MANAMA: Extreme poverty has dropped in the developing world especially in Asia, an annual assessment report by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Wednesday.
"The share of people in the developing world who subsist on less than $1.25 a day… dropped from 46 percent in the baseline year of 1990 to 27 percent in 2005," the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Report 2010 said.
It said that the progress was led by "China and Southern and South Eastern Asia."
The poverty rate "is expected to tumble to 15 percent by the target year of 2015," said the report, given to AFP in Bahrain.
The economic crisis took a heavy toll on jobs and incomes around the world, but its impact does not threaten achievement of the MDG’s target of cutting extreme poverty rates in half by 2015, the report said.
"At the same time, it is clear that improvements in the lives of the poor have been unacceptably slow, and some hard-won gains are being eroded by the climate, food and economic crises," Ban said in the report.
However, in many poor countries, especially in Africa, more children are finding their way into primary schools, the report said.
It also spoke of "strong interventions in addressing AIDS, malaria and child health" in addition to "a good chance to reach the target for access to clean drinking water" in Africa.
However, "those living in remote areas or with a disability, or due to ethnicity or gender, have sapped progress on many other fronts," it said.
The report, based on data provided by a large number of international organisations within and outside the UN system, criticised the lack of healthcare for women during childbirth in some developing regions.
Aside from reducing poverty, MDG goals include improvements in education, gender equality as well as child and maternal health.
Other goals include fighting AIDS, improving environmental sustainability and greater global partnership.
