Less aid, economic woes said to hamper poor nations' development

Published: 2004-11-24

UNITED NATIONS (CNS) -- Archbishop Celestino Migliore, Vatican nuncio to the United Nations, said Nov. 23 that some countries were making encouraging progress toward development goals set by the Millennium Summit but the poorest were not. "Scarce economic aid and international economic conditions have not allowed the poorest countries to achieve the most important targets in education, health and access to water and sanitation," he said. At the summit in 2000 at the United Nations, with the Vatican represented by Cardinal Angelo Sodano, secretary of state, world leaders declared that they would seek to reduce the number of people living in poverty by half, provide universal education, promote gender equality and achieve other "millennium development goals" by the year 2015. Archbishop Migliore, speaking to a session of the U.N. General Assembly that was reviewing progress toward meeting those goals, said the amount of development aid provided by donor countries fell far below the 0.7 percent of national income that had been widely accepted as a reasonable guideline. Much of the aid that donor countries do give is "not targeted at the fundamental needs of the poorest countries," he added.

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