By DPA
Geneva : United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said Monday he believed the world could still achieve the nine key Millennium Development Goals aimed at improving life for millions by 2015.
The first comprehensive report on progress so far showed disappointing results, confirming that many regions would not meet the UN-set targets to reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger.
However, the secretary general insisted significant progress had been made and there was still time.
"The goals are still achievable everywhere if we work hard to realize them," he said, reiterating that it was critical that developed countries should keep their promise on increasing development aid.
Ban said the number of people living on less than one dollar a day has dropped by 32 percent to 19 percent, or from 1.25 billion in 1990 to 980 million in 2004. Sub-Saharan Africa is one area where the target on poverty would be missed. Here the number of desperately poor had only "levelled off."
However Ramesh Singh, chief executive of the non-governmental organization ActionAid, dismissed the report as "a con" which "glossed over" the truth that more people now were deprived of food.
Singh said, "Seven years ago when governments promised to halve hunger there were 800 million hungry people across the globe. Now there are 854 million people going hungry."
According to ActionAid, every 3.6 seconds a person died from hunger even though the world produced enough food for twice the world's population.
Launching the organization's five-year campaign for a Hunger Free World, Singh said hunger could be eliminated. "Death and suffering from hunger is not necessary, it is not an act of nature, not an act of God, it is a political choice. It is a violation of human rights."