Even before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Arab countries were facing daunting challenges, including conflict, instability, displacement, high rates of material deprivation and unemployment, and increasing financial pressures that all affected poverty and efforts to reduce it. The pandemic and the war in Ukraine have exacerbated money-metric poverty and deprivations in several dimensions relating to household capabilities.

This report describes and analyses the extent, characteristics and evolution over time of multidimensional poverty in Arab countries. It reveals trends over the last decade and discusses the impacts on poverty of the multiple crises affecting the region, highlighting elements of progress and stagnation in poverty reduction efforts. It also sets out a way forward by laying out policy recommendations that remain valid and important after the first Arab Multidimensional Poverty Report. Linking development policies and programmes to the poverty indices used in this report could help to design better-targeted initiatives that reach the poor and address the severity and complexity of poverty.