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More needs to be done quickly to achieve Millennium Goals, UN official says

More needs to be done quickly to achieve Millennium Goals, UN official says

USG Ocampo
While the international community has taken important steps to increase its official development assistance, much more needs to be done, and done quickly, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a senior United Nations official said today.

While the international community has taken important steps to increase its official development assistance, much more needs to be done, and done quickly, to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a senior United Nations official said today.

The Goals are a set of eight, time-bound targets that seek to restructure the world's social fabric, from slashing extreme poverty and hunger to curbing infant mortality and major diseases to improving access to education and health care for all - all by 2015.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington, D.C., Jose Antonio Ocampo, Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, also called for "a bold and innovative approach to...improving the voice and representation of developing countries in the governance structures of the multilateral financial institutions."

Mr. Ocampo's remarks came at the meeting of the Group of 24 (G-24), a chapter of the G-77 coalition established in 1971 to coordinate the positions of developing countries on international monetary and development finance issues and to ensure that their interests are adequately represented in negotiations on international monetary matters.

The Washington-based Bretton Woods institutions, founded in July 1944 at the UN Monetary and Financial Conference held in the New Hampshire town for which they are named, comprise the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Mr. Ocampo is scheduled to address the Development Committee tomorrow.