"It’s true that the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty has dropped from 40% to 21% between 1981 and 2001", but there are still "many countries and peoples who have high levels of poverty". Their conditions "now ask the international community for new efforts". It’s a cry for alarm and a heart-felt appeal, those sent out yesterday by the Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the UN, mgr. Celestino Migliore, at the 44th session of the Commission for Social Development of the UN Economic and Social Council that met to measure the results achieved between 1997 and 2006 in eradicating poverty. Although said mgr. Martino, whose report was published today by the Vatican Press Room the report "justly highlights the encouraging progress that has been made in reducing poverty in many Asian countries, it also shows a mixed global picture, with sub-Saharan Africa having made little or no progress in reducing its poverty rate since the Nineties". According to the figures, "only eight African countries can halve" their poverty levels by 2015 and, as indicated by the World Bank, "the scale of privation keeps being alarming just like the number of Africans who live with less than one dollar a day, which are almost twice as many as in 1980, from 156 million to 315 million". Three are measures that have been suggested by the Vatican delegate: improvement of trade relations, doubling of aids, further reduction of debt.
