UN calls on world leaders to invest in making poverty history by United Nations News 11:15pm 20th Sep, 2010   Sept 22, 2010    UN secures $40 billion for women’s and children’s health over next 5 years.    UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Heads of State and Government, along with the private sector, foundations, international organizations, civil society and research organizations, have kicked off a major concerted worldwide effort to accelerate progress on women''s and children''s health.    With pledges of $40 billion over the next five years, the Global Strategy for Women''s and Children''s Health has the potential of saving the lives of more than 16 million women and children, preventing 33 million unwanted pregnancies, protecting 120 millions of children from pneumonia and 88 million children from stunting, advancing the control of deadly diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, and ensuring greater access for women and children to quality facilities and skilled health workers.    “We know what works to save women’s and children’s lives, and we know that women and children are critical to all of the MDGs,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said.    20 Sept 2010    The MDG Summit meeting of the UN General Assembly is being held to take stock of the progress towards achieving the Millenium Development Goals – which include slashing poverty, combating disease, fighting hunger, protecting the environment and boosting education.    “Real results have been made since the MDGs were devised in 2000, Mr. Ban noted, including an increase in school enrolment rates, expanded access to clean water and greater control of diseases.    “The transformative impact of the MDGs is undeniable. But we must protect these advances, many of which are still fragile. And the clock is ticking, with much more to do.”    Mr. Ban urged world leaders to “stay true” to ensure that the Goals are met on time.    “True to our identity as an international community built on a foundation of solidarity. True to your commitment to end the dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty.”    He called on wealthy countries not to pull back from their previous commitments on official development assistance to poorer nations, which he described as “a lifeline of billions of people.”    He also stressed that “being true means addressing inequality, both among and within countries. Even in countries that have registered significant gains, inequality eats away at social cohesion.    “And it means reconsidering conventional wisdom. Recovery from the economic crisis should not mean a return to the flawed and unjust path that got us into trouble in the first place.”    The Secretary-General said one of the keys to success was “making the smart investments in infrastructure, small farmers, social services… and above all in women and girls.”    He will unveil a global strategy for improving women’s and children’s health, with study after study indicating that a boost in this area has a great multiplier effect across all the MDGs.    “There is more to do for the mother who watches her children go to bed hungry – a scandal played out a billion times each and every night. There is more to do for the young girl weighed down with wood or water when instead she should be in school. And more to do for the worker far from home in a city slum, watching jobs and remittances disappear amid global recession.”    Sept 2010    UN Assembly President calls for broad-based partnership to attain MDGs.    The UN General Assembly President has urged countries, donors, civil society and the private sector to cooperate more closely to defeat poverty, hunger and disease, underscoring that a global partnership is key to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).    Mr. Deiss stressed that the international community has a moral duty to care about the well-being of its weakest members.    He called on the nearly 140 heads of State and government taking part in the meeting to send “a strong message about our will to achieve” the MDGs by their target date of 2015.    Data shows that “real progress” has been made towards some of the MDGs. “But we are lagging behind in some regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa. And we are also falling short in some areas, especially with regard to eradicating hunger, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health.”    Mr. Deiss said the global financial crisis that began in 2008 had undermined progress towards the MDGs in many countries.    “We have the know-how and the resources to succeed, and we can do it. But that requires commitment from the donors, civil society and the private sector. If we want to succeed, we have to do it together.”    The head of the UN agency that promotes the development-friendly integration of developing countries into the world economy called for several urgent policy changes and actions to achieve the MDGs, including a significant increase in agricultural production in countries where food insecurity is still a perennial problem and the mobilization of private domestic resources to raise long-term productive investment.    UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Secretary-General Supachai Panitchpakdi said official development aid must also rise and greater attention must be paid to inequality, which has been rising globally. He cited rural development in his own country, Thailand, which had helped bring millions of people out of poverty and projections that similar policies elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region could lift 200 million people out of poverty.    UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) President Hamidon Ali called for a stronger role for the body in monitoring commitments and accountability, by both developed and developing countries.    The former president of the UN General Assembly and co-chair of the current meeting on the MDGs, Ali Treki, said that with just five years left much progress had been made, with many more children in school and health care reaching some of the poorest and most vulnerable. But he stressed that much more needs to be done.    “Let us be frank and acknowledge that whatever we say or agree in the coming days are only words unless in the poorest countries and poorest communities the poor start to see improvements in their lives,” he added.    Sept 2010    Calling hunger “the most severe face of poverty,” the head of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned that only swift and committed action by global leaders will make the difference for the millions of people worldwide who have to subsist on one meal or even less every day.    It is time to put hunger “on top of the global agenda,” said Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of WFP.    “We know what to do but we have to do it, and we have to do it vigorously… There’s nothing more basic than hunger.”    A joint report issued last week by WFP and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization indicated that the number of chronically hungry people has fallen for the first time in 15 years, dropping from 1 billion to 925 million.    But Ms. Sheeran said this improvement, while welcome, must be treated cautiously.    “It is a projection for this year and of course we have recently seen epic-level flooding in Pakistan which was not factored into the projections,” she said. “This is no time to relax.    “We are seeing food prices climbing again. The projections are based on increased economic growth. If there isn’t that growth, and there’s a sudden-onset disaster or an unpredictable loss of crops, then those numbers can really swing. We’re in a volatile area where the underpinning factors are more volatile than ever in recorded history.”    The WFP chief said the recent global financial and food crises had “exposed structural weaknesses in the battle against hunger,” with many people in poorer nations priced out of the market for basic foods.    “That’s why during the crisis I labelled it a ‘silent tsunami.’ Villages in virtually every country in every continent were affected.”    Hunger fell disproportionately on women and children, Ms. Sheeran said, noting that the agency has changed its policies and strategies to focus on children under the age of two.    “They are the most vulnerable. We have learned that the first 1,000 days of a child – from conception to two years of age – is so important. If they are undernourished, then they will be damaged in their minds and bodies.    “New scientific evidence has reinforced what we had learned and has revolutionized the way we approach the issue of hunger. It’s not only important that children get calories, but that they get the right kind of calories at the right time – that they get highly nutritious food.”    WFP distributes food for about 90 million people in at least 70 different countries each year, and Ms. Sheeran stressed the importance of making sure “we tap into the world’s best thinking, the best technologies and the best minds to defeat hunger.”    Sept 2010    Human rights central to achieving global anti-poverty goals, says Human Rights Chief.    World leaders are more likely to accelerate progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) if they take a human rights approach to their commitments.    “It is the job of all of us to forge a global human rights constituency, to ensure that this moment is not lost, and that human rights and the MDGs are pursued hand-in-hand for sustained and equitable development results,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.    The Goals, which include halving extreme poverty. halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education, all by the target date of 2015, were agreed upon by world leaders 10 years ago.    Ms. Pillay said that many commitments world leaders have made in the past “regrettably remain only paper promises.    To ensure that their pledges are translated into deeds, governments need to adhere to the obligations and responsibilities they have all accepted under international human rights law, she added.    The High Commissioner focused on the potential of MDG 8, which mandates a global partnership for achieving the Goals, adding that such partnerships should explicitly prioritize the needs and rights of the poorest and most marginalized, and mandate positive measures to level the playing field.    “The MDGs embody an unprecedented global compact for poverty reduction, a new deal under which richer and poorer countries agree to join efforts towards a small number of achievable, time-bound human development targets.    “MDG 8 is a defining element of this bargain, encouraging a fairer deal on aid, trade, debt relief, technology transfer, access to essential medicines and other critical elements of an enabling international environment for development,” said Ms. Pillay.    She added that the outcome document that is to be adopted at the end of the summit contains a number of explicit references to human rights, including the right to development, which require that the implementation of the MDGs be done in accordance with the human rights obligations of States.    The chairpersons of the major international UN human rights treaty bodies noted that faster progress towards achieving the MDGs can be accomplished by adhering to international human rights standards.    The group drew special attention to the fact that some of the Goals, such as primary education for all or gender equality, fully meet international human rights treaty obligations.    However, they stressed that realization of other Goals “would still fall short of what human rights treaties require, as treaties call for the realization of human rights for all, which goes beyond the reaching of quantified targets.” Visit the related web page
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