UN chief Ban Ki-moon expressed alarm on Monday about the impact of the global financial crisis on poor nations and called for urgent multilateral action in support of the UN’s anti-poverty agenda.
“I am deeply concerned about the impact of this crisis on the developing world, particularly on the poorest of the poor and the serious setback this is likely to have on efforts to meet major goals,” he said in a statement.
Ban added that while initiatives by the World Bank and the IMF to provide new emergency liquidity provisioning to poor nations could help them counteract some of the effects of the crisis, “more needs to be done.”
On Sunday, World Bank president Robert Zoellick said the financial crisis, the worst since the 1929 market crash, underscored the need for coordinated action to build a better multilateral system.
Zoellick announced that the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s private sector lending arm, was exploring the possibility of a fund to help recapitalize banks in the developing world.
Experts say poorer countries could be hit twice by the crisis — finding it more difficult to get access to funding and as their exports fall because the crisis undercuts demand.
With donor aid programs under pressure during the financial crisis, the World Bank estimates that up to 100 million people are at risk of falling into poverty because of higher food and energy prices.
In his statement on Monday, the UN secretary general also stressed the need “to consider urgent multilateral action to alleviate the impact of recent events on the development agenda of the organization.”
He singled out the implementation of anti-poverty Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by a 2015 deadline, the food and energy crises as well as the challenges of climate change.
Last month, a UN summit on how to reduce global poverty ended with pledges from donors of roughly US$16 billion. But the financial turmoil has raised fears that the promises may not be kept.
Ban noted that the finance for development conference scheduled for next month in Doha “provides us an important opportunity to review developments and to ensure that the current financial difficulties do not undermine commitments already undertaken to provide more aid and other financial resources for the achievement” of the MDGs.
The Doha Round of trade liberalization talks, orchestrated by the WTO, was launched in the Qatari capital seven years ago but has been deadlocked because of disputes between the rich developed world and poorer developing nations on trade in farm and industrial products.
The MDGs include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating diseases such as HIV/AIDS, ensuring environmental sustainability and creating global partnerships for development.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS