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Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a
day. |
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The GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of the poorest 48 nations (i.e. a quarter of
the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest
people combined.
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Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign
their names. |
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Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed
to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn't happen.
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51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations. |
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The wealthiest nation on Earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any
industrialized nation. |
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The poorer the country, the more likely it is that debt repayments are being
extracted directly from people who neither contracted the loans nor received
any of the money. |
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20% of the population in the developed nations, consume 86% of the world’s
goods |
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The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the
expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment — the bottom fifth,
barely more than 1%. |
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In 1960, the 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times
the income of the poorest 20% — in 1997, 74 times as much.
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A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5
billion people. |
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“The 48 poorest countries account for less than 0.4 per cent of global
exports.” |
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“Of all human rights failures today, those in economic and social areas affect
by far the larger number and are the most widespread across the world’s nations
and large numbers of people.” |
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“Approximately 790 million people in the developing world are still chronically
undernourished, almost two-thirds of whom reside in Asia and the Pacific.”
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According to UNICEF, 30,000 children die each day due to poverty. And they “die
quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny
and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying
multitudes even more invisible in death.”
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Statistics
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