Nearly 140 mil­lion Arabs live below the poverty line. That stat comes from a new report from the United Nations Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme and the Arab League.

The report says that 51 mil­lion jobs will need to be cre­ated by 2020. Even that many jobs will not reduce unem­ploy­ment in the Arab world, but just main­tain the same lev­els as we have now.

From this AFP arti­cle that we found at Yahoo News, we read more about the report’s details.

The joint report stressed “there has been no decrease in the rates of poverty in the Arab region over the past 20 years,” with some coun­tries actu­ally show­ing an increase.

“Over­all poverty remains high, reach­ing up to 40 per­cent on aver­age, which means that nearly 140 mil­lion Arabs con­tinue to live under the upper poverty line.”

The doc­u­ment enti­tled “Devel­op­ment Chal­lenges for the Arab Region: A Human Devel­op­ment Approach” also indi­cated youth unem­ploy­ment was “the high­est in the world” in Arab countries.

“The pro­por­tion of young peo­ple of the total unem­ployed pop­u­la­tion is more than 50 per­cent for most Arab coun­tries,” it said.

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