Britain unveiled plans on Monday for an international multi-billion dollar fund to help the world's most vulnerable people through the global financial crisis as economic meltdown threatens to tip another 90 million into poverty.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown hopes to win backing for the proposal at next month's G20 meeting of industrialised and developing nations, which London is hosting.

Brown also promised the G20 summit would "crack down on tax havens that siphon off money from developing countries - money that could otherwise be spent on mosquito nets, vaccinations, economic development and jobs".

The proposed $5-6 billion rapid response safety-net fund will be administered by the World Bank.

"Too often in the past our responses to such crises have been inadequate or misdirected, promoting economic orthodoxies that we ourselves have not followed and that have condemned the world's poorest to a deepening cycle of poverty," Brown said.

"But this fund will be targeted at the very poorest, helping to keep girls in school, keep food on the table and keep poverty from the door so that when growth returns, people are in a position to contribute to the economy once more."

Brown was speaking at an international development conference in London attended by experts from 40 countries, including international economists, scientists and aid agencies.

British International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said new estimates suggest the current crisis could set back the fight against extreme poverty by up to three years, with the number of people living on around a dollar a day or less growing by millions every week.

The proposed fund will target the most vulnerable groups including women, children, the disabled and elderly. It will offer basic services, such as feeding children and medical care for pregnant women, and will invest in initiatives to get people back into jobs, including food for work projects.

"If developing countries are less affected by the immediate fallout of the credit crunch, they may be more vulnerable to the second wave of what has been called a once-in-a-century credit tsunami," Alexander told the conference.

"And for the poorest people in the least developed countries, this is a crisis upon a crisis," he said, pointing out that it comes on top of last year's food price hikes, which trapped as many as 130 million in poverty.

"The human cost of this global recession will be real - by the end of next year we could see 90 million more people living in poverty," he said.

Alexander said the fund would be supported by a new global poverty alert system that would link international organisations, aid agencies and research groups into a single network providing instant updates on the impact of the economic crisis.

The system, which would include real-time updates using text messaging and emails, would enable money to be targeted faster and more effectively.

Although many developing countries were not impacted in the same way as the United States and Europe in the early stages of the global downturn, Alexander said there were growing signs a devastating knock-on effect was on its way.

He said it would be the poorest who would be hit hardest as world trade shrank, private sector investment slowed down and the flow of cash from family members abroad dried up.

• Private capital flows to developing countries are likely to fall from $1 trillion two years ago to less than $200 billion this year.
• Remittances to many countries globally worth as much as $280 billion a year are starting to fall as workers who migrated to the West find it harder to send money home. Remittances are worth three times as much to developing countries as global aid.
• World trade could shrink this year for the first time in more than 25 years, meaning job losses and falling demand for commodities. Up to 300,000 miners in the Democratic Republic of Congo are already reported to have lost their jobs.

Alexander promised Britain would keep its promise to raise aid levels to 0.7 percent of GDP by 2013 and said other leading nations must do the same. He also promised new action to improve trade, tackle climate change and stop conflict in fragile states.

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