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September 21, 2010

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Sarkozy in aid pledge at UN meet on poverty

FRENCH President Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday pledged to boost aid to the world's poorest by 20 percent over the next three years and issued a plea for other developed nations to join him in meeting UN anti-poverty targets by 2015.

With Millennium Development Goals, set by the United Nations 10 years ago, lagging and hard hit by the global recession, Sarkozy implored world leaders not to fall back into "old bad habits" of ignoring global poverty as the world economy begins climbing out of the severe economic downturn

"We have no right to do less than what we have decided to do," Sarkozy told the assembled 140-plus leaders at the UN in New York. He also said the world body should join in creating a small international tax on financial transactions that would go toward ending poverty and meeting other millennium goals.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon opened the summit with a call to the assembled presidents, prime ministers and kings to use their power to meet UN goals to help the world's poorest by 2015.

Ten years after world leaders set the most ambitious goals ever to tackle global poverty, they are gathered again to spur action to meet the deadline.

General Assembly President Joseph Deiss called the session to order, saying: "We must achieve the Millennium Development Goals. We want to achieve them. And we can achieve them."

For centuries, the plight of the world's poor had been ignored but with the turn of the new millennium, leaders pledged to begin tackling poverty, disease, ignorance and inequality.

Leaders have vowed to reduce extreme poverty by half, ensure that every child has a primary school education, halt and reverse the HIV/AIDS pandemic, reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters and child mortality by two-thirds. Goals additionally called for cutting by half the number of people without access to clean water and basic sanitation - all by 2015.

They also set goals to promote equality for women, protect the environment, increase development aid, and open the global trading and financial system.


 

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