UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 (AFP) - Wealthy nations are not making good on their pledge to deliver the money needed to halve extreme poverty worldwide by 2015, a panel of UN-appointed experts said in a new report on Monday.
Nations around the world have committed themselves to an ambitious programme of UN "millennium development goals" to improve the lot of the world's poor and suffering.
But with more than one billion people worldwide living on less than a dollar a day -- and 2.7 billion more surviving on less than two dollars -- the experts said time is running short to living up to those promises.
"With the right mobilisation of resources and political will, and reform in developing countries as well as in developed countries, these goals are still achievable," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the UN Development Programme.
Despite promising to funnel 0.7 percent of gross national product (GNP) in aid to the developing world, the world's 22 richest countries are only giving 0.25 percent, the experts said.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan commissioned the report into progress on the goals, which include wiping out extreme hunger, making primary education universal, cutting child mortality and fighting AIDS and other deadly diseases.
"The practical solutions exist. The political framework is established. And for the first time, the cost is utterly affordable," the report said. "All that is needed is action."
Assembled by 265 leading development experts from around the world, led by former Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, the report blamed lack of will, disease, war and trade regulations for much of the halting progress.
"What we're proposing is a strategy of investment to help empower the lives of very poor people that lack the tools, and even sometimes the basic means, to stay alive," Sachs told a news briefing.
"We are not asking for one new promise from any country in the world -- only to follow through on what has already been committed," Sachs said.
In addition to coming up with the promised funds, the experts urged a number of quick-fixes such as giving away mosquito nets to fight the transmission of malaria, an easily preventable and treatable killer disease.
"As many children die every month of malaria in Africa as died in the Indian Ocean tsunami, about 150,000 per month or more," Sachs said.
He also expressed hope that the G8 group of wealthy countries would take steps next month to cancel the debt of the world's poorest nations.
Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown called earlier Monday for wiping out billions of dollars in "unpayable" debt owed by African countries as part of a proposed "Marshall Plan" for the continent.
He said former South African president Nelson Mandela had agreed to go to London for the G8 meeting to rally support for an African version of the plan that helped Europe rebuild after World War II.
Beyond halving extreme poverty by 2015, Sachs said, it could be wiped out entirely by 2025.
01/17/2005 18:08 GMT - AFP