This prompted the organization of a 2nd UN LDC conference almost a decade later. The second UN LDC Conference was held between 3 and 14 September 1990, once again in Paris, the second UN LDC Conference was convened to measure the progress made by the LDCs towards fulfilling their development goals during the 1980s. Recognizing the problems that plagued the LDCs over the past decade, the conference formulated a new set of national and international policies to accelerate the growth rates of the poorest nations. These new principles were embodied in the "Paris Declaration and Programme of Action for the Least Developed Countries for the 1990s".The fourth UN LDC Conference was the most recent conference. It was held in May 2011 in Istanbul, recognized that the nature of development had fundamentally changed since the 1st conference held almost 30 years earlier. In the 21st century, the capital flow into emerging economies has increasingly become dominated by foreign direct investment and remittances, as opposed to bilateral and multilateral assistance. Moreover, since the 1980s, significant structural changes have taken place on the international stage. With the creation of the G-20 conference of the largest economic powers, including many nations in the Global South, formerly undeveloped nations are now able to have a much larger say in international relations. Furthermore, the conference recognized that in the midst of a deep global recession, coupled with multiple crises (energy, climate, food, etc. ), the international community would have fewer resources to aid the LDCs.
Share of the population living in extreme poverty
Current trends
Getting to zero
Using the World Bank definition of $1.90/day, as of 2021, roughly 710 million people remained in extreme poverty (or roughly 1 in 10 people worldwide). Nearly half of them live in India and China, with more than 85% living in just 20 countries. Since the mid-1990s, there has been a steady decline in both the worldwide poverty rate and the total number of extreme poor. In 1990, the percentage of the global population living in extreme poverty was 43%, but in 2011, that percentage had dropped down to 21%. This halving of the extreme poverty rate falls in line with the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG1) proposed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who called on the international community at the turn of the century to reduce the percentage of people in extreme poverty by half by 2015.This reduction in extreme poverty took place most notably in China, Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Vietnam. These five countries accounted for the alleviation of 715 million people out of extreme poverty between 1990 and 2010 – more than the global net total of roughly 700 million. This statistical oddity can be explained by the fact that the number of people living in extreme poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa rose from 290 million to 414 million over the same period. However, there have been many positive signs for extensive, global poverty reduction as well.