A/HRC/44/40/Add.1 Annex Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights on his mission to Malaysia I. Introduction 1. The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, visited Malaysia from 13 to 23 August 2019. The purpose of the visit was to report to the Human Rights Council on the extent to which the Government’s policies and programmes relating to extreme poverty are consistent with its human rights obligations and to offer constructive recommendations to the Government and other stakeholders. The Special Rapporteur is grateful to the Government for inviting him and facilitating his visit, and for its continuing engagement. The present report is submitted in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 35/19.1 2. In the course of 11 days, the Special Rapporteur visited Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Sarawak, Sabah and Kelantan, and met with state and federal Government officials, representatives of international agencies, civil society and indigenous communities, academics and people affected by poverty in urban and rural areas. He visited a soup kitchen, a women’s shelter, informal schools and a disability centre, and met with families living in overcrowded low-cost housing, people with disabilities, indigenous communities, migrants, refugees and stateless people. He would like to express deep gratitude to the organizations, communities and families who met with him. 3. Malaysia has achieved extraordinary economic growth over many years and made great strides in reducing poverty. It will soon be ranked as a high-income country. But its official method of measuring poverty produces a national poverty rate of just 0.4 per cent, the lowest in the world, suggesting that less than 25,000 households are in poverty. 2 4. At the end of his mission, the Special Rapporteur observed that this would make Malaysia the unrivalled world champion in conquering poverty. But he also noted that the claim reflected a statistical sleight of hand that has had extremely harmful consequences. The Government recognized this at the time and appeared prepared to act on the basis of the various rigorous independent analyses showing that poverty is very far from having been eliminated. 5. However, the new Government’s formal response to the Special Rapporteur’s report throws that commitment into doubt, stating that it “stands by [the] absolute poverty rate”. That is deeply concerning. The current line is inadequate and almost universally considered to be misleading. The Government’s protestation that it is “derived from internationally accepted standards” is a smokescreen and ignores the blatant mismatch between reality and statistics. 6. The absolute poverty line in Malaysia is extremely low at just RM 980 (US$ 241) per month for a family of four.3 That bears no relation to the cost of living and would see an urban household surviving on RM 8, or less than US$ 2 per person per day – a tragically 1 2 3 2 The Special Rapporteur is grateful for the excellent research and analysis undertaken by Bassam Khawaja, Rebecca Riddell, and staff of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Khazanah Research Institute, “The absolute vs relative poverty conundrum” (June 2019), p. 5; World Bank, “Poverty headcount ratio at national poverty lines (% of population)”, available from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.NAHC?end=2018&most_recent_value_desc=false&start =2018&view=bar. Currency conversions as of 20 January 2019.