UN General Assembly
2009

use their currency reserves to pay their oil bills and were forced to allocate subsidies for the sake of maintaining civic peace and democratic governance. When it comes to the second crisis, the food crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations established that as a result of the food crisis, the number of people suffering from hunger worldwide rose by 150 million, which meant that for the first time in human history the total figure exceeded the number of 1 billion human beings. Before these two crises broke out, the World Bank had already indicated that in order to meet the Millennium Development Goals in the remaining seven years — that is, between 2008 and 2015 — $250 billion were still needed, or $50 billion every year. Obviously, with the outbreak of these crises, which gravely affected the economies of developing countries, the resources needed to meet the objectives that had been set to cut by half the level of poverty worldwide would have to be increased significantly above the projected figures established by the World Bank.