World leaders pushed today for stronger action to reduce global poverty in the face of spreading financial turmoil and high food prices that threaten to worsen the problems of the poor.
Addressing world leaders at a poverty summit, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called on countries to be bold and generous.
With sufficient funds and political will, the fight against poverty, hunger, disease and inequality could be won, he said.
Eight years after UN members set goals to halve global poverty by 2015, the UN meeting is taking stock and discussing other steps to accelerate progress.
While there has been progress in some countries, the UN has said not a single African country is on track to reach all the targets set out in these Millennium Development Goals.
Mr Ban said earlier this week the fight against poverty can be won if rich countries provide some $72 billion a year. "The current financial crisis threatens the well-being of billions of people, none more so than the poorest of the poor," he said. "This compounds the damage being caused by much higher prices for food and fuel."
Mr Ban said current successes in sharply reducing deaths from malaria, Africa's biggest killer, through prevention and treatment showed progress could be made in tackling disease. "We are close to containing this scourge," Mr Ban said. "What we are doing with malaria, we should do with education, maternal health, climate and agriculture."
British prime minister Gordon Brown appealed to rich countries not to use the current financial crisis as an excuse to abandon the goals of the fight against global poverty. "This would be the worst time to turn back," he said.
Taoiseach Brian Cowen said it was "nothing short of scandalous" that there are over 860 million hungry people in the world today.
But French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner doubted whether the Millennium Development Goals could be reached in the current climate. It was "sort of unfair," he told reporters, to talk about the goals when countries were being affected by the global credit crisis.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates said the goals had successfully focused the world's attention on the world's poorest citizens. Now, greater innovation was needed such as developing new vaccines to prevent disease, he said.
World Bank President Robert Zoellick worried that the financial crisis could quickly spread to developing nations, already reeling from higher food and fuel prices.
"In general, the developing world has provided some sources of growth in the midst of the turmoil, but now I am concerned with ripple effects of this most recent trauma could start to hit some of them more seriously," he told a news conference.