2008 be the year for Bottom Billion

New York: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon stressed that 2008 should be the year of the "bottom billion," citing the need for renewed determination to address the needs of the poorest of the world’s poor who have been left behind by global economic growth.

"We must address ourselves to the needs of the weak, the disadvantaged, those who have been excluded from the mainstream international community," Mr. Ban told reporters at a Headquarters press conference, his first for the new year.

And so I say, let 2008 be the year of the ‘bottom billion," Mr. Ban declared, employing the phrase used by some economists to describe the poorest of the world’s poor the nearly one billion left behind by global economic growth.

Noting that most of the world’s poorest live in Africa or the small developing islands of Asia, "eking out lives of hardship on incomes of less than $1 a day," he pledged to work over the coming year to strengthen the UN’s role in development.

He also called for fresh thinking on ways to help nations achieve the pledges to slash poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy by 2015, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the mid-point towards the 2015 deadline, it is widely acknowledged that many countries, particularly in Africa, are not on track to meeting the Goals.