UN: Boost aid to poor countries

UN: Facing possible shortfalls in funding due to the global economic crisis, the UN Development Program (UNDP) on Wednesday called on donors to "continue, and ideally boost, their current commitments" to help the agency pull the world's developing countries out of poverty. "I am concerned that we may not meet our income targets for 2009 and 2010, and that we will face a continuing imbalance between contributions to regular and other resources," UNDP Administrator Helen Clark said, calling on the Group of Eight (G8) leading industrialized countries to fulfill their oft-stated pledge to commit 0.7 percent of their gross national income to official development assistance (ODA).

She stressed that the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the UN-endorsed targets which seek to mitigate a host of social ills ranging from poverty and hunger to maternal and infant mortality to lack of access to health and education, all by 2015, remain at the core of UNDP's Strategic Plan. "With 2015 now barely six years away, we need an enormous focus on the MDGs," she told a session of the Executive Board of UNDP and the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). "Nowhere is that more important than in Africa, especially in these challenging times when African nations and their peoples have been hit hard by the economic crisis."

"As is well known, no country in sub-Saharan Africa was on track to achieve all the MDGs before the crisis. It would be a double blow if the global recession acted to reverse hard won progress towards the MDGs," she said.

Many developing countries, facing reduced domestic revenue this year, need support to maintain budgets for basic services like health and education, vital ingredients in meeting the MDGs, Clark said.

"If children are pulled out of school because of the effects of the crisis on their families and their countries' budgets, they may never get a second chance in education.

United Nations, Thursday, Xinhua