By KUNA
London : Ambitious targets for tackling global poverty and disease are failing to be delivered because women’s basic rights in the developing world are being ignored, a report warned Friday.
The plight of women and girls in the poorest areas of the world must be put at the “heart” of the global response if the Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved, a report from the charity “Action Aid” said.
The eight goals were set in 2000 by UN member states with a target date of 2015. They range from halving extreme poverty to halting the spread of HIV-Aids and providing universal primary education.
The Action Aid report, released on the eve of International Women’s Day, argues that eight years on from the goals being agreed, progress is “patchy” and the goals are “off-track”.
Governments and international donors are “sidelining” women in development programmes, the report said, despite the fact that they are disproportionately disadvantaged in all the key areas covered by the goals, from health and education to income and political participation.
Women and girls account for just over half of the world’s population, but form a large majority of poor and hungry people, according to the report.
Currently 41 million girls worldwide are still denied a primary education and two-thirds of the world’s illiterate young people are women.
In Pakistan and India, girls have a 30 percent to 50 percent higher chance of dying before their fifth birthday than boys, the report added.
Women and children in Africa spend 40 billion hours collecting water per year, equivalent to a year’s labour for France’s entire workforce.
The least progress has been made in maternal care and sexual health, the report said, with women in the developing world continuing to die of pregnancy-related causes at the rate of one a minute.
In Africa, women account for 75 percent of all young people living with HIV and Aids.
The report called on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders meeting at the UN in New York in September to set more ambitious and specific targets on women and girls within the existing Millennium Development Goals.