'Civil liberties trampled in name of nat'l security'

Global Governance Initiative, a major report written by over 40 WEF experts and released on Wednesday, evaluated the world community's effort to tackle poverty, war, ignorance and disease.

It found that little was achieved last year.

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"Governments, international organisations, business and civil society are engaging in only about one-third of the effort necessary to realise the United Nations Millennium Declaration Goals," it said.

The report found that peace and security proved elusive, as the world community failed to find a way to act collectively with regard to the US-led war in Iraq.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained dangerously unresolved and international terrorist networks and nuclear proliferation continue to pose a severe global threat.

The World Trade Organisation negotiations in Mexico were perceived to be the "biggest failure" of the year.

"The failure to liberalise trade in agricultural commodities at Cancun continued the discrimination against poor farmers' market access," the report said.

One out of every six people in the developing world still did not receive enough food and the numbers of hungry people is likely to increase in the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

As for education, at least 96 countries are still far from the target of universal primary education by 2015, while 104 million children are not even in primary school.