..Press Release................................ UNESCAP News Services

Date 6 July 2005
Press Release No: N/34/2005

Regional Poverty Reduction the aim of expert UNESCAP meeting

Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) - Poverty reduction strategies for the Asia-Pacific region are the focus of a two-day UNESCAP meeting in Bangkok.

The First United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006) Group Meeting in Bangkok is taking place on 6-7 July 2005 at UNESCAP, Bangkok.

In a region of rising prosperity, fast economic growth in countries like China, India and the East Asian "tigers" hides widespread extreme poverty in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) of Asia and the Pacific.

An expert group will discuss progress made during the last decade and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of targets aimed at reducing a host of socio-economic ills such as extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.

Development aid and debt relief to the Asia-Pacific LDCs have been disproportionately low and must be increased if these impoverished countries are to reach the MDG’s.

Please see http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/poverty/poverty.htm for more information on the United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006). The Decade aims to eradicate poverty as an ethical, social, political and economic imperative of humankind.

For further information please contact:
UN Information Services Bangkok
Tel: +(66-2) 288-1861-69, Fax: +(66-2) 288-1052
E-mail: unisbkk.unescap@un.org
http://www.unescap.org

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