"Global poverty can be cut in half by 2015 and eliminated by 2025 if the world's richest countries, including the United States, Japan and Germany, more than double aid to the poorest countries, hundreds of development experts concluded in a report on 17 Jan 2005.
"'What we're proposing is a strategy of investment to help empower the lives of very poor people that lack the tools and sometimes even the basic means to stay alive, much less be productive members of a fast-paced world economy,' said professor Jeffrey Sachs, head of the U.N. anti-poverty effort and lead author of the report.
"The investments range from schools, clinics, safe water and sanitation to fertilizer, roads, electricity and transport to get goods to market.
"'The system is not working right now -- let's be clear," Sachs said. 'There's a tremendous imbalance of focus on the issues of war and peace, and less on the dying and suffering of the poor who have no voice.'
"In 1970, the world's nations agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development assistance, and that figure was reaffirmed by the U.N. conference on financing development in Mexico in 2002.
"So far, only five countries have met or surpassed the target -- Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden."
See also:
The other tsunami: debt and domination
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