The World Bank voiced on Tuesday its support for a UK-led initiative to accelerate progress towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to cut global poverty in half by 2015.
"The World Bank welcomes Prime Minister Brown's leadership and focus on the MDGs. I look forward to attending a session hosted by the United Nations Secretary General this September to concentrate on achieving the MDGs in Africa," said World Bank President Robert Zoellick in a statement.
"We will do all we can to support the program Prime Minister Brown has outlined, including through the important drive to replenish funding for the International Development Association ( IDA), critical for the most impoverished countries," Zoellick added.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared a "development emergency" in a speech delivered in New York early Tuesday, stating that the international community was falling short of the targets adopted at the UN Summit in 2000.
With only seven and a half years left until the 2015 deadline, Brown called on governments, business leaders, faith groups and civil society worldwide to form a new partnership to mobilize action and hasten the pace of progress in developing countries.
According to a World Bank report issued last April, countries in South Asia, Latin America and East Asia are on track to meeting the first MDG of halving extreme poverty by 2015 from 1990 levels.
Sub-Saharan Africa, where nearly 300 million people are surviving on less than 1 dollar a day, is the one region that is unlikely to meet this MDG.
Furthermore, all regions are off track to meet the MDG related to reducing child mortality. Nutrition remains a major challenge, with nearly one-third of all children in developing countries underweight or stunted. And half of the people in developing countries continue to lack access to adequate sanitation.
Source: Xinhua
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