Gordon Brown has called on UN countries to renew their efforts to achieve the goal of eradicating global child poverty.

He said that the way in which global governments respond to child poverty will be the "true litmus test of globalisation".

Addressing a special United Nations general assembly session on children in New York, Brown recommitted the UK to the war on child poverty and disease.

Detailing the problems of hunger, poor health, and inadequate education, Brown called for a renewed effort to combat the problems faced by 600 million children.

"It is this vicious circle of poverty, deprivation and hopelessness that shames us, calls us here, and challenges us to act," he said.

"And by our collective action, starting here this week in New York, that stranglehold of despair can, and must, be broken."

The chancellor has campaigned hard to raise the issue both at home and in an international context.

Last year he launched an initiative to tackle global child poverty - although aid agencies are alarmed that governments have since failed to match talk with action.

Brown has pointed out that half the world's people live on less than two dollars a day and one billion have no access to safe drinking water.

Some 30,000 children lose their fight for life every day and seven million children perish before their first birthday.

He told his audience that today's political leaders have a huge responsibility.

"We have the power and obligation, never given to any other generation at any other time in human history, to banish ignorance and poverty from the earth," the chancellor said.

Brown set out Britain's commitment to international aid, but stressed that others will have to follow suit.

"We will substantially increase our development aid, raise its share of our national income, untie all our aid and, beyond that, will be ready to reshape our policies, adjust our expenditures and refashion our priorities so that the actions of each of us make possible the attainment of the goals set by all of us," he said.

"But let us remember that we advance only if we advance as one - and each country must play their part, accept their responsibilities and go further than they have been prepared to go in the past"

The chancellor told his audience that the current level of aid will have to be doubled if the 2015 Millennium Development Goals are to be achieved.

Brown said that meeting the challenge of global child poverty will cost an additional $50 billion a year.

"The Zedillo Report estimates that if we are to succeed in achieving these goals, an extra $50 billion will be required each year until 2015," he said.

"To raise investment by $50 billion a year would require unprecedented action. But I believe it is not beyond us."

His comments echo recent remarks from UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, who warned of a "loss of momentum" in the international campaign for sustainable development.

The conference, which was delayed by the September 11 attacks on the US, has brought together governments, aid agencies and children to examine the problems facing young people around the world.

The executive director of the United Nations Children's Fund, Carol Bellamy, this week urged politicians to remember that "children are not an expense, they are an investment".

The president of the UN's general assembly, Han Seung-Soo, started the three day conference saying that children had a right not just to survival, protection and development, but to "a stake in the future of the world".