Asia - how we’re helping reduce poverty

Two-thirds of the world’s poorest people live in Asia and 800 million people there live on less than a dollar a day. Seven out of ten of these poorest people are women. That’s why we see cutting poverty in Asia as essential in helping achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Progress has been made but there is still a long way to go.

While poverty is likely to be halved in the region by 2015, there are still high levels of malnutrition in countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Those most likely to suffer malnutrition are often women and children. There is also a lot of discrimination against women and ethnic minorities in some countries.

Our work focuses on the poorest people in the poorest countries in Asia. This involves supporting programmes to reduce poverty and working with governments and other agencies. We’re trying to make sure that more poor people have access to basic services, such as health and education. Over the next two years we’ll be increasing our development spending in Asia by 45%.

Some of our success stories in Asia include enabling India to reduce the number of children out of school to less than 10%, and assisting the Chinese government tackle the spread of HIV/AIDS. We’ve also been key in helping Vietnam and Nepal strengthen the poverty focus of their public spending, and our direct financial support has helped the government of Pakistan increase spending on poverty reduction by 90%.

Last updated: 11 August 2008