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Developing nations must assist poor nations: Annan
United Nations, May 30: Urging industrial nations to put their differences on Iraq behind and make issues of poverty and development their priority, UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said the countries should drop trade barriers and double their assistance to help more than one billion people now living on less than a dollar day come out poverty.
United Nations, May 30: Urging industrial nations to put their differences on Iraq behind and make issues of poverty and development their priority, UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said the countries should drop trade barriers and double their assistance to help more than one billion people now living on less than a dollar day come out poverty.
In an open letter to the Group of Eight (G-8) comprising world's richest industrial nations who are meeting in Evian, France, Annan warned that some of their pledges to the developing world ranging from trade and aid to Aids, medicines and clean water are in "grave danger of not being met."
"The developing countries look to you, the leaders of the world's most prosperous and powerful countries, for active support," Annan said.
Their pledges include eliminating agricultural subsidies which put the farmers of the developing countries at disadvantage and to make life-savings drugs, including for treatment of aids, affordable to the poor nations.
The G-8 comprise the United States, Britain, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Canada and Italy. The secretary-general himself will be travelling over the weekend to attend, at the group's invitation, an informal summit on June 1 with the leaders of a number of developing countries.
In the letter Annan highlights Africa's "deadly triad" of inter-linked crises - HIV/Aids, food security and governance - with the disease decimating women who play the major role in food production and killing off the most skilled and productive members of society capable of governing and administering.
"Africa needs to fight HIV/Aids with a concerted effort. It can do so only if resources are made available," he wrote. "Sustained funding for it is a must." Stressing that more than 2.2 million people, mostly children in developing countries, die every year from diseases associated with poor water and sanitary conditions, he noted that the UN millennium summit pledged to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
Bureau Report
Their pledges include eliminating agricultural subsidies which put the farmers of the developing countries at disadvantage and to make life-savings drugs, including for treatment of aids, affordable to the poor nations.
The G-8 comprise the United States, Britain, Russia, Japan, France, Germany, Canada and Italy. The secretary-general himself will be travelling over the weekend to attend, at the group's invitation, an informal summit on June 1 with the leaders of a number of developing countries.
In the letter Annan highlights Africa's "deadly triad" of inter-linked crises - HIV/Aids, food security and governance - with the disease decimating women who play the major role in food production and killing off the most skilled and productive members of society capable of governing and administering.
"Africa needs to fight HIV/Aids with a concerted effort. It can do so only if resources are made available," he wrote. "Sustained funding for it is a must." Stressing that more than 2.2 million people, mostly children in developing countries, die every year from diseases associated with poor water and sanitary conditions, he noted that the UN millennium summit pledged to halve by 2015 the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water.
Bureau Report