Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that were officially established following the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000, following the adoption of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. All 189 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve these goals by the year 2015. The goals are:

Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger,
Achieving universal primary education,
Promoting gender equality and empowering women,
Reducing child mortality rates,
Improving maternal health,
Combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases,
Ensuring environmental sustainability, and
Developing a global partnership for development.^[1]

Each of the goals has specific stated targets and dates for achieving those targets. To accelerate progress, the G8 Finance Ministers agreed in June 2005 to provide enough funds to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) to cancel an additional $40 to $55 billion in debt owed by members of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) to allow impoverished countries to re‑channel the resources saved from the forgiven debt to social programs for improving health and education and for alleviating poverty.

Debate has surrounded adoption of the MDGs, focusing on lack of analysis and justification behind the chosen objectives, the difficulty or lack of measurements for some of the goals, and uneven progress towards reaching the goals, among other criticisms. Although developed countries’ aid for achieving the MDGs has been rising over recent years, more than half the aid is towards debt relief owed by poor countries, with much of the remaining aid money going towards natural disaster relief and military aid which do not further development.

Progress towards reaching the goals has been uneven. Some countries have achieved many of the goals, while others are not on track to realize any. A UN conference in September 2010 reviewed progress to date and concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date. There were also new commitments on women’s and children’s health, and new initiatives in the worldwide battle against poverty, hunger, and disease.

Government organizations assist in achieving those goals, among them are the United Nations Millennium Campaign, the Millennium Promise Alliance, Inc., the Global Poverty Project, the Micah Challenge, The Youth in Action EU Programme, “Cartoons in Action” video project, and the 8 Visions of Hope global art project.

Background The aim of the MDGs is to encourage development by improving social and economic conditions in the world’s poorest countries. They derive from earlier international development targets and were officially established following the Millennium Summit in 2000, where all world leaders in attendance adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration The Millennium Summit was PEEd with the report of the Secretary-General entitled We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the Twenty-First Century Additional input was prepared by the Millennium Forum, which brought together representatives of over 1,000 non-governmental and civil society organizations from more than 100 countries. The Forum met in May 2000 to conclude a two-year consultation process covering issues such as poverty eradication, environmental protection, human rights and protection of the vulnerable. The approval of the MDGs was possibly the main outcome of the Millennium Summit. In the area of peace and security, the adoption of the Brahimi Report was seen as properly equipping the organization to carry out the mandates given by the Security Council. The MDGs originated from the Millennium Declaration produced by the United Nations. The Declaration asserts that every individual has the right to dignity, freedom, equality, a basic standard of living that includes freedom from hunger and violence, and encourages tolerance and solidarity.The MDGs were made to operationalize these ideas by setting targets and indicators for poverty reduction in order to achieve the rights set forth in the Declaration on a set fifteen-year timeline.An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach: Freedom and Agency’ The Millennium Summit Declaration was, however, only part of the origins of the MDGs. It came about from not just the UN but also the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The setting came about through a series of UN‑led conferences in the 1990s focusing on issues such as children, nutrition, human rights, women and others. The OECD criticized major donors for reducing their levels of Official Development Assistance (ODA). With the onset of the UN’s 50th anniversary, then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan saw the need to address the range of development issues. This led to his report titled, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century which led to the Millennium Declaration. By this time, the OECD had already formed its International Development Goals (IDGs) and it was combined with the UN’s efforts in the World Bank’s 2001 meeting to form the MDGs.”The Political Economy of the MDGs: Retrospect and Prospect for the World’s Biggest Promise”, The MDG focus on three major areas: of valorising human capital, improving infrastructure, and increasing social, economic and political rights, with the majority of the focus going towards increasing basic standards of living.”The Millennium Development Goals Report:The objectives chosen within the human capital focus include improving nutrition, healthcare (including reducing levels of child mortality,HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, and increasing reproductive health), and education. For the infrastructure focus, the objectives include improving infrastructure through increasing access to safe drinking water, energy and modern information/communication technology; amplifying farm outputs through sustainable practices; improving transportation infrastructure; and preserving the environment. Lastly, for the social, economic and political rights focus, the objectives include empowering women, reducing violence, increasing political voice, ensuring equal access to public services, and increasing security of property rights. The goals chosen were intended to increase an individual’s human capabilities and “advance the means to a productive life”.The MDGs emphasize that individual policies needed to achieve these goals should be tailored to individual country’s needs; therefore most policy suggestions are general.

The MDGs also emphasize the role of developed countries in aiding developing countries, as outlined in Goal Eight. Goal Eight sets objectives and targets for developed countries to achieve a “global partnership for development” by supporting fair trade, debt relief for developing nations, increasing aid and access to affordable essential medicines, and encouraging technology transfer. Thus developing nations are not seen as left to achieve the MDGs on their own, but as a partner in the developing-developed compact to reduce world poverty.