UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 20 (UPI) -- World leaders meet in New York Monday for a "crucially important" United Nations summit on Millennium Development Goals to fight poverty, hunger and disease.
All 192 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations agreed 10 years ago to work toward eight goals, which include cutting poverty in half, by 2015.
The other goals are making improvements in education, gender equity, maternal health and environmental sustainability, reducing child mortality, fighting HIV/AIDS and other diseases and developing a global development partnership, CNN reported.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the summit "crucially important" for meeting the goals. Because progress reaching the targets has been imbalanced, several goals likely will be missed in many countries if additional efforts are not made, he said in a report.
UPI
