It is 1569 days, 9 hours and 21 minutes until 2015.

With only five years left until the 2015 deadline to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has called on world leaders to attend a summit in New York on 20-22 September to accelerate progress towards the MDGs. Coming new crises that threaten the global effort to halve extreme poverty, “the summit will be a crucially important opportunity to redouble our efforts to meet the Goals,” the Secretary General said referring to the targets adopted at the UN Millennium Summit of 2000, aimed at slashing poverty, hunger, disease, maternal and child deaths and other ills by a 2015 deadline.

“Our world possesses the knowledge and the resources to achieve the MDGs” the Secretary-General stated in his comments for the September summit. “Our challenge today is to agree on an action agenda to achieve the MDGs.” "We must not fail the billions who look to the international community to fulfil the promise of the Millennium Declaration for a better world."

In addition, on September 15, the UN’s development agency will host, for the first time, a live conversation on the global fight against poverty and the actions required to achieve sustainable development in the run-up to the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Summit. At the Summit, scheduled from 20-22 September in New York, world leaders will take stock of the MDGs, eight internationally-agreed targets that aim to substantially reduce poverty, hunger, maternal and child deaths, disease, inadequate access to water and sanitation, gender inequality and environmental degradation by 2015. With the “live global conversation”, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is providing an opportunity for people to voice their ideas on development and combating poverty; and raise questions related to UNDP's work and the MDGs. The conversation will be with UNDP Chief and UN Undersecretary General Helen Clark, a key participant at the summit. During the Facebook conversation, UNDP Chief Helen Clark, will be online, answering questions about the MDGs and discussing their achievement with any member of the general public. The event will be broadcast live on the UNDP Facebook Page and UNDP’s Ustream Channel. During the summit, Helen Clark will update the public on the latest developments and outcomes by tweeting on the @UNDP Twitter account.

6 days after the Summit, UN Undersecretary General Helen Clark will be the key note speaker at the WCO Capacity Building Committee here in Brussels. It is with great pleasure we then will get a chance to hear directly from the UNDP chief, about how the world leaders the week before discussed this very important question and their view on progress in this field. In her address at the WCO Capacity Building Committee, the UN Undersecretary will also explain how Customs plays a vital role for development and how UNDP thinks that the WCO Columbus programme can contribute to the successful implementation of the MDG.