The Prime Minister is in talks to involve leading international companies, including internet giant Google and investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, to tackle a “development emergency” in the world’s poorest countries.
Mr Brown said UN poverty targets for 2015 are half way complete
Discussions have been held with 20 major players in the private sector in to persuade them to put their expertise into action to improve skills and infrastructure, and provide investment capital.
Gordon Brown hopes the plan will put the international community back on course to achieve seven UN development goals by 2015, directed at reducing poverty in all its forms including hunger, lack of income, education, and enterprise.
A UN report has shown that the international community is on course to miss goals for tackling poverty, education, health and sanitation, unless something more is done.
Among the companies that have been approached to help ways for increasing growth and encouraging enterprise in poor countries also include telecoms company Vodafone, and American supermarket firm Wal-Mart. Gordon Brown said: “We are half way to the target date of 2015, but a long way off track to our goals and face a development emergency.
"2008 should be a development year and mark a call to action from everyone - not just rich and poor governments but civil society, faith groups, trade unions and even the private sector.
“There are 72 million children not going to primary school, in some countries one woman in six dies in childbirth, over a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water.
“The international community needs to face up to this development emergency.
“We know what to do - we need to keep our promises and act. I am therefore calling for an millennium development goals action meeting during the UN general assembly in September to re-examine and galvanise our efforts.”
The Prime Minister is expected to speak on his plans at a conference involving the private sector in London in the spring, at the summer 2008 meeting of the G8 in Japan and a UN session in New York in the autumn.
The emphasis on the role of the private sector marks the start of a new phase in the development strategy, although the role of multinational companies in helping the world’s poorest is likely to be controversial.
Kevin Watkins, editor of the UN’s annual human development report, said achieving growth without attempting to tackle inequality would not put the global community back on course to achieve the millennium development goals.
“We are all in favour of high growth,” he said, “but there has been a failure in some high growth countries, such as India, to deliver on human progress because of inequality.
"The key to achieving the development goals is to concentrate on helping the very poor.”
Lady Vadera, development minister, has said that growth was the “single biggest factor separating success from failure” in developing countries.
She will be speaking to multinational corporations about the prospect of initiatives in financial services, mobile telephones and agriculture over the coming year
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