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Kenya hails progress in achieving Millennium Development Goals

Xinhua, September 26, 2015 Adjust font size:

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday hailed the progress in the global efforts to reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight anti-poverty targets, saying that "many of the MDGs have been achieved."

The statement came as the Kenyan president was speaking at the UN Summit for the Adoption of the Post-2015 Development Agenda, a three-day UN event which kicked off here Friday morning. World leaders adopted the MDGs at the Millennium Summit here 15 years ago.

"Fifteen years ago, at the Millennium Summit, we adopted the Millennium Declaration," Kenyatta said. "Through this declaration, we adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) through which we undertook to exert all efforts to reduce extreme poverty by the year 2015."

President Kenyatta listed out goals accomplished in the past 15 years, starting out with the significant progress made in poverty reduction.

Between 1990 and 2002, for example, there were overall incomes rose and sharp falls in the number of people living in extreme poverty, as well as child mortality rates, he said, adding that life expectancy rose from 63 to nearly 65.

"An additional eight percent of the developing world's people received access to water while an additional 15 percent acquired access to improved sanitation services," he said. "Similarly, over 100 million people have been uplifted from slums."

"We know that, today, more girls than ever before are going to school at all levels," he said. "More women are joining the ranks of formal employment. I also noted that the spread of HIV/AIDS is being reversed, with new infections falling by 40 percent between 2000 and 2013."

"Important milestones have also been reached in the fight against malaria and tuberculosis," he said. "Similarly, efforts to manage the global environment have been accelerated, with significant reductions reported in the reduction of ozone-depleting substances."

Earlier Friday, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted at the summit here to replace the MDGs as the new blueprint for global sustainable development for the next 15 years. The SDGs are a set of 17 economic, social and environmental goals from 2015 to 2030. Endit