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Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs named Annan's aide on development goals

Harvard's Jeffrey Sachs named Annan's aide on development goals

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has named a renowned Harvard scholar, Jeffrey Sachs, as a key aide on efforts to achieve the goals for development set at the 2000 Millennium Summit, a UN spokesman said today.

Professor Sachs, the Director of the Center for International Development at Harvard University, was appointed as Special Adviser on The Millennium Development Goals for an initial term of one year.

At the historic UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, over 160 world leaders agreed to eight Millennium Development Goals -- on health, poverty, education and environment.

Professor Sachs' duties will be to gather and commission research and to develop new approaches to aid in the achievement of those goals, which include the overarching goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015. He will work closely with UN Development Programme Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown, who has been charged with coordinating the campaign to reach the Millennium Development Goals across the UN system.