THE global campaign to eradicate poverty picked up fresh support at last week's United Nations World Summit, when leaders of 150 nations pledged their commitment to the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

Created five years ago to improve the lot of the world's poor, the MDGs established for the first time a set of specific targets to be achieved by 2015. "They let us move beyond the question of whether it should be health or education or environment. We need all of that, and it needs to be addressed in an integrated way," says Guido Schmidt-Taub, associate director of the UN Millennium Project, which oversees the goals.

Five years on, the results have been mixed (see Graphs). Much of Asia - especially China and India - has made excellent progress on targets such as reducing hunger and child mortality, so the world as a whole may be on course to ...