Food crisis task force meets
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today convened the inaugural meeting of a high-level task force of senior United Nations officials aimed at addressing the food crisis, noting that there was an urgent need to help the millions of people already suffering. The crisis threatens gains made in achieving Millennium Development Goal 1, which focuses on hunger and extreme poverty.
The Special Adviser to the United Nations Secretary-General on Sport for Development and Peace, Wilfried Lemke, met today with FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter at FIFA headquarters in Zurich. They agreed to deepen cooperation between FIFA and the UN to further advocate for the role of sports as a effective tool for development and peace, in the lead up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ and the 2015 deadline for the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
It is the 7th anniversary of the pledge by African Union member states to allocate 15% of national budgets to health. In a statement to mark the anniversary, Archbishop Tutu stated:
The dramatic surge in food prices has plunged millions of poor people and many net food importing poor countries into a food crisis. Consequently, it has also put at risk their chances of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. Whilst the focus has been on the impact on the MDG1 of reducing poverty and hunger, given the close inter-connectedness between all the 8 MDGs, the impact on these sections of the poor on health, education and livelihoods more broadly, cannot be underestimated.
The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health has called on G8 leaders to fulfil their previous commitments to global health and commit to new, long-term financing for essential interventions that could avert the deaths of over 6 million mothers, newborns and children every year.
CAPE TOWN – Leading global health experts, policy-makers and parliamentarians convened in Cape Town last week to address the urgent need for accelerated progress to reduce maternal, newborn and child deaths, if internationally-agreed targets are to be met.
