UN urges renewed efforts to meet Millennium Development Goals
Tuesday, 3 July 2007
GENEVA, July 2 (AFP): Governments, aid agencies and other international bodies must make more efforts to ensure the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are met on schedule by 2015, the UN said today.
The global body in particular criticised the failure of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations to live up to their commitments at the 2005 Gleneagles summit to double aid to Africa by 2010.
The UN set a 15-year timeframe at the turn of the millennium to achieve its goals of halving extreme poverty, boosting health and education and further empowering women across the developing world.
Halfway through this process, some 20 UN agencies released a report showing progress to date and areas where more efforts are needed-saying the results are "predictably, uneven."
Although there has been "significant progress" in cutting extreme poverty, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, currently only one out of eight geographical regions is on track to meet all the goals by 2015, the report said.
In a foreword to the "Millennium Development Goals Report 2007", UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said much remains to be done, but that the goals can be met if concerted action is taken.
"There is a clear need for political leaders to take urgent and concerted action, or many millions of people will not realise the basic promises of the MDGs in their lives," he said.
Paolo Garonna, director of the statistical division of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, said the report is a "scoreboard that would allow policymakers to know where we stand." "The picture is really mixed and there are a lot of challenges," he told journalists.
The G8's inability so far to live up to its Gleneagles development commitments is "worrying," as is the current deadlocked state of global trade negotiations, he said.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the extreme poverty rate-defined as those living on less than one dollar per day-has fallen by nearly six percentage points since 2000 to 41.1 per cent from 46.8 per cent, due to economic growth.
"Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are now experiencing rates of growth which are considerable, and some of them are really becoming emerging success stories in terms of market economies," Garonna said.
Despite this progress, the region is still not on track to reach the goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015, and the poor who live there are the most economically disadvantaged in the world, the report noted.
The global body in particular criticised the failure of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialised nations to live up to their commitments at the 2005 Gleneagles summit to double aid to Africa by 2010.
The UN set a 15-year timeframe at the turn of the millennium to achieve its goals of halving extreme poverty, boosting health and education and further empowering women across the developing world.
Halfway through this process, some 20 UN agencies released a report showing progress to date and areas where more efforts are needed-saying the results are "predictably, uneven."
Although there has been "significant progress" in cutting extreme poverty, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, currently only one out of eight geographical regions is on track to meet all the goals by 2015, the report said.
In a foreword to the "Millennium Development Goals Report 2007", UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said much remains to be done, but that the goals can be met if concerted action is taken.
"There is a clear need for political leaders to take urgent and concerted action, or many millions of people will not realise the basic promises of the MDGs in their lives," he said.
Paolo Garonna, director of the statistical division of the UN Economic Commission for Europe, said the report is a "scoreboard that would allow policymakers to know where we stand." "The picture is really mixed and there are a lot of challenges," he told journalists.
The G8's inability so far to live up to its Gleneagles development commitments is "worrying," as is the current deadlocked state of global trade negotiations, he said.
In sub-Saharan Africa, the extreme poverty rate-defined as those living on less than one dollar per day-has fallen by nearly six percentage points since 2000 to 41.1 per cent from 46.8 per cent, due to economic growth.
"Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are now experiencing rates of growth which are considerable, and some of them are really becoming emerging success stories in terms of market economies," Garonna said.
Despite this progress, the region is still not on track to reach the goal of reducing poverty by half by 2015, and the poor who live there are the most economically disadvantaged in the world, the report noted.