FRANCE: Protesters play dead in front of Eiffel Tower to highlight Millennium Development Goals

Record ID: 588813

  • Title: FRANCE: Protesters play dead in front of Eiffel Tower to highlight Millennium Development Goals
  • Date: 19th September 2010
  • Summary: PARIS, FRANCE (SEPTEMBER 18, 2010) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PROTESTERS LYING ON THE GROUND 'PLAYING DEAD' AT THE TROCADERO CLOSE UP OF PROTESTER VARIOUS OF PROTESTERS IN T-SHIRTS LAYING ON THE FLOOR 'PLAYING DEAD' IN FRONT OF THE EIFFEL TOWER WITH BALLOONS UP THEIR T-SHIRTS PROTESTERS TAKE BALLOONS FROM UNDER THEIR T-SHIRTS AND RELEASE THEM PEOPLE TAKING PHOTOS BALLOONS BEING RELEASED (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNNAMED PROTESTER, SAYING: "This is about giving a last message to our President before he goes to New York for the summit to overview how these UN Millennium Development Goals have been progressing since they were signed in 2000." VARIOUS OF PROTESTERS LAID ON THE FLOOR 'PLAYING DEAD' (SOUNDBITE) (English) UNNAMED PROTESTER, SAYING: "The symbolic of it is to show if each country, especially France, do not respect what they have signed in 2000, then it will keep on killing many people, but then if those MDGs (Millennium Development Goals) are respected, then it gives hope to people and they can continue to live, that is that message today." PROTESTERS LAID ON THE FLOOR AT THE TROCADERO 'PLAYING DEAD'
  • Embargoed: 4th October 2010 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: Domestic Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVAAQJI9ILAWM4UECPANIJEFOGYW
  • Story Text: A couple of hundred people protested in Paris on Saturday (September 18) in what they said was an urgent message to president Nicolas Sarkozy before he leaves to attend the United Nations Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.
    Ten years after more than 150 leaders signed off on the U.N. Millennium Development Goals, their successors will gather on September 20-22 to take stock of the targets, which aim to drastically reduce poverty and hunger world-wide by 2015.
    The protesters, made up of various French organisations fighting hunger and poverty, claim that at the present rate the goals will not be met by 2015 and that this poses a threat to the lives of many people all over the world.
    The protesters laid on the ground and 'played dead' in the Trocadero gardens in front of the iconic Eiffel Tower and released black balloons from under their T-shirts to represent the eight million young children and 350,000 women around the world who they say die during pregnancy every year.
    "This is about giving a last message to our President before he goes to New York for the summit to overview how these UN Millennium Development Goals have been progressing since they were signed in 2000," said one protester.
    "The symbolic of it is to show if each country, especially France, do not respect what they have signed in 2000, then it will keep on killing many people, but then if those MDGs are respected, then it gives hope to people and they can continue to live, that is that message today," she added.
    A new World Bank study shows that one of the major goals -- halving global poverty by 2015 -- is likely to be met, but much of the progress reflects rising wealth in emerging China and India, but that prosperity has reached little of Africa, where 38 percent of the population is likely to live below the poverty line in 2015.
    There has been far less progress toward meeting the goals of reducing hunger and malnutrition, improving gender equality, access to health care and education, tackling climate change and helping mothers and their new-borns, the World Bank report said.
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