2000: CUTTING POVERTY BY HALF --
UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM SUMMIT

UN Millenium Summit on the web: http://www.un.org/millennium/summit.htm

September 2000, saw the largest-ever gathering of world leaders at the United Nations Millenium Summit, with some 150 heads of State or government participating. The summit addressed major global challenges such as how to pull over 1 billion people out of extreme poverty, reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS and protect the environment.

Out of this summit came the "Millennium Development Goals" -- global targets that the world's leaders set in the Millennium Declaration, meant as outlining an agenda for reducing poverty and its causes and manifestations. The most well-known target from the Millenium Declaration ist the pledge to cutting the number of people living in absolute poverty (which means, in UN terms, on less than a Dollar per day) by half.