By Suvendrini Kakuchi
GENEVA, Jun 27 2000 (IPS)

A report outlining measures aimed at reducing glo bal poverty was released Monday to mark the first day of the United Nations General Assembly on Social Development.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the report, entitled “A Better Worl d for All” “addresses the most compelling of human desires”, which is to see a world free of the misery of poverty, a goal described in the document as “the greatest challenge to the international community”. Currently 60 percent of the world’s 6 billion people live in some degree of poverty.

At the top of the list of seven goals aimed at poverty reduction, with mo st of them expected to be completed over the next 15 years, is bringing the number of people living in extreme poverty down from 1.3 billion to 0.9 billion.

Other goals include enrolling all children in primary school, making prog ress toward gender equality and empowering women by eliminating gender dispari ties in primary and secondary education.

At present some 133 million children who should be in school are not, wit h the highest numbers recorded in Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

Efforts will be made to ensure a decline in the 500,000 maternal deaths e ach year and to provide access for all who need reproductive health services. Maternal mortality is highest in Sub-Saharan Africa, where one in every 100 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth.

In 1998, 11 million children under the age of five died; the majority of deaths occurred in Sub-Saharan countries. Unsafe water, inadequate immunisation coverage, war and civil conflict, malnutrition, poor access to basic educ ation and the spread of HIV/AIDS and the resurgence of malaria and tuberculosis have all been linked to these child deaths.

The report takes note of the need to ensure minimum social standards as well as access to basic social services. It calls for the effective and equitable use of resources for development, which, it says, does not come cheap.

The report points out that most of the world’s poor live in rural areas, but urban poverty is growing rapidly. Women are more likely than men to lack rights to land and other assets and also have no access to credit, adequa te employment and economic security in old age.

In the 1990s, poverty fell slightly in East Asia. In Thailand, for exampl e, seven percent annual growth rate between 1988 and 1996 translated into a reduction in the number of poor – from 22 percent to 11 percent of the population. But the financial crisis of 1998 has since brought the povert y figure up to 13 percent.

Despite some progress in countries such as Malaysia, the Republic of Kore a and India that have now halved the proportion of their people living in pover ty, the report paints a gloomy picture of the overall state of poverty, makin g the UN’s goal a formidable challenge.

“The UN alone can do little or nothing. If we are to succeed, we must wo rk together. On the part of developed countries they must do more to open th eir markets, increase debt relief and ODA (Overseas Development Aid),” Annan said at a press conference launching the report.

The report was jointly produced by the United Nations, the World Bank, th e International Monetary Fund and the Organisation for Economic Co- operatio n and Development. It was the first time the four had collaborated on such a project.

The G-8 countries, due to meet next month in Japan, had asked for it as a means of measuring progress in poverty reduction.

The report’s introduction signed by the heads of the four institutions po ints out that “the support of the international community is vital” to achievi ng the targets. “High income countries, because of their greater resources, have much to contribute,” adds.

At the summit so far, rich countries have been strongly criticised for no t providing enough resources to meet previous poverty reduction targets. Cu rrent ODA is 55 billion dollars with only four donors reaching the target of 0. 7 percent of gross domestic product going for aid.

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