Millennium development goals elusive

Davos: A determined international effort to put the Millennium Development Goals back on track was launched yesterday in Davos by Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General of the United Nations.

The goals, MDGs, were adopted in 2000, and aim to halve extreme poverty, boosting health and education and further empowering women by 2015 across the developing world in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and South America.

However, these targets have been slipping badly, and this World Economic Forum in Davos was the occasion to announce a new effort to get them back on track. As Ki-moon put it, "It is unacceptable to live in a world where one child dies every five seconds."

The renewed focus on the goals aims to bring together government organisations and private sector companies as well as social and religious groups seeking to motivate the whole of civil society in what should become a global endeavour.

Gordon Brown, UK Prime Minister, shared the stage with Ki-moon and supported the call to action by announcing that the British are holding a special conference in London in May, to which private sector, government and NGO bodies are all very welcome to look at how to develop the essential partnerships needed to meet the MDGs.

Then the European Union summit in June will focus on the MDGs, to be followed up by the G8 meeting in July, leading up to the special meeting of the UN General Assembly called by the UN Secretary General for September.

Brown put passion into his speech, pointing out that no one with a conscience can afford not to be involved in stopping poverty. "We cannot continue with a world with one billion people living on less than $1 a day," he said.

He highlighted the failure of the MDGs at present by pointing to one of its targets: that all children should get at least basic education by 2015. "At the rate we are going at present, this will not happen until 2115," he said.

Queen Rania of Jordan took a strong line defining the crisis as a "development emergency, even if it does not look like a traditional disaster, caused by a drought or a flood".

She added that governments, civil society, NGOs, and the private sector all have to combine to ensure that the goals are met, that more people get to drink clean water, that more people climb out of poverty. "Over four million new born babies die every year and this has to stop," she said.

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, had already electrified the Davos meeting by announcing his new initiative in agricultural funding, spoke of the need to get more commitment from all sectors in backing the Millennium Development Goals.

He was backed by Bono, the U2 rock star, who said "our generation is going to be judged on this issue. Previous generations fought fascism, and we cannot fight the anaphales mosquito."

Firm steps

He wanted to make the goals firmer. "We need to change our moral compact to do something about poverty to a moral contract which can be enforced on the richer nations."

But despite the optimism, the economic turbulence still lingered over the World Economic Forum's annual meeting.

Indian Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidam-baram said that the threat of a global slowdown would hurt his country, one of Asia's biggest econ-omies.

A "slowdown is a precursor to a recession and I think that is worrying," he said.