By DPA
Geneva : Much more needs to be done if the world is to hit its Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets to reduce poverty and improve the quality of life for millions of people by 2015, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.
Halfway towards the deadline, he presented the most comprehensive global assessment of progress to date on the eight key goals or MDGs agreed in 2000 and admitted the results were mixed.
"There have been some gains and success is still possible in most parts of the world," said Ban in the foreword to the report. "But they also point to how much remains to be done."
Progress had been made on the key target of reducing extreme poverty by half with the numbers living on less than a dollar a day dropping by 32 percent from 1.25 billion in 1990 to 19 percent or 980 million in 2004.
If the trend continued, the MDG on poverty reduction would be met in most areas with the exception of sub-Saharan Africa and Western Asia, though in sub-Saharan Africa the number of desperately poor had "levelled off".
Rapid economic growth had put Asia on course to reduce poverty. Worldwide, the report stated, more children were going to school, women had gained marginal ground on equal rights and child mortality had fallen due to simple measures such as inoculation against measles.
Malaria controls had expanded and the tuberculosis epidemic was declining, though not fast enough.
More than half a million women still died annually in childbirth and AIDS deaths rose to 2.9 million last year from 2.2 million in 2001. Half the world's population had no access to basic sanitation and the catastrophic effects of climate change were already being felt.
The UN secretary-general said efforts to succeed were being hampered by factors such as armed conflicts and HIV/AIDS. Developed countries had also failed to provide "adequate financing" making it difficult "even for well-governed countries to meet MDGs".
Despite pledges by the leading industrial nations in 2005 to double aid to Africa, official aid had declined in real terms by 5.1 percent between 2005 and 2006.