By Prensa Latina
United Nations : The UN General Assembly agreed to hold a top-level conference September 22 concerning Africa’s development needs, due to the great delay in attaining goals planned by the international organization in 2000.
The Assembly requested that Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon present an advance integral report on the panorama in that region and its most pressing needs.
A recent UN report about the situation of the Millennium Development Goals in Africa in 2007 revealed those goals will be impossible to reach by 2015 at the current pace in most countries.
The report revealed that progress with children has been slow, including expectations to reduce hunger and the proportion of underweight minors under five, which were only reduced from 33 to 29 percent.
The UN experts said that despite progress in education, 30 percent of African children still do not attend elementary school.
In reference to gender equality, they noted a slight increase of women’s presence in parliaments, from 7 to 17 percent, while the number of wage-earning women, outside of agriculture, was less than one third of the labor force.
The infant mortality rate, 185 deaths per one thousand live births in 1990, dropped to 166 per one thousand in 2005, which rate will not make it possible to achieve a two-third reduction by 2015, as the UN hoped.
Another aspect of terrible consequences in Africa is HIV/AIDS, which has taken two million lives in 2006 in that region, with an increase in the number of women with the disease, although the total number of those infected has not risen.
These, among other problems and difficulties, added to intense droughts, huge floods, and armed conflicts will be analyzed by heads of State and Government and top officials in the coming UN summit.