 Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Edinburgh in July |
World leaders need to do more to deliver on promises to tackle poverty, campaigners have claimed. The charge was levelled as Make Poverty History published a report in Edinburgh - where 225,000 people staged a march in the lead-up to the G8 summit.
It said targets of halving poverty, disease and hunger by 2015 would not be achieved for more than a century at the present rate of progress.
Politicians agreed those Millennium Development Goals five years ago.
However, Mary Cullen, Scottish chairman of Make Poverty History, said one of the goals - to have an equal number of girls and boys in school by 2005 - had already been missed.
The report - entitled Justice for the World's Poor: Did the G8 Deliver? - said world leaders needed to do more.
Ms Cullen said: "On 2 July a quarter of a million people marched round Edinburgh in solidarity with the millions of people around the world who live in extreme poverty.
"The G8 leaders responded with supportive rhetoric, however their actions are far from what campaigners demanded.
"As a result of the measures taken at Gleneagles a child will die from poverty every 3.5 seconds by 2010 compared to every three seconds at present."
She urged world leaders, who are meeting in New York next week ahead of the UN World Summit there, to refocus their efforts.
"If they don't, the world's preventable poverty death toll will continue to grow," she said.
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The G8 leaders responded with supportive rhetoric, however their actions are far from what campaigners demanded
