In the year 2000, world leaders met to create a plan to establish goals to eradicate extreme poverty, hunger, illiteracy and disease. Organized by the United Nations, the group also aimed to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of women, environmental sustainability and a global partnership for development.

However, in Latin America and the Caribbean, rising food prices and the current economic crisis threaten to cast doubt on progress towards meeting some of the Millennium Development Goals, according to a new United Nations report.

The report includes an update on how this region fares in respect to achieving the aims, which were hoped to culminate in halving extreme poverty by 2015.

Latin America and the Caribbean progressed in eradicating poverty from 1999 to 2005, as the percentage of people living on less than $1.25 per day fell from 11 to 8 percent. However, the recent upswing in food prices has begun to reverse that trend, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reports that 53 million people in the Central American region experience extreme poverty.

The Latin American and the Caribbean region is the leader in the efforts to achieve gender parity in parliamentary representation, with 22 seats held by women, up 15 percent since 2000. The region has reached its target goal of gender parity in education and has the highest share of women in paid employment outside of agriculture (45 percent in 2007).

The study also shows that the Latin American and Caribbean region is reducing the death rate of children under five and that reaching the goal of reducing mortality rate two-thirds by 2015 is probable. The rate decreased from 54 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1990, to 24 deaths in 2007.