[United Nations] Leaders Slam Poor Progress on Poverty

From The Edmonton Sun

Leaders from Africa, Asia and Latin America lamented yesterday the scant progress made in meeting pledges to reduce poverty and disease set five years ago. A grim UN report said recently about 40% of the world's people still struggle to survive on less than $2 US a day.

Prospects for meeting UN development goals, which include cutting extreme poverty by half by 2015, dominated the final document issued at the end of last week's UN summit that attracted a record 151 world leaders.

In the first two days of the General Assembly's followup ministerial meeting, the plight of the world's poor remained in the spotlight in formal speeches and informal gatherings outside the United Nations.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo warned on Sunday that "poverty and exclusion conspire against peace, security and democracy."

Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa expressed hope that the goals set after the Millennium Summit in 2000 and the commitments made last week by world leaders to achieve them "will not remain mere empty words."

Sri Lanka's President Chandrika Kumaratunga said "it is unconscionable" to let six million children die from malnutrition before their 5th birthday and to have more than 50% of Africa's people suffer from diseases like cholera, caused by unsafe water.

Reflecting a widespread demand, Ludwig Scotty, president of the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, called on wealthy nations "to match their rhetoric with action" by giving more money for development assistance and forgiving foreign debts.

On the sidelines, top diplomats from the United States, Britain, France and Germany met to discuss Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rejection of a European offer of economic incentives in return for Tehran halting its uranium enrichment program.

To prove that Iran has no intention of producing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad offered foreign countries and companies a role in Iran's nuclear fuel production program.

A UN Human Development Report, released Sept. 7, said more than 1 billion people still survive on less than $1 a day, and 2.5 billion live on less than $2 a day. These figures amount to about 40% of the world's 6.2 billion population.

The 35-page document adopted late Friday by world leaders includes 16 pages on development, including a commitment by all governments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, known as MDGs, which also call for universal primary education and halting the AIDS pandemic by 2015.

But the final declaration dropped a call for countries that haven't done so, including the United States and Canada, "to make concrete efforts" to earmark 0.7 per cent of their gross domestic product to development assistance.