World leaders are hoping to put a spotlight on the growing gap between rich and poor and the failure to find US$50 billion a year to help more than 1 billion people escape extreme poverty and start sharing global prosperity.
At two meetings yesterday -- the eve of the annual UN General Assembly debate -- leaders and ministers were to focus on innovative ways to finance the alleviation of poverty and to ensure that millions of the world's poor don't get left behind by globalization.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who will speak at both meetings, said recently that poverty is "morally and ethically unacceptable." He called for a global campaign "to free all human beings from hunger" and ensure that 24,000 people don't continue to die every day because they have nothing to eat.
The meetings are expected to help set the stage for next year's summit that the General Assembly is holding to assess progress toward meeting the goals that world leaders agreed on at the 2000 Millennium Summit. They include halving the number of people living in dire poverty, ensuring that all children have an elementary school education, that all families have clean water, and that the AIDS epidemic is halted -- all by 2015.
More than 50 heads of state and government were to arrive in New York a day early to attend yesterday's meeting of world leaders on "Innovative Sources of Finance to Alleviate Hunger and Poverty" which is the brainchild of Silva.
Several leaders and many ministers also will attend a discussion of a report by a UN commission that said the income gap between the richest and poorest countries has widened over the past four decades and the vast majority of the world's population could fail to see the benefits of globalization.
The World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, which was established in 2002 by the International Labor Organization, urged policy-makers in the February report to set fairer rules for trade and immigration so that millions of people can benefit -- not suffer -- from globalization.
Finland's President Tarja Halonen and Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, who chair the commission, were to lead yesterday's session.
Finland's UN Ambassador Marjatta Rasi said they are working on a resolution to put the issue on the General Assembly's agenda. "We are talking about all different aspects of globalization -- good governance, rule of law, human rights, labor standards. It's a huge variety of issues the report covers," she said.
US President George W. Bush, who has focused on Iraq in his last two speeches to the General Assembly, is making a dramatic shift this year to humanitarian concerns. He said in his radio broadcast Saturday he would "talk about the great possibilities of our time to improve health, expand prosperity and extend freedom in the world."
But he was to skip yesterday's meetings and was sending US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman. French President Jacques Chirac, by contrast, is flying to New York just for the day to speak at both sessions.
Bush and Chirac, the most outspoken critic of the US-led war in Iraq, won't cross paths because the French leader was to return to Paris last night, with Bush to arrive at the UN this morning for his speech.
France's UN Ambassador Jean-Marc de La Sabliere said the aim of the meeting to combat poverty is to mobilize the international community "at the highest level" and start preparing the discussion for next year's summit.
"It is not only a moral issue to assist these countries, but also it is our common interest to see them developing and not to have part of the world marginalized," he said.
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