Millennium Development Goals

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The Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that 191 United Nations member states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015.

Contents 1 Goals 2 Achieving the Millennium Development Goals 3 United States leadership 4 References 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] Goals

The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in September 2000, commits the states to:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than one U.S. dollar a day.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
   • Increase the amount of food for those who suffer from hunger.
2. Achieve universal primary education
   • Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling.
   • Increased enrollment must be accompanied by efforts to ensure that all children remain in school and receive a high-quality education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
   • Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015.
4. Reduce child mortality
   • Reduce the mortality rate among children under five by two thirds.
5. Improve maternal health
   • Reduce by three quarters the maternal mortality ratio.
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
   • Halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS.
   • Halt and begin to reverse the incidence of malaria and other major diseases.
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
   • Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes; reverse loss of environmental resources.
   • Reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water (for more information see the entry on water supply).
   • Achieve significant improvement in lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers, by 2020.
8. Develop a global partnership for development
   • Develop further an open trading and financial system that is rule-based, predictable and non-discriminatory. Includes a commitment to good governance, development and poverty reduction—nationally and internationally.
   • Address the least developed countries’ special needs. This includes tariff- and quota-free access for their exports; enhanced debt relief for heavily indebted poor countries; cancellation of official bilateral debt; and more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction.
   • Address the special needs of landlocked and small island developing States.
   • Deal comprehensively with developing countries' debt problems through national and international measures to make debt sustainable in the long term.
   • In cooperation with the developing countries, develop decent and productive work for youth.
   • In cooperation with pharmaceutical companies, provide access to affordable essential drugs in developing countries.
   • In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies—especially information and communications technologies.

[edit] Achieving the Millennium Development Goals

The Millennium Villages project of Millennium Promise offers a collaborative initiative to meet the Millennium Development Goals. The organization's mission is to end extreme poverty by 2025.

The United Nations Millennium Campaign supports citizens' efforts to hold governments accountable for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. ^[1]

[edit] United States leadership

As the largest national economy in the world, the United States' leadership and commitment is seen as vital in addressing world poverty and in implementing the Millennium Development Goals.

Although the US has declared its commitment to the goals, an August 2005 press briefing stated that the US would avoid using the term "Millennium Development Goals" in official statements, preferring to describe these as the "goals in the Millennium Declaration."^[2] Nevertheless, just a few weeks later, a reporter at another press briefing noted an apparent about-face on the terminology issue.^[3]

While the United States gives large amounts of aid abroad in absolute (rather than proportional) terms, due to it being mostly military in nature, its impact upon the Goals during George W. Bush's presidency has been mixed.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

1. ^ Millennium Campaign Fund http://www.millenniumcampaign.org
2. ^ ON-THE-RECORD BRIEFING: Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs Kristen Silverberg on United Nations Reform, US Department of State, Aug. 31, 2005
3. ^ Briefing on Ongoing Diplomatic Activities at the UN and Other Current U.S. Foreign Policy Issues (R. Nicholas Burns, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs), US Department of State, Sep. 15, 2005

[edit] See also

• International Finance Facility
• 2005 World Summit
• The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria
• Economic development
• Anthony Asael
• Development assistance
• United Nations Millennium Project
• Millennium Promise
• HungryKids
• The End of Poverty

[edit] External links

• The Millennium Goals
• "Are We Making Poverty History?" - OneWorld.net's Perspectives Magazine, August/September 2005
• BBC Summary 2005 of UN Millennium Goals
• Millennium Development Goals Indicators: MDG Dashboard (downloadable database)
• UN Stats Division - MDGs
• www.developmentgoals.org
• Development Gateway Special Report: Aid Harmonization:What Will It Take to Meet the MDGs?
• International Food Policy Research Institute, Annual Report Essay:Agriculture, food security, nutrition and the Millennium Development Goals
• No more Broken Promises? - A plain language guide to the MDGs
• What are the Millennium Development Goals?, Introduction to the MDG written for laypersons.
• 'MDG Scan' to Benchmark Private Contribution Report on a mechanism to evaluate a company's contribution to reach the MDGs - IPS, 27 February 2007