Poverty

Climate change threatens to exacerbate conflict in fragile nations across the globe and lead to increased deaths, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said in a report. 

While climate shocks alone may not trigger new unrest, the IMF said, they "significantly worsen conflict, compounding fragility" such as hunger, poverty and displacement.

The COVID-19 pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the war in Ukraine have pushed 165 million people into poverty since 2020, the United Nations has said, calling for a pause in debt repayments for developing countries.

An alarming 90 percent of children have expressed concerns about the welfare of their family members, 62 percent expressed fear of parental unemployment, and 57 percent expressed worries about the state of the economy, according to a recent study by Istanbul Bilgi University.

Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras on Tuesday said there were encouraging signs from the development of micro-funding in Greece.

In 2022, 95.3 million people in the European Union were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, i.e. they lived in households with serious financial difficulties. This is according to data from the Eurostat statistical office. They remain almost unchanged from the previous year, when 95.4 million people lived at risk of poverty.

The share of the Turkish population in rented houses was 27.2 percent in 2022, rising from 26.8 percent in the previous year, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) have shown.

The share of the population living in their own dwelling declined from 57.5 percent in 2021 to 56.7 percent last year, according to TİUK's poverty and living conditions survey.

In 2022, the total poverty line for Bulgaria was BGN 525.92 per household member per month. With this size of the poverty line, 1.5719 million people, or 22.9% of the country's population, were below the poverty line, according to data from the National Statistical Institute.

Even though Milan Krajniak, the minister for labour, social affairs and family, recently vowed to compile a proposal to aid approximately 50,000 people in need who have been unable to cover their expenses due to high levels of inflation, Karova and her colleagues are afraid that some of the most vulnerable homeless people will not be able to benefit from the aid.

Alexandra Kárová

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has accused the world's rich nations and energy giants of squeezing poor countries with "predatory" interest rates and "crushing" fuel prices. Speaking to leaders of more than 40 countries in need, at a conference in Doha, Guterres said rich nations should provide $500 billion a year in aid:

Athens Municipality has started to distribute backpacks filled with basic essentials for the winter to homeless people in the city.

On Thursday evening, street work teams distributed backpacks to homeless people, each of which contained sleeping bags, blankets, jackets, water resistant trousers, thermos flasks, flashlights and whistles.