Annan thanks LA City Council for supporting Millennium Development Goals

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today applauded the Los Angeles City Council’s approval of a resolution to support the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), an agenda negotiated at a world summit at the UN in 2000 that includes stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and halving extreme poverty by 2015.

“I am heartened that you have adopted this resolution in support of the Millennium Development Goals,” he told council members the day after the resolution’s passage.

The resolution, which will include the support of MDGs in the council’s 2003-04 legislative programme, “reflects an understanding that the work for a healthier, more equitable world begins with every one of us – in developed and developing countries alike,” he added.

Mr. Annan is on a two-day trip to Los Angeles. Besides addressing the City Council, he is marking the 50th anniversaries of the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador programme.

The MDGs are different from “other bold pledges that became broken promises over the past 50 years” because they are people-centred, time-bound and measurable, they have unprecedented political support and they are achievable, he said.

Among the factors vital to their fulfilment is a true partnership engaging developed and developing countries alike. “Indeed, forging a global partnership for development forms one of the Goals in itself, Goal number 8,” he said.

Mr. Annan noted that city councillors around the world represented more than half of the world’s human population: the 3 billion people living in cities. “Cities like yours can be vehicles for peace in the broadest sense of the word,” he said.