UN Chief Says World Leaders Aren't Moving Fast Enough to Cut Poverty, Improve Education and Fight AIDS

Two years ago, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged world leaders to use their power to give billions of people a better life by 2015. In his first report card on Monday, he said they are not moving fast enough to cut poverty, improve education, reduce child mortality and fight AIDS.

Annan's report card to the UN General Assembly covers every commitment made in the declaration adopted by 189 countries at the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000. More than 150 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs attended the largest gathering of world leaders in history. "The record of the international community in the first two years of implementing the Millennium Declaration is, at best, mixed," Annan said. "In the remaining 13 years, progress must be made on a much broader front. Otherwise, the ringing words of the declaration will serve only as grim reminders of human needs neglected and promises unmet," he warned. By 2015, the leaders pledged that the spread of HIV/AIDS and the scourge of malaria and other major diseases should be halted and reversed.

As for HIV/AIDS, Annan said that while a few countries like Uganda and Thailand have had some success in limiting or reversing their national epidemics, "the global picture remains daunting." The $3 billion being spent to fight HIV/AIDS in 2002 is still "far short of estimated needs of about $10 billion annually by 2005," he said. Nonetheless, the secretary-general said there is still a chance to meet the 2015 targets. "They will only be reached if the right national and international economic conditions are achieved, and the necessary financial resources mobilized," Annan said. The declaration also commits world leaders to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, to provide debt relief for the poorest countries, and to close the so-called digital divide by working to make the fruits of globalization available to the poor as well as the rich.

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