DHAKA: About 800 million people still live in dire poverty and suffer from hunger despite the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) being the most successful anti-poverty push in history.

The UN said on Monday, The Straits Times publishes this report on Tuesday.

The number of people living in extreme poverty on less than $1.25 a day has more than halved, to 836 million from 1.9 billion in 1990, the UN said in a report analyzing eight development goals set out in the Millennium Declaration in 2000.

‘Following profound and consistent gains, we now know that extreme poverty can be eradicated within one more generation,’ UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in a statement.

‘The MDGs have greatly contributed to this progress and have taught us how governments, business and civil society can work together to achieve transformational breakthroughs.’

But progress has been uneven across regions and countries, the UN said, and the new sustainable development agenda should focus on inequalities to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable people.

World leaders are due to adopt a set of new development objectives - known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) - at a UN summit in September. The new goals aim to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.

Conflicts, which in 2014 uprooted almost 60 million people in countries such as Syria, Iraq, Central African Republic, Nigeria and Pakistan, remain the biggest threat to human development, and fragile and conflict-affected states have the highest poverty rates, the UN said.

In the Middle East there has been a resurgence of poverty after years of progress and poverty rates are expected to increase to 2.6 percent from 1.5 percent between 2011 and 2015, the report said.

BDST: 1152 HRS, JULY 07, 2015
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