RIYADH — In the most comprehensive strategy ever put forward for combating global poverty, hunger and disease, some 265 of the world’s leading development experts proposed yesterday a package of cost-effective measures designed to cut extreme poverty by half and radically improve the lives of at least one billion people in poor developing countries by 2015.
The recommendations of the UN Millennium Project, an independent advisory body to the UN secretary-general, are laid out in the report Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
The report was presented to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who has said the fight against extreme poverty should be the top priority of the world community and the UN system in 2005.
An advance copy of the report was released to Arab News by the UNDP Resident Representative Office in Riyadh. “Until now, we did not have a concrete plan for achieving the Millennium Development Goals,” said Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist who directed the three-year UN Millennium Project.
“The experts who contributed to this huge undertaking have shown without a doubt that we can still meet the goals-if we start putting this plan into action right now.”
The UN Millennium Project’s report was released as the Asian tsunami disaster focused global attention on the need, scale and effectiveness of aid to the world’s poor. The enormously generous response to the tragedy sent a powerful message that ordinary citizens in wealthier nations do in fact support such aid — if they clearly see the need and if they believe the funds will reach and help the people in need.
The project’s plan addresses these legitimate concerns — and shows that targeted investments in essential public services such as health, education and infrastructure make poor communities less vulnerable to such disasters and to the hardships of disease, hunger and environmental degradation.
The project report leads off a series of global initiatives aimed at making the goals a reality, including a report to UN member states from the secretary-general in March, which will draw heavily on the project’s recommendations.
“The project team has given us the biggest intellectual contribution to the development debate from the UN system in at least 20 years,” said Mark Malloch Brown, the secretary-general’s incoming chief of staff and chairman of the United Nations Development Group, (UNDG).
