Worldwide implementation of Millennium goals 'mixed,' Annan reports

The international community must do more to reach the goals set at the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit aimed at fighting poverty, hunger and other global problems, Secretary-General Kofi Annan says in a new report, which paints a mixed picture of progress achieved so far.

"Some Millennium goals have benefited from the hard decisions and courageous reforms that are needed. Others have not," the Secretary-General writes in his first annual report to the UN General Assembly on the progress achieved by the UN and its Member States towards implementing the Millennium Declaration adopted in 2000.

World leaders meeting that year at UN Headquarters in New York agreed to an action plan that would - in the next 15 years - cut in half the number of starving people and those who live on less than $1 a day as compared to the 1990s. The leaders also committed themselves during that same time span to fight infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, as well as deal with the debt problems of developing countries.

While East Asia has made progress in reducing the proportion of its population that is malnourished or extremely poor, the number of hungry people in Africa actually rose by 27 million during the 1990s, Mr. Annan notes.

The Secretary-General says that the successes described in his report showed that the vision set out in the Declaration was not "focused on horizons too remote for us to reach." Much of the progress has been made by relying on strategies that combine the energies of Member States, international institutions and agencies with those of others, such as the private sector and other parts of civil society.

"A coordinated strategy, with the will and resources to apply it, can make the difference between progress and retreat," the Secretary-General says. "The poor, the vulnerable, those trampled by conflict or suffering under tyranny and discrimination - all are waiting for us to act."