Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals are outcome-based international development targets that were agreed at the United Nations Millennium Summit in New York in September 2000. Eight Millennium Development Goals are defined. These goals incorporate 18 more precisely defined targets with a total of 48 indicators. Development targets were set out initially by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1996, following previous attempts to set out aims and objectives for the promotion of economic growth and basic needs between the 1970s and the 1980s, and the definition of the aim of sustainable development in the 1990s incorporating environmental concerns next to the aim of poverty reduction. The agreed set of targets was set out in the Road Map Towards the Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Goals in 2001.

The Millennium Development Goals define the objectives of development policy based on the desired outcome. They act as a measurable set of objectives against which the performance of the international community and individual nations in their development efforts can be measured. It is also argued that accepted development goals and targets ascertain international responsibility and establish a common purpose for the international community.

The first seven Millennium Development Goals are the following: [Page 1133]

• 1.
  Eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. This goal contains two targets: first to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people whose income is less than a dollar a day, and second, to halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
• 2.
  Achievement of universal primary education. The target here is to ensure that by 2015 all children will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.
• 3.
  Promotion of gender equality and empowerment of women. The fourth target related to this goal is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and to all levels of education no later than 2015.
• 4.
  Reduction of child mortality. The target is to reduce by two-thirds, between 1980 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate with the indicators of the under-five mortality rate itself and to increase the proportion of one-year-old children being immunized against measles.
• 5.
  Improvement of maternal health. This goal has the target to reduce by three-quarters, between 1980 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio. This is to be measured by the maternal mortality ratio and proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel.
• 6.
  Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases. One target is to have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the spread of HIV/AIDS that is indicated by the HIV prevalence among 15-to-24-year-old pregnant women, contraceptive prevalence rate, and the number of children orphaned by HIV/AIDS. Another target is to have halted by 2015, and begun to reverse, the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
• 7.
  Ensuring environmental sustainability. This goal integrates the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs as a target and is to reverse the loss of environmental resources. The proportion of land area covered by forest, land area protected to maintain biological diversity, GDP per unit of energy use as an energy efficiency measure, and carbon dioxide emissions per capita are utilized as indicators. Furthermore, this incorporates the target of halving, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water, as well as the target of having achieved, by 2020, a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers. The proportion of people with access to improved sanitation and the proportion of people with access to secure tenure acts as a means of measurability.

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