Annan calls for poverty reduction

Kofi Annan: Redefining the role of the UN

United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has set out a detailed blueprint for world leaders in the 21st century, urging a sharp reduction in poverty and disease - aided by information technology.

The report, which also contains proposals for health, education and the availability of water, is aimed at refocusing the work of the UN's 55-year-old charter.

Global facts

22% of world population lives on less than $1 a day

One in five have no access to safe drinking water

40 million orphans by 2010

10% of all health research spent on the health of 90% of the world's people

Mr Annan told the 188-nation UN General Assembly: "We must put people at the centre of everything we do. No calling is more noble, and no responsibility greater, than that of enabling men, women and children, in cities and in villages around the world, to make their lives better."

The report is also designed to form the basis of discussion for what is billed as the biggest gathering of world leaders at a UN millennium summit in September.

Correspondents say UN officials hope the report will have more of a practical effect than the declaration laboriously agreed at the organisation's 50th anniversary summit in 1995 - which almost immediately passed into obscurity.

Proposals

The report's range of proposals includes halving the proportion of the world's population existing on less than a dollar a day by 2015, to halting and reversing the spread of Aids by that time.

UN members are also urged to commit themselves to ensure that by 2015 all children complete primary schooling and that the gender gap is eliminated at all levels of education.

Technology proposals

IT corps for developing world

Health information networks

Uninterrupted communications for disaster areas

Other proposals include improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 and granting free access to the markets of industrialised countries.

The secretary-general also announced the formation of a volunteer corps called the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) to train groups in the developing world in the use of computers.

In partnership with a number of private businesses, the UN is participating in a scheme to provide internet access to medical information for 10,000 hospitals and clinics around the world.

Mr Annan wants to improve the lives of slum dwellers

Mr Annan also announced an initiative to distribute mobile and satellite telephones to relief workers operating in regions hit by disasters and emergencies.

Globalisation also came under scrutiny. Mr Annan said: "The benefits of globalisation ... remain highly concentrated among a relatively small number of countries and are spread unevenly among them.

"Thus the central challenge we face today is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world's people, instead of leaving billions of them behind in squalor."

Environmental action

Mr Annan called on nations to adopt a "new ethic of stewardship" in the 21st century to protect the environment.

He urged participants in the forthcoming summit to take action on greenhouse gases and the global water crisis, and proposed a system of "green accounting" to ensure environmental costs and benefits are integrated into their economic policies.

He called on all states to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which commits industrial countries to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions over the coming 12 years by an average of 5% below 1990 levels.

While this would be "just one step" towards the 60% reductions required to stabilise the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at a safe level, he said, "early action is essential" to provide the incentive for further rounds of emission limitations.