Global financial crisis may hinder UN poverty fight

World leaders meeting at the UN General Assembly this week face a global financial crisis that threatens the United Nation's efforts to generate billions of dollars to fight poverty, especially in Africa.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week he was very concerned the economic slowdown and turmoil on Wall Street could have a negative impact on the ability of rich nations to help achieve United Nations goals to improve the lives of the poorest people who live on less than $1 a day.
Leaders were set to begin a week of meetings on Monday.
Before the US financial meltdown rippled around the globe, Ban asked world leaders to arrive a day early for the annual ministerial meeting of the UN General Assembly to focus on Africa's development needs and to interrupt their speechmaking Thursday to make new commitments to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.
"We are experiencing a development emergency," Ban said in an AP interview. "This is one of the triple crises that I have termed climate change, development emergency, and global food crisis.
"This week, with the help of all world leaders, I would like to really mobilize necessary resources and galvanize political will to as high as possible as I can," he said.
The leaders are arriving in New York as the US Congress starts debate on a $700 billion proposal to buy a mountain of bad mortgage debt in an effort to revive US credit markets, and whether they are prepared to make fresh commitments to help the poor remains to be seen.
The weeklong meetings begin Monday with a high-level session on African development that 106 of the 192 UN member states have signed up to attend including 34 heads of state and 11 heads of government.
Undersecretary-General Cheick Sidi Diarra, Ban's special adviser on Africa, said he was concerned about the world economy's downturn but he still expected developed countries to keep their promises of increased aid.
At a summit in Scotland in 2005, the major industrialised powers agreed to increase yearly aid to developing countries by $50 billion by 2010 compared to 2004, and to channel $25 billion of the increase to Africa.
But Ban said in a recent report that rich donor nations have failed to deliver on their promises and must increase aid by $18 billion a year. Of that, $7.3 billion would have to go to Africa.