Tuesday, July 4 2006 10:18 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

United Nations: The number of unemployed people across the world touched 192 million last year and the figure is on the rise, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has warned.

"In 2005, about 192 million people were out of work. Almost half of the world's unemployed are young people even though youth make up only a quarter of the working-age population," Annan said in a report presented at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) annual session yesterday (July 3, 2006).

Three times as many people are doing jobs that do not allow them to escape from extreme poverty, he said.

"Greater attention, therefore, needs to be paid to decent work, defined as opportunities for men and women to obtain productive work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity," Annan told delegates at the opening day of the session.

The issue, he stressed, is not just about jobs, but about employment that can generate sufficient income for individuals and households to move out of poverty.

UN Deputy Secretary-General, Mark Malloch Brown inaugurated the meet with a call for ECOSOC to sharpen its focus on reaching the development goals agreed upon at the 2000 Millennium Summit.

The goals call for halving or eliminating several social and economic ills by 2015 to better the lives of billions of poor worldwide.