The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston and his team took several months to study poverty in Malaysia, culminating in an 11-day visit and a preliminary report that was released on Aug 23.
One of Alston's key findings was that the threshold for the definition of poverty in Malaysia was absurdly low, leading to only 0.4% of Malaysians being defined by the government as living in poverty. He said that most other countries have a rate of about 15%.
