 JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Unless drastic measures are implemented, the world will not meet its targets for reducing poverty and millions of people will die needlessly during the next decade, according to a major U.N. report released Wednesday. | My wallet just started weeping. I wonder why? |
Despite progress globally, many countries are falling behind, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where the HIV/AIDS pandemic is dramatically reducing life expectancy and creating financial and social burdens that slow development.| Maybe you should nationalize your farms and factories. That always works well. |
The stark findings contained in the 2005 Human Development Report were presented to world leaders a week before they meet in New York for a U.N. summit to review progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. The goals include halving extreme poverty, reducing child deaths by two-thirds and achieving universal primary education by 2015. The goals "are a promissory note, written by 189 governments and signed only by the US and Australia to the world's poor people," said Kevin Watkins, the development report's chief author. "That note falls due in less than 10 years time, and without the required investment and political will, it will come back stamped 'insufficient funds.'"| Hint: It always comes back 'insufficient funds.' It's something in the ink, I guess. |
Despite increasing global prosperity, more than 1 billion people still survive on less than $1 a day; 10.7 million children die before their fifth birthday; and 115 million children are not in school, the report said. Life expectancy in Botswana has dropped 20 years since the 1970s to just 36. A person living in Zambia has less chance of reaching 30 than one born in England at the dawn of the industrial revolution in 1840.| Which means less than nothing, since all those Zambians are being raised under the gentle auspices of the UN anti-poverty programs and the 1840 English had to go it alone. |
In many instances, the gap between rich and poor also is widening, the report said. One-fifth of humanity live in countries where people can spend $2 on a cappuccino. Another fifth survive on less than $1 a day.Such disparities present one of the greatest barriers to progress, Watkins argued. At the current rate, 115 countries with a combined population of almost 2.1 billion are off track by more than a generation on at least one millennium goal. Governments of developing countries can help turn these trends around by tackling inequalities, respecting human rights, encouraging investment and rooting out corruption, the report said. But in the meantime, give us more money their success will depend on the support of wealthy nations. This year saw the eight richest nations devote unprecedented attention to poverty at their summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, | Just before their attention was diverted when Al-Q boomed the Tube... |
including a pledge to double aid to $50 billion by 2015. But aid levels are still far from keeping pace with growing incomes in the wealthiest countries, the report said. |