UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 7 (Xinhuanet) -- World leaders received on Wednesday a stark warning of the human costs of missing agreed global targets for lifting people out of extreme poverty, and an urgent plea for swift and dramatic changes in global aid, trade and security policies.

    The 2005 Human Development Report, compiled by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), cites a lack of funds and political will and shows that while there has been substantial overall progress globally, many individual countries are actually falling further behind.

    The Report, delivered to world leaders in preparation for the upcoming World Summit, warns that there will be no chance under current trends of fulfilling the promises made at the UN summit five years ago with the Millennium Declaration and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

    According to the report, 50 countries with a combined population of almost 900 million are falling backwards on at leastone of the Goals.

    "Another 65 countries with a combined population of 1.2 billionrisk failing to meet at least one MDG until after 2040," the report said. "In other words, they may miss the target by an entire generation."

    In 2015, on current trends, there would be 827 million people living in extreme poverty, 380 million more than if the internationally agreed target were reached, and another 1.7 billion people would be living on 2 dollars a day, the report noted.

    On current trends, the goal to reduce the deaths of children under five years of age would be met in 2045 instead of 2015, it said.

    In 2015, 47 million children would still be out of school, 19 million of them in sub-Saharan Africa, it added.

    Instead of halving the ranks of the 1 billion people who lack access to fresh drinking water, on current trends the world in 2015 would still be 210 million people short of this goal, the report pointed out.

    The report argued that extreme inequality is a brake on progress towards the MDGs and wider human development goals, spotlighting the scale of the international wealth divide.

    The poorest 40 percent of the world's population, about 2.5 billion people, live on less than 2 dollars a day, accounting for just five percent of all global income, it said.

    "The Millennium Declaration was a solemn pledge to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty," Kevin Watkins, the report's lead author and Director of UNDP's Human Development Report Office, said.

    "The world has the knowledge, resources and technology to end extreme poverty, but time is running out," UNDP Administrator Kemal Dervis said of the MDGs.

    "This Human Development Report presents us with a clear warning.We know that the MDGs are attainable, but if we continue with business as usual, the promise of the Millennium Declaration will be broken," he stressed. "That would be a tragedy above all for the world's poor, but rich countries would not be immune to the consequences of failure."

    "In an interdependent world our shared prosperity and collective security depend critically on success in the war against poverty," Dervis noted. Enditem