Poverty’s long shadow

Poverty’s long shadow

PAKISTAN’S contribution to rising poverty across the Middle East, North Africa and the Afghanistan-Pakistan region is troubling. According to the World Bank, the country accounts for nearly half of the region’s people living in extreme poverty. Ours is a story of repeated hardship. Millions of Pakistanis have endured the pandemic, deadly floods, soaring inflation, and years of economic uncertainty, often with little opportunity to recover before the next crisis arrives. For a poor household, each setback leaves lasting damage. Families may exhaust their savings, sell livestock, borrow money to buy food, or withdraw children from school to save expenses. Even when prices stabilise and incomes improve, the losses are not easily reversed. A farmer who has sold his animals or a small trader who has closed his business cannot simply resume earning a livelihood. This helps explain why poverty can continue to rise even as the wider economy shows signs of recovery. The damage caused by successive crises has accumulated, leaving vulnerable families with fewer resources to withstand another blow. Fresh dangers are emerging. The World Bank has warned that the conflict involving Iran could push up fuel and commodity prices, weaken remittances and increase borrowing costs. Adverse weather could also drive up food prices and hurt agricultural livelihoods. For households still struggling with the effects of earlier shocks, another spell of inflation could prove devastating. The government must, therefore, go beyond providing relief after disaster strikes. It needs to identify families at greatest risk, strengthen early-warning and disaster-response systems, protect farming livelihoods and ensure that financial help reaches vulnerable households before they are forced into desperate choices. Keeping children in school and preventing families from losing their means of earning a living must also be priorities. Poverty reduction cannot succeed if every new crisis pushes people back into hardship. Pakistan must protect the fragile gains its poorest citizens manage to make. Published in Dawn, October 11th, 2026