Thirteen years after the world set the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), countries have made big strides to meet the eight anti-poverty targets by their 2015 deadline, a UN report has said.
The report asserts that the unmet goals are still within reach, but nations need to step up their efforts to achieve them.
"In more than a decade of experience in working towards the MDGs, we have learned that focused global development efforts can make a difference," Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says in the report's foreword, in which he urges for accelerated action to close development gaps.
"Now is the time to step up our efforts to build a more just, secure and sustainable future for all."
Agreed upon by world leaders at a UN summit in 2000, the MDGs set specific targets on poverty alleviation, education, gender equality, child and maternal health, environmental stability, HIV/AIDS and malaria reduction, and a global partnership for development.
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2013 shows how the combined actions of governments, civil society and the private sector have made substantial progress in meeting many of the targets, while also pointing out areas that are falling behind and require immediate attention.
The targets that have already been met include halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and providing more than two billion people with access to improved sources of drinking water.
Countries have also made great strides on health targets, and are within close reach of achieving them by 2015.
These include reducing the mortality rates from malaria and tuberculosis and stopping HIV infections.
2013, poverty rates have been halved, and about 700 million fewer people lived in conditions of extreme poverty in 2010 than in 1990.
Between 2000 and 2010, mortality rates from malaria fell by over 25 per cent, averting some 1.1 million deaths, and between 1995 and 2011, a total of 51 million tuberculosis patients were treated, saving 20 million lives.
