2023-10-10 06:00:03
Uhe summit went completely unnoticed on September 18 and 19 in New York, even though it focused on the fate of half the world’s population, those who live on the margins of development. Organized at the very beginning of the week of the United Nations General Assembly, it aimed to take stock of the “2030 Agenda” adopted by the UN member states in 2015, a list of seventeen sustainable development goals in different areas, such as recycling, education, the fight against water waste or the defense of human rights.
The bad news is that the world is lagging behind these ambitions. More than half will not be affected and, for a third of them, a regression is even noted. Thus 1.1 billion humans live in urban areas in conditions similar to those of slums, and more than 2 billion people still do not have access to drinking water; 575 million people will still live in extreme poverty by 2030, or 7% of the planet’s population, most of which are in sub-Saharan Africa.
But there is also good news. The experience of the last three decades shows that it is entirely possible to fight poverty. This has halved in barely thirty years: 1 billion inhabitants emerged from extreme poverty, before the Covid-19 pandemic abruptly put an end to this progress.
Contrary to popular belief, China is not the only country where the number of inhabitants living on less than 2 dollars (or 1.89 euros) per day has fallen. In Africa, they represented 41% of the population in 2015 compared to 54% in 1990. New solutions have also appeared in the fields of education or health. According to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, several of them are simple and affordable, such as to reduce the maternal mortality rate. Worldwide, a woman dies every two minutes from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth.
“Reforms are urgent”
It is urgent to put development back at the top of the international agenda at a time when low- and middle-income countries have just been hit by three successive crises. First, the Covid-19 pandemic, which has had devastating effects on education, leading to learning delays and dropouts. Since 2019, childhood vaccinations have also seen the biggest decline in three decades, and deaths from tuberculosis and malaria have increased compared to pre-pandemic levels.
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