UNITED NATIONS, June 29: Pakistan said on Tuesday that any UN reform would be hollow so long as mass poverty, hunger and disease stalked many nations as the ‘world remains pervasively unequal and, in many ways, unjust to the poor and the powerless’.

“The reform and revival of the UN to which so much energy is being devoted can only emerge from the principles of justice and equality enshrined in the UN Charter,” said Pakistan’s ambassador to the United Nations, Munir Akram, while addressing the General Assembly’s High Level Dialogue on Financing for Development.

Mr Akram said: “Our leaders will need to muster the political will to meet the imposing challenges we face: the systematic inequalities against the developing countries; the growing gap between the rich and the poor; rising numbers of the poor; the unfulfilled commitments of development ‘partners’.”