LONDON (AlertNet) - World leaders must accelerate efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015 and rich countries must make good on promises to boost aid to poorer nations, development officials said at a conference on Thursday.
In an assessment seen by AlertNet, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) says there has been progress towards achieving some of the goals - which include halving both the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and the proportion suffering from hunger between 1990 and 2015. But it warns that "numerous goals and targets" will be missed without urgent additional action.
Helen Clark, the head of UNDP, told AlertNet the goal on poverty will likely be achieved, but only thanks to ChinaÂ?s success in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. "If we took that out of the equation and looked at everyone else, it wouldn't be such a good figure," she said in an interview.
Clark said goals on primary education - enabling all children to complete primary school - and child mortality - reducing the under-five mortality rate by two-thirds - could be achieved with "some more push". But she warned that the target of reducing the maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters "is going to need incredible focus".
UNDP says only eight out of 30 countries are on track to meet the MDGs on improving maternal health - the goal that the United Nations says has seen the least progress.
"The most important investments and changes we could make would be around women's and girls' needs and empowerment, because if you push that button, you start to push just about every other button as well," said Clark.
She added that if governments don't address gender inequalities, they won't reach the development goals. "It's as simple as that. If you're systematically excluding 50 percent of the population from the main benefit (of the goals) you're not going to get there."
Britain's International Development Secretary, Douglas Alexander, told the audience of development experts that the global economic recession and 2008 food and fuel price crises have made achieving the MDGs much tougher.
He said a U.N. summit on the MDGs in September must be used as a turning point in making progress on the goals.
"Business as usual is not enough," he said. "We need leaders from all countries around the table in September to endorse a global action plan which will benefit hundreds of millions of people in the developing world."
BROKEN FUNDING PROMISES
The London conference set out proposals to double aid for basic education in low-income countries from $3 billion to $6 billion a year, and to double aid for maternal, newborn and child health from $4 billion to $8 billion annually.
Britain's Department for International Development also called for a greater proportion of aid to go to fragile countries - those mired in violence and political instability - as well as a global programme to tackle malnutrition.
The pressure for more funding comes at a difficult time when rich nations are failing to deliver on their existing commitments - for example, the 2005 promise by the Group of Eight industrialised countries to double aid to Africa by 2010.
Malawi's vice president, Joyce Banda, cited a 2009 report from the African Development Bank stating that G8 countries had only delivered $9.4 billion of $28.3 billion pledged at the Gleneagles summit in 2005.
"Therefore developed countries need to acknowledge this shortfall and agree on an emergency plan to boost aid levels," she said.
UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said unmet aid pledges have created a "credibility issue".
"Promises made and then not delivered on bring cynicism, and it doesn't produce a global negotiating environment that is conducive to good relations," she said.
Banda said Malawi is on track to meet five of the eight MDGs partially or completely - including those on reducing HIV and AIDS and cutting child mortality - thanks to the support her country has received from donors. But there are areas where more resources are required, for example in preventing mothers from dying in childbirth.
Banda told AlertNet many women have been persuaded that giving birth in a health facility is much safer for them and their child, but hospitals are now congested because demand is so high.
"If the developed countries fulfil their promises, what we could do as a country is provide nurses, hospitals, holding shelters, ambulances." she said. "We are doing our best, and we know how we could do even more to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. All we don't have are the financial resources."
UNDP's Clark urged donors to commit to protecting their development assistance budgets from cuts as they begin to rebuild their battered finances after the global banking crisis.
But she said money isn't the only path to achieving the MDGs, and countries - particularly in Africa - should share and learn from each others' experiences in order to get there.
"We know that in the least developed countries there are ways of doing things that work. You can take the ingredients of success and help people apply the lessons," she said.
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