NEW YORK — Eight years on from the largest meeting of world leaders where promises injected momentum into the fight against poverty, the effort is at a crossroads:  will the developed world accelerate their efforts and achieve their goals?  Or will they fall further back, leaving millions of the world’s poorest people living in crisis conditions?

ONE co-founder Bono and activist-for-Africa Bob Geldof are in New York this week for a series of meetings and discussions with world leaders, representatives of the private sector, and non-governmental organizations – all culminating with the United Nations emergency summit on the Millennium Development Goals set for September 25.  The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight goals to be achieved by 2015 that respond to the world’s main development challenges.  The goals are drawn from the targets contained in the Millennium Declaration that was adopted by 189 nations-and signed by 147 heads of state and governments during the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000.  In an analysis released earlier this year, ONE’s DATA Report 2008 showed that the world’s leading economic powers are falling behind in the commitments they made to assist the developing nations, especially those in Africa.

“The last few years have shown that people can fight their way out of poverty if provided the right tools,” saidONE President and CEO David Lane. “This week is all about highlighting what our development dollars have achieved and accelerating this progress through stepped up commitments from nations, businesses, and NGOs. A presidential debate on foreign policy is a fitting end to a week like this. The momentum from New York will help set the stage for Friday’s debate. We want to ask one question to John McCain and Barack Obama – will they lead America and the world to tackle global poverty and disease? This is the time for them to answer that question.”

“There has been some remarkable progress in the work to finally put an end to extreme poverty.  But it hasn’t been enough and it may not be lasting.  The current global challenges don’t just threaten the ability to achieve these goals but also raise the potential specter of a reversal of progress made to date,” explained ONE Executive Director Jamie Drummond, in New York this week for the global meetings.  “This week will draw a clear line in the sand — does the world stand by its commitments at a time when they are even more necessary?”

ONE is calling on world leaders to work together with diverse actors, in new ways, to build on successes and finish the job they’ve started, arguing that if development commitments are not addressed poverty, hunger and conflict may further exacerbate global financial and economic instability.

This afternoon in New York, Bono and ONE representatives will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy to push on the French aid budget, which will be announced later this week, and with h European Union (EU) Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso.  In the meeting with President Barroso ONE will push the need for the EU to reallocate 1 billion Euros in European agricultural subsidies towards helping up to 30 developing countries fight hunger and invest in urgently needed agricultural development.

Later this week in New York, Bono will speak at the opening session of the Clinton Global Initiative on September 24.  He will co-present the Irish Hunger Task Force Report and participate in a major announcement on malaria eradication on September 25.  That will be capped with his participation in the Secretary-General’s emergency meetings on the Millennium Development goals that same day.

Bob Geldof will participate in an event focusing on the effectiveness of aid to Africa on September 22.  He will speak at a Clinton Global Initiative event in the evening of September 23.

To support their work, the ONE Campaign has already gathered more than 50,000 signatures on an online petition directed at UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and G8 leaders flagging the need for further progress on the MDGs, with a particular focus on the hunger crisis.  ONE will launch a new short film, called “CELEBRATE/ACCELERATE” on Thursday, September 25, focused on the MDG challenge.  ONE also will support a new effort called “In My Name” to help citizens in developed countries put pressure on their government to keep their anti-poverty promises.  The organization will be very visible in New York City throughout the week, promoting awareness of the issues in advance of the first presidential debate set for Friday.

Successes to celebrate and accelerate:

Malaria: There has been great progress in pilot districts where the disease is endemic.  In Rwanda and Ethiopia, for instance, malaria deaths have dropped by more than 50 percent.  The Global Fund alone has distributed 59 million insecticide treated malaria bed nets worldwide; yet, it is estimated that 250 million bed nets are needed to cover Africa alone effectively as well as more widespread use of insecticides and therapies for treatment for malaria.  An historic plan to aggressively innovate and accelerate this success against malaria, bringing in new donors and new partnerships and increased financing, will be presented on Thursday, September 25.

Education:  There has been great progress since 1999, with 29 million more children in school in Africa, 41 million more globally.  This tremendous progress will be built upon through a special side summit on education on Thursday, September 25.  This meeting will call for immediate financing of “education for all” plans which are currently underfunded.

HIV/AIDS:  In 2002, only 50,000 African people living with HIV/AIDS were on lifesaving medications; today, 2.1 million Africans are on the drugs and nearly 3 million people globally.  However, 4.9 million more African people and 1.8 million more globally still need these medicines – and every day 6,800 people are infected with HIV/AIDS around the world.

Child mortality: The number of children dying from preventable treatable illnesses has been reduced from 12.7 million to 9.2 million per year since 1990.  While the lives of 10,000 children are being saved each day, more than 25,000 children lose their lives to causes related to extreme poverty daily.

In other areas, progress has been underwhelming and ONE is demanding urgent action:

Maternal mortality:  More than half-a-million women still die each year from treatable and preventable complications of pregnancy and childbirth.  The maternal mortality rate is not declining and will be the subject of much attention and creative energy in New York, led by the White Ribbon Alliance.  ONE trusts that there will be a series of new announcements investing in health care workers and health systems to help fight maternal mortality.

Hunger:  In the last year the number of people going hungry increased from 848 million to 923 million globally, brought on by a 50 percent increase in food prices in many of the poorest countries. Meanwhile, about 30 countries have emergency needs of around $1 billion for investment in seeds, fertilizers and food to fight hunger and kick-start agricultural development. This immediate gap could be more than filled by the reallocation of some unspent European agricultural subsidy funds — a proposal which must be fully adopted n Brussels and by European leaders.

About ONE

The ONE Campaign is a global organization uniting millions of people to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease around the world. For more information on the ONE Campaign, visit www.ONE.org.

About the Millennium Development Goals

At the Millennium Summit in September 2000 the largest gathering of world leaders in history adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations to a new global partnership to reduce extreme poverty and setting out a series of time-bound targets, with a deadline of 2015 that have become known as the Millennium Development Goals.  By setting time-bound, measurable targets for achieving results in areas like child and maternal health, education and access to water and sanitation, they injected new momentum into the fight against global poverty. These goals are:

Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

• Target 1: Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day
• Target 2: Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger

Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education

• Target 3: Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling

Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women

• Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015

Goal 4: Reduce child mortality

• Target 5: Reduce by two thirds the mortality rate among children under five

Goal 5: Improve maternal health

• Target 6: Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio

Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

• Target 7: Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
• Target 8: Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases

Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability

• Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources
• Target 10: Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water
• Target 11: Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020

Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

• Target 12: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system Includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction — both nationally and internationally
• Target 13: Address the special needs of the least developed countries Includes: tariff and quota free access for least developed countries’ exports; enhanced program of debt relief for HIPCs and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction
• Target 14: Address the special needs of landlocked countries and small island developing States
• Target 15: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term.
• Target 16: In cooperation with developing countries, develop and implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth.
• Target 17: In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries
• Target 18: In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications