UN Reducing Extreme Poverty Goal Met, World Bank Says
First Posted: 02/29/2012 3:35 pm Updated: 03/ 1/2012 10:13 am
WASHINGTON, Feb 29 (Reuters) - The World Bank said on Wednesday developing countries appear to have already met a United Nations goal to halve extreme poverty in the world's poorest countries by 2015.
The Washington-based development lender said preliminary data showed developing countries as a group reached the goal - the first of eight U.N. Millennium Development Goals - in 2010.
The MDGs are a set of targets adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to fight poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries.
"We are now confident that the developing world as a whole has reached the first of the Millennium Goals and reached that goal in 2010 despite the crisis," said Martin Ravallion, director of the World Bank's research group and lead author of the report./.../