The UN General Assembly will hold a special two-day debate next week in a bid to accelerate progress to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and to help tackle the most intractable problems, the UN said Thursday.
The debate, slated for April 1-2 at the UN Headquarters in New York, will concentrate on the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating malaria and other diseases, according to a UN press release.
"The poverty, education and health goals are the areas where progress is most urgently required and where experience suggests that positive results have a catalytic effect on the other goals," said General Assembly President Srgjan Kerim.
He said the debate comes at a time when "it is already clear that our pace is too slow."
According to UN statistics, the absolute number of poor in sub-Saharan Africa is still rising and projected to stand at 360 million by 2015. Globally, around 72 million primary age children are not enrolled in school. And every year, more than half a million women lose their lives to causes related to childbirth, almost 10 million children die before reaching their fifth birthday and an estimated 1.7 million people in Africa become infected with HIV.
"We face a race against time," said Kerim. "We must now demonstrate the political will and turn our promises into action."
The debate, according to Kerim, will also be an opportunity to set the overall strategic course for a series of development meetings that will take place this year, including a high-level event to be convened jointly by the general assembly president and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sept. 25.
"The General Assembly must send a strong message to the rest of the world, a message that is carried to inspire the many conferences and summits on development this year," Kerim said. "2008 is the year of action."
The General Assembly debate will bring together representatives from academia, business, government, non-governmental organizations and the United Nations system.
"Achieving the MDGs is fundamentally a test of our global partnership on development," said Kerim, "a partnership that goes beyond cooperation among member states to include the private sector, civil society and the global public."
Source:Xinhua
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