A/HRC/44/40/Add.3 appears to have recognized this and is preparing to act on the basis of the various rigorous independent analyses showing that poverty is very far from having been eliminated. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • Malaysia stands by absolute poverty rate, which currently recorded at 0.4% of total households in 2016 or 24,700 households. This poverty rate is derived from internationallyaccepted standards based on the Canberra Group Handbook on Household Income Statistics, Second Edition (2011), which is published by the United Nations. As such, the assertion made by Professor Alston that there is “a statistical sleight of hand that has nefarious consequences” is wholly unacceptable and irresponsible. • While the Government appreciates the effort by the Special Rapporteur in raising awareness on issues of poverty, certain comments are baseless and uncalled for. For instance, the assertion that a “sizable part of Malaysia’s population struggles to get by with tenuous access to food, shelter, education and healthcare...”, is both misconceived and erroneous clearly lacking empirical evidence and rigorous scientific procedures. With regards to the assertion that Malaysians have “…limited ability to exercise civil and political rights”, this is rebutted by the universal participation of 82.3% of Malaysians in the last General Election which saw for the first time a peaceful change in Federal Administration since Independence. • The Midterm Review of Eleventh Malaysia Plan, which was tabled in Parliament in October 2018, stated that the measurement of poverty to be revised in tandem of the cost of living. Therefore, the work on PLI revision has started earlier during the Plan. As the Special Rapporteur’s visit was in August 2019, during the bilateral meeting with the Special Rapporteur and Government agencies, the SR and his team had been informed that the need of PLI revision was published in the document. The Ministry of Economic Affairs (MEA) in collaboration with other relevant Ministries/Government Agencies have been working on the revision since March 2019. • Further, the Prime Minister in the Parliament in October 2019 stated that the Government has been working on revising new PLI and to implement Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) as poverty measurements from multi dimensions. Therefore, all policies, strategies and initiatives had been in place even before the visit of Special Rapporteur. While the visit of SR had sparked interests on poverty issues, however, the claim that the Government had only act on poverty reviews only following the SR visit is incorrect. • On humanitarian grounds, the Government has always been collaborating with the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and its partners in providing access to basic needs as well as provision of skills, education, livelihood and healthcare to enable the refugees to take care of themselves in Malaysia. Paragraph 4 Malaysia’s current poverty line is extremely low at just RM980 (US$241) per month for a family of four. This is irreconcilable with 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 low line for a country on the cusp of attaining high income status. Yet during the course of the visit, officials consistently claimed that poverty had been virtually eliminated, with only “pockets” remaining. Comments from the Government of Malaysia: • The Poverty Line Income (PLI) used to derive this poverty incidence is currently set at RM980 at national level and calculated based on the basic requirements for a household to live healthily and actively, which is more than the PLI targeted in the Sustainable Development Goal 1 at USD1.25 per day. This PLI is also higher for Sabah at RM1,180 and Sarawak RM1,020 to take into account additional costs, such as transportation. However at implementation level, especially when disbursing assistance, a household’s PLI takes into account its location, household size and other demographic factors. This may result in a higher household PLI than the national PLI. Hence, assistance is tailor-made according to the needs of the recipients, based on the profiling through the eKasih system which is an innovative initiative by the Government to identify the right target groups. 3