Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all 193 United Nations member states and at least 23 international organizations have agreed to achieve by the year 2015.
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,[2] and were officially established following the Millennium Summit in 2000, where all world leaders present adopted the United Nations Millennium Declaration.
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 focus on three major areas of Human development (humanity): bolstering human capital, improving infrastructure, and increasing social, economic and political rights, with the majority of the focus going towards increasing basic standards of living.
Goals:
1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger:
2: Achieve universal primary education
3: Promote gender equality and empower women
4: Reduce child mortality rates
5: Improve maternal health
6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
7: Ensure environmental sustainability
8: Develop a global partnership for development
Drawbacks of the MDGs :
- the lack of analytical power and justification behind the chosen objectives. The MDGs leave out important ideals, such as the lack of strong objectives and indicators for equality, which is considered by many scholars to be a major flaw of the MDGs due to the disparities of progress towards poverty reduction between groups within nations.
- the difficulty or lack of measurements for some of the goals.
Progress:
- Progress towards reaching the goals has been uneven
- major countries that have been achieving their goals include China (whose poverty population has reduced from 452 million to 278 million) and India due to clear internal and external factors of population and economic development.
- areas needing the most reduction, such as the Sub-Saharan Africa regions have yet to make any drastic changes in improving their quality of life, are at a major risk of not meeting the MDGs by 2015.
- Fundamental issues will determine whether or not the MDGs are achieved, namely gender, the divide between the humanitarian and development agendas and economic growth, according to researchers at the Overseas Development Institute.
Review Summit 2010:
- held at UN headquarters in New York on 20–22 September 2010 to review progress to date, with five years left to the 2015 deadline.
- concluded with the adoption of a global action plan to achieve the eight anti-poverty goals by their 2015 target date.
- There were also major new commitments on women's and children's health, and major new initiatives in the worldwide battle against poverty, hunger and disease
Challenges:
- Although developed countries' aid for the achievement of the MDGs have been rising over recent years, it has shown that more than half is towards debt relief owed by poor countries.
- As well, remaining aid money goes towards natural disaster relief and military aid which does not further the country into development
- According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (2006), the 50 least developed countries only receive about one third of all aid that flows from developed countries, raising the issue of aid not moving from rich to poor depending on their development needs but rather from rich to their closest allies.
Goals in detail:
Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger:
Target 1A: Halve the proportion of people living on less than $1 a day
Proportion of population below $1 per day (PPP values)
Poverty gap ratio [incidence x depth of poverty]
Share of poorest quintile in national consumption
Target 1B: Achieve Decent Employment for Women, Men, and Young People
GDP Growth per Employed Person
Employment Rate
Proportion of employed population below $1 per day (PPP values)
Proportion of family-based workers in employed population
Target 1C: Halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
Prevalence of underweight children under five years of age
Proportion of population below minimum level of dietary energy consumption[13]
Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education:
Target 2A: By 2015, all children can complete a full course of primary schooling, girls and boys
Enrollment in primary education
Completion of primary education
Literacy of 15-24 year olds, female and male[14]
Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women:
Target 3A: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
Ratios of girls to boys in primary, secondary and tertiary education
Share of women in wage employment in the non-agricultural sector
Proportion of seats held by women in national parliament[15]
Goal 4: Reduce child mortality rates:
Target 4A: Reduce by two-thirds, between 1990 and 2015, the under-five mortality rate
Under-five mortality rate
Infant (under 1) mortality rate
Proportion of 1-year-old children immunized against measles[16]
Goal 5: Improve maternal health:
Target 5A: Reduce by three quarters, between 1990 and 2015, the maternal mortality ratio
Maternal mortality ratio
Proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel
Target 5B: Achieve, by 2015, universal access to reproductive health
Contraceptive prevalence rate
Adolescent birth rate
Antenatal care coverage
Unmet need for family planning[17]
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases:
Target 6A: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS
HIV prevalence among population aged 15–24 years
Condom use at last high-risk sex
Proportion of population aged 15–24 years with comprehensive correct knowledge of HIV/AIDS
Target 6B: Achieve, by 2010, universal access to treatment for HIV/AIDS for all those who need it
Proportion of population with advanced HIV infection with access to antiretroviral drugs
Target 6C: Have halted by 2015 and begun to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases
Prevalence and death rates associated with malaria
Proportion of children under 5 sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets
Proportion of children under 5 with fever who are treated with appropriate anti-malarial drugs
Prevalence and death rates associated with tuberculosis
Proportion of tuberculosis cases detected and cured under DOTS (Directly Observed Treatment Short Course)[18]
Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability:
Target 7A: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs; reverse loss of environmental resources
Target 7B: Reduce biodiversity loss, achieving, by 2010, a significant reduction in the rate of loss
Proportion of land area covered by forest
CO2 emissions, total, per capita and per $1 GDP (PPP)
Consumption of ozone-depleting substances
Proportion of fish stocks within safe biological limits
Proportion of total water resources used
Proportion of terrestrial and marine areas protected
Proportion of species threatened with extinction
Target 7C: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation (for more information see the entry on water supply)
Proportion of population with sustainable access to an improved water source, urban and rural
Proportion of urban population with access to improved sanitation
Target 7D: By 2020, to have achieved a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers
Proportion of urban population living in slums[19]
Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development:
Target 8A: Develop further an open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system
Includes a commitment to good governance, development, and poverty reduction – both nationally and internationally
Target 8B: Address the Special Needs of the Least Developed Countries (LDC)
Includes: tariff and quota free access for LDC exports; enhanced programme of debt relief for HIPC and cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous ODA (Overseas Development Assistance) for countries committed to poverty reduction
Target 8C: Address the special needs of landlocked developing countries and small island developing States
Through the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States and the outcome of the twenty-second special session of the General Assembly
Target 8D: Deal comprehensively with the debt problems of developing countries through national and international measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term
Some of the indicators listed below are monitored separately for the least developed countries (LDCs), Africa, landlocked developing countries and small island developing States.
Official development assistance (ODA):
Net ODA, total and to LDCs, as percentage of OECD/DAC donors’ GNI
Proportion of total sector-allocable ODA of OECD/DAC donors to basic social services (basic education, primary health care, nutrition, safe water and sanitation)
Proportion of bilateral ODA of OECD/DAC donors that is untied
ODA received in landlocked countries as proportion of their GNIs
ODA received in small island developing States as proportion of their GNIs
Market access:
Proportion of total developed country imports (by value and excluding arms) from developing countries and from LDCs, admitted free of duty
Average tariffs imposed by developed countries on agricultural products and textiles and clothing from developing countries
Agricultural support estimate for OECD countries as percentage of their GDP
Proportion of ODA provided to help build trade capacity
Debt sustainability:
Total number of countries that have reached their HIPC decision points and number that have reached their HIPC completion points (cumulative)
Debt relief committed under HIPC initiative, US$
Debt service as a percentage of exports of goods and services
Target 8E: In co-operation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable, essential drugs in developing countries
Proportion of population with access to affordable essential drugs on a sustainable basis
Target 8F: In co-operation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications
Telephone lines and cellular subscribers per 100 population
Personal computers in use per 100 population
Internet users per 100 Population[20]
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