[UN] Asia winning war against poverty but Africa getting poorer

From Press Esc

Asia has achieved unprecedented gains against poverty, but mothers and children in many parts of the world are dying from causes which are treatable and preventable, and where half of the developing world lacks access to simple sanitation, according to UN report release today.

The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005 was released ahead of the Africa-oriented Group of 8 (G8) meeting in Gleneagles, Scotland.

"The year 2005 is crucial in our work to achieve the Goals," UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in his foreword to the report. "Instead of setting targets, this time world leaders must decide how to achieve them."

Five years after adoption of the Millennium Declaration, where the MDGs were first enunciated, and a decade before most of the goals and targets come due, the UN General Assembly will review progress on all areas of the Millennium Declaration at a summit to be held in September.

The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen off by 130 million worldwide since 1990, according to the report, even with overall population growth of more than 800 million in the developing regions since then.

This reduction of humanity's ancient enemy, on an order of magnitude dwarfing that of any other period in history, was led by countries of Eastern, South Eastern and Southern Asia, where extreme poverty was cut back by more than 230 million since 1990, with the Latin American-Caribbean region also contributing.

But these improvements were offset by increases in the number of the extreme poor in other areas, notably sub-Saharan Africa, from 227 million in 1990 to 313 million in 2001.

In all, an estimated one billion people-one in five people in the developing world-still live below the extreme poverty line of a dollar a day in income (1993 US dollars).

For the very poor in sub-Saharan Africa, the average income actually fell, from 62 cents a day in 1990 to 60 cents in 2001.

Still the UN optimistically claims that the decline of the extreme poor, from 28 per cent of the developing world population in 1990 to 21 per cent in 2001, means that the target of cutting the proportion of the very poor by half is expected to be met globally before the target year 2015, if post-1990 trends persist.

Five years after adoption of the Millennium Declaration, where the MDGs were first enunciated, and a decade before most of the goals and targets come due, the UN General Assembly will review progress on all areas of the Millennium Declaration at a summit to be held in September.

The number of people living in extreme poverty has fallen off by 130 million worldwide since 1990, according to the report, even with overall population growth of more than 800 million in the developing regions since then.

This reduction of humanity's ancient enemy, on an order of magnitude dwarfing that of any other period in history, was led by countries of Eastern, South Eastern and Southern Asia, where extreme poverty was cut back by more than 230 million since 1990, with the Latin American-Caribbean region also contributing.

But these improvements were offset by increases in the number of the extreme poor in other areas, notably sub-Saharan Africa, from 227 million in 1990 to 313 million in 2001.

In all, an estimated one billion people-one in five people in the developing world-still live below the extreme poverty line of a dollar a day in income (1993 US dollars).

For the very poor in sub-Saharan Africa, the average income actually fell, from 62 cents a day in 1990 to 60 cents in 2001.

Still the UN optimistically claims that the decline of the extreme poor, from 28 per cent of the developing world population in 1990 to 21 per cent in 2001, means that the target of cutting the proportion of the very poor by half is expected to be met globally before the target year 2015, if post-1990 trends persist.


Link to report