Proceedings of the 13th Meeting of the
COMCEC Poverty Alleviation Working Group
4
She continued her presentation with the GHI values of the Member Countries, which range between
under 5 and 45.4. None of the OIC member countries experiences an extremely alarming hunger
situation and 3 member countries are in an alarming situation while 22 countries are in a serious
situation. On the other hand, 9 member countries are in moderate hunger situation and 13
countries are in low hunger situation.
Furthermore, Dr. AŞIK expressed that the world human development index (HDI) average has
increased from 0.598 to 0.728 between 1990 and 2017. For the same period, the OIC average rose
from 0.505 to 0.632 and remained significantly below the OECD and world average. OIC’s HDI
values are only higher than those of LDCs. On the other hand, the gap between the OIC and
developing countries has enlarged in the last 25 years. In 1990, it was only 0.010 points whereas it
has risen to 0.049 points in 2017 implying a more rapid progress in developing countries.
In terms of the components of HDI, Dr. AŞIK stated that in terms of life expectancy and expected
years of schooling, OIC’s index values are slightly below upper middle income countries and higher
than low income and lower middle income countries. However, an important point to note is that
the HDI ranking of OIC is not improving as rapidly as the GNI of OIC, meaning that the rise in
incomes in OIC is not sufficiently translated into development outcomes. Put differently, HDI score
of OIC is lower than what its income per capita implies.
Dr. AŞIK summed up status of the poverty indicators in the OIC region as follows; Monetary poverty
is significant in the member countries; however, non-monetary poverty is a bigger problem. Nearly
a quarter of the population in the OIC member countries live under multidimensional poverty. She
added that progress in the human development varies significantly among the member countries.
There is an improvement over time; however, a faster progress is needed.
Finally Dr. AŞIK provided information on the improvements in key health outcomes. Health
expenditures as a percent of GDP show significant variation across OIC countries, with high income
OIC members exhibiting lower expenditures as a share of GDP on average and lowest income
countries on average having higher shares. Dr. AŞIK suggested that this reflects the fact that
maintaining a certain level of health expenditures exhausts more of the available resources in low
income countries. Across OIC countries, Sierra Leone has the highest health expenditures as a
percent of GDP with 18% and Gabon has the lowest, with expenditures equaling 3 percent of GDP.
Dr. AŞIK stated that maternal mortality rates were more than halved in most income groups across
the World, but there is still need for significant progress to meet the Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG) of 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. Low income OIC members were able
to reduce maternal deaths from 915.3 per 100,000 live births in 1990 to 501.5 in 2015. The
reduction in lower middle income OIC countries was from 479.7 per 100,000 live births to 270
during the same period. Dr. AŞIK stated that upper middle income OIC countries is just about to
meet the SDG target, with 75.3 maternal deaths while high income OIC countries have already met
the target with 12.9 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.