Programmes and appeal 2008-2009

Asia Pacific: Growing inequality and polarization cast shadow over economic success

Home to six out of every ten human beings, the Asia Pacific zone is a region of great diversity in culture, politics and socio-economic development. While some countries in the region are advanced industrialized economies with a high standard of living, the vast majority are poor and include some of the most disadvantaged people in the world.

The uneven effects of globalization have led to increased socio-economic polarization and widening patterns of vulnerability to disasters and public health threats in many parts of the region.

The Asia Pacific is home to 600 million people who live below the US$ 1 a day poverty line. A further 1.8 billion people survive on less than US$ 2 a day. This poverty is found not only in ‘poor’ countries, but also in the emerging middle- income countries.
Inequality is growing across the region, within countries and between urban and rural areas. Some groups experience systematic discrimination based on their gender, ethnicity, caste, age or beliefs, which perpetuates their chronic poverty and economic exclusion.

While parts of Asia have witnessed significant improvements in achieving several of the Millennium Development Goals, other parts have not. South Asia, for example, spends just US$ 26 per capita each year on health – less than sub-Saharan Africa – while Afghanistan has the highest infant mortality rate in the world.

In the Pacific, efforts to raise standards of living and achieve balanced growth are complicated by the isolation created by huge distances and substantial variations in levels of development among countries.

The Asia Pacific region is also the most disaster-prone region on earth, accounting for over 60 per cent of world’s disaster events. The type, scale and frequency of natural disasters in the region are truly daunting. Each one has a very different impact in each of the different subregions, depending on geography, demography and socio-economic status.

Set along numerous fault lines, many countries in the region are often hit by serious earthquakes. The entire region is also plagued by seasonal typhoons and floods which kill thousands of people and cause billions of dollars worth of damage and severe hardship for millions of people each year. The situation is expected to get worse in the future due to the effects of climate change. The combination of poverty and frequent disasters presents a huge challenge to the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement in the Asia Pacific region.

1. All figures are in thousands of Swiss francs (CHF).

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Complete document: Programmes and appeal 2008-2009 (28.7 Mb, 88 pages)	Chapter 3: Snapshots of the Red Cross Red Crescent in action in 2007 (24.2 Mb, 40 pages)	Asia Pacific: Growing inequality and polarization cast shadow over economic success (432 Kb, 2 pages)