The United Nations Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon presented yesterday 23rd June during a press conference, the Millennium Development Goals Report 2010. This annual accounting report is dedicated to the analysis of the eight Millennium Development Goals.

Based on the latest data and analysis of international and UN agencies around the world, the report’s review is far from being good regarding the progress made by each region compared with each targeted goal set to be achieved by 2015.

"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," said the Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the foreword to the report. But even if employment and incomes have been affected by the economic crisis around the world, it is still possible to achieve the Millennium Development Goal 1 relating to poverty reduction by half by 2015, the report noted. However he said that "progress has been uneven in some areas ... we are going backward." “But the gap persists between the rich and the poor, between the urban populations and those living in rural areas, between men and women."

Regarding Goal 2, the report mentions the significant increase in the enrolment of children in primary schools in many poor countries, especially in Africa. Nevertheless, it emphasizes on the challenges for the international community to act significantly in order to reach the Target 4 relating to the reduction of child mortality by two thirds especially the under-five mortality rate. Although this rate is dropped 10 million, it was 8.8 million in 2008 against 12.6 million in 1990; millions of children continue to die around the world.

Regarding Goal 5, maternal health improvement, the news is not quite good either. The report states that hundreds of thousands of women die during pregnancy or childbirth. It also states that 99% of them live in developing countries. It notes however, that prenatal care is improving in rural areas compared to urban areas.

The Secretary General has also taken this opportunity to announce the establishment of an advocacy group for the MDGs, which will help consolidate the political will and mobilize actions so that the MDGs Summit, scheduled from 20 to 22 September, before the opening of the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly, be a decisive time in achieving the MDGs by 2015.

The MDG Advocacy Group will be co-chaired by the Rwandan President Paul Kagame and the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and will include 16 members including the former President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet, Focus on MDG 3 (gender equality and the empowerment of women), Jeffrey Sachs, UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on the MDGs Focus on all MDGs, Mr. Philippe Douste-Blazy, UN Special Advisor on innovative financing for development, Mr. Eliasson, and chairmen of Bill Gates and Ted Turner’s enterprises.