".That was worrisome since the affected countries were "among the most climate-vulnerable in the world".The agency's report, published ahead of meetings of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and also of G20 finance ministers in Washington, highlighted the need for swift action.But despite repeated warnings, "little has happened so far, and the risks have been growing," UNDP chief Achim Steiner told reporters in Geneva."That crisis is intensifying and threatening to spill over into an entrenched development crisis across dozens of countries across the world."The poor, indebted countries are facing converging economic pressures and many find it impossible to pay back their debt or access new financing.'Volatility'"Market conditions are shifting rapidly as a synchronised fiscal and monetary contraction and low growth are fuelling volatility around the globe," UNDP said.The UN agency said debt troubles had been brewing in many of the affected countries long before the Covid-19 pandemic hit."The rapid build-up in debt over the past decade has been consistently underestimated," it said.The freeze on debt repayment during the Covid crisis to lighten their burden

A United Nations report argues that an unprecedented array of crises, chiefly among them Covid-19, has set human progress back five years and fueled a global wave of uncertainty.

coronavirus by allowing them to stay home, according to a U.N. Development Programme (UNDP) report released on Thursday.The report suggests three options: top-ups on existing average incomes, lump-sum transfers linked to differences in the median standard of living across a country or uniform lump sum transfers regardless of where someone lives in a country.

Global human development — a measure that combines education, health and living standards — will this year decline for the first time in at least three decades, the United Nations Development Programme warned on Wednesday, as the coronavirus upends the global economy.