A/HRC/44/40/Add.3 I. Introduction Paragraph 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 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, facilitating his visit, and its continuing engagement. This report is submitted in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 35/19. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • The visit which took place from 13-23 August 2019 (11 days), covers various Ministries/Agencies as well as different states and NGOs, civil society. The number of days is very limited to cover the requests from SR to meet all stakeholders including Prime Minister, Ministers and Government officials. In addition, the areas to be covered include Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Kelantan, Sabah and Sarawak are geographically distant. • The SR and his team only provided the softcopy of the draft media statement and End of Mission Report on the morning of 23 August 2019 within hours before the debriefing meeting. It caused the officials had no time to review the documents. Feedbacks were given to the SR and team, however, the comments were not incorporated in the advanced unedited version of the report dated 27 January 2020. Paragraph 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, international agencies, civil society, 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 center, and met with families living in overcrowded low-cost housing, people with disabilities, indigenous communities, migrants, refugees, and stateless people. The Special Rapporteur would like to express deep gratitude to the organizations, communities, and families who met with him. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • Efforts have been undertaken to provide low-cost housing to the targeted group in rural and urban areas. As of 2018, a total of 1.2 million low-cost houses has been constructed. In addition, to provide a conducive living environment for the poor and low-income group, for the period of 2010-2019, a total of 114,000 houses have been repaired under Bantuan Rumah Program. • Based on National Housing Standard for Low-Cost Housing (CIS 1: 1998), the floor area for low-cost housing has been fixed at 650 square feet (kps) with 3 bedrooms. Subsequently, the floor area of low-cost housing was raised to 700 kps during the Ninth Malaysia Plan to provide comfort to the residents. In addition, the Government has introduced the National Housing Standard (CIS 26: 2019) that emphasise on the standards to be followed for the planning of housing areas particularly the low-cost housing to create an effective, comfortable and secure site layout for the well-being of its residents. Paragraph 3 Malaysia has achieved extraordinary economic growth over many years and has 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 percent, the lowest in the world, suggesting that less than 25,000 households are in poverty. At the end of his mission, the Special Rapporteur observed that this would make Malaysia the unrivaled world champion in conquering poverty. But he also noted that the claim reflected a statistical sleight of hand which has had extremely harmful consequences. The Malaysian Government now 2