Annan Calls for Urgent Action in Global Anti-poverty Campaign

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, October 05, 2002

Annan Calls for Urgent Action in Global Anti-poverty Campaign

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United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Friday appealed to UN member states to take decisive action to ensure that agreed anti-poverty and other targets at the Millennium Summit be met on time by 2015."We cannot afford to treat the Millennium Declaration as something to think about tomorrow, or whenever the pressure of business permits," he told a segment of the 57th session of the UN General Assembly.

"Let us not forget that our heads of state and governmentadopted it as an urgent agenda -- a list of the things we mosturgently need to change if this new century is to be any betterthan the last," he said.

In 2000, world leaders agreed to a series of targets to be metover the next 15 years, including halving the number of poor andhungry people, achieving educational parity for boys and girls andfighting the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The General Assembly meeting was discussing Annan's firstreport on the progress towards meeting the goals. Annan said therecord of the international community in the first two years "is,at best, mixed", and that "in the remaining thirteen years,progress must be made on a much broader front".

He gave a dismal picture in Africa, where the number of peopleliving on one US dollar a day or less has been cut only by oneforty-eighth in the past 10 years from 48 percent to 47 percenttoday.

Annan said the developed countries must deliver what they havepromised: to open their markets fully to the products ofdeveloping countries and to provide much more generous developmentassistance.

"Without these things, many developing countries will be unableto reach the development goals, however hard they try," the UNchief said.

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