DAVOS, Switzerland, 26 January: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to agree on some intermediate milestones for nations to accomplish by 2010 as they work to achieve the millennium development goals by 2015.
The early target would include lifting 75 million people out of extreme poverty in Africa, admitting 25 million more children in school, saving 4 million more childrens lives, providing skilled health personnel to attend 35 million births and providing access to drinking water for 70 million people.
Ban Ki-moon said only 30 percent progress has been achieved until now. – Without extraordinary effort, we will fail to achieve the millennium development goals, he said.
The goals were set in 2000, with 2015 as a cut-off date for several specific achievements.
The targets include
– halving the number of people living in absolute poverty;
– offering universal primary education;
– promoting gender equality and empowering women;
– reducing infant and maternal mortality by two-thirds;
– halting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases;
– ensuring environmental sustainability;
– ensuring significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020; as well as
– achieving a global partnership for development.
Ban described progress on the millennium development goals as “a development emergency” at a special World Economic Forum session called to discuss the goals.
Others who took part in the special session were Britains Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Nigerias President Umaru Musa YarAdua, Jordons queen Rania al-Abdullah, Microsoft chief Bill Gates and rock star Bono.
Ban said the world must “rededicate” 2008 for addressing the problems of a billion people who live on less than a dollar a day. For once, the movers and shakers of global business and politics moved away from their profit-oriented concerns to the problems of the deprived. But little progress was made at the meeting.
Bono was strongly critical of the failure to address the millennium development goals. – The time for “moral compact” and “moral” persuasion to fulfill the goals is well over, he said.
He asked whether the corporate world and governments are ready to accept “legally binding commitments to fulfill the goals by 2015”. Bono, who is leading the “Debt, Aids, Trade, Africa” campaign, made a call to action concerning the goals.
But there was no response to Bonos call for legal commitments. The only agreement so far is to convene a UN special session in September to address the tardy (fodslæbende) implementation of the goals.
There was no dearth of (mangel på) renewed calls for more action. Prime Minister Brown said he will convene a meeting of the global private sector in May to announce new measures to support the millennium development goals. Bill Gates called for concerted action both by the private sector and governments.
Kumi Naidoo, secretary-general of the civil society group Civicus, which is at the forefront of the Global Call to Action against Poverty, said issues relating to poverty do not get the same treatment as the financial and banking market crisis, which dominated Davos 2008.
– There are double standards in addressing the problems arising from the United States as compared to the deathly conditions in Africa, he said.
Kilder: IPS og The Push Journal
