"Philip Alston, the former UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, upon the release of his final report, which will be presented to the UN Human Rights Council tomorrow by his successor, Olivier De Schutter."
Affiliation with the UN doesn't make someone credible. There were UN human rights officials claiming the George Floyd killing was an indication of widespread "racial violence" in the US, a claim for which zero evidence exists. There is absolutely no evidence that even Floyd's killing was motivated by anti-black bias.
Alston's statement doesn't provide any substantive criticism of the statistics. He points out that the cutoff for extreme poverty used by the UN is extremely low, as if that is in itself a moral failing.
The point of any poverty line is to measure progress, not to imply that the line is a sufficient standard of living.
Alston also points out that the number living with a wage below $5.50 a day has declined very little since 1990, which omits how much smaller this cohort's share of the global population is today than it was in 1990, due to population growth that has occurred since then.
Anti-scientific conspiracy theorist?