A/HRC/4/9 page 8 numerically a minority in society may at the same time have dominance over the economy or other sectors. This thematic report on minorities and MDGs focuses on groups that are disproportionately disadvantaged and otherwise denied the power to protect their rights. 22. There is a genuine risk that the strategies used to achieve MDGs will be less beneficial for minority groups, and might even increase inequalities and further harm some minority communities. Greater effort is needed to ensure that minorities who are poor benefit fairly from the international commitment to reduce poverty and meet MDGs by 2015. This analysis seeks to contribute to this effort by providing an overview of key minority issues and concrete recommendations. A. The disproportionate poverty of disadvantaged minorities 23. Poverty occurs in all countries, both developing and developed. Minority groups commonly have higher and disproportionate levels of poverty in all regions of the world and this poverty is often structurally and causally distinct, requiring both targeted and mainstreamed policies to overcome it. 24. Poverty-related data disaggregated by ethnicity, religion or language is hard to find. Household surveys on income and human development indicators do not usually gather information necessary to correlate this data to membership in a particular social group as defined by ethnicity, religion or language. This means that statistics on relative incomes and human development of minority groups are not available for many countries or, if available, are not frequently published. However, a sample of available statistics is revealing. 25. In 2002 income figures for Brazil, the proportion of whites living on less than $1/day is 4.3 per cent; for non-whites (predominately Afro-Brazilians), the figure is 8.3 per cent; at the level of $2/day the gap persists - 8.6 per cent of whites and 19.4 per cent of non-whites live on this income.1 26. In Nepal, the lowest consumption levels are among low-caste Dalits with poverty incidence of 46 per cent, Muslims with 41 per cent and hill Janajatis (ethnic indigenous communities) with 45 per cent. Low-caste Dalits, in particular, have a 15 per cent higher incidence of poverty than the average rate.2 1 Matías Busso, Martín Cicowiez and Leonardo Gasparini, Ethnicity and the Millennium Development Goals in Latin America and the Caribbean, Working Paper 27, Centro de Estudia Distributivos, Laborales y Sociales (CEDLAS), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, (Bogota, Colombia: UNDP, 2005): Table 2.4, p. 77. 2 Nepal MDGs Progress Report 2005, (Kathmandu, Nepal: HMG Nepal, National Planning Commission, September 2005): p. 10.