Global poverty can be cut in half by 2015 and eliminated by 2025 if the world's richest countries -- including the US, Japan and Germany -- more than double aid to the poorest countries, according to a UN-sponsored report.
It's a matter of life or death for tens of millions of impoverished people, according to the report, released Monday, by 265 of the world's leading development experts.
The so-called Millennium Project initiated by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan spells out the investments needed to meet UN goals adopted by world leaders at the Millennium Summit in 2000 to tackle poverty, hunger and disease and promote education and development, mainly in African and Asian countries.
"What we're proposing is a strategy of investment to help empower the lives of very poor people that lack the tools and sometimes even the basic means to stay alive, much less be productive members of a fast-paced world economy," said Professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of the UN anti-poverty effort and lead author of the report.
The investments range from schools, clinics, safe water and sanitation to fertilizer, roads, electricity and transport to get goods to market.
"The system is not working right now -- let's be clear," he said. "There's a tremendous imbalance of focus on the issues of war and peace, and less on the dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice."
In a world of food mountains, 1 billion people live on US$1 a day or less and 1.8 billion more live on just US$2 a day, many going to bed hungry every night. Life expectancy in the poorest countries is half that in high-income countries, around 40 instead of 80, the report said. And every month, for example, 150,000 African children die of malaria because they don't have bed nets to keep out mosquitos, a tragedy Sachs called the "silent tsunami."
In 1970, the world's nations agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development assistance, and that figure was reaffirmed by the UN conference on financing development in Monterey, Mexico in 2002.
So far, only five countries have met or surpassed the target -- Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Six others have made commitments to reach the target by 2015 -- Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and Britain.
But 11 of the 22 richest donors, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, are far from the target and have not set timetables to reach it including the US, Japan and Germany.
If all 22 rich countries come up with the money, more than 500 million people can escape from poverty and tens of millions can avoid certain death in the next decade, the report said.
If the countries kept up the 0.7 percent level of aid-giving for another decade, it said, "by 2025 extreme poverty can be substantially eliminated" for the remaining 500 million people surviving on a dollar a day.
"Our generation for the first time in human history really could see to it that extreme poverty on the planet is ended, not just by half but ended by the year 2025," Sachs said.
"We are not asking for one new promise from any country in the world, only the follow-through on what has already been committed," he stessed.
But trying to get the US and the other rich nations to double or triple the amount of development assistance they now give is expected to be an uphill struggle -- and the target of a major lobbying effort.
The resources to meet the UN goals are definitely within the means of the world's 22 richest nations and their US$30 trillion economy -- about US$12 trillion just in the US, Sachs said.
One of Japan’s biggest pop stars and best-known TV hosts, Masahiro Nakai, yesterday announced his retirement over sexual misconduct allegations, reports said, in the latest scandal to rock Japan’s entertainment industry. Nakai’s announcement came after now-defunct boy band empire Johnny & Associates admitted in 2023 that its late founder, Johnny Kitagawa, for decades sexually assaulted teenage boys and young men. Nakai was a member of the now-disbanded SMAP — part of Johnny & Associates’s lucrative stable — that swept the charts in Japan and across Asia during the band’s nearly 30 years of fame. Reports emerged last month that Nakai, 52, who since
Seven people sustained mostly minor injuries in an airplane fire in South Korea, authorities said yesterday, with local media suggesting the blaze might have been caused by a portable battery stored in the overhead bin. The Air Busan plane, an Airbus A321, was set to fly to Hong Kong from Gimhae International Airport in southeastern Busan, but caught fire in the rear section on Tuesday night, the South Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said. A total of 169 passengers and seven flight attendants and staff were evacuated down inflatable slides, it said. Authorities initially reported three injuries, but revised the number
EYEING A SOLUTION: In unusually critical remarks about Russian President Vladimir Putin, US President Donald Trump said he was ‘destroying Russia by not making a deal’ US President Donald Trump on Wednesday stepped up the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to make a peace deal with Ukraine, threatening tougher economic measures if Moscow does not agree to end the war. Trump’s warning in a social media post came as the Republican seeks a quick solution to a grinding conflict that he had promised to end before even starting his second term. “If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other
‘BALD-FACED LIE’: The woman is accused of administering non-prescribed drugs to the one-year-old and filmed the toddler’s distress to solicit donations online A social media influencer accused of filming the torture of her baby to gain money allegedly manufactured symptoms causing the toddler to have brain surgery, a magistrate has heard. The 34-year-old Queensland woman is charged with torturing an infant and posting videos of the little girl online to build a social media following and solicit donations. A decision on her bail application in a Brisbane court was yesterday postponed after the magistrate opted to take more time before making a decision in an effort “not to be overwhelmed” by the nature of allegations “so offensive to right-thinking people.” The Sunshine Coast woman —
RSS