UN General Assembly
1991

Indeed, the 1991 report of the United Nations Development Programme on human development notes, with regard to countries in the South, that more than half a billion human beings are living in dire poverty, some 180 million children - that is one out of three - are suffering from serious malnutrition, that 1.5 billion persons have no access to primary health services, that nearly 3 million children die each year from diseases for which vaccines exist, that approximately a billion adults are illiterate, and that the number of children of school age who do not attend school is in excess of 100 million. Those frightful statistics bear witness, if any were needed, to the failure of the last three United Nations Development Decades. At the end of this millennium the burning question is not one of available resources but whether those resources are being properly distributed - which presumes solidarity based on real political will.