The Summit on soaring food prices, convened by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), has concluded with the adoption by acclamation of a declaration calling on the international community to increase assistance for developing countries, in particular the least developed countries and those that are most negatively affected by high food prices.
The dramatic surge in food prices has plunged millions of poor people and many net food importing poor countries into a food crisis. Consequently, it has also put at risk their chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Whilst the focus has been on the impact on the MDG1 of reducing poverty and hunger, given the close inter-connectedness between all the 8 MDGs, the impact on these sections of the poor on health, education and livelihoods more broadly, cannot be underestimated.
Following reports that the Philippines, including other Asian countries, is in danger of not halving extreme poverty rates by 2015, the United Nations (UN) Millennium Campaign, together with various civil society organizations, urged the administration of President Aquino to immediately come up with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Breakthrough Plan for the country in time for the UN General Assembly next month in New York.
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2010
The Millennium Declaration in 2000 was a milestone in international cooperation, inspiring development efforts that have improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Ten years later, world leaders will gather again at the United Nations in New York to review progress, assess obstacles and gaps, and agree on concrete strategies and actions to meet the eight Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Millennium Development Goals Report Card
The last two decades have shown that it is possible to defeat the scourge of poverty. Progress has not been uniform across countries, and there have been setbacks and disappointments. But overall, the rate of progress in reducing poverty and in increasing access to basic health, education, water, and other essential services is unparalleled in many countries’ histories.
New Analysis Reveals African Countries Top List of 20 Countries Making Most Overall Progress on MDGs
As G-8 and G-20 leaders prepare to gather in Canada, new analysis issued by the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the United Nations Millennium Campaign finds that, in absolute terms, many of the world’s poorest countries are making the most overall progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) – the set of promises world leaders made to significantly reduce extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease by 2015.
European citizens took their demands that world leaders end poverty to the European Parliament today, where a giant petition symbolic of the voices of 505,823 Europeans who have signed an e-card to their leaders was handed over to the President of the
European Parliament, Jerzy Buzek, by the UN Millennium Campaign, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and dozens of civil society organizations. The petition was presented as the European Council prepares to meet on June 18 to decide the European Union’s (EU) position on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
On March 29, Members of Parliament from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe launched a network of Parliamentarians for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at a consultative meeting held in Abuja, Nigeria. Through this network, they committed to speak with one voice to ensure that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are achieved.
The network members called for an ambitious agenda to address the poverty and inequality bedeviling the African continent and stressed that achieving the MDGs is an important first step.
Scoring goals
In the western Kenyan village of Sauri, near Lake Victoria, the crops don’t fail, nearly all the children attend school, malaria is almost non-existent and medical care is free.
