Economic Development Studies » Poverty and Inequality

High incidence of poverty and inequality remained major developmental challenges facing the humanity today and despite all efforts, both at national and international levels, majority of the developing world have not been able to achieve economic growth and equitable distribution of resources required to reduce poverty and inequality to acceptable levels. In general, progress in eradicating poverty remained highly uneven across the OIC member countries. Incidence of poverty, both in monetary and multidimensional terms, remained very high especially in low and lower middle-income OIC countries located in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions. Undoubtedly, poverty eradication is a complex task because of the multifaceted nature of poverty. Like many of their developing counterparts, governments in OIC member countries are facing a myriad of issues and challenges in their fight against poverty including access to basic services, availability of financial resources, institutional capacity and political will.

Eradication of poverty and improvement in wealth distribution are the major areas of cooperation identified by the OIC for joint Islamic action under OIC-2025 Plan of Action adopted in 2016. SESRIC is contributing towards the on-going efforts of OIC to eradicate poverty and advocate for more prudent national policies by providing analytical research work on current state of poverty, distribution of poor among member countries, major determinants of poverty in OIC group and national capacities of member countries for the measurement and collection of poverty statistics.