Day Eighty Six - Poverty

I found this during some research I was doing for one of our contracts. This is all information I have heard before but reading this hit me particularly harder today than usual. This is reality:

Poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon and must be analyzed from the dimensions of consumption, human development and vulnerability. Looking at the international accepted form of consumption poverty, 51 percent of Southern Sudanese currently – over 4 million people – live below the nationally determined consumption poverty line of SDG 73 per month. This is not an internationally comparable figure, because PPP data is not available for South Sudan to allow a $1-a-day comparison. Moreover, data for other dimension of poverty suggest that the degree of poverty suffered in South Sudan is not adequately reflected by it. The proportion living below the national poverty line corresponds to Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1 of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger.

The poverty headcount, though easy to understand, does not provide information on how close or how far away the poor are from being able to satisfy their basic needs. The poverty gap measure estimates the average shortfall in consumption relative to the poverty line. The poverty gap in the population as a whole is 24%. The poverty gap among the poor (i.e. excluding those not classified as poor) is 47%, meaning that the average poor person in Southern Sudan consumes the equivalent of just SDG 39 per month. MDG goal 1 includes this as one of the indicators for measuring progress.

These are just words and number but just take a moment to really process what they are saying. To put this in perspective, I on a good day spend an average of 25 SDG (SSG) per day in Juba and I know people who spend 75 SDG per day (If you can believe that). The situation in which the majority of Southern Sudanese people are living in is entirely inconceivable for me.