• Submitted by: manso
• international
• 09 / 21 / 2010

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Leaders from 140 countries are arriving to New York since Saturday to give a decisive boost to fulfilling the Millennium Development Goals, set 10 years ago to be met by 2015. Advances until now and difficulties that threaten the achievement of those goals will be the main issue of the UN summit which meets here from Monday to Wednesday.

The top-level forum is expected to adopt a declaration that was negotiated and reached by consensus early this month in the General Assembly, regarding the current state of the eight goals set in the year 2000.

The proposed declaration is marked by an air of forced optimism, predicting the fulfillment of major challenges like reducing extreme poverty and hunger by half compared to 1990 levels.

The goals are also aimed at promoting gender equality and women's autonomy, achieving universal elementary education, reducing infant mortality by two-third between 1990 and 2015, and fighting HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases.

Other items deal with defense of the environment, and promoting a world development association.

However, the text that will be approved here next week does not satisfy the expectations of developing countries reagarding various important issues, leaving out proposals made during negotiation of the document by the Group of the 77.

Diplomatic sources told Prensa Latina that most of those initiatives are related to the eighth goal, referring to trade, the financial system, aid to underdeveloped countries, foreign debt and new technology.

According to the Cuban Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Rodolfo Benitez, the developed nations also blocked any language targeted to the need to give new and additional resources to the underdeveloped world for making progress in the fulfilment of the modest goals.

In that sense, he added, the document an analysis that is sufficiently truthful and critical of the current situation.

The summit will have six plenary sessions and several roundtables, on Poverty, Hunger and Gender Equality, Health and Education, and Promotion of Sustainable Development.

Others will tackle emerging issues such as climate change, economic and financial crisis, food security and armed conflicts, special needs for the poorest countries and increasing and strengthening collaboration associations.
 
Source: PL