(March 09, 2012) The world has been able to meet some of the United Nations goals
of reducing poverty and raising living standards in developing nations, though some
regions like sub-Saharan Africa are not reaping many benefits, the U.N. chief said
on Thursday. There has been "broad progress" in achieving the Millennium Development
Goals, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters. The goals are targets adopted
by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to slash poverty, hunger and disease
in poor countries by 2015. Earlier this week the United Nations announced that developing
nations have already achieved their 2015 goal of drastically reducing the number of
people without regular access to safer drinking water, though much of the credit lies
with India and China. Last week the World Bank said developing countries appear
to have already met the U.N. goal of halving extreme poverty in the world's poorest
countries by 2015. That was also mainly due to China's economic boom. Ban also cited
progress in other areas, such as the fight against tuberculosis and malaria, parity
in primary school education between boys and girls and improvement in the lives of
at least 100 million slum dwellers.