Millennium Development Goals

THE MILLENNIUM Development Goals (MDGs) are a set of promises made by 189 heads of government to try to meet specific developmental goals within their own countries. The MDGs were created by a team of eminent people charged by the United Nations (UN) to create a list of achievable, challenging goals that would [Page 717]deliver rewards that are high in human and monetary value. There are eight broad goals and 48 more specific indicators that constitute the MDGs. They were based on 10 thematic areas that the UN had identified as being the most important developmental issues affecting the world: civil conflicts, climate change, communicable diseases, education, financial stability, governance, hunger and malnutrition, migration, trade reform, and water and sanitation.

The goals aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/ AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; and develop a global partnership for development.

The first goal has the two specific targets of halving between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who have average income of less than $1 per day and halving, in the same time frame, the proportion of people suffering from hunger. Other specific targets, of which there are 18 in total, include reducing by two-thirds the under-5 mortality rate; halving by 2015 and starting to reverse the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other major diseases; and halving the proportion of people without access to safe and sustainable sources of water.

In July 2002, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan launched the Millennium Project as an independent advisory group led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. The Millennium Project helps to create strategies to help countries achieve their MDG targets by the agreed date of 2015. The Millennium Project published the report “Investing in Development” to summarize these strategies and to help disseminate the issues relating to achieving the MDGs.

The project's 10 key recommendations are made in the report, including the need by 2006 for all developing country governments to create Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) that specify the increase in public investment, capacity building, domestic resource mobilization, and official development assistance. There is a need to strengthen governance, civil society, the private sector, and human rights.

Progress toward meeting the MDGs has been mixed, and is subject to events and shocks in the environment. The increase in terrorism directly affects the ability of a number of states to meet their MDG targets, in addition to other impacts. Conflict and potential conflict among states has worsened the situation for many people in Iraq and Sudan, among other places. The proportion of people facing extreme poverty declined from 29 percent in 1990 to 23 percent in 1999, which is a definite improvement, but in most parts of the world the rate of change is too slow to permit MDGs to be achieved. In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, virtually no improvement at all was noticeable, and outbreaks of famine in Niger demonstrate continuing food insecurity. Approximately 27 million more African people suffered from food insecurity at the end of the 1990s compared to the beginning. In east Asia, poverty and hunger are still widespread, but have been reduced significantly.

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